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humansoulsarg · 4 years

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Recap - artifact555 video solve

In the early days of this blog, some of the solves weren’t documented as cleanly in one post as has become the pattern. In reviewing the solutions to Pangent’s publicly available videos, it was discovered that a few of them could use a newly compiled summary solve post. So here goes the first of those, enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVWfnqiuVXk Binary title: artifact555 Video begins with a warning about flashing images, and whoo boy, those happen. There’s lots of shots of the cube, glitching in colors and flashing, and interspersed with possible flashes of Lottie, and some more interesting effects. The sound is also ‘interesting’. The cube is alive. There doesn’t appear to be any coded content in the video, but the description has some things worth investigating. almost-binary in the description, replace the ‘O’s and 'C’s with '0’s and '1’s to get actual binary for: xV_OQ4CQqE8

This is a YouTube ID: https://youtu.be/xV_OQ4CQqE8 - A video with binary title 'theline’, showing Lottie 'speaking’ but the audio sounds computer-generated and states:

There are some things we as a species weren’t meant to know

This video also contains some pastebin links in the description, more on those later.

Back to the text in the description of 'artifact555’:

imgur bAqfpxr

This is theoriginal MSPA ad which was the trailhead for this ARG imgur jbUD1v0

This is a nonogram, popular in those days. Can be solved manually or with tools like http://a.teall.info/nonogram/

Interpret the squares as binary:

011010110111101001110110 011000110110011101110001 011010000110001001110111 011110010111100101110101 011101000101011001101011 011000100110111001100010 011011010110101101110011 011001110111010101100011 011101100110110101101001 011011010110111101111001 011011010111001001100111 011110100111001101110001 011011000110111001100111 011001111111111111111111 kzvcgqhbwyyutVkbnbmksgucvmimoymrgzsqlngg Vigenere with key 'conscioushumansouls’ (and add spaces): i like it here it Isnt quiet can you hear the waves imgur 7Foyrsz

Kcode - read off the RGB values of each square In decimal they are: 49 53 32 104 111 117 114 115 32 102 114 111 109 32 116 104 101 32 99 101 110 116 101 114 32 111 102 32 116 104 101 32 115 111 117 114 99 101 0 15 hours from the center of the source xV_OQ4CQqE8 is a YouTube ID leading to: https://youtu.be/xV_OQ4CQqE8 unlisted video with binary title: theline Contains several Pastebin links in the description: PB CBiWsY85 https://pastebin.com/CBiWsY85 - hex title: themoth contains binary text encoded as Vigenere with key 'guineapix’ which decodes to:

I have a friend, let’s call her C. Let me talk about C for a minute. The wonderful and terrible thing about C is that she’s a moth drawn to flame. For a few years now I have supported her in everything she’s done. She’s reckless. If she were a character in a movie, she’d see an explosion and run toward it while most people are running away. She’d run into the burning building and inhale the smoke while taking notes on how it affected the building structure. And she’s probably the one who caused the fire in the first place. Metaphorically, I mean. She gets results only because she loves the danger of it. She’ll come up with a solution and write it down without knowing if it’s right or not. She’ll try it a dozen different ways, watch the entire thing fall to pieces in a dozen different, irreplaceably expensive ways. Destroy everything while taking notes on the wreckage. When she’s done she’ll clean up the mess and she’ll understand the problem on a molecular level, from the inside out. She’ll be standing in the catastrophe she created, with a thousand pages of notes on how to do it right next time. I believe she’s the greatest genius I’ll ever know. And she’s a disaster. A walking disasterpiece. Her mind makes leaps that other minds can’t, because they understand that actions have consequences. She knows that messes can be cleaned up, and systems rebuilt. So she plays with fire. Well, not every mess can be cleaned up. You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. Now that I’ve typed that I’m not so sure. She could probably figure it out. She’d ruin a lot of tubes of toothpaste in the process. But hey, toothpaste is cheap. The Twitter archive is still broken because of her, but I suspect if she hadn’t been fired she’d have fixed it within a few days. And because of her we did figure out how to decrypt the deleted data. It’s a slow, manual process, but it’s all there in some form or another. I wonder if that was X’s plan all along, somehow. He remembered Sandy Bridge, and figured if there was smoke there there was fire. He followed a trail of clues and now he’s taken everything. It’s not C’s fault. She did what she always did. She made a mess so that we could learn something. Maybe something we shouldn’t have been messing with in the first place. There’s this object, Artifact 555, alias The Cube. I’m not going to ask where it came from or how X’s father got it, because I value my life and my career and I know that questions have consequences. I’m not going to ask what it is, either. But I don’t have to. C is asking. What I know is this: X, because he’s an asshole, sent the three of us photos of this thing. It’s hard to see and harder to look at but I’d describe it as a glass cubic box with reflective blue matter inside. When I looked at the photos of this thing, I was filled with a paralyzing fear unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Afterward I was sick for two days. Leslie was sick too. Even her cat was sick. I don’t know how that’s even possible. I don’t want to know how that’s possible. But then, I’m not a moth drawn to flame. C was at the store when she saw the photos. Just on her phone, not even on a big monitor. She fell and hit her head. E had to come and get her. She didn’t walk straight for days. Now, a normal person’s instinct would be to get the hell away from this thing, and get the hell away from X, who used it as a weapon. Another kind of woman with another kind of mind would have changed her name, left the country, called in an exorcist and dedicated her life to rejecting satan and all his ways. Instead she signed the world’s worst contract and said she’d be back to work on the second. Because she’s a moth drawn to flame. She loves the mystery and danger of meddling where she shouldn’t. I know that right now every cell in her body is screaming out wanting to know what this thing is, even if she has to burn the world down around her to understand it. Well, that’s just who she is. X knew that too. He knew that if he shouted “DANGER” at her with a megaphone and police sirens and flashing lights five hundred feet tall, she’d come running toward that kind of danger. She can’t help it. For years, I’ve supported her in everything she’s done. I hope I never have to regret that.

PB i1pxP041 https://pastebin.com/i1pxP041 - hex title: gnixob (reversed: boxing) It’s almost-binary again, replace the 'C’s and'O’s with '1’s and'0’s then reverse, then decode as binary, then Vigenere with key 'argentina’ to get:

Another question. Let’s say there’s an object. Let’s call it “an object.” I looked at a few photographs of this object and became violently ill for reasons passing understanding. It was a couple days before I could walk without worry. The others in my group had a similar reaction. Here’s the question. What happens when I see this thing in person? And work alongside it for a long period of time? What exactly happens to my sanity? Happy Boxing Day.

PB sd7MrRX5 https://pastebin.com/sd7MrRX5 - hex title: analog Contains binary, Vigenered text with key 'argentina’:

Okay, I’m calm now. The Cube reacts to electrical stimuli. It even reacts in a predictable and reproducible way, suggesting that data can be imprinted on it for later use. X’s father must have known this. Someone must have run tests, suggesting this could work for data storage, if we could only understand how it works. Well, we don’t need to understand the Cube. And it doesn’t need to understand us. We’ve been thinking of this thing as digital, thinking how can we connect to it, like it’s a hard drive. But it’s not. It’s squishy, it’s meat, it’s liquid, it’s practically a brain. It’s analog. Do you understand? When I was a kid, we had cassette tapes. We had vinyl records. A vinyl record isn’t made with digital data. Vinyl doesn’t understand and interpret the music, it’s just plastic. And the needle is just a needle. There is no artificial intelligence there. But when a song is playing, you can etch the vibrations of that song onto that dumb plastic, and the needle will react the same way to play it back again. Magnetic tape is dumb too. It doesn’t need to understand and interpret the signals being sent through it. It just needs to be able to play them back accurately. VHS tapes of movies, cassette tapes of music. Did you ever record a computer program onto a cassette tape, and then play it back? You could just play the sound, all of this whirring and beeping, and your Apple II or Commodore 64 would understand what the tape couldn’t. The original analog medium is a book. The pages of a book don’t understand the data written on them. But the writer understood, and the reader understands, and that’s enough. We don’t need to understand the Cube. We don’t access that data by plugging in a cable. We don’t learn its language and it doesn’t learn ours. It’s a book. We write something on it, and then we can read it later. So. Let’s say I set up a server which reacts to data. And we test the Cube’s reactions to the same data. And we test it and test it and change the way we deliver the data to the Cube, until the reaction matches. We don’t need to speak the Cube’s language. We just need it to react in the right way when we speak ours.

