Digital Disembodiment

 

The defining characteristics of older technologies are valued over the new. Rather than brokenness or obsolescence, musicians speak of the warmth, authenticity, humanity, and even sexuality of analog sounds, tube amplifies, and vinyl LPs, as compared to the coldness, inauthenticity, and disembodied character of digital recording, integrated circuits, and compact discs (Goodwin 1988 265, Théberge 207-13). Eno describes how the apparent “weaknesses” and limitations of instruments and media, these aspects regarded as “most undesirable,” become ‘their cherished trademark.” (Auner, 2000)

Auner’s point of disembodiment of digital recording can be taken almost literally: when we create, play and use a digital file, we no-longer engage with it physically. As the jack of all trades Brian Eno elaborates:

I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. This transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse. Musicians enjoy drawing on that finesse (and audiences respond to its exercise), so when muscular activity is rendered useless, the creative process is frustrated.

Musicians are a touchy feely bunch of people. They like to hold things in their hands, tweak things, bend things, break things, scratch things. Most of the iconic musicians did things with their hands and instruments that had never been done before – most often they interfered with the instruments normal actions – lets say the distortion of hendrix, the scratching of Grandmaster flash. And they could do so because the instruments they used allowed their hands to get in the way.

Digital technologies don’t allow phyiscal movements to be utilised : because we interact with them, as Eno says, through “mental activity”. It doesn’t matter how many buttons i have on screen, how many things to manipulate, how many choices, i have a single mouse with one or two buttons, and a keyboard. No matter what variable i change on-screen, the physical process is the same. I use the same mouse click to copy and mp3 file as i use to transfer thousands of dollars between online bank accounts.

And it doesn’t matter who i am: even the most technically astute programmer is no better (or worse) at clicking on an icon than I. Obviously this is not the case with analogue technologies, which required different physical skills for each machine:

In drawing our attention to the technology itself, its machines and media, noise becomes a metaphor attaching a kind of tactility to sound. Radio static becomes the feel of a tuning knob. The crackle of dust becomes the vinyl itself. The hum of tubes evokes their warm temperature. A stylus dropping carries the weight of a tone arm. (Link, 2001).

We enjoy these actions because they allow individual differences – DJs can take playing a record, a universal, mundane action which (20 years ago) we all would have performed, and skillfully scratch and manipulate music. Their own personal style is communicated through these movements, movements which are difficult, if not impossible to emulate due to the “unreliable muscles” we enact.

I think this is Link’s point when he says that:

Transduction noise can thus function as a “suture” in film theory, stitching our subjectivity into the recording. An LP’s hiss, crackle, and warpage emerge as surprisingly essential aspects of listener identity. (Link, 2001)

Hand Made Donuts

“Are the events of music simply there or do we occasionally sense within them the voices of commentators that enunciate them.” (Abbate; 1991, 15).

Let’s talk about this concept of re-instating the hand-made using the example of a vinyl album released in 2006 by the now dead JDilla (James Dewitt Yancey), titled Donuts. The album is a collection of short edits of soul and funk songs, looped and cut together live on a sampler. It is important to consider that at the time the album was produced, JDilla was in hospital (he passed away three days after the album was released).

The album is heavily stamped with the artist’s own touches – recording the album live, adding errors, scratching, re-cueing the records, adding static, out of time loops, etc. At each song we are reminded that whilst “recordings exist without death, available for nearly infinite playback”, the producer, Dilla, can still be present (Gallope; 2006, 8). This album is an attempt to impress temporaility and ‘live-ness’ onto the continuous commodity of the record.

Gallope sees this drive for ‘live-ness’ as a response to the ‘cold-ness’ of digital recording.

“Performance suddenly appears nostalgic, more real, vulnerable, expressive, ephemeral or drastic. Modern musical performance, whether on the classical stage performing a composed work, touring an album, or reproducing a traditional style, it must be anxiously marked live, authentic, organic, real, as if to preserve the difference of humanity against the constant haunting of immortal, insomniac recordings that seem to proliferate in ever increasing numbers, seeming to come out of nowhere.” (Gallope: 2006, 9)

The liveness of Donuts transcends death of the artist brought about by recording, and in this case, death of the artists corporeality. JDilla demonstrates that the death of body does not equal death of social presence ”…in the absence of the body, social presence still persists, so challenging the current orthodoxy that our embodiment is essential to social membership” (Hallam, Hockey, Howath; 2001, 74). Discogs lists around 13 posthumous releases – he is still releasing albums, creating flows, spawing fansites, producing commodities after death.

