For those of you looking for the most recent tape club mix, it's in the post below this one.
While uploading all the tape club tapes to sendspace instead of megaupload (people seem to find sendspace easier), I found a load of my old mixtapes. I am an incessant maker of clubs - clubs, as the title suggests, that don't necessarily have any members, or members who aren't necessarily conscious or willing of their membership. Does this come from being an only child? Possibly, maybe, probably.
So the first major example of this was the mixtapes I made in the halls of uni. The first one was the demo for my radio show on the uni airwaves at the time; i didn't have a usb stick, and i was very worried whether i would be able to switch the CDs in the disarming space between the beginning and end of the previous track. After I got the show, I put the cd in the kitchen, and used to play it when I was cooking and had forgotten to bring in some other music from my room. I got bored with it soon enough, and so made another, and another...eventually I made a little wallet, and stuck it to the wall...and then I wrote all the tracklists out on a typewriter and put them next to the wallet, in case I wanted a specific song.
At some point, I realised that people were listening to them in the kitchen, and subsequently taking them to rip onto their computers - I didn't expect it at all, but it was super awesome. This spured me on, and it didn't really stop from there. The tape club as it exists now was really just a way to coagulate a disparate kitchen by email. It's not the same as a big table and some beers and some wine and a cheap cd player and that delicate ballet of hungry people making hungry food at the same hungry time, but then, what is? The ones I'm making at the moment are more for individual use, anyway. I've never really thought about it before, but I'm still making them for kitchens. It's just that, now, our kitchen is a lot smaller.
There is a profound connection between making food and listening to music, perhaps almost as unique as driving and music or, the pinnacle of all catalystic connections, walking and music. I don't know if its connected with that specific kind of knowing creation, where you are either following a recipe in a book, with points one, two, three, four, or are making a dish where you know that this step is here and this step is now and i must do this in a minute; where, at the end of it all, you will have created something truly meaningful - not without effort, or without skill (the delicate balance of chopping and throwing and stirring is underestimated when connected with drinking and listening to music), but with an unfailing certainty that you will have something to enjoy on an aesthetic and viceral level.
It could be this notion of process, and I've seen it happen with things like knitting and the radio, or ironing and television. Where the mind is actually, literally, concerned with two seperate things at once. We must make the distinction here: sometimes reading and listening are not seperate. Sometimes drawing or painting does not allow you to listen to someone speak. And yet, with knitting, where a high level of (generally) autonomous actions are taking place, the mind is not disengaged (as with, perhaps, the monotonous pattern of factory work), but is actually able to concentrate, fully concentrate, on two things at once.
As with cooking. For some reason, reading a recipe does not occupy the internal voice that also digests and facilitates music. Even when it is important to listen closely to the food you are making, listen to it bubble and make sure it does not pop, the mind can still hold these things in perfect harmony, actual parallel, as opposed to switching rapidly between them, like taking notes in a lecture.
Of course, it may be the fact that you are listening to something that you have heard before. I have had experiences where something new has struck me with that unrelenting beat, but I know that while cooking, we all mostly take something that is equivalent to 'going out music': music that you know and love, and has a kinesis that you hope to be infectious. When you know it, both the kinesis and infectiousness is doubled by the fact that you anticipate it to a certain extent, and know that you already love it. 'Passing judgement' is an ugly phrase - and maybe even uglier in its action - but we all do it, and it can deplete us. We are all wary to begin with, unless the first notes are instantly likable, in which case we become more relaxed and malleable.
I have, for the sake of argument, two sets of friends. One set cannot listen to music while writing academically or creatively; the other can. I fall into the latter category. Does this mean I am listening to music, when I am writing, as background music? I hate the idea that this is true, and luckily (or concidentally...) I don't believe it. Perhaps to qualify the statements further: one set cannot listen to music while writing academically or creatively; the other must. At this moment, it is hard for me to imagine the two even occupying the same sides of the brain, because I am listening to the yellow swans. Certain types of music, and certain bands - like yellow swans - do not seem to enter through my ears, but through my throat. Through my fingers and into my eyes, through my mouth and around the bones, where it sits and radiates. It is a physical reaction to music in the purest sense, but it is important for me to say that this doesn't not mean it is an unthinking reaction.
