8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

The Limits of Experimentation

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The absence of a significant musical trend or cultural movement so far in the 21st century: I’ve attributed this to a lack of territorial isolation in that movements (artistic and cultural) would spring out of ‘scenes’ that existed locally but not globally. Now that we have constant connectivity, this separateness is rare, and thus so are movement shifts.

There may also be an element of technology involved, and not just in the advances of global connectivity. Technological progress has created musical trends and genres; think of the increasing number of audio multi-tracks and how that begat Sgt. Pepper’s or Pet Sounds. Or of the fuzz guitar creating psychedelia, the drum machine and sequencer creating electronic dance music, etc.

We can look to film as a guide. There’s a dramatic difference in movies produced in the ’70s versus those in the ’60s and in movies shot in the ’60s compared to those in the ’50s. Many people, especially the young, in the ’70s, would have a hard time watching ’50s movies as they seem old-fashioned. The shift in style and look is pronounced. There are aesthetic differences, too — subjects that were taboo at one time became commonplace decades later, for example — but often, technological developments that influenced the culture inspired these changes.

Think of Jean-Luc Godard and the jump cut. An editing technique that was so radical at the time of Breathless is commonplace in film and TV (and YouTube) now. Godard made it revolutionary because cinema, as a developing art form, still had areas left to explore. As time moves forward, the technology of the medium is no longer one of limitation. 

Another example is the brilliant Russian Ark, an ambitious 2002 film created in a single long camera shot. Digital filmmaking was new, and the hard drive space available to the cinematographer dictated the ‘single shot’ running time of Russian Ark. Compare this to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, meant to look as if it is a long, single-shot movie, but throughout, there are several sneaky cuts. The length of a roll of film limited Hitchcock as he had no access to hard drives, but this did not make Rope any less radical in its era. Now, the single-shot film is commonplace — a technique used and overused by modern filmmakers with an almost unlimited amount of digital storage space at their disposal.

Limitations of a medium breed experimentation as the artists push and explore what is possible. With limits removed, this experimentation takes other forms.

The Music We Dislike: Calculated or Cultural?

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From an insightful piece by Philip Cosores in Uproxx:

From track lengths to chord progressions to song structures, the amount of math involved in what sounds good to the ears is the least sexy aspect of music, right up there with the language of recording contracts and the cleanliness of tour buses. But it wasn’t until the rise of services like Spotify and Apple Music that the mathematics of music felt so dangerous. Namely, the math involved in streaming. […]

It’s been music critics who have been beating the drum about the dangers of streaming algorithms lately … but most of the time the criticism is less about well-researched investigations and more about gut feeling call outs, directed at music that is often simultaneously commercially successful and critically derided. Over the course of the last year, you’d be hardpressed to find a negative album review that didn’t at some point evoke the idea of The Algorithm being to blame for the music’s perceived lack of quality — it has become this specter hovering above popular music, ready to sink its talons into anything that finds commercial success. […]

Of course, the music world has changed because of streaming, and many artists and labels will always look to trends when creating their own strategies and aesthetics. But blaming streaming for the music that you don’t like feels increasingly closed off from reality, where streaming is, in fact, influencing most of the music that is being consumed, regardless of quality. This is no better or worse than it has ever been, it’s just a recent mode of consumption that musicians are learning how to work with.

It’s impossible to argue that in the history of commercial music — even before recording technology — there was a time when the means of delivery wasn’t an influence on songcraft. Whether it’s writing an opera with intentionally dramatic moments to enthrall a packed theater, to keeping the perfect pop song under three-and-a-half minutes for the best fidelity on a 7” single, to Brian Eno realizing his “Thursday Afternoon” around the amount of time available on a compact disc — format has always held sway on the music.

Of course, there are artists creating music specifically to exploit Spotify as a platform — the ‘poop song’ guy immediately comes to mind — but I agree with the thesis of this piece. It’s easy to accuse music we don’t like of solely catering to ‘the algorithm’ just as we once derided songs made specifically for pop radio or albums in the ‘70s that seemed so serendipitous they were obviously capitalizing on a trend.

The favored target of the music critic is ever-changing (and I love music criticism and feel it’s necessary, so don’t take this as a slam). The identity of that target is a gauge of where music stands and the ways we, as music fans, feel uncertain in its progress. Emerging trends create a widening feedback loop, making it increasingly difficult for the critic to separate the calculated from the cultural. Yesterday’s disparaged made-for-MTV band is today’s algorithm-friendly artist. And, soon enough, probably tomorrow’s A.I. assisted songwriter.

🔗→ Stop Blaming Streaming Services For The Music You Don’t Like

Shoving from the Margins: Pop Music and the Fringe

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Mat Dryhurst for The Guardian:

I believe that those on the margins would do well to shift focus on to more ambitious and untested fund-generating efforts that emphasise the interdependence of musical communities of place and purpose. We need technical and economic concepts that reflect what working artists have long known to be true: an artist creating challenging work is dependent on resilient international networks of small labels, promoters, publications and production services to facilitate their vision. A vision of interdependence acknowledges that individual freedoms thrive in the presence of resilient networks and institutions. It asserts that even pop stars, and the streaming services that prioritise them, significantly benefit from those on the margins market-testing ideas so that they don’t have to. {…}

We need to acknowledge that those communities, and the sounds they foster, generate value that is impossible to quantify on a spreadsheet. The artist and writer Jon Davies recently invoked the ideal of interdependence to emphasise the role that social music spaces play in combating epidemics of loneliness and depression. As well as enlivening commercial culture with a trickle-up supply chain of new ideas, music on the margins offers many a sense of shared purpose.

As noted in my post about the closing of Red Bull Music Academy, independent music communities — especially those operating on the fringes — may need to adopt collaborative and communal strategies to maintain relevance, rather than relying on corporate patronage. Dryhurst smartly suggests that the health of the experimental edges of the music community is vital for pop culture’s continued evolution. I see his point — current hit songs by some of the biggest names obviously draw upon production techniques that were underground and radical ten years ago. Culture becomes stale without the experimental margins giving it a shove.

🔗→ Band together: why musicians must strike a collective chord to survive