Signature specification

[imomus]

Today I start work with Rusty Santos on a new record. Usually when I make a record I have, written down somewhere, a "signature specification", a short document spelling out how I want it to sound. Here's a text I sent Rusty last week, starting with a list of the four artists I want to be our guides, in terms of their sound palettes and their structural daring:

1. Yuko Nexus6 and her kotatsutop computer music.

2. Tomomi Adachi's "punk style choir" unit Royal Chorus.

3. Caetano Veloso's most experimental album, Araça Azul.

4. Alejandra and Aeron's field recordings. (Thanks, Tim Coster, for the guide to these!)

I want to make a record that's very radical. In a way you could say that it's a "post-tinnitus" album; it's a record that will be very quiet. I can imagine people putting it on for the first time and saying "But where are the songs? Where's the music? This is mostly silence! There's nothing here!" But then they'll listen again, and be seduced by the calm, level surface of the record, the fact that it can be on in the background, the fact that there's an enticing sensuality about its treatment of sound.

This is a record which assumes that the listener's ears have been re-set by "listening music". Whether it's John Cage or the "Meeting at Off-Site" series, "listening music" records say "It's a pleasure to listen to sound in its own right. Re-calibrate your ears and enjoy these sounds for their sculptural qualities". Cage said that music students were incapable of hearing a single note, but taught instead to focus on the relationships between sequences of notes. So Cage wanted to strip things down, get things back to the point where people were able to hear individual sounds, and think of them as music.

The music I enjoy the most these days is this kind of music. I'm thinking of the field recordings of Alejandra and Aeron, or pieces by Tomomi Adachi in which you just hear pieces of crockery grinding gently against each other, or a Yuko Nexus6 piece which uses her mumbling a language learning exercise. I also very much like the calm, soothing sound of the spoken voice. Records by Bernhard Gal and Tomomi Adachi have really made me think about how you can use the speaking voice in a musical way. And the murmuring of a human voice, very close-miked, can be a kind of equivalent to the "scratching back" idea I talked about. It can be a bit like the sound of cooing pigeons. I'm thinking of the kind of sensuality that informs some kinds of French radio creations (horspiel, or radiophonie productions by France Culture or Arte Radio), or the way bossa nova and Tropicalia vocals are recorded. Very dry and warm and close, with the sensuality of the voice to the fore. And of course Caetano Veloso is the master of this.

Caetano Veloso's "Araca Azul" album of 1973 is a key recording here, because it takes the typical bossa vocal warmth, but plays about with form. And here we come to two very important ideas for this record; Cute Formalism and children's records. Cute Formalism is my take on a certain Japanese style (think of Nobukazu Takemura's label Childisc) in which there's a combination of what we'd think of in the West as Formalism (experimental, avant garde techniques), but without machismo, pomp, or academic gravitas. Imagine if Picasso, Cage, Duchamp and other "Formalist" artists were children, baby versions of themselves, playing with sand and bricks. That would be cute formalism. The avant gardism which might be pompous and scary in adults would become, in children at play, charming.

So I want to abandon traditional song structures entirely, and try to re-invent pop music using listening music and Cute Formalism as a basis for a new grammar of "song" construction. We should avoid too much layering; sounds need to be exhibited with some silence around them, some space to give them definition. The sounds themselves should have a certain intimacy, delicacy and sensuality. I'd like the whole record to have the effect of listening to someone with a very soothing voice, despite the unorthodox structures used.

Mesmeric speech. This is something I want to capture on the record. Think of very early Laurie Anderson, how calming and entrancing her voice was (and yet you fell into a spell-like slumber at your own peril, because she was often doing "the authority voice" and you had to be vigilant against it). Think of when someone is showing you a portfolio, and obviously falling into a fairly well-rehearsed sales schtick, and yet there's something that makes you give in to their speaking voice, despite the fact that you find nothing interesting in their work and don't intend to buy it. Or think of school science demonstrations, when the lights were dimmed and some odd, murky chemical miracle was demonstrated. It took you somewhere else, into a miniature world of crystals, seahorses, ions... Mesmeric. You trust the narrator even when he may well be taking you to a place where you'll find yourself lost.

The themes of the record will be things like friendship, collectivity, nature, positivity, cooking, sex, playfulness, wholesomeness, ethical virtue. Something welcoming and nice and kind.



