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Listening to EDM: Sound Object Analysis and Vital Materialism Écouter la dance music : analyse d’objets sonores et matérialisme vital
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/volume/3647 DOI: 10.4000/volume.3647 ISSN: 1950-568X
Printed version Date of publication: 30 December 2013 Number of pages: 193-211 ISBN: 978-2-913169-34-0 ISSN: 1634-5495
Electronic reference Mandy-Suzanne Wong, « Listening to EDM: Sound Object Analysis and Vital Materialism », Volume ! [Online], 10 : 1 | 2013, Online since 30 December 2015, connection on 10 December 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/volume/3647 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.3647
L'auteur & les Éd. Mélanie Seteun 193
Listening to Electronic Dance Music: Sound Object Analysis and Vital Materialism
par Mandy-Suzanne Wong
University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract: In electronic dance music (EDM), Résumé : Souvent, dans l’electronic dance music melody, harmony, and rhythm are often indistin- (EDM), on ne peut distinguer la mélodie, l’har- guishable, hence are inadequate as descriptive cate- monie et le rythme, catégories qui se révèlent ainsi gories. EDM’s timbres are equally elusive: describing inadéquates pour décrire cette musique. Les timbres electronic sounds in terms of their sources tell us de l’EDM sont tout aussi insaisissables : décrire little about the sounds themselves. Perhaps this une musique à partir de ses sources ne nous dit pas music’s descriptive evasiveness is partly what drives grand-chose des sons eux-mêmes. Peut-être ce flou analysts to deem EDM an aesthetic failure outside descriptif explique-t-il pourquoi certains chercheurs the dance club. I investigate the possibility that travaillant sur l’EDM considèrent qu’elle est un sound object analysis, a listening technique which I échec esthétique en dehors de la boîte de nuit. Je designed to address “avant-garde” music, might also défends l’idée que l’analyse des objets sonores, une help listeners to discuss EDM in terms of sound, not technique d’écoute que j’ai élaborée afin d’étudier just cultural context. Connections between sound la « musique d’avant-garde », pourrait permettre à object analysis and vital materialism – the theory des auditeurs de décrire et de débattre de l’EDM, that anything with the ability to affect other pheno- en vue d’analyses concentrées sur sa texture sonore Volume mena constitutes a material body – suggest that liste- et non pas simplement sur ses contextes culturels. ning is, as much as dancing, an encounter between Je la relie au concept de « matérialisme vital », selon material bodies and an embodied form of dialogue. lequel tout ce qui a la capacité d’affecter d’autres ! n° 10-1 phénomènes constitue un corps matériel. Ce lien Keywords: Electronic dance music – sound objects – suggère que l’écoute est, tout autant que la danse, listening – analysis – Yasushi Miura. une rencontre entre des corps matériels et une forme incarnée de dialogue.
Keywords: Electronic dance music – objets sonores – écoute – analyse – Yasushi Miura. 194 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
21, 2009: Walt and stools, and gradually the chaos morphed into a Disney Concert patterned rhythm. This approach is Matmos’ stock-in- November trade: from randomness to order… Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s opening night at the LA Phil’s West Coast, Left Roberts capably describes what he saw that night, Coast festival. On the program are solo and col- but cannot be specific about what he heard. He laborative performances by Terry Riley and the barely mentions the blips and beeps that consti- Kronos Quartet, veritable pioneers in American tute most of Matmos’ textures in these pieces: experimental music. Also included is Mike Ein- sounds for which descriptions in terms of their ziger, experimental composer and founder of the instrumental sources – synthesizers, samplers, rock band Incubus. But I believe the evening’s and laptop computers – would be of little help in triumph belongs to Matmos: the EDM duo from characterizing the sound itself. In fact, to describe Baltimore. Matmos duets with the Kronos Quar- the warm, electronic sound of “Supreme Balloon”, tet in «For Terry Riley”, then performs the track Roberts invokes other artists. Sonically, “Supreme “Supreme Balloon” (2008). LA Weekly’s Randall Balloon” “draws from Kraftwerk (they use simi- Roberts (2009) would describe it as “an epic ins- lar early modulators and synthesizers) and Brian trumental meditation … To hear it in Disney’s vast Eno’s ambient work.” The point is, what one hears space is to experience a very specific kind of bliss.” in EDM is difficult to characterize precisely on its To hear, not to dance. The audience is quiet and own terms: sounds, often of unidentifiable sources still, no evidence of psychedelic drugs: this is (it’s not easy to hear the difference between digital the string quartet’s audience, Riley’s audience. synthesizers); relationships between such obscure Disney Hall, Frank Gehry’s marvel, brings out sounds; and the modes of one’s engagement with every particle in Matmos’ velveteen textures. the sounds. Given the sheer size of the place, the characte- ristic bass-drum beat of EDM, four-on-the-floor, Yet, from Roberts’ glowing review, one thing is acquires seismic proportions. We’re flattened to clear: EDM, electronic dance music, succeeds as our seats. Under the sociocultural, historical, and music for listening, not only for dancing. Listening sonic circumstances, we can’t help but sit and to EDM in a serene concert setting, even alongside listen. “avant-garde” bastions, is viable and enjoyable. It works. But how? How might we discern and des- Later, the experience proves difficult to describe. cribe EDM’s musical complexities? Roberts offers a short list of the instruments involved in “For Terry Riley”, and a vague charac- Given that conventional, score-based analysis, ! n° 10-1 terization of its structure: which emphasizes the visible relationships between The piece began rather gently, with Kronos and notated pitches and durations, cannot adequa- Matmos creating sounds with toy hammers, percus- tely describe the timbres, gestures, and memories