PB 18E6yhak https://pastebin.com/18E6yhak - hex title: repair Contains binary, Vigenere’d text with key 'argentina’

Questions for this Christmas, asked of nobody but myself. The first question is whether or not data can have a soul. This is a question with two possible answers, so for the sake of argument let us assume the ridiculous - that the data of a soul can be saved, and that this does not disprove the existence of the soul as a theological concept and construct. Let us say that data can have a soul. The second question is, what if that data stream becomes broken and corrupted, in the way that souls also become broken and corrupted? If we save the data, do we save the soul? And if so, do we save it in a theological sense or merely on a technical level? What exactly would we be tampering with here? It’s four AM. I’m drunk. I should go back to sleep.

#video #unlisted video #puzzle #puzzle solution #human souls arg #submission #13ago

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doomedandstoned · 5 years

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Time To Roll: STONERROR Mark Robust Return with ‘Widow In Black’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Album art by Justyna Verdavaine

We've always got our ear to the rumblings of the heavy underground, looking out for something special. Well, we've found a new record that will keep you floating on for a quite some time. It comes to us via STONERROR, a psychedelic stoner-punk foursome from Kraków that have been jamming since 2015. They made an impression on us two years ago with their freshman full-length 'Stonerror' (2017), of which I wrote:

"Stonerror is revved up, fuzzed out, and itching to go out for a spin -- and damn, what a bitchin' bassline this record has! Not your usual stoner rock fare. Stonerror have definitely put a lot of thought and craftsmanship into this one. Fans of Kyuss, Dozer, Fu Manchu, Greenleaf, take notice!

If the first album was fire, let me warn you to buckle in for the fantastically frenetic follow-up! Not only does 'Widow In Black' (2019) sound fantastic, sonically, the new record is taking us on a thematic joy ride that is sure to warrant your invested listening for the long haul.

Photo by Marcin Pawłowski

Without doubt, Widow In Black is one of the year's most engaging, heart-thumping, hair flying wildly in the wind kind of records. Take for example, the humorously named "Kings of the Stone Age," a genuine stoner-pop marvel, which musters the bouncy verve of QOTSA and the f^*%-you punk intensity of Mutoid Man. "Revelation" brings us pop sensibilities reminiscent of Torche, while "Hellfire" shreds as hard as anything Radio Moscow or Earthless has brought to the fore. "Ships on Fire" is one of my particular favs, channeling the balls-out fury of ASG, accented by some of those big, bendy, Soundgarden-esque riffs. And I absolutely love those sweet, sweet hooks and licks in "Asteroid Fields."

As with the first record, this Stonerror crew is lightning together. You've got Łukasz Mazur on lead vocals and guitar, with Jarosław Daniel shredding it up on guitar, Jacek Malczewski on bass (also pitching in on some nice vocal harmonies), and the steady hand of Maciej Ołownia on drums. It's an unbeatable, finely tuned machine that feels neither uptight nor undisciplined. They're just free, man, free.

To draw a comparison with Kyuss (yes, I feel one is warranted after soaking this all in): if Stonerror was the Wretch of the band's discography, then Widow In Black is surely its Blues For The Red Sun. Stonerror toggle between a wide range of interlocking styles with confidence, delivering exciting psychedelic touches, grinding desert riffs, soaring choruses, and dreamy post-metal finishes. It's a perfect companion to last year's The Sea by Somali Yacht Club, not to mention a fine complement to ASG's Survive Sunrise.

Widow In Black releases on Wednesday, May 22nd, and can be pre-ordered on CD and vinyl here. Leading up to its release, you can hear it all from edge to center right here, right now, on our bitchin' lil blog!

Give ear...

Widow in Black by Stonerror

A Chit-Chat with Stonerror

Congrats on the new record! It sounds fantastic. Would love to know more about the recording process.

Widow in Black was recorded live in one room, on a vintage 16-track Studer magnetic tape recorder and mixed in analog -- in real time -- to stereo track. That’s our usual mode of recording and mixing. We prefer it to digital technologies, because it allows us to catch the momentary energy and synergy of playing together as a band. Also, the sound is a lot more dynamic and “breathing” than in case of digital recording and mixing. Once again, we worked with one of the best producers in Poland – Maciej Cieślak, who’s also a renowned musician and composer.

Right on. Well, let's get into the thematic content of 'Widow In Black,' because that especially interests me.

Lyrically, “Widow in Black” is a concept album. The first four songs (“Ships on Fire”, “Widow in Black”, “Tumbleweed”, and “Kings of the Stone Age”) tell a story of a doomed, turbulent, and painful -- but also intense and all-consuming -- love affair. The apocalypse comes in “Domesday Call,” leaving the protagonist utterly alone, battered, and surrounded by ashes and rubble. In “Hellfire” he descends all the way to hell only to return stronger and mentally transformed. Having experienced excruciating and cathartic solitude in “Mothership”, he sets himself free and leaves the past behind in “Revelation.”

I have to say, I love concept albums. What was the underlying inspiration for these tracks?

Some of our lyrical inspirations include:

“Ships on Fire”: inspired by Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” dialogues, especially the famous “Tears in Rain” monologue.

“Widow in Black”: Freudian sexual motives, Greek mythology.

“Kings of the Stone Age”: made up of sexual innuendos from James Bond movies, with references to David Bowie (“Heroes”) and Iggy Pop & The Stooges (“Gimme Danger, “Raw Power”, and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”).

“Hellfire”: based upon Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” and the ancient Icarus myth.

“Mothership”: references to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and sci-fi movies.

“Revelation”: based upon the Buddhist concept of spiritual enlightenment.

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#D&S Debuts #Stonerror #Wroclaw #Poland #Stoner Rock #Punk #D&S Reviews #D&S Interviews #HeavyBest19 #Doomed & Stoned

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thetapelessworld · 3 years

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Spitfire Audio and associated London label SA Recordings announce availability of HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS sample library and album namesake

Spitfire Audio is proud to announce availability of HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS — a sample library comprising an extension of the sound palette of Berlin-based electronic music composer and performer Hainbach’s musically mind- blowing Landfill Totems concept album simultaneously released on SA Recordings, the London-based label owned by the British music technology company, allowing access to a truly unique world of one-of-a-kind, bespoke sounds expertly curated by Hainbach himself from long-forgotten, now-obsolete test equipment collected from nuclear research labs, grandfathers’ sheds, and scrap heaps, completely repurposed and given a new lease of life as instruments, meticulously recorded and processed further before being presented in Spitfire Audio’s award-winning, easy-to-use plug-in as many morphing and evolving sounds suited to techno and ambient music production, as well as cutting-edge film scoring — as of April 8… Berlin-based electronic music composer and performer Hainbach (a.k.a. Stefan Goetsch) creates shifting audio landscapes living on the experimental edge of electronica, championed by British independent print and online music magazine The Wire — widely renowned for its coverage of a wide range of global alternative, underground, and experimental musics — as “...one hell of a trip.” The music itself is an abstract yet visceral experience, fashioned from esoteric synthesizers, test equipment, magnetic tape, and idiophones — instruments that totally vibrate when struck, shaken, or scraped. Straddling studio to stage, Hainbach’s immersive live performances are also admired, manifesting more recently through his YouTube Channel, where he has amassed an ever-expanding loyal following, sharing his experimental journeys and expertise with wider audiences.

Appropriately, the Landfill Totems project started life as a performance installation at Berlin’s PNDT — a new art gallery whose purpose is to provide a space for culture and creation, for presentation and appreciation of art in all its forms, expanding exponentially into a full album and accompanying sample library recorded at Patch Point, builders and sellers of unique instruments in Kreuzberg-Berlin — much more than a standard store on account of offering residencies to promote community and education through a free booking room filled with unique synthesizers for everyone to play. Hainbach himself puts it this way: “What I love about Patch Point is that it is a place for those interested in sound and music itself. You don’t go there to buy a box with 999 presets that will make you sound like the industry standard; you go there to find something that speaks to you. You pick up something that will start an intimate process of music creation, and it will sound like you, and only you.” Subsequently stacked into three monolithic towers resembling totem poles, each piece of equipment thereon was carefully chosen by Hainbach for its distinctive tone generation and modulation capabilities before being wired together much like a modular synthesiser. Says the electronic music composer and performer eventually lending his notable name and one-of-a-kind, bespoke sounds to Spitfire Audio’s HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS sample library: “Each tower of equipment took the form of a lifelike statue, and suddenly all these faces started appearing in the machines. They made massive sounds and unfamiliar noises and I thought, ‘I want these to be heard — to sing again.’”

