2 POP EUREKA moments

[imomus]

Did I grow out of my fascination with pop music? Did the world grow out of its fascination with pop music? Did pop music die, stealthily, somewhere? Did I become too old and conservative for pop music, or did pop music become too old and conservative for me? Did playlists and personal all-time Top 100s and endless repetition of classics exhaust us all? Was pop's ubiquity pop's abyss? Or did filesharing really kill it? Was Michael Jackson "the last king of pop", and did it die with him? Was it the Ladytron lighting list? Did people making pop stop being the most creative people around, and did the creative people left making pop get ever-more-marginalised and powerless? Or is it something to do with the decline of the West's belief in itself?

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Whatever happened, there's almost nothing that excites me in pop music right now. (We'll come back to that saving "almost".) Days and weeks can go by in which I don't hear pop, or experience it only as an irrititant in a cafe, an earworm in a supermarket. It's a reason to leave, not a reason to live. As I write these words -- as if to taunt me -- someone has started our communal courtyard throbbing with an awful power ballad. It's nothing I can identify, nothing I've ever heard before, but has a chord sequence (G minor, E sharp, A sharp, F) I've heard a million times before. I close the window -- this is what super-efficient German double-glazing was invented for -- but the bassline still ebbs in, filling the room with an infectious banality I can't quite filter out of my soul. Phew! It's stopped, mid-song. The perp was evidently as bored with the ballad as I was. Birdsong. Planes. Voices. Doors banging. I re-open the window. These sounds are welcome.

But I miss pop. I do. What I miss most, I think, is the idea of pop music signaling the future -- the new, exciting, strange shapes and forms of a future society beckoning people in the present to its bosom. Because pop music used to do that. It used to feel avant, ahead. I also miss what I call "the shoplifting impulse" -- that moment when you hear an idea so fresh and bold that you instantly want to steal it. That "shoplifting impulse" is just appetite, but -- like all appetite -- it concerns the immediate future. "I want to eat. I will eat." In the case of music, it would be: "I want to make music that sounds like that. God, what great music! What a game-changer! What a life-changer!"



Okay, I've been exaggerating a bit. This isn't a new feeling, for a start. I remember the same sense of pop's staleness when I was 23. I lost interest in UK pop entirely. Only Jacques Brel mattered for me. Or, you know, I'm 14 and only David Bowie matters a damn. Kick out all the rest! But -- just when you think you've purged your appetite for pop trash -- EUREKA! Pop comes back, stronger than ever. It does something that only pop can do. Your eyes pop in your skull. Your appetite is rekindled. The return of the repressed. There is a future after all! For the medium, for society, for you-in-the-medium, and for you-in-society.

Over the past month -- a month in which I've been, officially, indifferent to pop -- I've nevertheless had two POP EUREKA moments. One was when I heard this Echo Nest remix by yhancik of Devo's Time Out For Fun. What was exciting, initially, was that it restored the original sense of strangeness I got from early Devo; it defamiliarised. It was also exciting that this had been achieved via a new piece of software, so if offered the possibility that one could write relatively conventional songs and then press a "strip every third bar" button or a "put this into 5/8 time" button and get something a lot more interesting. If there's an "I could do something with this!" angle, naturally, things are twice as exciting. Being a pop producer -- even an imaginary one -- makes being a pop consumer a lot more relevant.

The other POP EUREKA moment happened just the other day. Franck Stofer from the Sonore label posted a video of Oorutaichi live in performance at Superdeluxe in Tokyo. Here it is (I'm pretty sure you can see that even without logging in to Facebook). It's a really extraordinary track in which the Japanese eccentric (he's touring Europe later this year) seems to be channeling Indonesian pop -- the kind of thing you can hear in the great cassette pop compilations on the Sublime Frequencies label, or in your local Thai supermarket, if you have one, or in the work of Jonny Olsen, the "American Taliban" of the music world, who left California to become a pop star in Thailand and Laos.