Volume sion, and whistles. They banged on their music stands involved in listening experiences, perhaps sound 195 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... object analysis, an exploratory listening technique its relationship to listening. Michel Gaillot, Simon that I recently designed as an approach to “avant- Reynolds (1999), Timothy Taylor, Brian Wilson garde” or experimental “classical” music, might (2006), and Robert Strachan (2010) discuss the also be applicable to EDM. In this article, I inves- critical social perspectives or quasi-religious esca- tigate the descriptive potential of the categories pism conveyed by EDM in various sociocultu- involved in sound object analysis with regard to ral contexts. With several of the aforementioned EDM, in the hope of suggesting a specific and authors, Matthew Collin (2010) links the charac- telling vocabulary for this music and the expe- teristics of EDM to the effects of hallucinogens. riences it affords. Identifying points of agreement Other authors do address how EDM might be between sound object analysis and Jane Bennett’s heard, by analyzing its musical qualities. Butler (2010) theory of vital materialism, I propose that (2006) identifies the formal, rhythmic, and tex- listening to EDM is, like club dancing, an encoun- tural structures typical of EDM. Joanna Demers ter between material bodies. As an embodied form (2010) interrogates all experimental electronic of dialogue, listening does not compromise, but music from aesthetic, ontological, and epistemo- rather complements, the co-inhabitance and co- logical perspectives. She also theorizes “aesthetic creation of EDM that happens on the dance floor. listening” – a mode in which the listener’s atten- Thus, listening and dancing are comparable and tion constantly and arbitrarily mutates, intensifies, valuable avenues of engagement with EDM. or recedes – as a potential avenue of approach to electronic music (pp. 151-161). I’ll have more to say on this below, since sound object analysis relates to Perspectives aesthetic listening. Many authors feel that, outside clubs and raves, But both Butler and Demers comment on the EDM is an aesthetic failure (see for instance Gail- difficulties involved in their attempts to describe lot, 1998; Taylor, 2001; Ferreira, 2008). For Hil- what they hear in EDM. EDM poses a daun- legonda Rietveld, house music is “meaningless” ting challenge to discourse and description – to unless it is “played to and interacted with a dan- language. It is one thing to listen intently to an cing crowd” (quoted in Butler, 2006: 13). Simi- EDM track and enjoy it, and know within one- larly, Timothy Taylor (2001) takes psychedelic self, without saying a word, why one is enjoying it. Volume trance music itself to be reducible to the gathe- It’s another thing to communicate what one has rings (and drugs) that often but not always attend heard in a manner that enables an interlocutor to this music. Mark Butler subsequently bemoans appreciate it: here is the challenge. While Butler, the extent to which “the significance of EDM’s Demers, and other authors rise to it admirably, in ! n° 10-1 musical aspects has been argued against” (Butler, verbal presentations of EDM’s aesthetic qualities, 2006: 13, emphasis original). Thus, many analyses they realize that to do so is to take up a formidable of EDM confront aspects of the genre other than burden. Butler observes that several analysts cave 196 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
beneath this burden, with the consequence that analysis to what some artists consider a subgenre analyses of EDM “tend to trade too much in gene- of EDM that is meant only for listening and ralizations” (Butler, 2006: 8). See for instance Dan contemplation, not for dancing. As Alwakeel (2) Sicko’s far from informative description of Juan points out, the label “intelligent” is contrived and Atkins’ music as “complicated, murky, and grim” nonsensical. Matmos (1999) shares this opinion; (Sicko, 2010: 44). Butler writes: “discussion of the electronica band Future Sound of London EDM as music remains at such a general level that finds “IDM” redundant and “restrictive,” since it one could easily discover most of the characteris- yet includes the term “dance” while claiming to tics mentioned in currently published accounts of eschew dance (Alwakeel p. 5); and Demers (170) its sound after a few minutes’ casual observation” rightly concludes that IDM is a marketing ploy (Butler, 2006: 8). Moreover, he notes that such used by “record labels [who] have found it a useful discussion characteristically relies on metapho- tool for appealing to consumers’ elitism.” Never- rical descriptors. He takes as an example Simon theless, although I would be hesitant to declare Reynolds’ account of Hyper-On Experience’s IDM an actual subgenre, the term’s existence “Thunder Grip” as “melody shrapnel whizz[ing] (whether it signifies a body of work or empty flat- hither and thither...infested with hiccupping tery) testifies to an interest, shared by artists and vocal shards...sheer Hanna-Barbera zany-mania” labels, in EDM as music for close listening. (quoted in Butler, 2006: 9). This description is However, Pedro Ferreira attests that dancing affirmative and exciting, replete with strong action “defines” EDM, therefore to listen to EDM with- verbs. And indeed, Demers suggests that metaphor out dancing is to fail to hear the music at all: is inevitable in descriptions of electronic music. In her words, figurative language is the “crutch” that EDM is made, above all, for non-stop [sic] dancing. enables her to proceed from listening to descrip- Admittedly, it is possible to do many other things while listening to EDM, but it is the immersion in the intense tion, from private to communicable experience experience of nonstop dancing, more than anything (Demers, 2010: 85). “Nevertheless,” says Butler, else, which defines its specificity, its operative nexus. such language “does little to help us understand The failure to grasp this elementary principle has led how the music creates these effects” (Butler, 2006: many to take EDM for what it is not. (2008: 18) 9) [emphasis original]. In particular, to merely listen to electronic dance Additionally, Ramzy Alwakeel (2009) demons- music is to conflate it with “electronic art music,” a trates how difficult it can be to differentiate elec- marriage with which Ferreira (Ibid.) cannot hold. tronic genres, even though such differentiation Like Ferreira, several other authors (including ! n° 10-1 may be valuable to certain EDM subcultures. Karlheinz Stockhausen, 2006 cited in Cox and He describes IDM’s (“intelligent” dance music’s) Warner, 2004: 382-383) would probably find my struggle for generic identity, as evidenced in use of the same approach for both “academic” and