As anyone observing those assembled anthropomorphic figures could conceivably concur, a deep appreciation and affection for the engineering technology of the past is apparent — totally unique machines assembled for one final swan song. Ultimately upcycled and redesigned as pillars and shrines, these totems act as a commentary on the environmental cost of progress; what was once the pinnacle of technology quickly becomes unviable and destined for the scrapheap — if not for the intervention of Hainbach, creating beauty from that which is thought to be obsolete. Carefully chosen to create this towering collection is medical, telecommunication, and scientific research equipment, vintage sound-testing devices, a Nuclear Instrumentation Modular, an outmoded medical signal generator, a mixer previously used by the Stasi — the state security service in former East Germany, and a Brüel & Kjaer 1613 bandpass filter creating the hi-hat, bass drum, and watery sounds.

Simultaneously released alongside Hainbach’s musically mind-blowing Landfill Totems concept album on SA Recordings, Spitfire Audio’s sample library namesake sees those same machines completely repurposed and given a new lease of life in an unforeseen capacity as instruments, producing unpredictable sounds from another world — wide ranging from eerie morse code bleeps and comms signals to flickering bass pulses; deep drones and ominous pads to grainy textural rhythms; visceral clicks, industrial drum hits and loops; and electromagnetic noise to heavenly humanoid ‘voices’. Virtual instrument brilliance is guaranteed as everything is meticulously recorded and processed further as dystopian sounds presented in Spitfire Audio’s award-winning, easy-to-use plug-in providing access to truly one-of-a- kind, bespoke creations, impossible to recreate otherwise.

On the face of it, then, the plug-in provides 40 presets split into four sections: Kling — presets containing elements from all other sections, with a huge range of textures available to explore using the mod wheel; Klang — tonal sounds, from evolving pads to pulsating drones; Knarz — textural and effects-style sounds, from watery to alien-like; and Krach — percussion and drum hits, as well as time-machine loops and patterns. Innovative inbuilt effects and controls provide a wealth of self- explanatory sonic possibilities to drastically control and manipulate each of the presets, including REVERB, DELAY, ATTACK, RELEASE, DISTORTION, and STRETCH, while the dynamics fader controls the processed signal to offer a spectrum of sounds within each preset — velocity-sensitive themselves for varying tones. “Just press one note, and you get a whole spectrum of emotion.” So says Hainbach himself, ending on a high note. As a sample library of stark sonic contrasts — from harsh, futuristic, and dystopian to beautiful and emotive sounds from another world, HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS is an invitation for musicians and producers to reimagine, recreate, or completely pull apart the sound world of an artist like no other to facilitate their own artistic vision. Indeed, it is perfect for creating tension, suspense, and beauty in any musical setting — from electronic tracks to hybrid film scoring or abstract sound design... and all without breaking into a broken bank balance-induced sweat! HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS is available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible plug-in supporting Native Instruments’ NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) for Mac (OS X 10.10 - macOS 11 minimum) and Windows (7, 8, and 10 — latest Service Pack) that loads directly into any compatible DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for an RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of only £29.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$29.00 USD/€29.00 EUR (inc. VAT) — from here: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hainbach-landfill-totems/ (Please note that the first 1,500 purchasers of HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS will each receive a limited-edition Landfill Totems cassette album for free.)

Hainbach’s musically mind-blowing Landfill Totems concept album is available to purchase either on its own as a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl album for £17.50 GBP (inc. VAT) or as a bundle — comprising a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl album (plus WAV / FLAC digital download) and the HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS sample library — directly from SA Recordings here: https://sarecordings.com/release/220828-hainbach-landfill-totems (Please note that bundle purchasers will each receive a limited-edition Landfill Totems cassette album for free.)

Spitfire Audio’s namesake Spitfire Audio application allows anyone to buy now and download anytime, and is available for free from here: http://www.spitfireaudio.com/info/library-manager/

For more in-depth information, including some superb-sounding audio demos, please visit the dedicated HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS webpage here: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hainbach-landfill-totems/ Watch Spitfire Audio in-house composer Homay Schmitz’s walkthrough of HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS here: https://youtu.be/i9uJNZwTBgY

youtube

Experience the one-of-a-kind atmospheric electronics embodied by HAINBACH - LANDFILL TOTEMS in its trailer video here: https://youtu.be/5JjBeMGFROM

youtube

#news #spitfireaudio #hainbach #samplelibrary #composer #songwriter

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years

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(HOT TAKE) Notes on a Conditional Form by The 1975, part 2

In the second instalment of a two part HOT TAKE (read part one here) on The 1975′s latest LP, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit, 2020), Scott Morrison ponders the tricksterish art of writing about music, before riffing on the history of the album as form, questions around genre, nostalgia and a sense of the contemporary, not to mention that saxophone solo and why Stravinsky would love this album.

Dear Maria,

> How pleasant it feels to begin a review with a note to a friend.

> Shoutout/cc:/@FrankO’Hara – I always liked his idea to write a poem like it’s addressed to just one other person. It strikes me as interesting to begin a piece of criticism in the same way. So, this is the mode I will try to inhabit throughout.

> As I read your words, and pondered, and learned, I was caught in the twin state of delighting each time you hit upon something already identified in my own thoughts – some of which I will expand upon here - and equally delighted every time you wrote something I could or would not. Such is the joy of conversation.

> I suppose in this preamble between speakers, which keeps up the pretence of our characters conversing - which will, inevitably, lapse as the form of this review gives way to a longer, more oneiristic, probably, onanistic, possibly, enquiry into the album (an act impossible in real conversation, by the way, imagine, imagine someone actually speaking for this long, how boring and alienating that would be, and yet that is usually what criticism is). Anyway, before all that, to help set the scene, I should mention a few ‘real world’ details. All of which happened either online, of course, or in isolation, because that, as you mention, is the real world now, during the violent interlude of Covid-19.

> I was delighted – that word again, repetitions and patterns begin anew already – to be asked to write this review. Firstly, because, like you say, I am a fan of The 1975. But also, because I am a writer and I am a musician and I am trying just now to forge a new mode of writing about music, one that can be both analytical (technically, socially, historically) and expressive (personally, lyrically, emotionally). And, most of all because I have always been, at best, suspicious, and, at worst, dismissive, of album reviews.

> I wrote, in our Messenger chat, ‘I usually find music reviews unhelpful’, which makes me sound like a bit of a dick, really. But what I meant is, what I meant is.

> There’s a saying I think about a lot, as the aforementioned writer and musician who writes about music: ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ (Martin Mull, Frank Zappa, or Elvis Costello, or any of the other people that sharp quote is blurrily misattributed to.)

> Incidentally, I would love to see a dance about architecture. But sometimes I think the sentiment of the statement is true. Will writing about music always be missing the point? Will it, through words, ever really be able to get to the essentially wordless essence of music? But I am a writer. And I am a musician. And I like writing about music. (Incidentally, I like making music about writing less). Yet I do feel there is some truth to the saying, I guess. Twists and turns. Try again. Here is another way of saying what I am trying to say.

> Music reviews make me hate adjectives. And I love adjectives. But often commercial reviews – for dozens of reasons, many of them valid, most of them related to that capital prefix – become attempts to describe a sound, invariably an artist’s ‘new sound’, again related to that capital prefix. Often, the goal is to generate press, to entice people to listen – or not – and so feed the music industry and the market. And to describe these new sounds, adjectives are piled-up like car crashes. Trying to describe a sound at any great length is, I think, ultimately fated to fail. Adjectives, up to a point, can provide greater and ever-more strident clarity. But, after a certain point – that appears very quickly in most pop reviews - saturation point is reached, and the clarity disappears, and we are left very far away from the music we were originally trying to pile word upon word to reach. ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’, you might say, if you were into foreshadowing. Which I am (obviously).

> So, I suppose, to continue thinking out loud (in silence, at my keyboard) I am interested in writing around music. Not describing the sounds (‘Let sounds be themselves’, says John Cage, whispering in my memory’s ear), but I am interested in writing that can tease out some of the ideas in and around the music and extend them in new directions. That, I think, is a different and interesting kind of dance worth attempting.

> We understand a review, then, as this kind of dance: as a record of the reviewer’s experience of listening to a record, which will accept that it will largely take as its subject the listening, and not the record. Even better if it’s a dialogue between two. So, here’s what I think about the album.

> Ok, before I talk about the album, actually, I would like to talk about a book. I hope that’s alright. There is no objective correlation between the album and the book except the proximity in time in which I experienced them. Let’s get that out of the way at the very beginning. The book has nothing to do with the album. But it does have something to do with how I heard it.

