Monday, February 7th, 2011 // Paperhouse
To explain minimal music to a public that cannot distinguish between techno and house is a bit like trying to force-feed chili peppers to a two-year-old. To be fair, the advent of contemporary hipsters and their slightly more refined taste in media has advanced the public’s understanding of electronic music to a point where anyone with an ugly Christmas sweater and big glasses could probably give you a crude, working definition of house music. Yet to our surprise, their hipster radars have stopped short of what we might call the richest, most compelling form of music.
We are surprised, because hipsters are very visual people, and understanding minimal is akin to understanding the principles of good visual communication: It requires a basic understanding of Gestalt psychology. And like the designers of the Modernist era, minimal does away with all but the most basic elements of a given piece of music to achieve its purpose with the utmost efficiency and restraint. Minimal is to music as Swiss typography is to design: clean and succinct, yet rich and humanistic. In minimal, nothing is accidental, and the best artists meticulously craft the most tedious intricacies in their soundscape, teasing out of a computer what seems possible only through a real instrument.
If you don’t believe us, listen to “Miss You” by Anders Trentemøller, a Danish producer whose 2006 album The Last Resort still dominates our top plays on iTunes. http://ResidentAdvisor.net, our version of Pitchfork, describes the album as “electronic Romanticism.” If you haven’t heard Trentemøller yet, tune into WRCT on 88.3 FM at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday during WRCT’s Massive Music Weekend to listen to a full half hour of nothing but Trentemøller.
“But what about Gold Panda?” you might ask. “Aren’t they clean and succinct and meticulously crafted?”
No. Go outside, smoke your cigarette, and think about what you just said.
-Alex Price and Mirko Azis
Monday, January 24th, 2011 // Paperhouse
Call me old-fashioned, but file sharing and portable music devices have spoiled us. It is my belief that the infinite world of audible vibrations has been hit hard by those iPods of ours.
Music and sound have become commodities. We buy them and sell them in cute digital packages. That’s a sad thing. Why? Well, think of this: If you were now asked to act as a Foley artist to reproduce the soundscape of the world around you, you would hardly even know where to begin. Do oak trees hiss? How would you describe the song of a gutter? What about the musical interludes of the brakes on a bus ride? If you can’t answer these questions, maybe you’re no longer listening. Well, maybe you are, but there are a lot of folks who aren’t.
Today, in the year 2011, we all have our own personal soundtracks. With these soundtracks, we are now capable of muting life’s daily chance encounters. We dictate what plays when and thereby plan how we’ll be feeling throughout the day. We are now in control of what symphony will be pulling at our heartstrings on a train ride from Lisbon to Lyon.
When we do experience life’s chance encounters, there is no vibrancy to the color of these memories. It’s sound that makes these realities we experience memorable. Some argue that this lack of memorability has begun to lead to a disintegration of direct human communications. That may hold true, but what I find more alarming is how this degrades our individual relationships with the world of sound.
Sound will always be that billowing force that, despite man’s efforts to sculpt, will always at its core be untouchable. To treat sound in any other manner, to attempt to wield it greedily like a drug that can rocket you into states of orgiastic bliss, is hubris.
Love music and love the noise. Make the music and make the noise.
-Juan Fernandez
Monday, January 17th, 2011 // Paperhouse
Things are confusingly scary. From UPS’s intimidatingly efficient human and technological infrastructure to the underlying motivations for military operations in the Middle East, things are weird. For something closer to home, let’s just think about the fact that the majority of the music that you’ve ever listened to has most likely been filtered by lossy data compression. Bizarre, right? When was the last time your body and eardrums experienced the real-time creation of music? Even for you audiophiles, when was the last time you experienced the simultaneity of a mallet hitting a timpani and its thunderous vibration? What about the molar-piercing shriek of a live electric guitar? I know, friends, it’s been a while.
Our lives have been devoid of the joy of the experience of music!
In my eyes, this is where live performances play such a crucial role. Shows, recitals, and concerts are great, but to really get at the heart of the matter, why aren’t we singing every day? If you have a friend who likes to sing, let him sing about his trombone sandwiches. If your other friend likes to make up spontaneous songs and funny sounds as she walks to the supermarket, let her! In my mind, there is nothing more intimate than being in the presence of the creation of music. Even if it’s your friend trying to make weird noises with his throat out in the cold while he waits for the bus, it’s absolutely beautiful. As humans, these friends of yours are interpreting the rhythmic patterns and sounds of the musical and non-musical world around them. They’re claiming the essence of those worlds as their own.
My tip to you, friend? If you’ve only been a listener, I highly suggest you try to become a music maker. Pick up an instrument. Sing a made-up song in a new language. And hey, if being a music maker is too tough, just be a noisemaker. You’ll be the better for it, I promise.
-Juan Fernandez