What I really love in the Oorutaichi track is how it clearly has a structure, but it's not one I understand or can anticipate. Avant noodling structurelessness is as boring as the over-familiar bassline ebbing through my double-glazing, but this track has the best of both worlds: a structure that could never have been arrived at randomly (it's clearly a structure which has evolved in the folk songs of some Indonesian land), but that can't be predicted according to any musical model already existing in my brain. In this way, it shares something with the Echo Nest remix of Devo: my unfamiliarity with Indonesian pop means that I interpret the folk structures in the Oorutaichi track as something avant garde (and Oorutaichi's sonic processing encourages that). And yet avant garde music is rarely as interestingly-structured as this. There has to be a folk tradition and an avant garde tradition to get this result. And there has to be Indonesia too. Indonesia -- or rather my unfamiliarity with its music -- is acting on this music like the algorithms in the Echo Nest software.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I prefer a pop derived from the experimentations and cultural DNA of Vapournesia, an unpopulated psychogeographical space I grew up in with countless others in protean homes and neighbourhoods build according to Kurokawa's Symbiosis, but have never been to, and constantly, inescapably visit because I yearn for the intimacy there that never existed.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I like how I don't like how your mind works!

Do you have a blog? You don't, do you? I like how I don't like how you don't have a blog too.

[(Anonymous)]

maybe pop music really doesn't exist anymore-

or, what do you consider to be "pop"?

i guess that "idea of pop music signaling the future" was pretty much connected with 100 years or so of rapid advances in recording or sound technology. probably now the advance of computing power means that there aren't really any technological barriers to overcome in terms of sound generations or recording.

( it probably didn't take all that long to get the algorithm for the echonest software, from concept to distribution. )

previously the advent of amplification, synthesizers, sequencers, samplers in turn meant that there would be a simultaneous crop of recordings,with a "futuristic" sound.

alternatively, sounds from a different culture could be integrated making a new/alien sound- like British groups integrating the sound of "race records" or "rhythm and blues"

later, the sound of earlier recording could be raided for "new material" like the 80s "ska revival"

In all of the cases, the source material (sounds, equipment or recordings) is of limited distribution, so the people recording music could present "new sound"

Maybe "new sound" is no longer possible.

all sources, all sound generations are available, and clickable

maybe that makes making pop music (whatever it is) a lot harder

[pulled-up.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Did Joe tell you he is touring with Oorutaichi in Germany?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually he did -- is there a Berlin date? Franck Stofer at Sonore (info@sonore.com) is looking for a Berlin venue now. Could Tippex suggest one?

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Love the Oorutaichi track. Hate gratuitous faux-knob twiddling onstage from people singing along to backing tracks, though. It's like a nervous tic.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes I was thinking that by the time he can afford to employ someone to do his mixing, so he can just get out front to sing, his music will be over-familiar.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can't actually work out if he's really singing or if he's miming along to samples of an Indonesian folk song (the female vocals, at the very least, are a sample). Even if he's miming, he's put quite a bit of effort into learning the syllables. I think some of the dodging behind the table is to hide bits of mime he's afraid he'll fluff.

Similarly, we can't be sure how much of the knob-twiddling is really doing stuff. There are some arcing sine waves that seem to be triggered directly by twiddles he does, so it may be that the knob stuff is less faux than the mic stuff. Anyway, let's not be rockist!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Anyway, let's not be rockist!

...because, you know, it's a short and slippery slope to:

- Cannot play an instrument.

- He hasn't endured the thousands of years of hardship and suffering that the Indonesians have.

- Plagiarised the work of a penniless old man in Laos who died shortly thereafter.

- I hear his parents own half of Osaka and operate sweatshops in Bangkok.

- He went to Yale and was in the Skull and Bones society with Bush the younger.

- No, he went to Oxford and was in the Bullingdon Club with Cameron.

- He is a ten foot lizard but doesn't mean it, man.

- Has not paid dues to the Musicians' Union in over 800 years.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh I think he's singing. I don't think that's Indonesian folk music, sounds more like Indonesian pop music from the '70s or so. As for rockism, the mixing desk is the new guitar in these circles, it might not be doing anything but its presence lends the illusion of authenticity.