De/Re-Territorialization of music

It’s an ephemeral thing, the flow of music; what sticks, what fails, what is kept, bought, sold.

Let’s take and follow the territories of a newly purchased vinyl record (vinyl, because it has a physical body to be inscribed with desires). It reads like the bands of a felled tree, letting us know it’s past.

Alright: 12″ single, black sleeve, minimal label info. Myra Barnes Re-edit, ‘Soul Sister’. Originally released late 60’s, re-edit is brand new.

 

Often the re-edit labels have NO info printed, not even a title: which aims to de-territorialize the music from its past, and re-hash it into the current. It doesn’t matter how much has been changed or re-mixed, its the very act of feeding it through the vinyl/dj machine that matters.

When i played it the first time last night at a bar, i was drunk, and knocked the needle straight across the vinyl, leaving a quiet pop every 1.88 seconds recurring across most of the 12″. It’s mine now. No other copy has that noise.

(Speaking of locked grooves, i have a copy of ‘jungle fever’ from the junglebook movie (disneyland), with a groove that loops, over and over. What were the types of Bodies without Organs again? Empty, full and cancerous? Well, a locked groove is cancerous, endlessly repeating the same thing over and over.)

As a record is played, needles, dust, dirt, scratches etc add to the sounds present, perhaps showing how the record is not petrified in its organisation (unlike cd’s). each time a record is played, the recording is brought into the current, into flux.

We have devices to stop these becomings: covers, dust cleaners, low wear styli. But we can reduce wear only to a certain point, whilst still creating music. It acknowledges music as a kind of becoming, and becomings are things that leave marks.

Plastic Dreams and the 7″

 

I’ll admit, i’m an addict.  I collect records insatiably, often with little regard for my bank account, and little regard for logic. If i already have a song legally downloaded, or on a cd, i will still go out and buy the vinyl if at all possible.

at estimate i have around 1000 vinyl / vinii?!?

Just for a frame of reference, a new 12″ single, with 1-3 songs will cost around $20, and a new 7″ single will cost around 12-16 dollars. Albums retail for around $30-40. Second hand vinyl varies tremendously, but albums usually cost around half the original price.

So why is it that i am so ready to part with my money for music?

“The buying is what counts, which is one reason why the record buyer is insatiable. The desire to buy does not always co-incide with the desire to hear music…a record is tangiable, like money.” – Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987

Whilst music formats come and go, and whilst there are many other formats that are both commodified and collected, vinyl has an unbreakable grip on the balls of the collector. I want to begin to explain why, with a particular focus on 45rpm records (7inch singles).

Prior to RCA’s invention of the 7″ single in 1949, music was pressed on brittle shellac 78’s. These were heavy, fragile disks which required a turntable motor to spin at 78rpm.

Celebrating the notion of carefree, high school bobby soxers (whose only concern in life was to have a good time and dance), they began to promote a new social type they dubbed…’teenagers.’ Like bobby soxers, teenagers were tied to the new high school world of dating, driving, music, and enjoyment. The concept was spreading rapidly, particularly as a marketing tool.  – (Palladino, 1996, p. 52)”

The rise of the 7″ co-incides with the rise of the ‘teenager’, as a distinct marketing group in postwar America. The upwardly mobile youth, with leisure time and disposable income were quick to grab onto the new format, which increasily catered to their musical tastes (in particular, ‘pop’ music, rock and roll). 

As well as catering to music genres, the 7″ also shaped them. Time constraints of around 3 mins per side of a 7″ were essential in creating a standard generic length for a pop single, a legacy which continues until this day.

The 7″ single had the advantage of being small, flexible, cheaper to produce, lightweight and incredibly portable. Record players for the first time were marketed as highly portable, to be used outside the house. This was an interesting development as prior to this players were generally as impressive and cumbersome as possible, designed as peices of furniture made to blend into the modern home.

 

This was the birth of music portability, something which has been developed extensively with the ipod and walkman generations. The 1950’s in particular saw a huge number of portable, battery powered players hit the market, including Fisher Price and ‘Smurf’ players. This difference in portability is intially what bifurcated the pop culture format and equipment from the ‘high’ adult culture of the 12″ and home stereo.