Volume album art and track titles. He thus devotes his “popular” genres untenable. Nevertheless, sound 197 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... object analysis will hopefully provide a perspective ted, EDM encourages dialogue rather than defini- that may illuminate the superfluity and artificiality tion or “solution” (Ibid.: 5). Likewise, as we’ll see, of a total, irrevocable distinction between “acade- by being flexible enough to accommodate EDM’s mic” and “popular” in electronic music. I endorse insubordination to categories, sound object analy- Demers’ (2010: 6) position: that “metagenres” sis may perhaps withstand normative temptations. of electronic music may be loosely distinguished according to how they interact with their venues and sources of funding (institutional or commer- Sound Object Analysis cial), with the understanding that venues and fun- ding are often shared between metagenres; and Regarding most musical genres, listeners can des- that “all [electronic] metagenres here constitute cribe what they hear by pointing to melodies, har- high art.” Further, Demers (Ibid.: 8) points out monies, basslines, and rhythmic patterns, and by that several EDM artists also produce “high-art” naming timbres according to their instrumental experimental music (Matmos, Vince Clarke, and sources. But in many EDM tracks, harmony is Taylor Deupree are just a few examples). From this absent, timbres unnamable – while melodic, bass, standpoint, using a single analytical vocabulary to and percussive tracks may be difficult to differen- approach both EDM and “electronic art music” is tiate. This is not necessarily the case in all EDM a valid practice that may yet do justice to both. genres: psy-trance, for instance, often utilizes The vocabulary supplied by sound object ana- clearly demarcated, even catchy, melodic lines and lysis may account for EDM’s most provocative harmonic progressions (as in Eat Static’s music or aspect: its repeated defiance of norms, thwarting Juno Reactor’s early work). In other cases, howe- the tendency toward normativity traditionally ver, such as Dominia’s track, also called “Domi- displayed in musical analysis. As we’ve seen, nia,” for the techno compilation Tresor Three, the EDM flouts attempts to confine analysis to closed four-on-the-floor beat is rendered by a low,pitched spheres circumscribed either by generic terms or sound, and is therefore as much of a “bassline” as labels such as “academic” and “popular”; it “rejects it is “percussive.” Like many techno tracks (for the very notion[s] of genre” and canon (Alwakeel: instance Joey Beltram’s music), “Dominia” lacks 2-4). Hence there is no “authority” or paradig- Volume matic example against which individual tracks melodic and harmonic movement. An isolated might be measured, and no hope of isolating an chord marks every other downbeat; but for the “essence” of EDM (Ibid.: 5). As I’ll discuss below, duration of the track, the pitches of this chord EDM also dissolves the boundaries between artist, remain unchanged. There is thus no “linear” ! n° 10-1 artwork, equipment, and listener. Thus the iden- movement (directed changes in pitch) that could tities of a track and its creator relentlessly vary qualify as a “melody” or as a “harmonic progres- (Ibid.: 9). Collaboratively, democratically genera- sion.” 198 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
Alwakeel therefore suggests that we try to hear to describe what we hear in this unusual mode: a and think EDM “vertically,” in terms of over- sound that gives no indication of its source or any lapping “blocks of sound,” rather than adopting other connotation. I add the qualifying term redu- the “linear” focus on development over time, that cible, to differentiate his notion of sound objects dominates our engagement with other genres from others’. (Ibid.: 13-15). Sound object analysis is a form of Schaeffer wrote that sound objects may be sounds engagement with just such “blocks of sound.” of any kind, including noises, hoping that iden- Now, I am not suggesting that all listeners do tifying and describing varied sound objects – their or should hear EDM in terms of sound objects; “typology and morphology”– would encourage rather, my goal is to assess the potential of sound listeners and composers to liberalize their unders- object analysis as one of many possible vocabu- tanding of what constitutes musical sound (1966: laries that may serve as tools for describing and 365). Sound object identification and description discussing this music, which has been known to constitute what I call sound object analysis. This elude traditional classifications. method has several advantages. Godøy attributes The term sound object began as Pierre Schaeffer’s a certain “universality” to the technique: since a conceptualization of music’s “raw element,” which sound object may be any kind of sound, sound the pioneer of musique concrète believed that liste- object analysis may apply to any kind of music ners could learn to hear (1967: 65). Typically we besides and including that of the western classi- listen for what sounds signify, and assess how they cal tradition (2009: 73). Moreover, sound objects contribute to meaningful structures. But Schaeffer are purely audible, not notated. Thus sound object observed that, precisely because the habitual aim analysis enables discourse on sonic details that of listening is to locate meaning in sound, mea- score-based analysis consigns to the margins, and ning diverts our attention from a sound’s intrinsic is appropriate to experimental, electronic, and features as soon as we detect its communicative improvised genres that are independent of nota- potential. In contrast, a sound object results from tion. Sound object analysis takes sound as its star- what Schaeffer (1966: 265) named reduced liste- ting point instead of fixed, abstract systems, a priori ning: a skillful hearing that deliberately ignores conditions that many listeners cannot even detect, sound’s possibilities for referring beyond itself, such as twelve-tone rows and large-scale tonal barring from perception any suggestions of forms. Indeed, perceiving sound objects requires sources, semantic functions, or significations that idiosyncratic listening techniques additional and the sound in question may imply. Instead reduced in contrast to our usual modes, that question the ! n° 10-1 listening aims at the sound object or decontextua- unspoken, foundational assumptions of analytical lized essence peculiar to each sound, with the goal discourse. Because, as we will see, a sound object’s of identifying the innate features that make sounds characteristics depend on how each listener hears