For the lyrics, I want to use a lot of web-translated Japanese journals, blogs kept by delicate and refined Japanese girls who often just talk about what they ate that day, or describe a seasonal Shinto festival (fireworks, the snow covers being put on the shrubs in Ueno Park). Rinko Kawauchi is a photographer whose work I think could really set the tone of the record. It's about the delicate magic of everyday life (if that doesn't sound too corny!). She concentrates on small, humble domestic details; the blue flame of a gas ring, light shining through a window, a pot of geraniums. It's the kind of detail Rilke picks up in his poem "The Duino Elegies". He says that maybe poets are just here to notice the jug, the comb, the feelings of a little girl... and that there's nothing "deeper" than that.

There's a link between being in the moment and the kind of sound texture I mentioned earlier. Simple sounds — of pots clinking, for instance — are the sounds of "the moment". Mentioning pots makes me think of Tori Kudo of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, who's a potter and has an approach to sound a bit like the one I'm thinking of, although perhaps using a bit more music and layering things a bit more than I want to. But his approach to pottery is interesting: the pots he likes are quite badly made, but have interesting flaws. I guess this is called wabi sabi in Japanese aesthetics; you keep the work that has the interesting flaw, or some kind of quirky, charming idiosyncracy, not the perfect shiny and powerful work.

A word about what I want to reject: I want the record to be static, not dynamic. It should represent contentment with where we are just now, rather than the heroic-Romantic desire for an intensity located elsewhere. It should dwell on domestic-scaled things. We'll literally be recording the vocals in a kitchen, so let's make a virtue of that, and make it "kitchen music".

I want to reject "Impact Culture". We live in a culture where people (professionals) edit things for maximum impact, cutting out what they think are the boring bits, using digital techniques to make everything sound "optimized" and loud. And I want to reject that quite forcefully. I also want to reject what I call "Easy Power". Easy Power is using well-established forms to achieve immediate impact. Writing songs that sound like The Beatles... only better, because the Beatles only had 8-track! You know, that kind of idiocy. The idea of artists writing previous artists' songs over and over again, only "better", "cleaner", more "efficient". I've found you can have just as much power by going quiet (in a live situation) as you can by going loud. Assuming people want to listen, and want to be taken somewhere (and it isn't a Friday night, with a bar at the back of the room). Another thing I want to reject is Moronic Cynicism. This record should be like a little courtyard you wander into, maybe a bit Islamic, like something you might find at Grenada. A courtyard protected from the traffic, very quiet, with a fountain and some very small sounds which, because of the silence, can flourish and be heard.

Or, to change the metaphor, the record should be like a succession of little sound sculptures, each one pleasing to the ear, each one defined by the silence around it. The fact that language will be treated like sound sculpture will bring the record close to the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. The record should feel a bit like wandering through his garden at Little Sparta.

In my original Cute Formalism essay I wrote "As Momus I'm not a Cute Formalist, more of a cad vaudevillian". I think that's about to change.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

it's amazing how much you can say about a record that you haven't even started to record. i wish i could control and bend what i'm doing like you do.

(o.)

[(Anonymous)]

All you have to do is self-wank until you believe your own hype.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite writings of yours are when you attempt to articulate an aesthetic sensibility that you're interested in.

shhhhhh

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps rather than make a record at all you should just issue a triangular piece of paper that folds out into cone so that people may press it to their ear and hear the music in the sounds of the world around them.
http://stormbugblog.blogspot.com/

Re: shhhhhh / cover design

[(Anonymous)]

as an academical spoiled designer i was immediately visualizing a packaging / cover concept for the record, the way you've described it, nick.
and i was exactly thinking of something like described above: an instruction (or a tool) for the listener to listen closer...
as there are many visual references in your specification of the album, have you already thought about its cover design, nick?
eRiC / bErLiN

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

" I also very much like the calm, soothing sound of the spoken voice. "

One of my female friends described your singing on the track "Old Friend, New Flame" as "it feels like he's about to lick me in the ear". Something you want to come even closer to with this recording?

[rainermaria.livejournal.com]

i like simple pop music, like beatles. avant garde music doesn't impact me, it's charming and forgettable. you talk about delicate magic of everyday life, but then i've never been to Grenada or inside an islamic courtyard.

[(Anonymous)]

the beatles are but a little richards rip-off without the avant-garde of the 1960s, dear

(o.)