> The book is called An Experiment with Time. I mentioned this to you once already over Zoom. It was written in 1927. My copy belonged to my grandfather, in fact, and his writing – and so his pen and then his hand and then his whole vanished being – appeared occasionally at marginal or pivotal points throughout the text. That was part of what I liked about it, I guess.

> The book – which I allowed Wikipedia to tell me only after I had pushed my way through it – is regarded as an imaginative curiosity, but one which science has never taken seriously. That’s fine for me, because I am far more familiar, fluid and fluent in the language and implications of the imagination that I am of science.

> The book, broadly in two halves, sets out in its first strange span experiences of premonitions in dreams. That will give you the idea of the kind of science book it is. The second half is an attempt at a logical, philosophical, and occasionally mathematical explanation of Time that can account for these premonitory fissures.

> It posits that, in addition to the three dimensions of space (height, breadth and depth, I suppose), that time is a fourth dimension in our universe. I’ve heard that said, but I never really got it before. I do now, and it is very beautiful, because it begins to make me imagine, how, like a sculptor, I can ply, fold and shape with this new dimension. You can imagine how this might be useful to a musician, music being an art that can only exist through time.

> Anyway, the book then goes on to posit that a fourth dimension in which something can be observed to travel (our consciousness), must necessarily imply an observer in a fifth dimension to observe that travel, and then one in a sixth dimension, and so on, ad inifitum, infinite regress, serial time.

> I confess this somewhat surpassed the boundaries of my metaphysics (and/or silently slipped over my head), but the image of the infinite regress has stayed with me, the clickanddrag of old Windows windows ossified and pulled to leave twisting, spiralling trails; the gold-tipped rhythm of tenement window embrasures, repeating, far off, clickanddragged up a hill (hints and twists of Escher), on my daily walks.

> Wikipedia later told me that an infinite regress is a shaky ground on which to base a philosophical proof. Again, this is fine for me: I am a bad philosopher, because I am not competitive, and so this does not bother me very much.

> The infinite regress is a beautiful image, with lots of possibility in it for further imaginings, and it entrances me. So, keep this idea of serial observers and the limitless extension it implies close, please (foreshadowing again, you’re welcome).

> I will switch now, briefly, too briefly, from critic to fanboy (I contain multitudes, etc.).

> Notes on a Conditional Form as an album title made me smile a smile that was very close to a wince or wink. Classic Matty, was probably the thought that came next. You have already summarised dastardly, dear, endearing, calamitous Matty, so I will move on assuming that, Matty Healy, yeah, I know.

> Back to the critic. The conditional form, in this review has already been (drumroll, eyeroll) music reviews themselves. See part one.

> Now I would like to take the album as the form in question – not this album, but albums generally, as this album is an exploration of the album form. The Album, capitalised.

> Albums have become normalised. But let’s play dumb for a moment – one of the cleverest things we can do - and we’ll see that albums are anything but inevitable, especially in the boundless age of streaming.

> Before this, albums used to be defined as collections with physical bounds. The capacity of a CD; before that, a length of magnetic tape; before that, the edge of a vinyl, a shellac, a wax cylinder. That about takes us back to the start of recorded audio media, I think.

> After Edison’s initial, waxy curiosities, albums began - like most things we love and hate - as a product. The form of the album was a circle. The music was a line. The edge of the line was the end of time. Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, as a fun aside. And, as another, did you know that there’s a funny B-plot in all of this to do with Beethoven. (It’s always to do with fucking Beethoven.) Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became the arbitrary marker for the desired length of the CD. It had never before been possible to fit the symphony onto a single, uninterrupted piece of media. And so, the B-plot goes, this is why the standard CD holds the amount of time that it does.

> Anyway, regardless of who shaped them, physical recorded media have, since their staggered births, profoundly shaped culture. Pop songs, especially singles, are still 3 and a half minutes long because that was the maximum amount of time that could be squeezed onto a 78, in the shellac days. Time was short and simple then, seemingly.

> Notes on a Conditional Form is 81 minutes long. It had 8 singles leading up to it, released over a span of ten months. Clearly, physical boundaries and marketing timelines, are not being treated in the usual way. You could just release singles forever now. But the fact this ended up as an album shows some belief in the concept beyond the physical and, yes, the commercial. Let’s press on, look elsewhere.

> Since we’ve started talking about classical music – ok, since I started talking about classical music – I’d like to dwell there for a moment, because there are foreshadows of The Album, conceptually speaking (and this album specifically) several layers up, several parenthesis ago, criticism as serial digression, in classical music.

> Collecting songs as albums was a favourite pastime of the Romantics, early emos. @FranzSchubert, @ClaraSchumann, @JohannesBrahms – there’s another B-plot in that trio if you want to look it up, by the way. Also, Clara Schumann is overlooked, like all female composers, because the classical music world is deeply patriarchal. It’s important to say that whenever we can.

> Anyway, the Romantics did not develop the album as a physical form – the only available recording medium at that time was sheet music, which they did sell in a big way, actually. But really, they helped develop the album as a conceptual form. They collected a group of shorter songs to make a larger statement – Schubert especially. In the 19th century, this was known as a song cycle, a lovely phrase, that makes me think of cycling through meadows, which I have done more than usual recently, as part of my state-sanctioned exercises, though the meadow was in fact an overgrown golf course, and no less lovely for it.

> Schubert’s Die Winterreise is a classic example of the song cycle – and another example of the emo-Romantic - a cycle of poems set to music that take the listener on a journey over time. Sound familiar? Albums. Song cycles. Song spokes. Meadows. Grasses and wildflowers. Meandering journeys.

> Anyway, here we finally return to Notes on a Conditional Form. Collecting songs together allows for an exploration of ideas that can evolve or expand over time – a Brief Inquiry, you might say. Art as a tool of investigation. Process. And this album certainly does that. You already touched on some of the ideas in the album: the climate crisis, the Anthropocene, digital communication, social unrest, calls to action, my favourite lyric on that theme, while we’re here:

Wake up, wake up, wake up, we are appalling

And we need to stop just watching shit in bed

And I know it sounds boring and we like things that are funny

But we need to get this in our fucking heads-

> You explore these ideas well so I will not pursue them more for now. Thank you!

> The other effect of collecting songs – or anything together – is that it gives birth to form. (Gasp, he said the title of the movie!)

> Yes, collecting things together as an album is what creates the form in all senses of the word – physical, commercial, conceptual. Form, pure form, is not the things, or the arrangement of the things, but the relationship between the arranged things. Glimpsing this is like getting a delicious glimpse of time as a fourth dimension. As I may have already let slip, I am very interested in time. And so, I am naturally interested in musical forms, which can only be apprehended through time, with time, thanks to time – thank you, time. We don’t often say that.

> This is where I will, at last - god, imagine I had been speaking at you this whole time - this is where I will at last get into the main topic of this review. The remarkable form of this album.

> Wait, sorry, one more thing before I do. A really quick one. As well as time, musical form also needs contrast. For sections to appear as distinct, and thus for us to clearly apprehend the difference between them, and thus get a glimpse of Form, they must contrast with one another, for how else would we apprehend change, notice borders, know we are somewhere else. (An interesting digression here is process music, which I love dearly, and which has an entirely different relationship with form. Look it up, if you like.)

> Anyway, for our purposes now, musical form requires contrast. This could be achieved in many ways: traditionally, it was done with different melodies or harmonies; but it could be done with volume, instrumentation, tempo, texture etc. etc.

> The main way that this album delineates its striking – and, to my mind, for what it’s worth, unique and new – form, how it creates its contrast, is using all of the above tricks, but, even more so, by contrasting styles/genres. This was immediately what struck me and thrilled me about this album, and it’s kind of funny – for me as the annoying writer, perhaps less so for you, the reader, I mean listener – that it’s taken me 2,534 words to mention it. This I think is the brilliance of this record. This is why we can call it not just contemporary, but new.

> The 1975 have always been shifting, but never like this. This album contains, sometimes literally right next to each other: punk, orchestral music, UK garage, Americana, shoegaze, folk, dancehall, 80s power ballads – and, of course, pop, whatever that means. Stravinsky became famous for sharp juxtapositions of distinct musical blocks. He would fucking love this.

