hopelandish
( ) is a title with no pronunciation. People are imaginative creatures, though, and they'll find a way to refer to it somehow. When you tell your friends what you're listening to, you'll say, "The new Sigur Rós," or "Sigur Rós—the one with the unpronounceable title." Unfortunately, the gimmick doesn't end at the parentheses: more than merely an untitled record of eight untitled songs with no liner notes (the credits are only available on the band's website), ( ) comes with a booklet of twelve blank pages. I fail to see how this tactic enriches the band's cinematic balladry. Art is ever the artist's child: it deserves a name.
-Chris Ott
We can understand all this as what it means to compose; it certainly is what we mean when we talk about what it is that we learn about composition from listening anew to sound. And, in the age of far-reaching, consequential technological growth, of which the computer is the primary symbol (although for how long, who can say?), we have seen that the lessons of sound extend into technology, and from there into compositional strategies for media in general. Even all media? Composition, as a concept and as a body of specific if evolving techniques, can then be dispersed into wider arenas of practice. We further see that technology is both a site of composition and the means of distributing what has been composed. Technology surrounds. It impacts but does not determine composition; insofar as it functions within a compositional practice, it too is part of what can evolve and change. Technology is dynamic; its role within composition, just as every other aspect, must be constantly changing, always improving. This is the sound of kaizen, or perhaps the kaizen of composition.
All this both enables and disables different modes of sharing and making. Consider Moby, formerly an underground techno artist of some scenester renown. For his 1999 album Play, Moby proved willing to license his music to whoever came calling. Because of this, several songs became well known when they were featured in television commercials, and the album rocketed to the top of the charts. Overnight, Moby became famous, even a bit of a celebrity. Eminem, the infamous rapper, wanted to fight him—a sure sign of having arrived. Interestingly, Moby seemed undisturbed by the use of his songs for commercial and other purposes that were often distinctly at odds with what he may have intended or desired for his music.
And yet, when we look more closely, we see that perhaps this is less odd than it may appear at first sight. Moby's music is heavily reliant on his ability to remix and recontextualize the music of others, like taking an old blues vocal sample and melding it to a bed of propulsive beats and lush keyboards. Moby's music thrives on recontextualization because recontextualization is already a part of what creates the music in the first place. Given that, how could Moby object to his already recontextualized music being further recontextualized through commercial culture? Here we see very keenly how our sense of worlding impacts what we understand music to be in its dynamic essence. The rejection of commerciality— the sense that if one licenses one's music to a corporation to sponsor some product—underpins the older sense of music's essence. In that world, music was the authentic creation of an inspired artist, perhaps aided and abetted by a sympathetic cohort, but ultimately being the expression of that artist.
Even when singing other people's songs, Elvis Presley was considered an artistic wunderkind-cum-young adult rebel who redefined the songs as his. This hint of authenticity remains a powerful force. Indeed, it is one of the reasons that the most idiosyncratic embodiments of musical authenticity—Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, The Beatles—are also the most sought after for commercial consideration. Moby's music undercuts this musical ideology at its core. What's important to us is that it simply doesn't do this because Moby has licensed the songs. Rather, it is the collusion of licensing with the technological means to sample as integrated into the music form, the way Moby assembles that form, and the aesthetic vision that stems from this ensemble of practices. That is to say, it is the world Moby's music evokes that undercuts the old world, even as it preserves it, carries it forward, and to what end we can only guess. Sound will remain dynamic.
