Dissensus Blogs

[sus]

interview (2024) big thanks to Luke for contributing some thoughts to this one

I started with the interview first because it's a stand-alone. Maybe because I'm a rebel without a cause. But it's a perfect place to start.

What is Mvuent's project, releasing all these essays? He'll tell you

It stemmed out of conversations we had on Dissensus, and the books that influenced those conversations, mainly Energy Flash and More Brilliant Than the Sun. I found that thinking about this stuff made music more exciting and vivid. It made me realize what qualities I most valued and responded to in music. But by the time I wrote the first half of this series, it felt like the conversations had died down, had run out of momentum. Rather than abandoning all the interesting tangents they'd generated, it seemed like there was an opportunity to sort of step back and take stock of where my brain had ended up. A chance to go, ok, maybe they’re obvious, or maybe they’re nonsense, but here are the thoughts I’ve found useful. This is the stuff I don’t want to forget. And that process involved trying to structure them and put them in context: that of a relationship with music which was and mostly still is entirely internet-mediated.

 

[sus]

After that it's nonstop bangers. "Even artists themselves can seem to intuit these lessons and then forget them, losing some of their powers without noticing." He wrote this so the ideas don't "get lost immediately in the rearranging of the sand dunes" of his mind.

 

[sus]

Music, we are told, is magical speech! Magical speech!! It's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard. He's talking about capital-M Music but I think it's true of all music. I'm going to start telling everyone this line.

 

[sus]

Does the caveman hear a growl and think "what a pure diminished triad with tessitura"? No, it thinks, Cripes I'm drownded! It thinks Here be monsters! "If anything it's absolute music that's a recent development." The so-called "purity" of absolute music is a recent development!! A con job! A modern monstrosity!! He flips the whole script on its head!! Semiotics were first! The discourse is devastated. It will never recover. An entire field lies in the devastation of Ian's wake. He shows no mercy. He burns your crops and converts your women to the discourse of musical cinema, "world music."

 

[sus]

"These are vision-making tools, the basic orientations that allow a dream to come to life."

 

[luka]

theyre great i love em me and you are the only people who will ever read them. a selcet group. the elite.

 

[sus]

I think the "music as personal style, orientation, way of carrying yourself"—an energy that possesses you, a rhythm of being in the world—versus "music as environment to explore dichotomy" is key. But I'm not sure they're necessarily opposed either. You are possessed by the spirit of the environment that is the music. Grime or 2step provide you with a simulacra sensory environment that your nervous system responds to and your body and your posture and you might like that way of being in the real world, that is provided for by the layer of augmented reality of your headphones. Or the real (read: social) environmental modification of speakers on a tube.

But there is something quite passive about it too. Even as the "possessed spirits" feel agentic and animated by the simulacrum's effect on their nervous system. It is ultimately a "hot" (McLuhan) medium. Whereas Mvuent has the courage and detachment to treat music as a cool medium. To explore it and engage in a two-way exchange. He is probing the terms of his own manipulation. Rather than reveling in being manipulated. This is key IMO.

 

[sus]

Some of the metarationality and Buddhist and Kegan stages and post-Bret Victor bloggers circle around the idea of "turning your perspective into an object." Objectifying your framework, your conceptual schema. Getting "handles" on it so you can probe it and interrogate it. Rather than merely being a slave to that (emotional) perspective.

I think that's what's happening here a bit. "For me, music always has been an object."

He is probing the terms of his own manipulation. Rather than reveling in being manipulated.

 

[Clinamenic]

version is losing his grip

Very rare indeed that his internal clerical errors lead to faulty broadcasts like this. Normally those snafus are swiftly resolved.

 

[Clinamenic]

i'm flattered. feel free to turn any passage of my sophomoric, typo-ridden screed into one of those mallgoth cursive tattoos.

"mallgoth" is a serious jab at Linebaugh's artistic integrity, and pretty rich coming from the poochwave scribbler over here.

