Re: homogenic/5 years drum sound

[Brian Dillard <dillardb@pilot.msu.edu>]

a bit of Kate content ... down at the bottom
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Rolf wrote, of "5 Years":
"I never heard a  crappier synth drum sound since I dumped my old C-64."

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Excuse the automatic reply from a rabid Bjork fan, but, um, I think
she probably _meant_ it to sound that way. A lot of techno and
techno-inspired artists turn the limitations of technology into
_positives_. The most famous synthesizer in all of dance music
is the Roland 303, which spawned the distinctively eerie sounds
of acid house when people stopped using it to try to emulate natural
bass (as it was designed to do) and started tweaking it in ways it
was never meant to be used, creating strange new sounds. An
earlier parallel would be the rise of feedback-drenched electric
guitar - another instance of something "wrong" becoming "right."

The drum sounds - and indeed the deliberately cheap synth effects
- in "5 Years" are no different from the scratchy surface noise
employed by artists as diverse as Madonna and Tricky to evoke
the sound of old vinyl being played. But instead of evoking a
supposedly "natural" analog past, Bjork, ever the modernist
("...like cars and such..."), evokes the primitive world of early
synthesizers and drum machines, celebrating technology for its
unexpected beauty.

KATE KONTENT: Was anyone else annoyed by the negative
reference in "Q" to the drum machines on HoL? The only
reason electronic music tends to sound "dated" to some is that
the pace of innovation is so quick - new sounds and even
genres evolve so often - that it's sometimes easy to tell when
a particular recording was made because of the distinctive
sounds. Basic rock-n-roll hasn't changed - in terms of the
specific sounds involved - for decades. Personally, early
80s drum sounds give me a bit of nostalgic thrill - I sat
around last night listening to the Pet Shop Boys' "Please"
album totally enraptured.

Brian Dillard
dillardb@pilot.msu.edu
my bjork reviews:
http://pilot.msu.edu/user/dillardb/homogenic.html
http://pilot.msu.edu/user/dillardb/joga.html