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imomusMusic artists often say that -- like the sexist Christian God creating Eve from a single rib of Adam -- they become fascinated by a song from their last album and build the next on it. I've never been quite that tidy an artist -- my albums tend to start with clear intentions, but end up all over the place -- but if there were a song on Ocky Milk (2006) that might predict what its successor (2008) album will sound and feel like, it's probably "the big ballad", Nervous Heartbeat. Not just because of the splash it made -- reaching Stylus' Top 50 Singles of 2006 list without even being issued as a single! -- but because it did something songs do better than anything else I know; it moved people by touching on a universal emotion ("When will I see you again?").
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The different things I do -- blogging, novel-writing, journalism, performance art -- can often do the things I used to do in songs (social commentary, trend-watching, experiment) better than songs ever could. Because I do these other things, my songs are free to do what they do best. And -- the way I see it right now, anyway -- that's to move us with huge, moving melodies and massively obvious, universal human themes. Of love, of tenderness, of longing, of loss, of memory, of emotion. The more different things I do, the more I focus on that aspect of songs -- their most conservative aspect, certainly, but also their most powerful. Hence the enka stuff I was doing on Ocky Milk; for me, always hyper-critical of my own culture and its mainstream, it's much easier to edge into universal themes via someone else's culture, someone else's mainstream.
But, since "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", the West's past is also a place I can draw inspiration from. There are songs in the West's past that can move me deeply, songs that touch universal emotions with supreme elegance. Some of them are incredibly mainstream, embarrassingly so. For instance, the song I've been most obsessed by, and listened to the most over the past month, is a very old one (but new to me): "The Next Time", sung by Cliff Richard in the film Summer Holiday. Something about this clip, with Cliff on a solitary walk through Athens, mourning a love affair that's now "ancient history" with the Acropolis behind him, is deeply, divinely compelling for me. Of course it's wrapped up with the fact that I lived in -- and loved -- Athens when I was a kid. But it's also the internal properties of the song; that utterly mysterious thing which makes certain combinations of words and chords so much more affecting than others, and click with us on the deepest level when others don't.
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Another song that does this for me is Harry Belafonte's amazingly haunting reading, in 1966, of "Try To Remember". His phrasing is so out of joint with the chords that it starts to resemble some of the weird trip-ups we edited into the song "Permagasm" on my last album, where we tried to balance emotion and estrangement by laying the vocal in the wrong places and cross-fading between different mixes. But it's the backing vocal in the Belafonte song -- is it a theremin? a sentimental robot? -- that really slays, underpinning the song's spiraling chords and schizoid, spooky morbidity with pure terror-tingle. This wistful tenderness for a distant life can only come from beyond the grave. Beauty's just the first glimpse of terror.
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Finally, here's a video someone's made for one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs, "Take This Longing". I'll be on a plane later today, crossing the Alps, heading with Hisae to Venice to catch the last few days of the Biennale. I doubt the experience will be quite this lyrical, though.
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The different things I do -- blogging, novel-writing, journalism, performance art -- can often do the things I used to do in songs (social commentary, trend-watching, experiment) better than songs ever could. Because I do these other things, my songs are free to do what they do best. And -- the way I see it right now, anyway -- that's to move us with huge, moving melodies and massively obvious, universal human themes. Of love, of tenderness, of longing, of loss, of memory, of emotion. The more different things I do, the more I focus on that aspect of songs -- their most conservative aspect, certainly, but also their most powerful. Hence the enka stuff I was doing on Ocky Milk; for me, always hyper-critical of my own culture and its mainstream, it's much easier to edge into universal themes via someone else's culture, someone else's mainstream.
But, since "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", the West's past is also a place I can draw inspiration from. There are songs in the West's past that can move me deeply, songs that touch universal emotions with supreme elegance. Some of them are incredibly mainstream, embarrassingly so. For instance, the song I've been most obsessed by, and listened to the most over the past month, is a very old one (but new to me): "The Next Time", sung by Cliff Richard in the film Summer Holiday. Something about this clip, with Cliff on a solitary walk through Athens, mourning a love affair that's now "ancient history" with the Acropolis behind him, is deeply, divinely compelling for me. Of course it's wrapped up with the fact that I lived in -- and loved -- Athens when I was a kid. But it's also the internal properties of the song; that utterly mysterious thing which makes certain combinations of words and chords so much more affecting than others, and click with us on the deepest level when others don't.
