Just as art is not something just to be looked at, nor is music something to be simply listened to: it has to be experienced – and that’s why format is a critical component, a transparent concession, that is tragically overlooked nowadays. I don’t mean that in the sense of a nostalgic hark back to the days of vinyl, except in the sense of how your experience, at the very least, is profoundly affected by the sensory modalities of having a real object – in this case a record sleeve – to hold and to gaze at, vinyl to smell, to touch, to handle. Imagine how boring food would be if the experience was reduced to taking a small invisible pill every day for all the necessary nutrients – and even this doesn’t take into account the crucial component of foraging and procurement, the very basis of collecting.
Right on. Personally I have never really appreciated music to the fullest up until I started buying vinyl records.
MEMORABILIA. COLLECTING SOUNDS WITH… William Bennett [MACBA.cat, PDF]
I honestly have no idea what to make of this. SD has been one of my favorite labels for a while so I’m very concerned right now.
More info, anyone?
Just a quick heads up for you guys: You can now follow all updates from this blog as well as various music rants, links to interesting DJ sets and other music-related stuff on Twitter at @filter27. The account is now updated regularly.. so jump on it!
Here’s a short excerpt from a UK TV program ‘The Tube’ broadcast in the the early 1980s. The presenters Jools Holland & Leslie Ash give an insight into the emerging New York dance music and club scene and the legendary clubs such as the Paradise Garage, The Roxy and Danceteria. Serious archival footage indeed!
The September 2011 issue of Wire (#331) features a wonderful essay by Amanda Brown, the owner of Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun Records and 100% Silk labels. The piece discusses the current download culture and the decline of physical music formats such as vinyl and cassette.
Physical objects engage our reality; you have to pick them up and manipulate them if you want to utilise their function (or get them out of your personal space). Digital files are a much more insidious form of clutter. The climate of indiscriminate cultural channel-surfing seems to be having an effect on our collective attention spans, too. Albums are ditched in favour of one or two key tracks; we even fast-forward through YouTube clips. When music has been reduced to the status of junk mail, and groups’ entire discographies are skimmed and dismissed in half an hour, what depth of understanding or appreciation for these creations can we have? How do we remember what we’ve eaten if it’s been swallowed, not chewed?
Collateral Damage: Amanda Brown [Wire]
PS: If you’re not yet familiar with Not Not Fun Records then you should check out this article courtesy of Altered Zones.
Here’s a real treat fans of Richard D. James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin: a 70-minute special from MTV UK’s ‘Party Zone’ program from 1996.
Tearist is a duo from Los Angeles formed in 2009 by singer and percussionist Yasmine Kittles and William Strangeland on synths and programming. I’ve always been a fan of the Suicide and Throbbing Gristle sound and the influences here are pretty obvious.
The videos below show the duo performing live on L.A.-based KXLU 88.9 FM two years ago. Yasmine Kittles just owns it. She jumps, she screams. She plays with the delay knobs like nobody’s business and smashes one piece of metal on top of another. Her force is powerful, raw and obvious – one could say almost brutal – yet she retains emotions and passion for it all. Forget the ‘hipster’ kind of crap or any attempts to classify where or how this music sits with you. Just let go and enjoy…
More info on the band here and on Twitter. Their music is available for download from Bandcamp.
John Maus (who?) talks some serious nonsense over at Pitchfork in the latest ‘guest list’ feature. Here’s his take on the old fashioned brick-and-mortar record stores:
You don’t know how happy it makes me that the days of the record store are coming to an end. $20 for an LP? Do you remember going to the record store and not getting what you want because there was no other place to get it? Now we can get it all for free, and I think that’s wonderful. There was always something really depressing to me about record stores and music equipment stores. There’s something oppressive about them, like the guy who looks you up and down and looks at what you’re buying. You’re bound up in exchange with the snobby clerk. So I’m glad they all have little “closed” signs on their doors now.
What a load of shit. And now he’s apologizing. Who is this guy anyway?
Alex Steinweiss, a graphic designer and art director who first brought custom artwork to vinyl LP sleeves and invented the first packaging for vinyl records, has died on Sunday at the age of 94.
From the New York Times:
The record cover was a blank slate in 1939, when Mr. Steinweiss was hired to design advertisements for Columbia Records. Most albums were unadorned, and on those occasions when art was used, it was not original. (Albums then were booklike packages containing multiple 78 r.p.m. discs.)
His first cover, for a collection of Rodgers and Hart songs performed by an orchestra, showed a high-contrast photo of a theater marquee with the title in lights. The new packaging concept was a success: Newsweek reported that sales of Bruno Walter’s recording of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony increased ninefold when the album cover was illustrated.
A nice showcase of Steinweiss-designed LP covers can be found here.
R.I.P.
Photo credit: Wikipedia.
Culture Dox meet German producer Arne Weinberg a.k.a. Onmutu Mechanicks for a video chat.
Self-Titled Magazine interviews Ben Frost.
FACT have a scoop on the forthcoming Andy Stott LP, due for release in May.
Pitchfork interviews Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear.