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imomusMichael Gira on Devendra Banhart:
'Whether the songs are pained, twisted, whimsical, or even sometimes weirdly silly, aside from being fantastically musical and expertly played, they are also utterly sincere, and devoid of a single drop of post modern irony. In short, he's the real thing.'
'2 years ago,' Gira tells us on the XL Records site, 'I first heard the crude home made recordings of Devendra Banhart... His voice - a quivering high-tension wire, sounded like it could have been recorded 70 years ago - these songs could have been sitting in someone's attic, left there since the 1930's... When it came time to record new music we were of course faced with the quandary of how to go about it - does he continue making hiss-saturated home recordings, or do we go into a "professional" studio? We mutually decided that it was best to move on - why should he be ghetto-ized as a possible low-fi crank/eccentric? Besides, his songwriting and his guitar playing (in my opinion) have taken such leaps and bounds forward, that we were compelled to record them in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly... we recorded 32 songs (culled from something like 57 Devendra had initially submitted!) in his living room, using the best possible vintage gear. Ideal... Deciding on the final arrangements was ridiculously easy - the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff or cheap impact.'
You know, there are so many weird assumptions and contradictions in that text! I like Devendra's records, but he by no means escapes the post-modern irony Gira claims he does. A recording made now that sounds like a 1930s recording is an example of post-modern irony, whether that's deliberate or accidental. Gira's desire to avoid the pomo label just pushes Devendra into the Oasis school of (accidental) pomo irony rather than the Matmos (deliberate) school of irony. (Visually, Devendra's retro-hippy look is also completely post-modern. Also, check out the incredibly camp, post-modern and ironic atmosphere that prevails on Devendra's tours. Especially the hilarious video spoofs featuring Captain Krizzle.)
Good grief, where to begin with Gira? The idea of 'fantastically musical' is just silly when applied to an artifact that appears in the category of music. It's like saying that one cultural artifact is more 'cultural' than another cultural artifact. I also have major problems with 'expertly played'. So this means that Devendra is getting closer and closer to the day a crack session musician could take over the guitar chores? As for 'recording in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly', I find it completely odd that the best way to do this was to 'use the best possible vintage gear'. Are we Lenny Kravitz? Do we believe that pop's Platonic ideal is the exact sound of 1968? And as for 'the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff...' Is there really sound here and sonic fluff there? Are they distinguishable? One is serious, and the other is fluff, right? One is essential, the other inessential, right? One is signal, the other noise? One is figure, the other ground. In short, if you find a barrel containing both music and sonic fluff, hunt through the sonic fluff for the music, because sonic fluff is just fluff but music is the real thing. So off with the hiss! (And if you're Devendra's stylist, remember that his head is the important thing and his hair is just fluff.)
What Gira describes seems either naive or willfully perverse. It's Platonic and entirely yoked to 'the metaphysics of presence'. In this vision, there is the 'real' and 'clear' sound of 'well-played' music which 'production' can only tarnish. The hiss on Devendra's early recordings is merely an impairment, to be banished when the budget allows. To retain it would make him a 'lo-fi eccentric'. Devendra Banhart, eccentric? Heaven forbid!
So, let me get this straight. The best way to get a 'real' and 'clear' sound is to use vintage gear, right? That means stuff like tape hiss, wow and flutter, right? But not quite as much of it as Devendra used to use, because you're trying to get away from 'eccentricity' and the 'lo-fi ghetto', right? But tracking down and using vintage gear (only 'the best', mind, not 'the worst' -- we want only the best quality errors, not cheap glitch and fluff) is not considered 'production', somehow, just as it wasn't 'production' when Devendra made those early hissy recordings that evoked the 1930s so pleasurably for Gira. None of this is 'production' because production is bad. Production is a stumbling block in the clear, natural, unproblematical path between the artist and the listener. (Do I have to add 'Protestant' somewhere in that sentence?) Production is something calculating, something that takes us away from authenticity and 'the natural', isn't it? And neither hippies nor retro-hippies like to lose touch with nature, do they? In the end, production itself is dangerously post-modern. After all, what is a rack of sound effects units but a series of quotations of all the other records which use the same sound effects? But, whoops, what is vintage analog gear but a quote of the records made with vintage analog gear? There is no way to produce an un-produced record. There is no neutral way of recording. The fourth wall and the live recording are conventions we go along with because we love theatre. There's just no escaping post-modernism, quotation, and irony. It's there at the front door and it's there at the back door. Dress up nicely and step over your porch to greet your friend post-modernism with a wave on the street, or flee out back and end up at his feet in a pile of his junk and rubbish, it's all pretty much the same thing in the end. Except that it's always friendlier to wave rather than sneer, and nicer to affirm the inevitable than deny it.