Volume “musical.” Schaeffer coined the term sound object it, analysis via sound objects challenges the pre- 199 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... sumed stability of every signifying category, and tion; to acknowledge that sound has no fixed the basic presupposition that it is possible to draw essence; and to admit that this, along with our conclusions about what a sound is. alternation between listening modes, precludes Overall, sound object analysis is grounded in the coherent, linear narration of musical expe- perception. Schaeffer conceived sound objects as rience. As we’ll learn, different kinds of sound unitary fragments of “medium duration,” neither object may coexist even within a single sound. too long nor too short for the listener to memorize After Schaeffer’s death in 1995, the termsound (Chion, 1983: 35), with the idea that sound object object was adopted and transformed by several analysis proceeds in the same way as perception: analysts and composers of electronic music. For synthesizing discontinuous perceptual “chunks” instance, it appears in Cutler’s work on the ille- into coherent experiences (Ibid., 1983: 35). In gal use of samples. He redefines the termsound these manageable chunks, listeners may detect object as a “found (or stolen) object,” a sound and enjoy characteristics imperceptible in shorter copied from one context and pasted verbatim into fragments and swallowed up by larger structures. another (2000: 94). Though he consciously appro- As examples will demonstrate, sound object analy- priates Schaeffer’s terminology, Cutler’s definition sis invites the apprehension of details that neither of sound object differs widely from Schaeffer’s. For acoustic measurements nor musical notation can the sake of clarity, I call the Cutlerian sound object capture. a transcontextual sound object, following Smalley’s Schaeffer recognized reduced listening as only definition of transcontextuality as a sound’s sug- one of many listening techniques, realizing that gestion of multiple interpretations based on its we can and do slip between different listening current and initial contexts (see Smalley, 1997). modes within the course of a single experience. Transcontextuality is contingent on listeners’ He sought to “facilitate” a “swirl” of multifa- recognition of the sound in question from its origi- rious listening modes enabling a listener to hear nal context. Only with such a priori knowledge can a single sound in numerous, even contradictory listeners appreciate the sound’s transplantation ways (1966: 343). For Schaeffer a sound object is between contextual arenas. In fact, says Cutler, “a thus objective and subjective: a sound come from plundered sound … holds out an invitation to be used because of its cause and because of all the without, potentially manipulated so as to trigger Volume perceptions, yet wholly contingent on a certain associations and cultural apparatus that surround type of perception. Objectively, a sound object is it” (2000: 97). The transcontextual sound object at once an element of a structure and a structure thus depends on a mode of listening opposed composed of elements, thus abstract and concrete, to the disavowal of meaning that characterizes ! n° 10-1 internally static and unstable. Subjectively, it is a reduced listening. Where reduced listening invites personal yet culturally-conditioned perception. singular focus on a sound’s characteristics inde- To deal in sound objects is to deal in contradic- pendent of every circumstance, transcontextuality 200 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
presents an opportunity to knit new experiences in the form of a gesture collectively constitute a out of previous encounters, past and present cir- gestural-sonorous object. Just as a musical note cumstances. isolates pitch and duration, the gestural-sonorous object offers analysts a way to consider how ges- Both reducible and transcontextual sound objects ture, specifically, contributes to musical experience. qualify as structural sound objects. This is a signi- However, contra musical notes, gestural-sonorous ficant concept to theorists and composers of objects and transcontextual sound objects are defi- microsound such as Curtis Roads, who uses the ned by personal, extra-sonic connotations. term sound object to distinguish sounds of a few seconds’ duration (“from about 100ms to several Sound object analysis relies on one aspect of a seconds”) from micro-sounds too short for any multifarious mode that Demers calls “aesthetic but a computer to process, and from macro-struc- listening.” I will draw attention to just one aspect tures too long for listeners to conceive as single of this complex mode: its awareness of and allo- sounds (2004: 16). Like all sound objects, structu- wance for fragmentary attentiveness. “Aesthetic ral sound objects are timbrally flexible: they may listening heeds intermittent moments of a work consist of noises, electronic beeps, vocal sounds, or without [necessarily] searching for a trajectory any other kind of tone. that unites those moments” (2010: 151). Each listener notices the music’s “transient delights” or Another variety of structural sound object is the “larger-scale patterns” if and as she desires (Ibid.: gestural-sonorous object coined by Godøy (2003). 