Numerous historians of the US sound recording industry have noted that the post-war period saw the rise of what Philip Ennis calls ‘a strategy of age stratification’ within the white mainstream. This involved differentiating market segments by age, with teenagers and adults as the basic constituencies. Ennis argues that, in the early 1950s, the album and singles markets ‘diverged’ and two different ‘exploitation systems’ emerged, radio and jukeboxes for teen-oriented singles, and store display and print advertising for adult-oriented albums. - Spencer Drate, ‘45 Rpm’: Cover art

What is important to note is that the 7″ single, which was the birth of ‘disposable’ music, has slowly worked it was into a ‘high’ culture position. Original pressings of rare collectable tunes fetch exorbitant prices: northern soul vinyl can fetch well over $5000.

So why fetish the 7″?

-Because it was cheaper to produce, smaller labels could release vinyl: possiblity for rarity

-Cost allowed experimentation: skit records, instruction records (even toy instructions)

-Many 7’s contain alternate takes or instrumentals that were not released on album formats. This trend continues, with bootleg labels, mashups etc. still being produced and released on 7″.

-Free ‘promo’ records in magazines, picture postcards, stories. The 7″ was often used as a short-press promotional tool, so copies are scarce. These promos were distributed to radio stations and dj’s in order to generate attention for an album.

-Because records were treated as disposable, finding copies, especially ones in good condition, was difficult

-A physical music collection can be seen as cultural capital:

Cultural capital can be objectified or embodied. Just as books and paintings display cultural capital in the family home, so sub cultural capital is objectified in the form of record collections.” (Shank, Bennett & Toynbee, 2005)

Collector’s mythologize vinyl as a format that is somehow unrelated to the mass music machines of today, which, whilst entirely untrue, makes vinyl seem ‘free’ and authentic. Vinyl is a physical medium, an analog, rather than a digital format. And as such, it degrades, ages, wears and is imperfect. Many vinyls have defects, but it is almost a point of affection, like one grows to love the mole of a beautiful actor. It is a point of indivuality.

Shuffle, Fracture & Time:

Records created the notion that you could program your own listening: the autonomous listener. Rather than be pinned to what the radio dj was playing, you could play your own records, create your own collection. (Highly relevant to the Ipod generation).

“Where radio unites, records fracture. They are well suited to a society where everyone is off pursuing his own dream.” -  Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987

Recorded music also fractured time: a specific moment (iterally a live music recording, or what the recording become associated with) could be kept and listened to years later. How many movies show the reminiscing old man digging out his favourite song? But i think the format affects this. There is something human about the way a record ages with you, unlike the ‘picture of dorian gray’ digital file, to which time is infinite.

“Man uses the music itself to slip inside time and undermine it” – Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987

Music For April

No Gimmicks. Just a full length (80 min) mix, recorded live last night, one take, straight from decks, no planning. Blend of all the things ive been playing the last few weeks, including a few drafts of edits and songs i made over the uni hols.

Intro (Charlie Rich, live 1973)

1. Dee Edwards – why can’t there be love (1978)
2. Joe Williams & Jazz Orchestra – Get Out Of My Life, Woman (1968)
3. Sky King – Why Don’t You Take Us (1975)
4. Keith Mansfield – Morning Broadway (~1979)
5. Young Holt Unlimited – Wack Wack (1986)
6. Os Tremendoes – Nome Do Jogo (Unknown)
7. Blackbuster – Shack up (1975)
8. Creative Source – who is he (instrumental) (1973)
9. Moondog – Lament I, “bird’s Lament” (1969)
10. Trus’Me – Trus’Us (2008)
11. Barrabas – Woman (Mr. Fox Re-Edit) (1972/2008)
12. Chic – I want your Love (Tangoterje edit) (1978/2008)
13. Trus’Me – At the Disco (2008)
14. Mr. Fox – Church Bells (2008)
15. Suff Daddy – Drama Pts. 1&2 (2007)
16. Unknown – Hot Pants Reggae (2008)
17. Mato vs. Beastie Boys – Intergalactic (2008)
18. Dee Edwards – why can’t there be love (Pilooksi edit) (1978/2006)
19. Dixie Cups – Iko Iko (Mr. Fox Edit) (1979/2008)
20. Lee Dorsey – Give it up (1980)
21. BT Express – If it don’t turn you on (1974)
22. Skull Snaps – It’s a new day (1973)
23. Jackson Five – Never can say goodbye (Mr. Fox Edit) (1983/2008)
24. Pilooski – Love is wet (2008)
25. Linkwood Family – Piece of Mind (2007) Original Cast of ‘Oliver’, London – Food, Glorious Food (1960)
26. Mr. Fox – I want some more… (2008)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/98836640db0130/

160kbps, 80mins – just right for a cd.