 

[mvuent]

"mallgoth" is a serious jab at Linebaugh's artistic integrity, and pretty rich coming from the poochwave scribbler over here.

i've called linebaugh a mall goth before and i will again, but in this case i was merely describing a tattoo style

 

[mvuent]

I started with the interview first because it's a stand-alone. Maybe because I'm a rebel without a cause. But it's a perfect place to start.

good choice. the interview was supposed to be sort of a gasp of breath after the sustained focus of the rest of the series, a place where i could just throw out random supplementary thoughts and phrases without having to organize or elaborate on them. the hope being that this might add some useful context and nuance to what preceded, and even, as you said, stand alone in an inchoate way.

 

[mvuent]

Music, we are told, is magical speech! Magical speech!! It's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard. He's talking about capital-M Music but I think it's true of all music.

that schaeffer interview is so great. hilarious, in a way. but it does get at what made him such an important and unique figure. a lot of people mistakenly believe he's only notable for being the first to make music with turntables or tape or whatever. but other people were doing that too. what's so important about him is that he was (at his most optimistic) the only person insane enough to try and develop an entirely new music theory/language, equivalent in richness and complexity to western classical, out of recordings of trains and squeaking door hinges. they don't make people like that anymore. it's easy to pat ourselves on the back for not getting mad when we hear the occasional weird noise thrown into a conventional song or whatever, but he was looking so so far past that. that his ideas were later adopted by people like roger scruton and reduced to tools for bludgeoning anyone trying to escape 19th century classical music does nothing to detract from their visionary potential.

 

[mvuent]

I think the "music as personal style, orientation, way of carrying yourself"—an energy that possesses you, a rhythm of being in the world—versus "music as environment to explore dichotomy" is key. But I'm not sure they're necessarily opposed either. You are possessed by the spirit of the environment that is the music. Grime or 2step provide you with a simulacra sensory environment that your nervous system responds to and your body and your posture and you might like that way of being in the real world, that is provided for by the layer of augmented reality of your headphones. Or the real (read: social) environmental modification of speakers on a tube.

great point. i've definitely posted it before but this is one of my absolute favorite youtube videos of all time:


rik davis of cybotron filming himself getting a hamburger. the setting is exactly the sort of ultra-boring suburban environment i currently live in, but his weird occult sci fi music playing over it reminds you that the old guy in the video is a mythic figure from the annals of electronic music, it creates a kind of aura around him that no one in the video is aware of.

but what's also great is his description:

I'm cruising to 5 guys for a burger fries and a coffee shake, in the new Malibu 2.0 T 8 speed Premier. This car has a top speed of 160mph, but I've got it set for a top speed of 80 for this video. I'll cut it loose later. This car is pure sci fi! The stuff they teased us with at G.M. Motorama shows! Chevy has not had a car this exciting since 1957 as far as I'm concerned. This 2 liter turbo is the bomb! The tech is pure science fiction! I LOVE it when it talks to me!

the music might seem humorously incongruent to us, but to him it's setting the atmosphere, enchanting the surrounding world so that he's driving a sci fi car through some kind of amazing futurescape.

 

[mvuent]

But there is something quite passive about it too. Even as the "possessed spirits" feel agentic and animated by the simulacrum's effect on their nervous system. It is ultimately a "hot" (McLuhan) medium. Whereas Mvuent has the courage and detachment to treat music as a cool medium. To explore it and engage in a two-way exchange. He is probing the terms of his own manipulation. Rather than reveling in being manipulated. This is key IMO.

hmm. a very intriguing interpretation. if you haven't read the preceding entries, i'd be really curious if they change your sense of the project. but there's no need, you've already pulled your weight several times over! i just hope i can return the favor.

 

[mvuent]

theyre great i love em me and you are the only people who will ever read them. a selcet group. the elite.

barty also read the first few paragraphs of one. not a large audience but a powerhouse audience. the ideal.

 

[0bleak]

probably not your ideal audience since I haven't given thoughtful feedback, but I was serious when I said I read it all that one night

 

[sus]

Tell us your favorite and least favorite bits @0bleak

 

[sus]

introduction (2022)

Mvuent do you see playing Runescape as a teen as critical to the development of your self and worldview?

 

[0bleak]

Tell us your favorite and least favorite bits @0bleak

if you're gonna pin me down, then I would say "Reaching the Far Lands as an Aesthetic Goal" and the interview are my favorite bits.
As for least favorite, i can't think of any! I also just had major bomb dropped on me about my whole life and situation going forward so my head might be too cloudy...