I have heard certain types of music, or certain examples of a type of music, described as 'academic'. This distinction is ridiculous in and of itself...but, nevertheless, it is to a certain extent necessary. Or, maybe not necessary, but more accurate than any I can think of. Let me explain.
My understanding of something that is academic, and this is an understanding that I have continually reminded myself of, is that it is difficult; it is unknown; it takes some time to comprehend. When studying a book, this can manifest itself in two ways - either the book itself is hard to read in its experimentalism or style (i.e., Ulysses, Tender Buttons), or it is difficult to comprehend the implicit or attached 'deeper'/scholarly meaning to the book (i.e., Ulysses, Tender Buttons...umm...The Magus?...Metamorphosis...). This is my problem with a lot of metafictional books at the moment - what they are doing is not necessarily intelligent, and is closer to the vein of 'anti-advertising', and is actually the dilution of experimentalism to the mainstream...instead of making the reader feel uneasy, or allowing them to realise something profound about the nature of the author or of reading itself, it skips the breakdown and goes straight to the sugar...but that's a different point to make in a different place.
There's another important aspect of the 'academic' work, and that's the way it grabs you at the beginning, when you first read it or hear it. There is something exciting about trying to comprehend something that you previously thought you understood. This is the essence of noise music, initially, before you marvel at differences between noise artists, at the way such a seemingly absolute sound can be guided with the infintely subtle grace and skill of a classical orchestral composition.
I guess at this point I might seem to be putting forward some kind of doctrine for listening to music, or for what music you even should listen to - that's not the point of this. I'm not denying that there is genius in conventional music, conventional songwriting. You can take something mainstream and subtly subvert it in the most unbelievably intelligent ways; you can sense genius in the most crystalline example of a pop song. There is genius in motown, not just in an obvious way - there is an incredible understanding of suspense and release, and of minimalism. Sometimes it even seems like they are trying to get away with as little as possible to secure a hit: a beat, a voice, and a bassline...maybe a spirit of violin. dance music took that further, and managed to whittle it down to 'a beat', but that, again, is a different conversation...
what I suppose i'm trying to get at is the fact that difficult music is often visceral, and the 'academic' way that it affects you is the reason it is classed as such. you don't understand why, sometimes on any level, why you like this certain piece, or why you like a lot of these things that are similar. And it's not just 'like', it's 'love'. This is the only reason you would invest as much time in something in order to qualify it, at least in the literary academic world, as worthy of further study. it is the same in the music world - certain labels obviously have a reputation for releasing 'academic' music, most of them are electronic labels. but there is music that you and i know of, that I don't want to name because I don't want to categorise it as one thing or the other, as 'academic' if we think about it. Something that happens with my friends from home is that we don't see each other for a while, but when we do, we happen to be reading the same book - W. G. Sebald has been one instance of this, another has been the Master and Margarita. What I mean is that there are certain books that we would read to challenge something, often ourselves, and though 'academic' is not a justifiable term, it illustrates what i mean. I won't use it again.
In music, this challenge has to come again and again, as you listen and relisten to the same album. It does with yellow swans; you hear something new every time. It does with certain books and essays; I have read Benjamin's 'the storyteller' over and over again within the last four years, and I can honestly say that I have understood and gained something new about it every time.
Music is that shape, between a perfect sphere and a circular saw, that comes around and cuts you, no matter how well you think you have mapped the surface. The blood is clean...actually, i've just found a better end to this post: Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.
A poem by Stephen Crane -
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
yellow swans - broken eraser/time stretch
--mx.
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