151-2). “Aesthetic listening resembles the way His research on motor-mimetic music cognition many listeners hear popular … musics” (Ibid.: finds that listeners’ imaginations, limbs, or both 16): in particular, as a fragmentary process in its respond to music with imagery or imitations of own right, it complements the often fragmentary sound-producing, sound-accompanying, or emo- aesthetic of EDM (Ibid.: 78). Aesthetic listening tive gestures, or by tracing a sound’s envelope in goes hand in hand with sound object analysis by movement (Godøy 2010: 60). In fact, because allowing listeners to slip between various kinds movements instigate sounds, and because sound of attention, and to consider individual sonorities is the movement of air, Godøy (Ibid.: 60) consi- instead of large-scale forms. ders gesture to be an “integral element” of sound. The mind forms “memory images” of sounds Neither sound object analysis nor aesthetic liste- along with their implicit gestures, retains and ning relies on prior knowledge of the historical reapproaches these images as though they were circumstances surrounding a piece of music. In “solid” (Ibid.: 54). Godøy calls these hypostatized EDM, such details are frequently unavailable to ! n° 10-1 images “gestural-sonorous objects,” a concept that listeners, as artists go out of their way to maintain encapsulates the “holistic,” unified experience of their anonymity behind multiple aliases or, as in sound and gesture (Ibid.: 58). For instance, a cli- the case of Yasushi Miura, by avoiding promo-
Volume mactic point in a melody and a dancer’s response tional materials. This is not to say that historical 201 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... details are irrelevant. Quite the contrary: histo- At the beginning of the piece we would unreservedly rical data is vital to hearing in certain ways, for state that the sound-object is the voice. At the end of the example from the traditional musicological stand- piece the sound-object is clearly a more “abstract” entity whose characteristics derive from the room acoustic. point. Even in sound object analysis, knowledge Somewhere in between these extremes our perception of the work’s history may help listeners to detect passes over from one interpretation to the other. (1996: and describe sounds’ transcontextuality, where it 158) is present. However, transcontextuality need not be detected for a sound object analysis to be viable. Wishart seems to read the vocal utterance as a Listeners may describe what they hear in terms of structural sound object. Additionally, recording reducible, structural, or gestural sound objects, the utterance changes it from a human encounter the discernment of which requires no background to a machine encounter, or to a human encoun- knowledge. ter mediated by time, memory, and the recording device. In other words, the recorded-replayed Let me demonstrate how sound object analysis utterance is transcontextual. But as it stacks functions regarding an “avant-garde” or “high- upon itself, the monophonic utterance becomes art” electroacoustic work. This particular example polyphonic and eventually loses its vocal quality, foregrounds several sound-object categories, taking on the anonymity of a reducible sound revealing them to interpenetrate one another. object. The layered recordings eliminate the pos- sibility of hearing words in the sound, and invite us to forget the sound’s origin in a human voice. I Am Sitting in a Room Soon we can no longer tell when new iterations Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room (1969, hereaf- of the utterance begin, so that we cannot follow ter ISR) requires the performer to recite and record the structure of the piece. In the end we can infer a short text. The performer plays back and records nothing from what we hear except the sound itself his recording, and repeats this process indefinitely, and its intrinsic features. Overall in ISR, a struc- with the result that the same sounds pile on top of tural, transcontextual sound object changes into themselves several times over. Multiple instances a reducible sound object when successive layering of the same frequencies activate simultaneously, renders it unrecognizable, its source indistin- reinforcing one another’s stimulation of the air in guishable from the surrounding space. Volume the performance space. By the end of the piece, Sound object analysis is appropriate to ISR because, all we can hear is the space itself ringing at the in one sense, Lucier’s endeavor is about entities in frequencies of the performer’s voice. Linguistic space. A performer’s vocalizing body, his recording ! n° 10-1 articulations metamorphose into unbroken sound. equipment, and their collaborative sounds work Wishart interprets ISR as the evolution of a myste- upon one another and the surrounding room, rious sound object: causing the space itself to resonate. Space, sounds, 202 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
and bodies manifest one another, before one ano- responsibility for her experience, and obscure the ther. Space brings sound to the forefront of atten- foundation of every sound object in subjectivity. tion and vice versa; both mediate the performing But this is precisely why Wishart emphasizes “per- body to attention. In the same way, in everyday ception,” not only sound, as the changing element living, spaces articulate visible, tangible objects; in ISR. Perception, the perceiver’s personal quali- objects dictate the contours of spaces; both inte- ties, her decisions, and her circumstances are all ract with and situate our bodies, making us appa- qualifying factors of sound objects. The characte- rent to others. Relating Lucier’s sounds to tangible ristics of sound objects are contingent on how we objects by thinking them as sound objects may help hear them, ergo no sound object needs necessarily to clarify the relations that he subtly brings to the possess any particular feature. forefront. Sound object analysis also accounts for Sound object analysis demonstrates that we can his deliberate attempts to engage certain receptive never definitively categorize sound, music, liste- modes – his use of layered recordings to propose ning, or analysis. I do not mean that sonic expe- “reduced” hearing of speech, for