[rainermaria.livejournal.com]

well, its not avant garde to me, i don't live in the 1960's. ;P momus says he wants to reinvent pop music and abandon traditional song structure, and its such a cliche. most of the time, it ends up sounding pretty boring and pretentious anyway. i guess this is what i really meant when i said avant-garde.

[(Anonymous)]

think before you write, rather than just say something that makes no sense. i always find that people who call others pretentious, are often just insecure about their own pretentions. everyone is pretentious dear, but at least some of us don't try to hide it, like you. and most of all, look up the exact meaning of "cliche" and try to understand it.

[rainermaria.livejournal.com]

i think there are many pretentious people, i don't agree everyone is pretentious. and i do think people do their best to try to hide the fact that they are being pretentious. i don't see what good it does to let everyone know you're a fake, unless you were something of an avant garde artist. so what are you saying? you seem angry, and according to your silly reasoning, you seem to be an insecure person yourself, labeling EVERYONE pretentious. i wasn't talking about people anyway, only music. i didn't even call Nick's music pretentious, only that when people attempt to change music in that manner,it seems to result in music that is unenjoyable and artificial and calculated. and i say it is cliche (banal, commonplace, obvious) because it seems many good musicians do this (especially after some commercial success, probably from their ego getting ahead of their musical ability), and often end up sucking. i just wanted to say though, i don't think that particular scenario applies to momus, and it wasn't my original intent to discourage him. i guess i'm just naturally inclined to be negative and socially awkward as any other dorks commenting on click opera.

[rainermaria.livejournal.com]

ps. it is actually spelled "pretensions". I looked it up. :B

[scola.livejournal.com]

Way to issue a simultaniously condescending and meaningless dismissal of a beloved and fairly innovative group of musicians, dear.

[scola.livejournal.com]

That was addressed to "anonymous" BTW... not to rainermaria. Momus's LJ customization makes it rather hard to tell.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh no, not another album I will not want to listen to.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Not that it's my place to determine where you get your lyrics, but I think a light teen-romance anime series like "Azumanga Daioh" would suggest the cuteness and formality of the project just as well.

Off the topic a little, sorry

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, just wondering what your issues are with 'Point', given that you're gonna be drawing on what you describe as the key influence on that album?

Thanks

Joseph

Re: Off the topic a little, sorry

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Point" is somewhat tidy for my taste... there's a kind of control-freakery in the way things are positioned that I don't hear when I listen to Caetano. Nothing is left to chance in Keigo's work, like his live show, which was all sequenced to the video projection. It's a "feel" thing. I love his concepts and his sensibility, but the "feel" is tight, like he's a graphic designer who uses grids or something.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

I've always found the kitchen sounds of pink floyd's "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" to be quite relaxing. Perhaps you could record the songs while Hisae is in the kitchen cooking. Have one mic on you for the vocals and instruments and one mic placed in the kitchen to capture the ambience.

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Why don't you do something new instead?

The whole of London has been making music similar to what you describe since the advent of the Minidisc recorder in the late nineties.

The current vogue for radio art, sonic art, Resonance programmes like Framework and Frequenzen are just a logical result of that. Much like hip-hop before it - a further dissolving down of music into its component parts.

Are you aware of Ouspensky's six processes?

"The Process 3-1-2

The process 3-1-2 means the triad in which the third force comes first, followed by first force, resulting in second force. In Rodney Collin's useful terminology, it is described as the sequence form-life-matter: Form, applied to life, reduces it to matter. In its negative aspect, this is sometimes called the process of crime, or the process of corruption. An example is the work of a virus. The virus represents form, or the third force, and it acts on life, the first force, reducing it to matter, the second force. Third force always stands between second and first force in its "density of vibrations", or intelligence. The virus is not alive, but hijacks the living, leaving dead matter in its wake.

Another example of the negative side of this process 3-1-2 is formatory thinking. Formatory thinking occurs when a pre-existing thought-form is applied to thought, essentially destroying the living process of thinking by forcing it to fit into the pre-existing form, which results in some lifeless result, for example, a slogan. In technical language, formatory thought occurs when the mechanical part of the intellectual centre overrides the work of the intellectual part of the intellectual centre. This is wrong work of centers, in this case, parts of centres"

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, don't you think there's any danger in over-thinking things, weighing down your work with so much theoretical baggage and aesthetic reference points before you've even begun working on it? I don't want to transcendentalise 'instinct' or 'inspiration'. But it seems to me that the best ideas often come out of the process of work itself and there's a danger of draining the life out of something by too tightly prescribing theoretical parameters beforehand.