[(Anonymous)]

It's OK, this music, and you go ahead and knock power ballads, but when you really want to be moved there's nothing to beat The Cars' "Drive".

[(Anonymous)]

The Oorutaichi is clearly an attempt at western pop, it's pulling in what you are pushing away. I find Missy Elliots use of folk melodies far more interesting myself on a track like " get your freak on" for example. Music has always been dictated by technological advances but the echo nest software wont take it anywhere different at the moment. Good music has always needed people with talent and doing it from the heart.

[(Anonymous)]

I ascribe to Pessoan ideals modified to suit my obfuscatory anti-identity (and anti-geography, oh IP address, how I loathe you) principles, thus I am constrained to anonymously pseudonymous, cryptic and noncomittal condensations of thought. With the occasional experimentations in sites you adore such as Twitter and Tumblr, as they suit my principles.

[(Anonymous)]

First 'build' instead of 'built' (I pretended I didn't need to revise it because perhaps I was being clever and was Freudian slipping a timeless present tense), now 'ascribe' instead of 'aspire' or 'subscribe'. Sigh.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's Indonesian folk music, sounds more like Indonesian pop music from the '70s or so.

Well, there was clearly a big folk element in Indonesian pop music of the 70s.

the mixing desk is the new guitar in these circles, it might not be doing anything but its presence lends the illusion of authenticity.

Aha, you did the "the radical context makes radicalism conservative" trick, like the Evening Standard art reviewer who says that to be truly challenging, the ICA needs to challenge its visitors' desire to challenge!

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Not being rockist. It's just the electronic equivalent of putting your blimmin foot on the monitor.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

While clearly a genius and an ardent, fussy self-editor, you are not a close reader of Click Opera. Twitter and Tumblr are far (http://imomus.livejournal.com/449715.html) from being sites I adore.

[(Anonymous)]

"What I really love in the Oorutaichi track is how it clearly has a structure, but it's not one I understand or can anticipate."

How many times do you think you will listen to this track?

does it have merit beyond novelty?

[(Anonymous)]

G minor - E sharp - A sharp - F

"E sharp" is technically just an F. And "A sharp" is not a member of the G minor scale. There is nothing conventional about this progression.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I read that! But I think perhaps we can use Twitter and generative music based on abstracted text/link data to create realtime pop that resonates with itself because the listeners are the themes, broadcast via an ever-shifting locus of regenerating Androgyne-Royalty of Pop-bots that win over the recently famous botnets who henceforth refuse to assault the kingdom of their idoru. Arbitrarily defamiliarised clusters of memes can be fed into the algorithm to create a lineage of homely variables.

Idiosyncratic Pop

[jdcasten.livejournal.com]

I recall the disappointment I had back in college when discovering that “alternative” had become the equivalent of pop rock (maybe that’s happened to the label “indie”—which is almost defined as anti-popular too). A lot of “rock” has to do with rebellion, and hence relates as an “avant-garde tradition;” it should change (via technology advances, and dialectical merging of genres, etc).

A “Eureka” moment for me, also in college, was when a professor asked me why that, as I claimed, “I didn’t want to be a cog in a machine,” metaphorically speaking. It was from this “common sense” “ordinary language” philosophy professor’s question that I started down a track of appreciating “clichés,” “truisms,” and even “kitsch.” Possibly pop fits in this category for me… something I take for granted, and can get bored with, although I don’t really understand it “completely” and could never really construct it self-consciously and authentically.

I’ve tried:

http://melodymethod.postegoism.net

Although it doesn’t have a four chord progression (eight!) Pachelbel’s Canon caught my ear at an early age—maybe a lot of pop is about young people discovering classical structures; but as we get older, and still want something new, we’re bound to travel idiosyncratic avenues: again, the anti-pop.