> I messaged you, after my first listen, to say that the album reminded me of one of Sophia Coppola’s soundtracks. That was an instinctive, emotional response, but, having thought about it, I can now demonstrate the reason for the similarity. The stylistically varied end products are similar to one another because the methodology is similar: soundtracks select music practically to achieve emotional affects. Soundtrack albums use music as a tool to heighten ideas that lie elsewhere, in their case, in the filmed scenes they accompany. If you believe Matty Healy, this is also what The 1975 do. They use beauty, in whatever style or genre they find it:

‘Beauty is the sharpest tool that we have - if you want someone to pay attention, make it beautiful’.

> What do you make of that, @Keats? No, really, I would love to know.

> I think this is a remarkable musical strategy, that requires flexibility, knowledge and skill. That there is such a high level of all these things in the band is what allows it the strategy to be successful.

> I would like to pause here and consider the implications of this strategy on a personal, social and cultural level.

> Musical genre and personal identity have been as fused for as long as pop music has existed. This could be a trick of the market, or it could be a need of the individual psyche, or both. I think there is some truth in theory that in the increasingly widespread absence of God – by which I mean organised religion – people need to find both a guide for their metaphysics and morals, and a structure for their community, as these are some of the most effective tools we have discovered for constructing our Selves, making sense of our lives and the world. Art can provide the guide for many people. It also provides community. These communities, collections – albums? - of political, moral and aesthetic views, then become subcultures.

> Until very recently, subcultures were fixed. ‘Hardcore till I die’, ageing ravers, old punks. Interestingly one never really sees ageing emos. But that’s a subject for another essay.

> This, I think, is perhaps what is so striking here: musical genres are normally culminations (or roots, depending on how you look at it) of lived sub or counter cultures. These usually result from a fixed viewpoint about life and society, shared by the individuals that comprise them. The individuals identify with what the music says, how it is presented and how it looks as much – or perhaps even more - than how it sounds.

> Before now, it would have been shocking to imagine a band switching effortlessly from one style to another – this occasionally happens over the course of a career, between albums, but almost never in the same album itself - because it would feel like a betrayal, if we accept that bands and styles represent fixed ways of life and viewpoints and that neither lives nor viewpoints can change. Which, obviously they can. And which, obviously, they do, nowadays, with increasing speed, @Coronavirus.

> Matty’s appearance is a perfect demonstration of this. Minging Matty, Hearthrob Matty, Matty in vintage jeans, in a skirt, in a pinstripe suit. If we accept the old association of musical style/subculture and the clothing/uniform each produces, what would the ideal garb of a The 1975 listener be? A screen. A real, working search engine, fused with their body.

> Previously, the model was that bands had ‘influences’ which they ‘blended’ to create a ‘new’ sound. Here, The 1975 don’t really focus on blending sounds at the level of individual songs: the blend, boldly, happens at the level of the album. If the album is like a soundtrack, it is the soundtrack to the algorithmic age of effortless consumption of media.

> And I would like an examination of that idea to be the final track on this album. I mean, review. I mean conversation.

> The 1975 are inseparable from recorded media. Not just their own, but recorded media from the past. They are not able to invoke and inhabit this startling panoply of styles, to my knowledge, because they have studied in individual places or with masters of each craft or tradition – they are able to do it because they, like us, are able to consume recordings of these styles, and they, like us, have done so all their lives.

> When The 1975 invoke these styles, they are not evoking a tradition, or a way of doing things, or even seeing things. They are invoking personal memories of experiencing recordings, encountering media. We can take a look at a few examples of this.

> Let’s start with the classical stuff. The orchestral interludes do not sound like they are written by classical composers, or even composers of film soundtracks - the use of orchestration is different. It sounds, to my ear, like acoustic instruments playing what were originally MIDI parts. Which, I imagine, is what happened. That would usually be called bad orchestration. I am not interested in saying that. I am slightly interested in the effect of getting classical musicians, with their classical training, to play music written by people without classical training on a computer. What are the implications of writing for the flute as a soundfont, rather than a person, instrument or tradition?

> And what is the significance of placing an orchestra, playing instrumental compositions, on a pop record. These are not backing arrangements in an existing pop song, as we commonly encounter; nor are they classical arrangements of a pop song (see Hacienda Classical et al).

> These are standalone orchestral compositions on a record that also includes shoegaze, UK garage, two-step, Americana, punk. What, then, is the significance of this? The instruments, I believe, are being chosen less for their own sonic timbres, and more for their social or cultural timbres. I will try to explain this thought.

> Matty has often spoken about ‘Disneyfication’; he said he wanted ‘The Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme’ on A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships to sound like a Disney movie. What does that mean? It means, I think, he wants it to sound like old movies, childhood, nostalgia. The orchestra is a sinecure for the ‘symphonic’, the cinematic, the dramatic; the orchestra is used like a banjo, which is, elsewhere on the album, used to conjure the exoticism of Americana as heard by someone listening to it in the UK, to paraphrase Matty’s words.

> The stylistic references in the album are as much references to media as much as they are to music. Disney: orchestral sounds, likely filtered and wobbled through VHS cassettes. The orchestra, already made symbolic by its association with movies, made a double symbol, a reflection of a shadow, being invoked through the original sound not really for this sound but for our associations with it. The banjo invoked as both an instrument of yesteryear and over there. The music constructs frames of otherness to facilitate wistfulness, longing, memory.

> The chart success of ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’ is that it’s a modern bop that sounds like 80s bangers. Its artistic success is that it contrasts the feeling of halcyon safety created by its imitation of 80s bangers (experienced for millennials usually as triumphant climaxes in movies, jubilant moments on oldies stations), and rubs this up against some of the disturbing parts of the present: the angst of online relationships, nudity with people you don’t know and have not and may never meet. This is a simple but highly effective juxtaposition.

> ‘Bagsy Not In Net’ does this too: a quotidian, painful experience of childhood (not wanting to play in goal in a football game), expressed as a yearning and grand orchestral statement. This is true, too, of ‘Streaming’. This is pop music Pop Art: the contemporary quotidian expressed in the language of an old tradition and invested with the significance of an Art it simultaneously questions the power and validity of.

> And, to linger on ‘If You’re Too Shy’ for just a little longer, what is the meaning of a saxophone solo in pop music in 2020? It is symbolic: a shortcut, practically a meme. Saxophone solos exist in a present in contemporary jazz - they are a living history making new futures. But saxophone solos almost always only exist in pop music as ghosts (careless whispers) of the past. This particular sax solo is so euphoric to us less because of its musical content and more because of the emotions we have learned to associate with sax solos through other media.

> The final, most perfect example of this, of everything I have been getting at, really, is the UK garage references. These are themselves references to artists like The Streets, and Burial, who, themselves, were referencing the primary records of UK garage which they (The Streets and Burial) never experienced in clubs, but as recordings. And The 1975 experienced these recordings of recordings. Layers and layers of reference. And here, abruptly, we find ourselves back at the opening image of the infinite regress.

> At times, this album wants to express the present moment back at itself, and so prompt reflection and action. The fright of the zeitgeist. In this we can include Greta Thunberg, ‘People’, and the overtly socio-political statements on the album. I hope these tracks will be successful. In the future, they will take on the significance of historic artefacts: preserved truths from a vanished time, fixed and rich, like amber.

> But there are long swathes of the album, that do not have this intent, and which will, I believe, have a different longevity. These are the (often wordless) lyrical sections: the abstract, the vague, the instrumental sections – in all senses of the word. Records of the individual imagination listening to another individual imagination listening to another individual imagination. What will these tracks become in time, in Time?

> There is something ethereally delicious about the thought of people in the future coming across people in the past’s nostalgia of another past, now three links distant to their present, compoundly insubstantial, glittering, compelling. Fifth, sixth, seventh dimensions - serial nostalgias.

Notes on a Conditional Form is out now and available to order.