So, dear Michael Gira, here is the news. It's 2004. Reproducing, deliberately and self-consciously, the sound of the past is an absolutely key part of post-modern music-making. I do it, you do it, Devendra Banhart does it. When you deny there's anything post-modern or ironic about Devendra Banhart's records, it's terribly post-modern and terribly ironic!
'Whether the songs are pained, twisted, whimsical, or even sometimes weirdly silly, aside from being fantastically musical and expertly played, they are also utterly sincere, and devoid of a single drop of post modern irony. In short, he's the real thing.'
'2 years ago,' Gira tells us on the XL Records site, 'I first heard the crude home made recordings of Devendra Banhart... His voice - a quivering high-tension wire, sounded like it could have been recorded 70 years ago - these songs could have been sitting in someone's attic, left there since the 1930's... When it came time to record new music we were of course faced with the quandary of how to go about it - does he continue making hiss-saturated home recordings, or do we go into a "professional" studio? We mutually decided that it was best to move on - why should he be ghetto-ized as a possible low-fi crank/eccentric? Besides, his songwriting and his guitar playing (in my opinion) have taken such leaps and bounds forward, that we were compelled to record them in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly... we recorded 32 songs (culled from something like 57 Devendra had initially submitted!) in his living room, using the best possible vintage gear. Ideal... Deciding on the final arrangements was ridiculously easy - the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff or cheap impact.'
You know, there are so many weird assumptions and contradictions in that text! I like Devendra's records, but he by no means escapes the post-modern irony Gira claims he does. A recording made now that sounds like a 1930s recording is an example of post-modern irony, whether that's deliberate or accidental. Gira's desire to avoid the pomo label just pushes Devendra into the Oasis school of (accidental) pomo irony rather than the Matmos (deliberate) school of irony. (Visually, Devendra's retro-hippy look is also completely post-modern. Also, check out the incredibly camp, post-modern and ironic atmosphere that prevails on Devendra's tours. Especially the hilarious video spoofs featuring Captain Krizzle.)
Good grief, where to begin with Gira? The idea of 'fantastically musical' is just silly when applied to an artifact that appears in the category of music. It's like saying that one cultural artifact is more 'cultural' than another cultural artifact. I also have major problems with 'expertly played'. So this means that Devendra is getting closer and closer to the day a crack session musician could take over the guitar chores? As for 'recording in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly', I find it completely odd that the best way to do this was to 'use the best possible vintage gear'. Are we Lenny Kravitz? Do we believe that pop's Platonic ideal is the exact sound of 1968? And as for 'the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff...' Is there really sound here and sonic fluff there? Are they distinguishable? One is serious, and the other is fluff, right? One is essential, the other inessential, right? One is signal, the other noise? One is figure, the other ground. In short, if you find a barrel containing both music and sonic fluff, hunt through the sonic fluff for the music, because sonic fluff is just fluff but music is the real thing. So off with the hiss! (And if you're Devendra's stylist, remember that his head is the important thing and his hair is just fluff.)
What Gira describes seems either naive or willfully perverse. It's Platonic and entirely yoked to 'the metaphysics of presence'. In this vision, there is the 'real' and 'clear' sound of 'well-played' music which 'production' can only tarnish. The hiss on Devendra's early recordings is merely an impairment, to be banished when the budget allows. To retain it would make him a 'lo-fi eccentric'. Devendra Banhart, eccentric? Heaven forbid!
So, let me get this straight. The best way to get a 'real' and 'clear' sound is to use vintage gear, right? That means stuff like tape hiss, wow and flutter, right? But not quite as much of it as Devendra used to use, because you're trying to get away from 'eccentricity' and the 'lo-fi ghetto', right? But tracking down and using vintage gear (only 'the best', mind, not 'the worst' -- we want only the best quality errors, not cheap glitch and fluff) is not considered 'production', somehow, just as it wasn't 'production' when Devendra made those early hissy recordings that evoked the 1930s so pleasurably for Gira. None of this is 'production' because production is bad. Production is a stumbling block in the clear, natural, unproblematical path between the artist and the listener. (Do I have to add 'Protestant' somewhere in that sentence?) Production is something calculating, something that takes us away from authenticity and 'the natural', isn't it? And neither hippies nor retro-hippies like to lose touch with nature, do they? In the end, production itself is dangerously post-modern. After all, what is a rack of sound effects units but a series of quotations of all the other records which use the same sound effects? But, whoops, what is vintage analog gear but a quote of the records made with vintage analog gear? There is no way to produce an un-produced record. There is no neutral way of recording. The fourth wall and the live recording are conventions we go along with because we love theatre. There's just no escaping post-modernism, quotation, and irony. It's there at the front door and it's there at the back door. Dress up nicely and step over your porch to greet your friend post-modernism with a wave on the street, or flee out back and end up at his feet in a pile of his junk and rubbish, it's all pretty much the same thing in the end. Except that it's always friendlier to wave rather than sneer, and nicer to affirm the inevitable than deny it.
So, dear Michael Gira, here is the news. It's 2004. Reproducing, deliberately and self-consciously, the sound of the past is an absolutely key part of post-modern music-making. I do it, you do it, Devendra Banhart does it. When you deny there's anything post-modern or ironic about Devendra Banhart's records, it's terribly post-modern and terribly ironic!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 09:52 am (UTC)Another point: I've just realised one thing that annoys me about in-yer-face postmodernism. It's not that I necessarily have a philosophical argument but an aesthetic one. Postmodernism is so literalist! It's constantly telling me that the movie is only shadows on the wall, that music is artificially created sound and theatre, that stories are not real and that narrators are unreliable. I know all that! It's boring to be told it! And even if I don't know it on a totally explicit level, I know it implicitly. When there's a fire in the movie I'm watching, I don't run out of the cinema. The twilight world of suspension of disbelief with one half of the brain while the other half knows just what's what comes very naturally to humans. If that weren't the case, storytelling would be impossible. There was a time when it was new and refreshing to be told that within the construct of the story. But I think that time has passed. I'm not saying we should go back to older, more conservative forms of storytelling, but maybe we should move on from the literal deconstruction of the story, and concentrate more on that twilight world of believing/not believing. Maybe what I'm arguing for is actually a more radical form of postmodernism, one that doesn't even make the distinction between the movie (fantasy) and shadows on the wall (reality) - since ultimately this does lead us back to essentialism!
Postmodern Universalism
Date: 2004-10-28 11:02 am (UTC)Can we not enjoy a work of art without always turning it into some tiresome intellectual puzzle to be picked apart? Have we lost to ability to build work organically rather than cobble together pre-existing forms? Does being constantly self-aware of one's postmodernism really get us very far in creating new, vital work? Ultimately, this nit-picky self-consciousness is terribly confining; it's also comes off as being a bit dogmatic, narcissistic and linear. It may be 'correct' but it's a bit tired, and not very satisfying on its own. Besides: do artists even have to be 'correct' in their thinking in order to make interesting work?
Polymodernism might be a more inclusive and constructive alternative: employing postmodernism as it is required, of course, but relaxing our grip on any one intellectual dogma, be it postmodern universalism or transmodernism or modernism. Call it what you want--I'm going dancing.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 11:59 am (UTC)"Correct thinking" artists are usually pretty horrible. I agree with a comment
And I think academic writers will always be around to come and pick apart a work as an intellectual puzzle. That's what they do, no?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 01:41 pm (UTC)With regards to letting the dark side of one's personality running free, what say we to this? http://www.wetterlinggallery.com/archive/nathalia/nathalia_main.htm
And the statement from the gallery, which sounds more like a rationale than a justification: http://www.wetterlinggallery.com/newsletter/newsletter.htm
I cannot speak for anyone else, but to actively kill a helpless, living thing for no better reason than for the sake of a petty intellectual curiosity is to my mind a morally bankrupt thing to do. Are we then condoning shooting or torturing other artists as a comment upon their work?
I am suspicious of the absolutist notion that 'there are no moral limits in art' or that 'art is independent of conventional morality'. This may very well be so in theory, but not in practice: sacred cows, cant and social taboos seem to be rife in ArtWorld, as they are in all human endeavors.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 02:02 pm (UTC)Creative parameters are usually a great way to be productive, but I was thinking about making art within the confines of a strict ideology. I can think of very few artists who worked well under strict ideological confines (artistic confines are, I think, significantly different from artistic confines).