Pachelbel’s Canon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHw9uyj81g

Oorutaichi’s performance reminded me of the music artist Jel in his bedroom, performing “All Day Breakfast” (Ambient Hip-Hop)—there seems to be a self-conscious decision against pretense and romanticizing the performance—as if not rehearsing a “show” was more authentic to the music:

[(Anonymous)]

Aha, you did the rhetorical sleight of hand trick where you put words in my mouth and extrapolate position for me that fits in with one of your theories, pressing hot button subjects like the Evening Standard, the ICA, radicalism and conservatism, none of which I actually even vaguely allude to. Thank you. Anyway rather than rise to your bait I'll simply reiterate what I was saying that, as Rhodri points out (and he 'hates' it - so not just conservative but, I'd suggest, also reactionary by your logic - nothing personal Rhodri), there is nothing particularly unusual about the practice of people singing at mixing desks, the "illusion of intimacy" says "this guy is doing it live", whether he is or isn't is neither here nor there, just as it matters not one jot whether anyone is actually playing a guitar in a rock video. I'm not making any claims as to whether it's 'radical' or 'conservative', just that it's an observable trope.

Incidentally, the ICA has entered one of its most conservative eras with the directorship of Ekow Eshun. His radically conservative act has been to cut what was arguably the most potentially experimental area (I say 'potentially' as it had yet to realise it) in the New Media Centre. Recent exhibitions (with the exception of the Nought to Sixty series which proves a general rule) have been largely nostalgic and historical and buying into to the received wisdom of the mainstream art scene, so not quite in Standard territory, but heading in that general direction.

Anyway that's all I have to say before I get any more "Aha... but look what you did there...", smartass statements. I clearly am the weakest link, goodbye.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

If these rebels were really rebellious they'd wear suits and ties!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We've actually had a couple of articles about Ekow's decision to cut the Live Arts department at the ICA: this one (http://imomus.livejournal.com/409301.html), and this one (http://imomus.livejournal.com/433836.html).

[(Anonymous)]

"We"?

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't realize that there was a whole team of you.

[(Anonymous)]

sounds pretty avant-garde to me.

E sharp?

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Did you mean E flat?

Re: E sharp?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I may well have done -- the bassline has been erased from my memory now, thank God!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I didn't say "we've written", I said "we've had", in the sense of "the Click Opera community". Because there's an influx of new users this weekend who don't know what's been covered and debated here in the past -- by all of us who talk in this talking shop.

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

I was at a David Byrne concert on Monday night at the Barbican, where I spent a fair amount of time considering the lighting, and noticed that you were now confirmed for the Brel tribute evening on Oct 22. A small voice, easily quelled, said "Momus doing retro-necro? The anons'll have a field day over that one."

Looking forward to hearing all about that special Momus-Galas frisson backstage though...

[(Anonymous)]

OK I see, consensus seems to be give the job to Kodwo. I don't think he'd be up to being institutionalizable enough to do it. At least Ekow's got all the public eye PR experience from doing Newsnight Review. An ICA staff member I know said that Ekow is more or less just a pretty public face, that all the real decisions are made at a more institutional level. Still, he's the name, he gets the blame.

[shadowshark.livejournal.com]

Thanks again for the Jonny Olsen--we've all been enjoying that a bunch!

pop

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

yeah, same here dude.
Totally boring.

I thought growing up with the Indy thing (which ah, I think was very exciting and 'real')... Nirvana as people say, killed the rock band... But same w rap... its dead... everything is dead.
yup... pop is boring... but, Although I cant say I feel really excited about Lady Gaga's music... I think she will usher in the next female persona in our culture (America).... It's hard to see pop music being anything like it was if western culture isnt doing it... I dont know... yes no?

Other Cultures take on Western music is great. Love finding hong kong or Japaneses take on motown... or beatles-ish rock.... Beatiful.

gawd... was up with these boring trolls.

[(Anonymous)]

Oorutaichi really sings live and the knobs he twiddles are that of his delay pedal, plugged to his mixing console as a send effect. Stop whining and come enjoy the shows in November and December!

Aurelien

[aliaspail.livejournal.com]

have you ever checked out 'plamo million sellers.'? he's someone who does pop music, but in a structure that is refreshing and hyper to me.

[(Anonymous)]

excellent post, I'm surprised there were so few comments responding to it, maybe in past years this would have gotten a bigger response from your blog readers, maybe this is an indication alot of people share your sentiments on the state of pop music these days