In the wake of a few high-profile artists commenting about the disposability of today’s digitally-flooded market, Defected’s Ben Lovett reviews the lengths people have gone to in order to create the perfect sound, and asks whether modern techniques can stand up against them.
Music has always been about experimentation, ever since the very first bursts of noise were slapped loosely together in the name of proto-Neanderthal entertainment. Zoom forward to the modern, technological age of sound and whilst the more commercially-driven arms of major labels have continually dominated, peddling their polished and inoffensive mainstream wares, it is experimentation – underground or otherwise – that has sparked the big money-making trends and impactful crossover scenes. It is the musical experimenters who have paved the way for so much of what we listen to.
Pioneer of the Sixties ‘girl group sound’, Phil Spector, is as good a starting point as any. Spector, synonymous with groups including The Ronettes and The Crystals, as well as productions for John Lennon, George Harrison and Tina & Ike Turner, masterminded the ‘Wall Of Sound’ studio technique, slavishly relying on large groups of musicians to play a dizzying array of instruments (not all traditionally used in ensembles) in orchestrated parts. These parts were doubled, tripled and even quadrupled, in perfect harmony with one another, to create a richer, fuller, more epic sound – one or two horns could ultimately be made to sound like an entire brass section.
Spector referred to his music as a “Wagnerian [Wagner, classical composer] approach to rock ‘n’ roll” and fiercely protected it. Multi-channel stereo was starting to make a mark during the mid-Sixties but Spector resisted claiming stereo took control of a record’s sound away from the producer in favour of the listener. Spector’s mono work focussed on the overall collage of sound – at time completely erasing the lines between brass, strings and vocal – rather than detailed recording quality, and quite literally swept a generation off its dancing feet.
Spector, of course, would heavily influence the young Brian Wilson, another of music history’s beautiful iconoclasts. Wilson, the beating production heart of the Beach Boys, opted to double-track the group’s vocals for a deeper, more powerful sound. And by the time their pivotal, impressively game-changing 11th album Pet Sounds was on shop-shelves, further, more extreme revolution was in evidence.
Pet Sounds, released in 1966, wove elaborate layers of vocal harmony with unconventional instruments and zany sound effects to infectious effect – everything from filtered organs, flutes and harpsichords to dog whistles, trains, coke cans, barking dogs and the Electro-Theremin. At first, the album’s sales were slow, but critics lauded its lofty Baroque ambitions and over subsequent decades it would earn its place in key NME and Rolling Stone polls as one of the greatest albums of all time.
Brits Pink Floyd hit their most far-flung phase of production during the Seventies, after the departure of original member Syd Barrett. The band had made a name for itself on the underground in the previous decade with a crisp psychedelic pop-rock sound. Their output grew steadily more progressive, best exemplified perhaps by the abortive attempt to make an album using only common household objects.
The radical project, attempted in 1973, followed the band’s seminal concept album The Dark Side Of The Moon, with its innovative, sweeping mix of prog-rock philosophy, multi-track sonics, then advanced analogue synths and looped samples. They felt they need to push the boat further out.
Pink Floyd subsequently dabbled with old hand mixers, aerosol spray cans, rubber bands stretched between tables, sticking tape, wine glasses and milk bottles. “I think it was that when Dark Side of the Moon was so successful, it was the end. It was the end of the road” bassist and vocalist Roger Waters once explained. “We’d reached the point we’d all been aiming for ever since we were teenagers and there was really nothing more to do in terms of rock’n roll.”
But things didn’t go well, several months of blue-sky studio sessions only yielding two or three, since lost, tracks, and a number of other rough-cut demos where rubber bands and the like had been substituted for guitars and similarly conventional instruments. “All the time we devoted to the project was spent exploring the non-musical sounds and the most we ever achieved was a small number of tentative rhythm tracks” summarised drummer Nick Mason. Of course, elements of those rhythm tracks would find their way on to classic Floyd composition Shine On You Crazy Diamond, as well as a recent Dark Side box set.
The Seventies were also exhaustingly creative for symphonic rockers Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who skilfully balanced acoustic ballads with leftfield organ and synth jams driven by some of the most complex time signatures yet recorded (influenced by classical and jazz) and innovative synthesised percussion – acoustic drum kits fitted with pick-ups that triggered electronic sounds then combined with the acoustics. Closer to the club (or dancehall) came Jamaica’s early forays in the dub. Pioneers Osbourne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry took their cue from Sixties reggae, offering up instrumental drum and bass-heavy re-shapes of existing licks with ample room for wild sonic experimentation.
The dub ‘riddims’ of the late Sixties treated the mixing desk as an instrument in its own right. Producers like Ruddock, Perry and Clive Chin would spend days and weeks manipulating their consoles to heavily echo, reverb and panoramic delay tracks before dubbing and distorting snippets of vocal and instrumentation to achieve the right ‘feel’ for their work, and provide the perfect aural platform for ‘toasters’ at live events. The rivalry between local soundsystems was such that several different ‘versions’ of the same riddims were put out each week in order to give crews something exclusive to rinse for their crowds. Attention to studio detail had never been so acute.
