an apple on the moon

[mvuent]

producers and critics alike tend to venerate the word "alien" as a descriptor in electronic music. sounds that are (ostensibly) devoid of connection to the everyday world are seen as representing the medium's greatest potential.

but there's a variation on that idea that's consistently produced even better results throughout the medium's history: bringing the alien / inhuman and the everyday together. this can take (at least) two forms: a) juxtaposing "ordinary" music and sounds with more experimental ones or b) morphing familiar music into alien shapes which retain at least some degree of their original identity.

i think there are two reasons this can work so well. first, there's just a kind of magic in encountering something that isn't constrained by the usual limitations. and second, these sources hold evocative power, i.e. emotional connections. so putting these ideas together: transforming and recontextualizing familiar and emotionally resonant source materials has the potential to generate more powerful, hard to pinpoint "feels" than mere "alien" music.

for a futher sense of what this is about:

there's a sort of a-musical freedom here with what are originally very tonally 'correct' commercial music cues/interstitials. the voices getting stretched into mp3 infinity.

that's also what's great about mid 80s hip hop and early 90s hardcore. a lot of the source material is ridiculously corny, yet when it's distorted through scratching, edits, etc. that quality ends up making it more insane, not less.

my favorite uses of sampling in hip hop are from the 80s. a lot of times the source material is really corny but used and manipulated in very jarring, imaginative ways. ironically probably closer to what john oswald had in mind than the more accessible, well known efforts later on.

i think this is a dynamic that can be found in everything from electroacoustic to rave and memes.

 

[mvuent]

b) morphing familiar music into alien shapes which retain at least some degree of their original identity.

(listen to what happens to the "owner of a lonely heart" sample at 0:34)

 

[mvuent]

this is a thread that might have had slight success in the barty era but probably won't in the current one

 

[luka]

If the dudes were less conservative aesthetically I reckon they could help out here. We need to help them.

 

[linebaugh]

Where does outsider music fit into here? Familiar ideas made alien through presentation alone. Do the shaggs belong in this thread?

 

[linebaugh]

Or maybe jandek is a better example

 

[luka]

The key to this thread is how do you avoid it being a tedious YouTube dump.

 

[luka]

what are the techniques? making time unstable for one.

 

[luka]

which typically alters pitch and thereby, in the case of the voice, gender.

 

[luka]

another is the one alluded too in the title. wrenching an object out of its context and putting it in another

 

[luka]

this could be spatial, an apple on the moon, or historical, something captured from the 70s and dragged into the 90s, it could be cultural, an indian flute in african american virginia

 

[luka]

kodwo eshun talks about how scratching makes a slice of time run backwards and then forwards at varying speeds. i think the new christopher nolan film is about this.

 

[luka]

you can foreground a quotidian artifact and focus until it aquires a new strangeness and regains its aura. everyone knows how you can look at an everyday word until it becomes alien and impossible. this principle.

 

[luka]

with the use of 'acoustics' (fake acoustics) you can create strange spaces for your events to unfold in and you can make those spaces change their dimensions and qualities in impossible ways as those events unfold.

 

[luka]

you can create the illusion of the listeners perceptual apparatus changing instead of the sounds themselves changing.

 

[luka]

other worlds have other time-conditions, other gravity, other atmosphere. this affects the way objects move and sound travels and so on and so forth.

 

[luka]

don't let mvuent tell us we're nothing without barty! prove him wrong!

 

[you]

Should we assume by 'alien' you mean influencing and informed by science fiction cultures?

Or do you really want to impress that anything electronic or not western and/or 4/4 is 'inhuman'? And a narrow seam of musical output is 'everyday'?

 

[luka]

Should we assume by 'alien' you mean influencing and informed by science fiction cultures?

other worlds have other time-conditions, other gravity, other atmosphere. this affects the way objects move and sound travels and so on and so forth.

 

[luka]

literally alien. other earth conditions. other perceptual apparatus. other bodies.