RE: [microsound] The 'quest for newness'...

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What is a blessing is also a curse.  When I made my first album 12 years 
ago it was, for me at least, an activity to be undertaken with great 
seriousness:  there were expensive studio time not to be wasted, costly 
tape to be conserved, the need to keep timings within the advisable 
limitations of a single LP (although we went a bit past these), and the 
knowledge that another such release would not be possible for at least 
another year.  We took the best material from our past years, perfected it 
in rehearsal, and released a small slice of ourselves which would do for 
the next three years, as it was only after this time that our second issue 
found its way out into the world.  Now the digital home studio is almost a 
necessity - especially for electronic musicians - and the expansive time 
allowances and cheapness of the media make it possible for people to 
release an album each week, eliminating any necessity of pruning, editing, 
or gestating, all of which to me made the wait between albums in the past a 
more deliriously satisfying experience than one has in the age of, shall I 
say, the digital laxative.  To me the issue does not relate to the tools of 
composition:  I recall that many "serious" musicians complained at the 
advent of the sampler and the MIDI sequencer that now Any hack would be 
able to make music, and the complaints about the hackery software music 
seem to worry about the same ease and democratization in music 
production.  Certainly I have heard plenty of music in the last year which 
seems hamfisted tweaking of software presents - "Powerbook diddling" 
happens - but then I have heard equivalent dysinspiration (should I say, 
expiration?) in just about every other region of music I have explored; I 
also expect that regardless of the amount of music flooding or trickling 
into the "market" the proportion of the interesting to the uninteresting 
remains about the same.  The idea of newness meanwhile is a bugbear - just 
about anything appearing to be shockingly new can be found to have strong 
influences and unmistakable antecedents, however many years it takes the 
novelly shocked listener to find them - and mere newness does not make 
something particularly good.  Returning to Oval, where I recall this thread 
began to fray, what has made Oval enduring for me is not its newness - 
skipping CDs alone would seem emptily gimmicky after a few initial listens 
- but its musicality, its melody, its richness, its personality, and I 
expect if the next Oval record were an acoustically recorded country album 
it would retain these characteristics.  And here is for me the dividing 
line:  does a record, whether the first this month or the first this 
decade, whether "bleeding-edge" or safely genre-stamped, whether made in a 
highend studio or at home, whether produced with medieval instruments or 
freeware, have emotion, have personality, have a desperate passionate 
reason to Be?  Has it been extruded or born?  Have care and time been taken 
with it or has it been recorded while its creator was on the potty?  The 
clock cannot be turned backward, and as a musician I am quite happy that I 
can now make records on the G4 in bedroom rather than in the uncomfortable 
tick-tock of the hired studio and that I can release them more often that 
once every two or three years, but the dangers of the situation must be 
acknowledged if our music is to be worthy of listening five or ten years 
from now.  Then again, the occasional brilliance found on a handwrapped CDR 
or an obscurely posted MP3 file makes the proliferating dross ever worth 
the wading.

PS - For sheer personality, the Tomlab compilation "For Friends" has quite 
won my affections this week, and at its low price I recommend it to all.

Playing now:  Tram "Heavy Black Frame"

joshua maremont / thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
boxman studies label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/