example. Liste- rience is ineffable in a transcendent sense. Rather, ning for different kinds of sound objects, we shift sound object analysis suggests the opposite. Sonic between listening modes: we experiment with experience eludes determinateness because it relies diverse standpoints from which we may encounter on subjective factors: interpretations, memories, and describe sonic experiences. Thus, as a quasi- cultural and epistemological predispositions of gestural metamorphosis of our attention (which individual listeners. Analysis is correspondingly could conceivably involve actual gesture), sound elusive because the variety of possible listening object analysis may enable listeners themselves to modes may be close to infinite. As such, sound experience or enact the gradual transformation object analyses are specific to the performing ana- that utterance undergoes in ISR. Sound objects lyst. Sound object analysts must be constantly also conceptualize what musical notes cannot, for aware that their conclusions are contingent and instance sounds’ provocation of memory, affor- therefore likely to be temporary. In other words, ding a succinct vocabulary that enables listeners to sound object analysis accentuates the personal, approach Lucier on his own terms, to describe and performative qualities of all analytical activity. hence to share their transformational experience What kind of activity is analysis? As the identifica- of his work. tion and description of objective elements within However, as I’ve argued elsewhere (Wong, 2012), a sonic structure, traditional score- or program- the term sound object may mask the temporality of based analysis proposes a narrative of a musical ! n° 10-1 sounds and their origin in movement, as the word work: a tracing of its semantic structure relative object can imply fixity, self-sufficiency, and objec- to a pre-established musical system plus, in many tivity. The word object lends a givenness to sounds cases, a translation of the “musical semantics” into
Volume that may in fact obfuscate the listener’s partial linguistic communiqués relative to socio-histori- 203 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... cal circumstances. The narrative forms a coherent, Sound object analysis evades this presumption by autonomous whole, an organized presentation empowering the listening subject as a critical and and objective presence with a claim to truth. This creative agent, allowing each listener to shape (via claim is strengthened by the narrative’s basis in an experience) every sound object, and thereby put- established system that fixes the terms in which ting traditional norms into crisis. I am not sug- all narratives proceed. In western systems, for gesting that sound objects should replace musical example, G# is always G#, even when its setting notes and other traditional categories; rather, I varies. Western analysis depends on categorizing seek a supplementary vocabulary that may come pitches, volumes, attacks, rates and sequences of into play especially when what we hear exceeds change, using inflexible terms determined prior to the descriptive capabilities of traditional nomen- any hearing. The predetermination of such catego- clature. ries prior to any analysis limits the extent to which analyses can vary. But in sound object analysis, the listening act pro- Capricious poses and explores all possible descriptive catego- ISR is without a backbeat, spun out of human ries, allowing for contradictory categorizations: it vocal sounds, and reliant on electric but not neces- is completely acceptable to hear the vocal sounds sarily computerized equipment. It is utterly unlike in ISR as at once transcontextual and reducible. EDM. Can sound object analysis, though it served Sound object analysis requires the listening sub- ISR reasonably well, do similar justice to digital, ject to interrupt and contradict every attempt at beat-based dance music? coherent narration, even her own, by moving at will or unconsciously between contrasting liste- In this portion of the discussion, I will apply ning modes. Where traditional analysis closes sound object analysis to “Capricious” (2008) by itself off from variations of its categories, sound Japanese EDM producer Yasushi Miura. This object analysis calls on an Other, any other liste- track is experimental in that it consistently strains ning subject, to interrupt every application of every EDM conventions. Miura abstains from structu- category. Thus sound object analysis functions ral formulae typical of EDM tracks, which center less like a declaration and more like an interac- around gradual buildups of textual layers (see Volume tion. It illuminates the egocentrism of traditional Butler, 2006), and even from making clear dis- methods, which undermine the very existence of tinctions between melodic, bass, and percussive listening subjects by categorizing sounds before lines. Even more than Matmos’ “Supreme Bal- anyone hears them, and assuming that everyone loon”, which begins tunefully and later relies on ! n° 10-1 hears in terms of these categories (despite that, minimalistic repetitions of consonant three-note for example, the category “G#” has no experien- figures, Miura’s “Capricious” questions the identi- tial correlate for listeners without perfect pitch). ties of EDM and its basic constituents, by means 204 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