[Error: unknown template video]
Another song that does this for me is Harry Belafonte's amazingly haunting reading, in 1966, of "Try To Remember". His phrasing is so out of joint with the chords that it starts to resemble some of the weird trip-ups we edited into the song "Permagasm" on my last album, where we tried to balance emotion and estrangement by laying the vocal in the wrong places and cross-fading between different mixes. But it's the backing vocal in the Belafonte song -- is it a theremin? a sentimental robot? -- that really slays, underpinning the song's spiraling chords and schizoid, spooky morbidity with pure terror-tingle. This wistful tenderness for a distant life can only come from beyond the grave. Beauty's just the first glimpse of terror.
[Error: unknown template video]
Finally, here's a video someone's made for one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs, "Take This Longing". I'll be on a plane later today, crossing the Alps, heading with Hisae to Venice to catch the last few days of the Biennale. I doubt the experience will be quite this lyrical, though.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 10:12 am (UTC)The idea of you going in a Flaming Lips direction excites me majorly :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 10:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 12:26 pm (UTC)Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 01:40 pm (UTC)This is my graphical interpretation of those 4 minutes and 7 seconds. Infact this is my graphical interpretation of emotionally charged love ballads period:
I reached out and touched those kittens, and jesus, they felt SO. FUCKING. GOOD. I ran straight home, practically kicked the door off its hinges and shouted "OMG Mum, Dad, get in the car. We're going to the pet shop to buy kittens RIGHT FUCKING NOW."
Pictures of kittens are nice. Kittens are nice.
That said, pictures of kittens, and kittens in and of themselves are absolutely nothing like actually owning a cat.
This is my cat Satchmo. She's 14 years old, which makes her a bit of an old girl in human years. She has arthritis in her back legs and she's a bit senile, she doesn't always know where she is. As you can see, she's not as photogenic as the kittens above and she dribbles on the duvet covers.
The point I'm trying to make is, photos of kittens, as nice as they are, stop representing for me what it is to own a cat at some point. Sure, my cat Satchmo was a kitten once, she was very cute. Photos of kittens remind me of that, but after a while I just stop relating my cat to those depictions.
This isnt necessarily about lack of authenticity or anti-tweeness; it's about limitations, Its about photos of kittens not being able to express what it is to actually own a cat.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 01:45 pm (UTC)Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 02:30 pm (UTC)Traditionalism, using "massively obvious, universal human themes" and "huge, moving melodies" seems like such an inevitable musician's trap--something that you yourself would have avoided a few years ago.
Don't listen to me, though; I probably wouldn't have said anything to this effect if you wrote "I want to sound like the Pet Shop Boys again".
Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 03:35 pm (UTC)I don't know if this is connected to Roman Emperors converting to Christiantity then giving the Bible a big patriarchal 'edit'...
Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 03:38 pm (UTC)I dont necessarily have a problem tradition musical depictions of love, I just find them limited. It's not about a lack of authenticity, it's about their focus on only one aspect of love that leaves me feeling unable to relate to them. It's like mainstream depicitions of love are constantly stuck in juvenile mode. It's an obsession with the honeymoon period, with youth, with sensationalism. "My flames are burning, I'm yearning".
I remember reading a manga about an elderly couple, it was just about their daily life in rural Japan. It was an "only in Japan" sort of comic, something you would never see published in the west. The stories were about meaningless things like their grand kids coming to visit and stuff, occasionally it would touch upon existentialist themes, but subtly and without fanfare.
I think it was supposed evoke feelings of nostalgia in its readers, It was a typical "slice of life" manga (there are lots of these types of mangas published in Japan), but it was untypical in that it depicted the everyday life and love of an elderly couple.
Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 03:43 pm (UTC)Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-16 03:57 pm (UTC)Still, though, I kind of feel like the Momus character has done that already?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 04:30 pm (UTC)Pitchfork is going to love you in 08.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 05:10 pm (UTC)And basically, koinei isn´t a very subtle language (we translated the Bible in second year Ancient Greek), so a lot was lost in translation.