Text: Scott Morrison

Published: 26/6/20

#review #reviews #album review #music criticism #music review #Scott Morrison #The 1975 #Maria Sledmere #Matty Healy

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fluidsf · 5 years

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Resonant Visions 8 EMPTYSET: BORDERS (2017) photography by J. Ginzburg design by Sheila Sachs Reviewed format: CD album on THRILL JOCKEY RECORDS Welcome to the eighth review in the Resonant Visions series in which today I have for you this excellent 2017 album by EMPTYSET titled BORDERS. The version I'm reviewing here is the CD album released on American label THRILL JOCKEY RECORDS. What attracted me a lot about the artwork of this album was first of all the awesome cover image. This is the image you can see on the cover of the 4-panel gatefold mini-LP style packaging of the album. The album cover is printed in decent quality and it shows what looks like two jellyfish swimming in a very dark background, like floating in a void almost. The two jellyfish create a kind of circular bended symbol in the way they're arranged which also adds a dynamic feeling of movement to the image which is especially accentuated by the fuzzy focus of the photo by J. Ginzburg (who's one half of EMPTYSET) and the three-colour seperation effect that adds a kind of trippy psychedelic 3D effect to the image as well. It's definitely a really strong attractive cover image that in my eyes represents an organic cycle of movement, movement forwards and backwards like two magnets attracting and retracting in this dark void. The photography by J. Ginzburg is only used on the cover and CD itself but the rest of the design by THRILL JOCKEY RECORDS regular graphic designer Sheila Sachs definitely accompanies the mood and music of this album quite well with stark and minimalist typography, everything in this dark black void. The spine of the cardboard sleev features the artist name and album title in all caps type that looks rather neat and tasteful. The catalogue number is in all caps as well and the UPC barcode is rather creatively placed in both its graphic form (to scan) and the digits themselves spread over three rows of 4 digits each on the left of the graphic barcode. On the back we have the artist name and album title seperated by a long line (again in white all-caps type) in big letters at the top and the label name in smaller all caps type at the bottom. On the inside of the gatefold sleeve on the left panel we have the music credits, copyright info and EMPTYSET website link in lowercase type. Underneath we have a section with mastering, recording and artwork credits, again in lowercase type. And finally there are two lines of publishing and label address info in lowercase at the bottom. On the right panel we have the tracklist (listed as simply the names in order) also in lowercase type, which again looks very neat and tasteful. Inside the right panel of the gatefold you can find the little envelope insert containing the CD. The inner white envelope is folded a bit like the inner sleeves of some vinyl LP records (mini-LP style) and the CD is visible through a plastic circle on the front. The envelope does offer a bit of extra protection from scracthing to the CD which is good. The CD itself features a blown-up version of the cover photo showing one of the jellyfish which showcases the washes of colour a bit more, looks great and above the photo you can see the artist name and album titled again, with a long line in between, similar to the back cover but in slightly bigger size. All in all the dark background with the dynamic organic photos on the artwork and CD do hint pretty well at the ambience and mood of this album, with the music having a rough (bassy) dark sound to it and the tribal like rhythms forming rhythmic cycles on the 11 tracks of BORDERS, so while it's pretty minimalist packaging, it's still a great accompaniment to the music itself. Now, onto the music on BORDERS itself. Like I mentioned, BORDERS has this theme of Tribal rhythms within it. With the droning bassy textures of many of the tracks on this album that gets generated from the hypnotic, repetitve and gradually progressing Industrial percussion rhythms EMPTYSET perform on this album you do get this strong feeling of trance inducing Tribal rhythms that reminds me of a contemporary more hi-fi style of Industrial harking back to 80's underground Industrial tapes. Very captivating in both sound design and performance, most of the 11 tracks follow a recurring Drone texture but EMPTYSET keep varying the patterns and textures created which makes for a very coherent and focused album. body starts off the album and introduces us to the aformentioned sonic textures. With long extended metallic vibrations, distorted Noise and plenty of intriguing Industrial resonances the rhythms grip us firmly inside their fuzzy textures and keep evolving overtime like a mechnical creature. border is a bit more abrasive in nature with EMPTYSET's custom string instrument creating both washes of dirty and fuzzy viseceral textures waves of noise as well as a metallic strumming rhythm (in the sides of the stereo image) that reminds me of the performances style of for example Eastern tradition music. A very good combination between resonant Noise and organic metallic rhythms, the music is minimalist in approach but very effective and enjoyable through the energetic and inspired performance. descent features, surprisingly a very Reggaeton like rhythm, though in this case performed on heavily resonant Industrial percussion, again with very bassy hissy and noisy percussion hits as well as what almost sounds like PWM synths adding nice accents to the percussion rhythms. What is also good to mention is the beginning of this piece which starts with a really heavy Industrial drone which works as a kind of percussionless interlude to the piece. descent's (gated) reverb adds a great sense of depth to the music which definitely helps to drive the hypnotic jumping rhythm of the piece which fluctuates in various curious ways. across features much more sparse percussion in the form of low drum hits and is focused around a very fuzzy Noise drone that has some gorgeous overtones to it and the fluctuations from tone to Noise also creates a sweet progression to the music, very entrancing again. In speak, the hissy Industrial drums accompany sweet galloping droning strummed tones in which the additional harmonics from the distortion add great edge to the texture of the music with the rhythmic "stabbing washes" of Noise they create. axis blends elements of slower paced Reggaeton like percussion rhythms with a more Raga like playing style on the string instrument and overtones, resonance and feedback both vary wildly on this track creating awesome washes of tones and Noise that swirl around, sometimes violently creating Noise stabs in the sound space. The many breaks in between the rhythmic patterns also create intense extended tones of Noise and feedback, like an Industrial ritual taking place, a very intriguing ambience is created here. sight juxtaposes a much more diffuse and harsh slow Industrial rhythm with washes of filtered Noise like the soundtrack to a Ritual dance performance, a very deep sound in this track. retrieve amps up the fuzz and Noise even more creating scattered stuttery hazes of resonant sound which also fragment sweeps of feedback. It's definitely one of the most Noise focused pieces on the album and the strummed instrument adds sweet Drone elements as well. There's plenty of variation in the patterns and sound manipulation performed in this piece as well, very visceral and driving. ascent recalls back to first track body though with a more jumpy bass drum heart-beat like rhythm adding tension to the music with rich Noise resonances accentuating the rhythm brilliantly. ground is a more repetitive piece in which EMPTYSET starts to rock out quite a lot with both their drone and Industrial percussion, creating very intense hazes of Noise filling up the dark void in which more uptempo rhythms play, very nice. In final piece dissolve, the instruments are being performed with a (relatively) cleaner sound to them, the string noises of the string instrument being more pronounced and bouncing back quite nicely in the reverb of the piece. The hissy Industrial percussion is more driving by the melodic drone performance here and accentuates it with deep thumpy bass hits. All in all dissolve is a great closing track that works well as piece in which all developments of the textures and rhythms of BORDERS are combined as a sort of "final stage of evolution" to perform their music in an equal balance of elements, finishing the cycle of the album (which refers back to the album cover as well). All in all, combined with the lovely photography by J. Ginzburg and neat graphic design by Sheila Sachs on this physical CD version of BORDERS, this album is an intriguing and entrancing ride of Tribal like Industrial rhythms and richly textured Noise drones that is a very focused set of music of which all short pieces combined create a memorable and enjoyable contemporary listening experience that not only invites deep listening to the sonic details but also enables you to immerse yourself inside these hazy sonic images and feel the strong drive of the music. I definitely recommend this album to fans of both old-school and contemporary Industrial music, Tribal music and both the Noise and Drones styles, as there's a great mixture of influences and excellent performances on this album. Go check this out. CD album is available from the EMPTYSET Bandcamp page here: https://emptyset1.bandcamp.com/album/borders

#cd #underground music #independent music #thrill jockey records #2017 #industrial #noise #drone #tribal #album #emptyset #borders #resonant visions #experimental music #album review #album packaging review #design review

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luxenovella-blog · 7 years

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jessicakmatt · 7 years

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From Discs to Digital: The Odd History of Music Formats

From Discs to Digital: The Odd History of Music Formats: via LANDR Blog

Physical formats have only been around since the 1870s— But in that relatively short amount of time, we’ve managed to come up with some pretty bizarre ways to release music.

Each format on this list had its moment of usefulness. But looking back might make you ask “what were we thinking?”

Regardless of how obsolete certain formats might be, they all led us to where we are today: streaming.

Most music fans choose to purchase their music digitally—either via download or streaming.

Smart artists are following suit as well. Many musicians are skipping out entirely on the cost of releasing physical formats—opting instead for digital music distribution that fits today’s music landscape.

Well, how did we get here?

Regardless of their popularity today, every format on this list played its part in the march towards digital domination.

We strolled through the odd history of music formats to explore where that journey has taken us—and where it might lead…

Here’s the music format timeline—from vinyl to digital and everything in between:

1948: The Record

Records, or discs, of varying speeds and materials have actually been around since the early 1900s—early versions rotated at 78 RPM (vroom, vroom!) and were made of shellac, which made them noisy (the bad kind of noisy, not the good kind) and fragile.

In 1948, Columbia Records produced a 33 RPM 12-inch ‘long play’ format, which we know, love, and donate the thrift stores today as the LP.

The first LP ever pressed was titled Columbia ML4001, and was a “Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor” by violinist Milstein with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bruno Walter.