Still in the Seventies, whilst Kraftwerk played around in their Dusseldorf ‘sound laboratory’ Kling Klang Studio with self-made electronic instruments and vocoders, in-demand disco remixer Tom Moulton was achieving mirrorball immortality by inventing the 12”, disco break and remix. This was the result of long, feverish multi-night sessions behind the desk picking apart tracks second by second, taking unsighted creative risks, and creating long and short edits to maximise appeal with different audiences. Moulton has chalked up over 4000 remixes in his time. “I always tell young remixers not to rush” he urges. “Today’s club music is largely based on three or four chords; the musicality is the least of it. There’s too much onus on grooves and gimmicks.”
French house favourite Dimitri From Paris would likely concur. In a forthcoming press interview (around a new Defected album project) he comments: “There was a time when legendary artists would spend weeks getting the perfectly adequate drum... or any other sound for their record. That cost time and money, but it was an investment done by the record labels that could eventually be rewarded.”
One immediately thinks of Moulton’s dancefloor peers – several of whom he actually remixed – but US house greats from the mid-Nineties should also figure, with the drum obsession of Master At Work Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez’ and clinical cut ‘n’ paste sorcery of Todd Edwards routinely documented. For the latter, research was vital - three or four years of it before going alone with a unique blueprint based on using vocals as a musical instrument (something inspired by singer Enya’s harmonic delivery; Todd would tightly chop and arrange vocal samples in place of string and piano sections) and incorporating often obscure folk samples.
As both Moulton and Dimitri intimate, time is a precious commodity today – a near-fully digitised clubland waits for no man, the breakneck churn of new releases quite definitely staggering and leaving little apparent opportunity for boundary-hopping. And yet there are those electronic artists still making time to pursue their wholly dedicated, idiosyncratic visions. Still within the realm of house, Levon Vincent’s ‘big picture’ mindset motivates him to consider, in “specific physiological detail” how every single sound frequency of a new track makes a difference - house is about the brain synapses and human evolution as much as it is about hedonistic thrill. “My music has so many different layers and feelings; it’s complex” he says.
Beyond the framework of 4-4 lies, as one might expect, even more dramatic production technique. Richard D James, AKA The Aphex Twin, progressed from playing the strings inside the piano as a child (rather than the actual keys like most infants) to re-programming ‘soundless’ computers and using complicated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms to make his records. His infamous 2001 album drukqs featured computer-controlled piano tracks inspired by radical early 20th composer John Cage (who prophesised in 1939 future music made by, and for dancers using “machines and electrical instruments we will invent.”) Subsequent free-wheeling output via his Rephlex imprint has been crafted down to an almost inhuman level of detail, James renowned for his ongoing experimentation with electronic equipment, recording on magnetic tape and continually changing pressing plants to achieve the best sound quality. His work ethic is seriously impressive; reports suggest he currently has material recorded for around 100 new albums.
Singer Bjork’s confident balance of pop verve and electronic dynamism was again demonstrated last year with the release of the world’s first interactive ‘app album’ Biophilia, an album still revealing its secrets on smartphones and tablets around the world as this article goes live. Biophilia follows a rich tradition of intense, unorthodox music-making; Bjork’s celebrated 1997 opus Homogenic, for example, focused on volcanic-sounding percussion (inspired by her native Iceland) and natural, alfresco recording with non-professionals, including her babysitter.
Photo credit: Chris Friel
All of which leads us nicely on to ‘aleatoric’ music master Matthew Herbert. Aleatoric music incorporates chance into the processes that create it and Herbert has certainly taken his chances over the years. Next month, he releases new album Tesco as alias Wishmountain, combining “old fashioned dance” with detailed field recordings from the trolley-crashing aisles of a supermarket. Tesco follows compositions based on everything from royal weddings to the pre-slaughterhouse life of a piglet. “At times I am an extreme producer, yes” he confirms. “I’ve chartered hot air balloons to record drums in, been in KFC chicken farms, hit London’s sewers at midnight, and recorded 10,000 people biting an apple at once. As always I’d like us to listen more carefully. I work as a kind of documentary musician so the stories always come first.”
Herbert is wary of the sometimes creatively bland, auto-pilot tendencies of today’s digital technology. “Rather than pinning complacency to the people, today, wanting to have a go at making music, I’d prefer to say that the technology is encouraging and rewarding complacency” he says. But what of potentially going too far the other way; doesn’t sonic extremism risk alienating an audience?: “I think the opposite. The more layers of detail, care, craft and consideration you put in the more openings you are creating for a listener and the greater the possibility of surprise, engagement or reflection.”
The boom of sonic innovation is as loud as ever.
Words: Ben Lovett