of those very constituents. Hence my selection “Capricious” is a swarm of corpuscular sounds. of “Capricious” as a test subject for sound object Pitched sounds are just as percussive as the per- analysis: though it is EDM, it eludes traditional cussive sounds and just as dissonant as the erratic categories. As “Capricious” challenges typical buzzing sounds, with the result that every sound conceptions of EDM, it poses challenges to accus- in the piece – and none of them – could consti- tomed or formalized modes of listening, including tute “melody,” “bassline,” “noise,” or “percussion.” analytical modes. This track provides rigorous ter- Therefore parsing “Capricious” into contrapun- rain on which analytical perspectives, including tal lines is impossible. So instead of hunting for sound object analysis, may reveal their strengths linear trajectories, perhaps hearing the piece as a and give away their blind spots. host of structural sound objects may be more tel- ling. Recall that a structural sound object may be a Unlike “Supreme Balloon”, which could be com- sound of any kind, even a noise or melodic figure, fortably described in terms of melody and har- that is long enough to be perceptible but extends mony, most of Miura’s music is notorious for its no longer than a few seconds. We may interpret obscurity. Of the bare handful of online reviewers “Capricious” as the interaction of a crowd of such willing to take on Yasushi Miura, most of them diverse objects. If we listen via headphones, this chalk up their experiences to psychiatric disease. characterization is not just metaphorical. Particu- As one author put it, an album of Miura’s music larly during the first minute of the track, I hear “becomes pretty demanding and one can only an assortment of sonic individuals in my right imagine that his music perhaps reflects … newly and left ears; on occasion they even seem to come discovered psychiatric diagnoses such as Techno from the center of my head. Like tangible objects Stress and Techno Phobia” (Electronic Music in visible space, the sounds shape, demarcate, and World, 2004). Another concluded that either “[t] populate the interior space in which I experience he music seems to showcase Yasushi’s schizophre- the music. Similarly, heard over large loudspea- nic nature … [or] there seems to be some sort of kers, these variously colored and positioned sound joke going on” (Heathen Harvest, 2009). Both objects would define and articulate the shape of these reviewers warn that “if you ever get ahold the surrounding room. Instead of a schizophrenic [sic] of it [Miura’s music], good luck understan- movement between high pitches, low pitches, and ding it … [as it is] simply just too abstract in noises over time, listening for sound objects reveals nature” – and above all, “don’t try dancing to it.” a horde of stable individuals marking out a space. Miura himself is even more inscrutable. Hidden somewhere behind his empty website, he sends his The difference lies in listening for individual ! n° 10-1 music to reviewers on CD-Rs with handwritten sounds instead of musical trajectories. As Alwakeel titles and nothing else – no note, sometimes not points out, listening “vertically” for sonic objects even a sleeve. Can listening via sound objects pro- may even change our view of Miura’s incessant
Volume vide productive insight on his work? repetition of the aforementioned sounds. “Cycling 205 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... units do not have to be seen as an undeveloping We may compare our listening experience to that sequence documenting [a] subject’s movement in of walking around a sculpture, taking it in from time through the music, but might be devoid of multiple perspectives. From this standpoint, the a linear subject altogether, and therefore exist to track takes on a certain self-sufficiency, again mir- some degree outside time” (2009: 14). Instead of roring tangible objects, which Miura exacerbates a single, obsessive-psychotic movement, we may by absenting himself from the music and its pro- hear in “Capricious” the persistence of individuals motion. Moreover, none of the digital blips and which, like tangible objects, possess a degree of buzzes in “Capricious” resemble human vocal permanence that enables us to reidentify them. timbres or the sounds of traditional musical ins- In my opinion, this interpretation could apply to truments. It is admittedly difficult for sound most EDM tracks that partake of the typical styles object analysis to thoroughly describe the timbres and layered structures. In tracks from Model 500’s in this track. We can be certain only that they are Detroit-techno anthems and Joey Beltram’s Bel- electronic. We might therefore call them transcon- gian-style “Energy Flash” (1988) to Eat Static’s textual sound objects, acknowledging their emi- psy-trance escapades and the latest experiments gration to the world of music from the insides of by IDM promoter r_garcia, there are elements computers, which were not designed to be musical that persist continually, repeat precisely, or return instruments. I find that interpretation tautologi- consistently: brief synth melodies or punctuating cal in electronic music, but it is valid nonetheless. figures, samples from film dialogue or other musi- It is my instinct to call these beeps and buzzes cal genres, and of course the beats, all of which reducible sound objects, thus underscoring their are identifiable and reidentifiable as circumscri- bed individuals. Alternately, regarding Miura’s meaninglessness except as they refer to the elec- track, since there is no reason why sound objects tronic and mechanical in general. This refusal of cannot be of any duration (the limits imposed by communication compounds Miura’s effacement Roads are arbitrary), we may reasonably hear the of human presence, including his own, from his entire track as a single, multicolored object with a music. It is almost as if the track has no creator complex, rippling texture: as a gestural-sonorous except perhaps itself or an unknown computer. At object comprised of sound and undulating move- the potential risk of invoking Romantic, phantas- Volume ment. Since there are no melodies, harmonies, or magoric notions of erasing the effortful human gradual buildups to imply any kind of trajectory; conduit between supernatural genius and its artis- and since the 4/4 beat, typically responsible for tic products, Alwakeel identifies the conflation EDM’s propulsion, never stabilizes in this track: it of producer, equipment, and product/artwork as ! n° 10-1 is reasonable to encounter the track “face-to-face” a distinguishing feature of experimental EDM as a quasi-permanent object, instead of “moving (Ibid.: 18). Sound object analysis calls attention to through” it. this provocative confounding of identities. 206 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