And plenty of art is morally bankrupt, although most of it doesn't necessitate the harming of living creatures. I heard about her show awhile ago and think most of it is a publicity stunt - my guess is that she gets the corpses from a shelter but hypes up the fact that they're real dead animals.
I don't think there is any inherent morality in art, but there is obviously morality and norms in the larger culture. That's precisely what the congressional art fights of the 90s were about - was the glorification of fisting (the infamous Mapplethorpe pic (http://images.google.com/images?q=mapplethorpe&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab=wi)) or the denigration of Christianity (Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" (http://images.google.com/images?q=andres%20serrano&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab=wi)) art? And if it is art, should it supported publicly?
de Sade still freaks me out. Did he make art? I think the answer is unquestionably yes. Is he sick twisted bastard? Yes.
Should that woman have killed the poor bunnies to make her art? I doubt that she did, but my morality tells me no. Is her stuff beautiful? Yes, but in a conventional modernist way.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 02:53 pm (UTC)That said, cheap outrage has never been sufficient to qualify the worth of an artwork, despite publicity. It always comes off as a short cut to me: when one is out of ideas, one transgresses. It's just too easy.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 03:34 pm (UTC)Formal outrage is slightly different, perhaps. I mean, Caravaggio was pretty shocking, as was Picasso (and "Les Demoiselles" is still bordering that ugly/amazing line).
I still don't know if Chris Burden was making art when he had himself shot. Or even if Duchamp was right when he said "artists of the future will simply point."
And what about Vanessa Beecroft? She's making tableau vivants. Is that art? It is shocking. Shocking in a way that's completely different, for me, from the dead-bunny lady. It's creepy to stare at naked models standing in formation, staring straight ahead. Am I supposed to pretend that their statues? Why can't they look at anyone? Damn... I'm really uncomfortable. I wish they would move. Did that one just shift her weight?
What about Rirkrit Tiravanija, who makes dinner in the gallery and calls it art? It's a lot of fun. The food is good. But is it art?
Personally, I like people who make objects more then performance artists... but... Damn. I was just going to say "I agree" but now I have all these qualifiers. I still agree.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 04:00 pm (UTC)It seems that drawing up a hypothetical plan for such a thing is more akin to art than the actual act of doing it. Christo's schematics are art, but the bombastic implementation of those schematics often seems more like an antic. I could be completely wrong, of course, but that's my initial impression. We all employ our powers of reason to bolster our prefernces and prejudices, I suppose.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 05:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-28 01:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-29 01:24 am (UTC)Re: Postmodern Universalism
Date: 2004-10-28 12:43 pm (UTC)The question of whether or not it is any different after all is a fascinating one to me. Spenser wrote "Faerie Queene" in a retro Chaucerian English so he could access a courtly beauty which he felt was not available to the modern world...kind of the equivalent of recording on analog tape. It was immensely popular and widely copied (even Byron covered Spenser covering Chaucer when he was inventing the "new" Romantic hero in the beginning of Childe Harold--talk about your convoluted poses). Ben Johnson, however, was quite dismissive of the whole idea--not on essentialist grounds, but on the grounds that archaisms were frowned upon as inelegant by classical stylists. The problem, to me, is actually in the whole idea of "organic" vs. "artificial". Even arch-romantics like Coleridge argued vehemently in favor of an arificial, elevated language, and called Wordsworth on it when he claimed he was writing in the common tongue. "Artifice" is essential to art. Nothing is organic, or ever was, and everyone else throughout history has known it. It's strange to me how an intellectual culture so obsessed with the idea of artifice is also so haunted by its imaginary corollary. Momus' comments were directed, not toward Devandra's retro modernism, but toward his reviewer, who was making paradoxical claims about genuine-ness.
B.
Re: Postmodern Universalism
Date: 2004-10-28 02:42 pm (UTC)You're absolutely right to take me to task on that sentence, as it was a sloppy way to frame the distinction between the borrowing, stealing and appropriating that is the ancient hallmark of all art and the hyper-self-consciousness of recent years that has become an inhibiting factor for many in the arts. I don't have an issue with postmodernism as such; I just feel that art must have an open-ended system in order to grow and flourish. Likewise, I adore artifice, but I prefer using it outside of a hall-of-mirrors environment.
I salute your learned reply.
W
Re: Postmodern Universalism
Date: 2004-10-28 11:36 pm (UTC)...said the twit writing in the blog.
Someone please slap me.
W