Then the Latin used for the Medieval bibles was also wonky, so the text most rules are based on is basically completely different from the ´original´.
Obviously, since theologists have started to study Hebrew since the late 18th century, and our knowledge of Ancient Greek and different dialects of Latin has improved we should have better translations now, but crazy fundamentalists stand in the way of renewing translations.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 07:47 pm (UTC)Yes, but will the things you do- blogging, novel-writing, etc.- be remembered as much as your songs? Will people reading this entry remember it in 5 years? I probably won't.
Barry White meets John Cage
Date: 2007-11-16 08:08 pm (UTC)Perhaps these themes are 'conservative' in essence, they certainly are the vertebrae of most music in the 'song' format - everything from bombastic rock ballads to Schubert's lieder.
Your treatment - musically and lyrically - of these subjects comparative to most songs in the pop idiom is however quite uniquely compelling and evocative, there's nothing hidebound in Nervous Heartbeat.
Have to admit I do like some those venom-tinged opuses of yore though, society needs songs like Vogue Bambini!
Thomas Scott.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 08:12 pm (UTC)Richard
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 08:14 pm (UTC)Thomas S.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 08:40 pm (UTC)preciousss
Date: 2007-11-16 09:35 pm (UTC)Re: preciousss
Date: 2007-11-16 09:53 pm (UTC)Thomas S.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-16 10:01 pm (UTC)nice to see you want to go in that direction.
(still think zanzibar's the true masterpiece though)
yeeess
Date: 2007-11-16 10:41 pm (UTC)Re: preciousss
Date: 2007-11-17 12:19 am (UTC)Did someone say spam?
Date: 2007-11-17 12:29 am (UTC)MOAR
Date: 2007-11-17 12:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 12:56 am (UTC)"Beauty's just the first glimpse of terror"?
Relates to ideas of sublime etc but seems especially familiar. Thank you in advance.
i am a human below
Date: 2007-11-17 01:12 am (UTC)My morbidity is actually very friendly and welcoming. Whats spooky is where Momus/Currie (dissociative split perhaps) finds time for his miscellaneous culture adventures. I'm not saying he only sleeps two hours a night like Mrs Thatcher and drinks the rich blood of Japanese nubiles. Im just saying.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 01:55 am (UTC)Danny Baker, of all people, has been playing 'The Next Time' a lot on his radio show recently. He reckons that they should sell Cliff-style string vests at the Acropolis gift shop.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 05:29 am (UTC)Gladys, empress of soul. Can't imagine my Philly/Atlantic City childhood without this stuff. I wanted to be a Pip so damn bad when I was a kid.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 05:35 am (UTC)I'd gladly shine Smokey's shoes--man was a god in my house. This one still gives me chills. There's aching beauty, but something ghostly, sad and even eerie in it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 05:46 am (UTC)Congratulations"- Cliff Richard
Date: 2007-11-17 06:03 am (UTC)object width="425" height="355">
welcome to my g-spot??!
Date: 2007-11-17 11:17 am (UTC)Re: i am a human below
Date: 2007-11-17 11:43 am (UTC)Re: i am a human below
Date: 2007-11-17 11:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-17 02:14 pm (UTC)PSF: A quote of yours- 'Music is not critical of itself at all' How so? Does your work try to go against this?
Well, it's not 'critical' in the sense that it takes a the meaning of it's gestures for granted. If you REALLY wanted to scare somebody, wouldn't you find a new way to do it? Or else it's 'Whew, it was only the cat!'
Re: i am a human below
Date: 2007-11-17 03:13 pm (UTC)Re: welcome to my g-spot??!
Date: 2007-11-17 09:26 pm (UTC)Re: Love ballads are photos of kittens
Date: 2007-11-18 04:21 am (UTC)reminds me of another idea, (i think it was from george steiner), something like, "can music lie?"
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-11 08:38 pm (UTC)or perhaps an artistic, creative god in perfect control of his materials saying look, I have made something good, now I will make something even more wonderful! ;-)