Shortly after, RCA Records developed a 45 RPM 7-inch ‘extended-play single’ format, or the EP for short.

Because of the fragility of shellac, which was frequently broken during transport, both Columbia and RCA Records eventually began producing their LP and EPs on vinyl.

Size and portability were the biggest strikes against vinyl. Eventually the music industry sought to find a solution and developed new formats that people could easily bring with them to work, parties, etc.

Despite the numerous physical formats that have been created since vinyl records, the market for them is still strong: according to the mid-year 2017 Discogs report the most popular physical music format sold so far this year is vinyl, with a year-to-year increase in sales of 13.92%.

But despite vinyl’s sustained popularity over time, vinyl was set aside as the go-to format as listeners looked for the next best thing.

1963: Compact Cassette

Compact Cassettes, or tapes, were invented by the Philips company and introduced to Europe at the Berlin Radio Show—Europe’s oldest tech convention with a rich history of its own.

Early cassettes featured reverse housing with a max play time of 45 minutes of stereo audio per side—significantly longer than a vinyl LP’s playtime.

Tapes also fit in a more affordable, compact package. The small size of tapes gave rise to portable players, making them a convenient development in the history of how and where we listen.

The cassette also fit perfectly into the post-war era. A boom in population and suburban expansion meant cars… lots of cars. So the need for mobile playback systems and formats was a hot concept.

The invention of tapes also introduced a volatile new concept into recorded music: Piracy.

The advent of cassettes and cassette recorders caused record companies to predict devastating effects on the music industry. After unsuccessful attempts to tax blank tapes, the DAT (digital audio tape) Bill was introduced in 1989, which restricted the amount of tapes consumers could by and prevented them from making copies of copies, aka the SCMS system.

Cassettes also birthed mixtape culture—a concept that runs the music industry as we know it today.

However, it didn’t help record labels, who believed that a tax should be paid to them. In 1991 the Audio Home Recording Act was introduced, which collected tax from media and record makers and distributed it back to labels.

But it wasn’t all suitcases, court cases and taxes on tapes… Cassettes also birthed Mixtape culture, giving amateur compilation creators a way to record audio off of multiple records and compile a single playlist—a concept that runs the music industry as we know it today.

These days tapes certainly aren’t our main mode of listening, but the industry is still active—In 2016, cassette sales grew by 74% from the previous year.

1964: 8-Track Tape

The 8-track tape was a collaborative invention between the unlikely trio of RCA Records, Lear Jet Company, and Ampex Magnetic Tape Company. This may seem like somewhat of an odd group, but Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with his employee Richard Kraus, were responsible for designing the cartridge for 8-track tapes.

Lear, who manufactured private, luxury aircrafts, had an interest in audio and previously tried to create an endless-loop wire recorder in the 1940s.

The benefit of 8-track tapes over the compact cassette was their ability to house 8-parallel soundtracks with four corresponding stereo programs—they could play a lot of music in a relatively small package.

Much of the 8-tracks success is thanks to the booming automobile industry of the time. By 1966, Ford Motors offered 8-track players as an option in their complete line of automobiles produced that year.

At home players were introduced the following year, and many saw the 8-track as a solution to the portability issue of records and record players.

Despite 8-track’s popularity in the 60s and 70s, the compact cassette took over as the more popular choice for artists and consumers due to its favourable size and price-tag.

Despite their popularity in the 60s and 70s, the compact cassette took over as the more popular choice for artists and consumers due to its favourable size and price-tag. As a result the 8-track became largely obsolete then, and today.

It’s argued that the last 8-track tape ever released by a major label was Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits, released in November of 1988 by Warner Records—perhaps a sign that we’d never be going back to 8-tracks again?

1972: Floppy Disk

Floppy Disk’s are normally associated with data storage for desktop computers, but during the 80s and 90s a select-few artists began releasing albums on this somewhat unconventional format.

IBM introduced the 8-inch floppy disk to the tech world in 1972, which was followed with a 5 ¼-inch model in 1976, and finally replaced with a conveniently-sized a 3½-inch format in 1982.

The floppy release remained fairly niche and never truly hit the mainstream. Diskette’s most notable release was Brian Eno’s 1996 album Generative Music I, released through Opal Music.

There were also a handful of major releases on diskette that tried to bring a “multimedia” angle to albums, but the format simply never caught on.

Regardless of diskette’s ill-fated moment in music, the floppy represents an important foreshadowing of music’s digital future—a trend that would soon be taken up by the CD explosion…

1982: Compact Disc

The floppy represents an important foreshadowing of music’s digital future.

In 1974, Philips (yes, the same Philips of tape fame) had the initial idea for CDs as a replacement for records and cassettes. During the same time Sony was also working on their own prototype (CD wars!). Sony’s offering was first demoed in 1976.

Eventually the two companies came together and CDs were officially launched as a viable format in 1982. Sony also introduced the first ever CD player that year, the CDP-101 Compact Disc Player which cost $1000!

With CDs also came portable CD players, CD-ROM drives, writable CDs and the 16-bit/44.1kHz benchmark for audio formats, which all had their own effect on how we listen to music.

CDs also brought together the best of every format that came before it: High-quality audio, compact, portable, writable and inexpensive.

Overall the CD was an extremely important development for the music industry, becoming the defacto release format for decades.

It was a need the CD and Discman could only fill for so long.

But in many ways the CD was the beginning of the end for physical formats. Computers and the MP3 (more on this in a minute) quickly took over our listening habits. With the invention of the internet and as computers became more sophisticated, so did the constant demand for convenience. It was a need the CD and Discman could only fill for so long.

As soon as it became possible to access music through your computer or MP3 player, most people no longer wanted to have physical copies of music when they could store everything in a folder on their desktop.

Of course CDs didn’t just evaporate overnight. There’s still some Discpeople out there. Even though Discog’s 2017 mid-year report cites vinyl as the physical format showing the biggest growth, CDs have seen their own growth in sales with an increase of 23.23% on the used market.

1992: MP3

The MP3 was originally developed in the the early 80s by researcher Karlheinz Brandenburg. His post-doctoral work at the AT&T Bell Labs expanded on pre-existing codecs for compressing audio. In a strange twist, Brandenburg chose Suzanne Vega’s 1987 hit “Tom’s Diner” as a test song to perfect the MP3.

But it wasn’t until 1992 that the MP3 went mainstream, and not until 1999—with the creation of Napster—that the format really caught fire.

The music industry is just now starting to recover from it’s own digital dawn…

Napster allowed for free peer-to-peer file sharing of the MP3 audio file that resulted in widespread copyright infringement and understandable outrage from the music industry.

Despite its brief 3 year run in its initial form, Napster eventually paved the way for platforms like the iTunes store—allowing users to search, purchase, and instantly play music all with a few clicks.

The effects from the shockwave that the MP3, piracy and pure digital formats created are still being felt today. In many ways, the music industry is just now starting to recover from it’s own digital dawn…

2002: Streaming

With 24/7 internet accessibility expanding thanks to mobile, developers and entrepreneurs saw the opportunity for something big: The possibility of listening to, and discovering, new music without having to actually download files or purchase songs.

Additionally, streaming platforms aimed to (hopefully) make digital music a sustainable business model for everyone involved. In many ways it has, but there’s still a long way to go.

The release of the iPhone in 2007 is what really caused streaming and internet radios popularity to skyrocket. Apps that were previously desktop only, were now available at the palm of your hand.

The following year Spotify launched, which runs off of paid advertisements. Users have two choices: listen for free with ads, or pay a monthly fee for unlimited, uninterrupted streaming.

Streaming apps filled the creeping demand for non-physical access to music and ushered in our current chapter of formats: Dematerialized music.

If this list proves anything, it’s that nothing is forever—especially in music.

For better or worse, every music format played it’s roll in the march towards streaming. While streaming hasn’t made every other format obsolete, there’s no denying that it’s the format that’s leading how we access music. For now at least…

What Now?

If this list proves anything, it’s that nothing is forever—especially in music.

So what’s next on the horizon? Maybe we’ll all listen to music while our autonomous cars drive us around? Or is there a renaissance for video’s role in music on the horizon (I’m looking at you Hype)?

No matter what the future holds, the format that matters most is the one that your favourite artist is releasing on.

If you’re a fan, support the artist and buy their music on the formats they distribute music with. Do your research and find the format that fits you, and them, the best!

We can all do our part to help the music industry by paying for music—and the formats it’s released on.

Support independent musicians, support small labels and support your local record store!

