Indie Trends: Digital Suffocation (July 2011)
By Chris Polley
Upon first glance, the title of this month’s edition of Indie Trends may elicit some kind of medium prejudice, like I’m some kind of technophobe geezer that can’t keep up with the kids today. But no, I’m not going to go down that tempting road, even if by someone’s interpretation it could tie metaphorically into the buzzed-about records discussed herein. I’d rather do what the column has become to do on its own since its inception, which is talk about the strictly surface-level aural connections between what has been deemed hip and revolutionary, or at least critically “good”, in the past thirty days or so, and how it relates to how we enjoy music as an art. Not as a platform of entertainment, not as a tangible versus intangible product, but as a way in which artists express themselves and sometimes rather serendipitously cross paths with others of their ilk, resulting in a kind of mass resonance whose appeal is perhaps as skeptical as it is joyously coincidental. I include this preliminary summary of the purpose of this feature not to sound redundant, but rather to hammer home something I believe I’ve been lacking in recent entries: the ability to be as critical as I have been celebratory of these trends. In fact, it’s almost absurd that after talking loosely about volatility, sadness, and death, it finally took a brazen act of suffocation, both of the listener and the musician responsible for the choked-up noise, to wake me up.
AraabMuzik “Streez Tonight” Electronic Dream [Duke]
But since I don’t like to be a killjoy, let’s begin first with the bright spot of the bunch, which ironically also happens to be the most puzzling inclusion into 2011’s indie canon this month. And yes, it may be fair to offer full disclosure that the two records discussed below arguably have aural predecessors that make their blogtacular success predictable, whereas this one seems a rather left-field choice, and thus became more immediately appealing to yours truly. And certainly this plays into the notion of feeling suffocated in the indie landscape. What does one do when feeling claustrophobic about the status quo, as if inundated with innumerable options that all look/sound the same? Flail wildly until you break free. One might think that implies the use of much distortion, incalculably fast rhythms, and/or feral screaming of some sort. Instead, electronic artist Abraham Orellana, otherwise known as AraabMuzik, decides to destroy the listener with interminably loud and thick atmospherics. It’s smooth and calming in a sense, like most music that allows “atmospheric” as its descriptor, but also relentlessly dense, as if it constantly threatens to swallow you using each cupped headphone as a mouth, forever agape and gulping.
What’s worth noting is that, like most oppressively warm records in the 21st century, it sounds like nearly ever instrument is either wholly synthetic or at the very least digitally processed to oblivion. The drums kick with a steady pulse that comes across as ominous and confident despite its crisp reverb and slow tempo. The vocal samples are slight and hypnotic but often interrupted with the questionable DJ motif of an echoing announcer declaring every 2-3 minutes that “you are now listening AraabMuzik.” Its frequency was enough for me (and apparently many others, according to some intense googling) to make sure to listen to various versions of Electronic Dream’s songs online to make sure we didn’t accidentally get a tainted promo copy. In the end it just turned out to be one more instance of the producer’s insistence to rock you out of your lull, and not in necessarily a pleasant way, just like when a sudden brash synth swath comes crashing out of nowhere on top of an otherwise innocuous sequencer rush. To continue with the choking analogy, it’s almost a sexual violence at play, seducing and teasing with nearly perfect melodic stretches until it wants to make you feel the loudness of everything all around you, to jolt you out of that disconnected bliss that is traditionally known as listening to music.
John Maus “Believer” We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves [Ribbon Music]
Austin, Minnesota native John Maus also wants to get a rise out of you, but he might not realize it as explicitly as Araabmuzik. For example, without reading an interview with the man or perhaps not knowing his third and most recent album’s title in advance of hearing his music, especially if you heard his cohort Ariel Pink before, you might just think he makes hazy pop music for druggies. And while it’d be nice to reduce him to such and move on (I could have easily if it weren’t for the ardent fandom he’s amassing here in the Twin Cities), there is an oddity to the billowing soundscapes he creates that is underneath the surface, which was, let’s be honest, just clearly lifted and slightly altered from Ariel Pink’s blueprint. First, there’s the verbose moniker he chose for his breakthrough record, in which he declares an imperative that doesn’t sound so attractive as to start a revolution anytime soon, and yet we know this guy’s serious because while his keyboards lilt and his songs have “doo-doo” refrains, nearly everything is smothered with a layer of despair and hollowness, even as it tries to fill up as much space as possible, cluttering and suffocating in the attempts to cover it all up in that lo-fi pop sheen.
Even more depressing is one of his most notable interview quotes, in which he claims, “Honestly, I thought I was making Top 40 kind of stuff.” To not only create but playback and hear this droopy, wilting, and almost deformed version of The Doors crossed with Eels and think it might sound not too jarring sitting next to Ke$ha or Katy Perry on some poor shmuck’s iPod (or if I want to prove I’m really not a geezer, Spotify playlist) is not just curious – it’s nearly straight-up unbelievable. If it’s a joke, then he’s certainly pulled a fast one on all of us, but if you listen to someone so congested by their own all-encompassing introspective pain for long enough, it starts to make sense. Maybe this guy is really so invested in his attempt to contribute his own work to the pop standard without understanding his own placement in zeitgeist that he truly listened past the wafting clouded effects he put on tape and heard the essence as something mindless and/or pure. Unfortunately, to this listener, it ends up coming off as a slightly toasted mumbling man retreating shyly from an alley only to awkwardly grapple with my throat until my windpipe collapses in slow-motion.
Washed Out “You and I” Within and Without [Sub Pop]
In a similar vein, I also thought we knew the man behind Washed Out before I heard his latest – and not just by association, but by previous output. And yet, Within and Without is still not quite as shocking or deceiving as the work of AraabMuzik. Née Ernest Greene, Washed Out had previously been known for the quiet and comforting DIY brand of computer music, albeit marginally sad and mayhaps a bit too-chilled-out, not the kind of electronica that undergoes massive crushed mastering and big label woes. I think this is what’s happened, however, despite my inclinations to not admit this and go back to listening and enjoying without thinking too much. It is a monumentally well-crafted album, truth be told, but it’s so propulsive in its straight-line contemplativeness that it simply becomes too much. Maus’s digital suffocation at least has a breathy quality to it that allows for it to potentially sympathize with its listener’s frustration. In other words, it sounds human. Here, on the other hand, Greene’s voice is deliberately buried, which, again, is not new, but with the Sub Pop budget, ends up coming off as forced and bloated.
Like I said, though: this is very listenable music, especially if you don’t turn the volume up too high, which may not be its purpose anyway. None of this is party music, obviously, but when the sounds are so big and domineering, the urge is to indeed blast it and let it strangle you a bit, just to see if you feel the fingerprints of your assailant’s hands, or hear the pivot of their feet as they maintain their balance against your weight. This is what it sounds like Greene is aiming for – our desire to want to resign ourselves to the mega-bliss he’s offering with his meticulous craft, once resigned itself to the confines of YouTube-quality rips and/or blog link sharing, because for the first time his obsessiveness over the digital revolution in music cannot just be heard or become a spark, but become huge and magnanimous. He wants us to give up as he’s choking us, just to revel in our final moments as we take in the impenetrable wall of sound. I could make a bad Phil Spector joke here, but I’d rather not. Because it’s likely that I’ll instead let my critical ear take a hike so that I can do exactly what Greene wants. I prefer the illusive power of Araabmuzik, but I’ll take the peculiar spacey qualities of Maus or the despotically bright sorrow of Greene when I can’t get the right kind of erotic asphyxiation coming through my headphones.