[thestove.livejournal.com]

a stranger agree's,

If your thinking about it, there are numbers, if your thinking about xyz-yz.0.485, no matter, they cannot exsist in what he was discribing, but detailing stuff like that will often miss produce meening, i find.

so the work becomes the previous post, but if you look at it that way, shrug ya shulders and carryon. Ah but may not work as well any may not be able to perfect a preset. personally i get lost when sitting in a world where there is "...." (...., represents something not in words or numbers), but i'm looking and wanting to tweek the fx unit.

Duno, i guess thats how i perseve it, but this is an interesting post.


Cheers..

TheStove.

[bklyndispatch.livejournal.com]

I am really intrigued by the ideas you're exploring here. any chance of rough versions being put up here on click opera?

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

i can't tell if you're serious or joking

Cute

[(Anonymous)]

You may be interested in this: james kochalka, a comics artist has a Cute Manifesto and a little thesis called Craft is the enemy. Its very simple in essence, but I think it echoes what you´re saying.

http://www.indyworld.com/kochalka/manifesto.html
http://www.pennydreadfull.net/thesisenemy.html
Abraço
Odyr

Re: Cute

[(Anonymous)]

James Kochalka...a truely honest person, glad to hear someone bring him up. No faking with him, he is not forcing his output or basing his new recordings on what is cool at the moment, or uncool either. I have done some collaborative recordings with him in the past and am working on something new with him at this very moment. You can also hear some of his recordings and look at his visual things at his American Elf site(can't think of the actual web address off the top of my head.)
love,
John/ Fashion Flesh
ps-hello Nick. I've been recording alot of new material as of late also, both alone and with far away friends. Write me with your current postal-details if you want to hear new things, without sampling them of course...just kidding, sort of.

www.fashionflesh.com
www.supermadrigalbros.com

[(Anonymous)]

Back in Mexico City with Paddington Bear. Everything swims along. The Duffy reissue is out and I trust you all love the new sleeve and my soul baring sleeve notes. Listening to the the Flamingoes at the moment wondering how they made such an amazing sound. Advertising Space is out soon as a single with interesting "b-sides". I Love My Friends is out on January 30th 2006 with Mao Badge In the Evening of Her Day Barbarellas House of Flowers Comedown Hey Kat and Holding Hands with Grace as bonus tracks. Universal are re-issuing the first three Lilac Time albums with extra tracks and the original artwork that no one saw at the time because it was pictures of hills and trees and not beautiful young chaps. Paradise Circus will hopefully be the double album it was meant to be - if we can get it onto one disc. Then everything apart from the they called him tin tin era will be out and They Called Him Tin Tin just about covers that. Claire & I have recorded our Lilac Time Christmas gift for you that will be available to the mailing list for free. Off to see the Aztec ruins - or maybe just the hotel bar. Loving The Young Knives single The Decision it's on Transgressive records x

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"As Momus I'm not a Cute Formalist, more of a cad vaudevillian"

Perhaps a leering diaphanist.

[pirateman.livejournal.com]

I've always been interested in recording a song from the next room - like, all that emotion and soul and intensity filtered through a wall... Like quietly telling someone you love them in the back bedroom of a thumping house party.

[300letters.livejournal.com]

I have an iTunes playlist that includes a Cage recording of him and Tudor performing Indeterminacy and then multiple versions of your 'minute of silence.' It is rather obvious, but I though the idea of a conceptual playlist was fun.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This "minute of silence" is not something I did consciously, it's just a little space marker at the end of "Oskar Tennis Champion" that at some point someone gave a name to. Its only function is to separate Adam Bruneau's ringtones from the rest of the album. But certain reviewers latched onto it in their hatchet jobs: "The new Momus is the kind of guy who stoops to include a minute of silence as the 16th track on this disc and titles it "A Minute of Silence". If that's not enough, he follows it up with an instrumental reprise of the album's second track-- rendered in telephone ringtones! Oh, the fun!"

Oh, the pretension!

[300letters.livejournal.com]

Space marker or not, it serves my purposes well. Besides I enjoy a little pretension every now and then. Keeps it all in perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus talks a good album.

It sounds too cold and calculating to me. Isn't this the 'friendly album'? What happened to the idea of using King Tubby as an influence?