The post From Discs to Digital: The Odd History of Music Formats appeared first on LANDR Blog.

from LANDR Blog https://blog.landr.com/music-formats-history/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/165981480674

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writtenbehindthescenes-blog · 7 years

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I’ve been writing blogs about everything happening behind the scenes with Robb Murphy for a couple of years now, but while writing the blogs about the band members and introducing them, it came to mind that I never really wrote a blog like that about Robb. It’s about time!

Those of you who’ve been reading my blogs already know a bit about Robb. Next to being a songwriter, creator of music and producer, he’s an outstanding pizza maker, coffee and tea lover, vegan, vinyl collector and he’s always up for silliness….a lot of silliness… Robb likes to challenge himself but, maybe more so, he likes to challenge others…yes I’ve been there ;) It’s not easy to fool him…but occasionally I manage to do it… Robb always tends to be late and I remember that during one of the tours we had to be at a radio station very early in the morning. I had reasons to believe that we would be late if I told Robb the exact time we had to leave, so I added 30 minutes spare time to that, without Robb knowing… Due to that we arrived at the radio station earlier than expected… That trick never worked again after that btw! And I have to admit…that trick was never needed again, because we’ve managed to be on time everywhere we had to go ever since.

And…there’s that thing with reading… Robb doesn’t always read everything…of which he recently posted proof…just a few emails to read…

Sometimes I have to be creative when it comes to making sure that Robb reads what I send him…by adding silly things for example. A while ago I made a to do list and I needed to be sure that Robb would read it. I added ‘practice choreography’ to that list and when he asked me what that was about, I knew that he had read the file ;) And there’s another example of Robb not always reading everything…it sometimes leads to funny situations like this:

All joking aside…I’ve been working with Robb on the music for 4 ½ years now and it’s been a pleasure. We’ve done so much, had ups and downs, but one thing for sure…things are never boring behind the scenes. There’s always a lot of work to do but we’re always having a lot of fun! Robb, the band and me…we’re all very lucky to have the support from partners, wives, husband and family, because without that we would not be able to do this. We have a lot of plans and are working on some exciting projects, so the work continues….onto the next 4 ½ years!

Time for a Q & A with Robb now…Just like all band members Robb was sent a list of questions too… He complained, saying that I sent him 9 million questions to answer – I think math is a problem here ;) – but he answered the questions, here’s what he said:

What drives you to write? Something compels me to write, I do not know what but I need to write music. Things that influence what I write about are just everyday situations, nature, and dreams. I also like trying to put myself in other situations, imagining how it would feel.

Can you remember the first time you wrote a song? Describe it to me. One of the first songs I wrote was called, “Turtle Dove”. Lyrics were; “I’m a turtle dove, I’m a turtle dove”. Half of this song credit goes to Rick from the band.

What’s your favorite piece of music and why? So many to choose from but for now I will pick Holocene by Bon Iver. I am usually more about the lyrics of a song but the melody, arrangement and textures created are what never fails to get me. I have been listening to it for years and have not once got bored of it.

What’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you while working on a song? When I was working on Stars from the Sleep Tonight album I heard a few xylophone notes during the instrumental that really worked, but were not recorded in the mix, I thought I was going mad! What actually had happened was we had guests in another room where I had left a small xylophone, one of them by chance played a few notes at that particular time. So I had to put it in the song !

Have you had any crazy fan encounters? Not many, but the first time I was asked to sign something I just assumed the person meant one of the other acts that had played so I went to get them. #Awkward

How would you describe your music? Lyric focused, emotive, my personal therapy! The music is arranged by whatever instruments and gear I have at hand, and whoever of my musical friends want to be involved.

Best advice ever given? Don’t try to copy current musical genres, trends will change so just be true to the type of music you want to create, and maybe a future trend will sync with one of your songs.

First song ever sung? The earliest song I have memories of singing is Nelly The Elephant, The Toy Dolls version. It was a birthday party favourite !

Secret craving? Sultanas, in anything

Favourite food? Pizza

What’s the hardest part about producing your own music? And what’s the easiest? Hardest part is not having other people’s input, meaning I am sometimes unsure if something is working. Easiest part is not having other people’s input so I can do what I want.

Is there someone you’d secretly love to work with? Not really, I am a loner. I am most comfortable writing among people I know and am close to. Songwriting for me is a very personal thing so it’s hard to switch it on if I am not relaxed. I love bringing songs to the band that are not fully finished, songs I am not even sure I like, hearing their opinions gives them a burst of new energy.

What do you like to do for fun outside of working on music? I like traveling, going for a drive, gardening.

You’ve toured the Netherlands quite a few times now, what’s your favourite thing about the Netherlands? I love the feeling of space in the country, the openness and fresh air. Also the people, always very helpful and welcoming.

Favourite Dutch word? Stroopwafel

Oddest thing that has happened while touring? It’s all weird, but one that sticks out happened when on tour in The Netherlands. Returning home late from a gig, my turn to drive, and in front of me was a cyclist riding from side to side on the road. We laughed at this but I just assumed it was someone not realising there was a car behind them. As I slowly approached him he swerved out again to the middle of the road, cycled in a big circle and I will always remember as the car headlights shown on his face his very large grin! He was a happy Chappy without a care in the world !

Cats or dogs? Don’t mind either but cats seem to find me, so I will go with cats

Favourite gig so far? A gig at Theater ‘t Heerenlogement in Beusichem during last year’s tour. It’s a great old theatre venue, we had a lovely meal with the owners Tineke and Gerard Holst, and a full house! Oh and wine back stage ;)

3 places you’d like to play? Coachella, Burning Man, Dublin Olympia Theatre

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I would love to have a recording studio and work with other artists to record their music. Other than that just be alive, healthy and happy!

Best software you’ve used for producing so far? I use Pro Tools for recording as it’s what I learned in university. But actually before that, though it’s not software, I used a tape dictaphone for recording ideas and I would also record sounds I like when I was out. There will be a lot of weird stuff on there!

Best hardware investment for music production? When recording sleep tonight I got a Focusrite ISA 828 pre amp, a set of 8 preamps that can be used on a bunch of things, I think I will always use it even if I get a larger variety of pre amps!

Favourite instrument? Acoustic guitar, trumpet & wurlitzer close 2nds

How many instruments do you play? A few, but variety of skill levels! Main instrument is the guitar and this feels most natural to me which is why I usually write with it. I play a bit of keys, harmonica, trumpet / trombone (badly out of practice) and the belly slaps.

Favourite place in Northern Ireland? Anywhere near the sea! North coast is great. The Mourne Mountains too. Not in the north but a recent favourite is Kellybegs, a small fishing town near Donegal in the North West of Ireland.

What trivial knowledge may save your life one day? I know how to open a bottle of wine with a shoe

If you could live anywhere on this planet and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose to live and why? I like it here, but it does lack some sunshine. So I would go somewhere in Tuscany, Italy, a farmhouse just outside Florence. I would take my new wife (not that I have an old one, but recently married) and my guitar. I could also take my macbook and phone, but I can live without them really. Tuscany has a lot of things I love, mostly reliable weather, scenery, art and culture all around. Oh plus coffee, wine and pizza are pretty good there too.

Top 3 songs on your playlist? Currently on my phone they are: Bon Iver – Holocene Traveling Wilburys – Tweeter And The Monkey Man Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Man On Fire

Favourite song from high school? A few that always remind me of high school are: Crash Test Dummies – MMM MMM MMM MMM Wet Wet Wet – Love is all around The Cranberrys – Linger The Corrs – Runaway Enigma – Return To Innocence The Connells – ’74-’75 REM – Daysleeper

Favourite thing about music? Writing and recording, the buzz when something works.

Least favourite thing about music? Promoting it, needs to be done but I feel like a broken record.

If you were a vegetable, which one would you be? A chilli pepper

One perfect day… what would it include? Big sleep in, good food, sunshine, sea, maybe a sneaky wine

Thanks very much for this Robb!

You can follow Robb on Twitter and Facebook. Stop by and say hello!

If you’ve missed the blogs about band members Kevin, Dave, Rick and Al, click on their names and you can read all about them!

Robb Murphy…Q & A I’ve been writing blogs about everything happening behind the scenes with Robb Murphy for a couple of years now, but while writing the blogs about the band members and introducing them, it came to mind that I never really wrote a blog like that about Robb.

#Singer-Songwriter #Blog #Coffee #Music #Musicbiz #Musicbusiness #NI Music #Northern Ireland #Production #Recording #Robb Murphy #Silliness #vegan #vinyl collector

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