You need a bit of playfulness, warmth, and surprise in that mix mate.

[(Anonymous)]

The ideas sound intriguing...but I'm not sure I'd want to listen to them play out over 40-50 minutes. (Or worse, 80...) I think insufficient attention's been paid to the interaction between the type of music and what sort of format best collects it. Do you write very short, catchy little songs? People are going to get tired of them after 30-40 minutes...whereas if your songs are a little longer - 4-6 minutes - and more complex and varied, you can fill 50-60 minutes without inducing ear fatigue. Or say you're a minimalist a la early Glass: your music really doesn't have the proper effect unless it's allowed to run long enough to more or less alter the perceptual framework of the listener. Anyway, all this is to say that I'd probably want to hear 10-20 minutes of this stuff, and would probably enjoy it at that length - but collect it into a longer format, and I think it would begin to lose its impact. Of course, listeners can always turn music off, or repeat it - but so long as the musician is going to trouble to assemble pieces into a larger whole, their overall effect should be considered. --Anonymous 2fs

[(Anonymous)]

The entire premise of the way this 'album' is planned seems to be to take a bunch of existing forms as templates and then recombines them in a very conscious and determined way. A kind of aesthetic bad faith, taking the aesthetics of the process but ignoring the process and the potential of applying the process to contemporary forms. Perhaps this is the point. I don't really know where to begin with this range of references. So yeah yeah, John Cage, etc, fair enough that this comes from Cageian ideas of indeterminacy and that 'naturally' would have brought forth small, quotidian everyday sounds into a determined musical sphere. Sure. And then to say, well Caetano Veloso's 'most experimental' album. Well I don't know. I think Veloso's 'most' experimental was the Arto Lindsay produced Circulado in 1991, where the No Wave faux jazz experimentalism rubs shoulders with Tropicali and easy listening. I suppose I'm sceptical about the pre-determination of the approach but equally intrigued about how process and aesthetic experimentalism might have congealed intself into stylistic tropes in your perception of your intentions. And also can't thinking that dorine_muraille has pretty much done this already? Maybe he's not so 'cute'?

direct language

[(Anonymous)]

that's "...can't help thinking that dorine_muraille..." etc

dl

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

The Musician's curse: Sound is the medium of nostalgia, more than any other.

[wintercamp.livejournal.com]

ah, every part of that sounds so good! i'm completely excited. many comments seem kind of heartless...does it bring you down or do appreciate the uh frankness? i couldn't take it!

Hugs to Momus

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, working with Rusty, I would love to have the two of you sit down and talk about the new Animal Collective. What do you two think? Also, what about the new Deerhoof?
I imagine if you listened to them you couldn't help but be a/effected by them. Landmarks both I say, but I am interested in your thoughts. xo Kumiko

[touristathome.livejournal.com]

I just have to ask...will a vinyl edition be in the works? CDs and mp3s just don't have the same ritualistic appeal to me as a good LP.

Other than that, I have to say that I am very excited. From the descriptions it sounds a little like Gastr Del Sol's Upgrade and Afterlife a bit...are you a fan of the record? Might be a little more on the formalist side of things, but reading the bit about "kitchen music" made me immediately think of the kettle sounds on The Sea Incertain.

the new album sounds like

[(Anonymous)]

it will be the worst one yet. Gawwwdddddd... i'd hope that the recent decline would end with this album, but it appears that this will be another "sounds interesting on paper, but boring on CD" recording. Please, PLEASE, PUH-LEASSEEE reconsider.

[(Anonymous)]

Your life always seems incredibly fast paced and I hope it isnt.

Your writing about your album worries me, although I'm not really worried about the end product.. I've been thinking lately about gambling -- slot machines have recently made their way into my city -- and the many different strategies people have devised in order to give a feeling of control over the randomness; really all of the games in a proper casino are elaborate coin tosses or something similar. I've decided that I very much like gambling (why not), but can't deal with all the illusions being placed in front of the pure fate that I'm craving. (roulette would be nice, but that is evidently to close to the blind witches for state law).

Now it is just the words "win" or "lose" coming to me now and then throughout the day.

Good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

look forward to the album and its quiet spaces / playful faces(?)

new album

[(Anonymous)]

do you see theese Ideas open source

is it ok to rip them off ??

I like the Idea of warm spoken word

and bossa inspired by avant composing very much