The concept of the transcontextual sound object achieve reasonable success in accounting for the may help us to rationalize the near-absence of a idiosyncrasies of “Capricious”, including its resis- 4/4 bass drum beat in “Capricious”. At several tance to categories. points during the track, the beat attempts to take hold, only to cease abruptly after a maximum of ten seconds, sometimes remaining absent Embodiment for long stretches. The beat is yet recognizable Sound object analysis constitutes a dialogue as an EDM beat, especially when a syncopated between a listening subject, sounds, and analyti- hi-hat-like sound enters during a brief passage. cal categories. As the listener shifts between liste- In fact the beat as a whole is the only sound ning modes, she participates in creating “what” in the track that I can name definitively (as an she hears. At the same time, sounds impose them- EDM beat). As a whole, we could consider the selves on her and, by being as they are, invite or beat – a bass-percussive timbre played in steady even compel her to hear them in certain ways. quarter-note rhythms – a single sound object. It As such, analysis is a creative, performative, col- is a gestural sound object certainly, in all EDM laborative act not just of contemplation but also tracks, for those who associate this idiosyncratic participation. Ferreira notes that “EDM is not a rhythmic figure with club dancing, as for those kind of creative message sent by a performer to his who cannot help moving to it. But Miura invites audience, but the sonorous dimension of a parti- an additional interpretation. In “Capricious”, it cular collective movement” (Ferreira, 2008: 18). is tempting to call the 4/4 beat a transcontex- He means the movement on the dance floor; but tual sound object, because its erratic presence listening and sound object analysis are also collec- and familiarity – both striking amid repeti- tive, embodied activities that are therefore viable tive textures and unnamable sounds – make it interactions with EDM – that do as much justice seem almost foreign to the track, as though it to the genre, on its own terms, as dancing does. came from elsewhere. The beat is circumscribed, parenthesized, by its own frequent absences: set Nina Eidsheim reveals that listening is always col- off from the rest of the track almost as a self-suf- lective and embodied: “aural experience is predi- ficient entity. Perhaps, relative to “Capricious”, cated on our physical contact with sound waves the genre of EDM, represented by its unmista- through shared media … [such that] sound is a kable beat, is somewhat “elsewhere,” set off yet multisensory experience, tactile as well as aural” close by. The notion of transcontextuality thus (2011, pp.146-7). The concept “sound object” serves ! n° 10-1 enables speculation on this track’s relationship as a reminder that the analytical act is likewise to genre: EDM is part of the track, but there is embodied. As it invites associations of sounds more to this music than EDM or its conventions. with objects, hence with visible, tangible, material
Volume In general, the categories of sound object analysis things (as well as objects of thought, objectivity, 207 Listening to Electronic Dance Music... and other phenomena), the notion of the sound For Bennett, events are “encounters between object makes explicit the fact that analysis is an ontologically diverse actants, some human, some encounter between material bodies: sonic/aerial not, though all thoroughly material” (2010: xiv). and human bodies (see Wong, 2012). She underscores the power (“thing-power”) of nonhuman things to instigate and participate in The theory of sound objects is thus an instance of events, and to produce effects Ibid.( : 6). In fact she what Jane Bennett calls “vital materialism,” which “equate[s] affect with materiality”: the ability of a theorizes the existence and importance of nonhu- thing to affect others, to produce change, is what man bodies as “actants.” An actant is “that which makes the thing a material body. Hence, as actants, has efficacy, cando things, has sufficient coherence sounds and sound objects are genuine material to make a difference, produce effects, alter the bodies. She emphasizes that “[o]rganic and inorga- course of events” : a “source of action…[that] can nic bodies, natural and cultural objects (these dis- be human or not, or, most likely, a combination of tinctions are not particularly salient here) all are both”. (2010: viii) As such, an “actant is neither an affective,” Ibid.( : xii-xiii) and that human bodies object nor a subject but an ‘intervener’…which, by should not be considered the only active parti- virtue of its particular location in an assemblage cipants in any interaction, hence the only mate- and the fortuity of being in the right place at the rial bodies in existence. Instead, Bennett offers a right time, makes the difference, makes things vibrant monism, in which everything – sounds happen, becomes the decisive force catalyzing an and humans alike – constitutes the same affective event.” (Ibid.: 9) For Bennett, metal, garbage, and material in different forms, unconstrained by any electricity are actants. By her definition, sounds “hierarchy of being”. Of course she acknowledges and sound objects are also actants. As both objects the “differences between the knife that impales (approached by a listener) and subjects (affecting and the man impaled,” between the sound that is a listener), sounds are partially responsible for heard and the hearer; but such differences do not catalyzing the event that is the listening/analyti- imply that humans dominate their every encoun- cal act. A sound is a nonhuman actant that pro- ter (Ibid.: 9-10). Activities like listening and eating duces effects on listeners and their surroundings. are thus “encounter[s] between various and varie- A sound object is also such an actant, with the gated bodies, some of them mine, most of them additional caveat that its mode of being is deter- not, and none of which always gets the upper Volume mined by what human listeners hear, how what hand” (Ibid.: viii). they hear interacts with what they know, and how The same occurs in sound object analysis. Liste- they choose to describe the total experience. We ning bodies meet sound objects in an encounter, ! n° 10-1 could say, then, that sound objects are nonhuman the shape of which is determined by both embo- actants that are nonetheless dependent on human died parties. Sound object analysis foregrounds experiences and choices. the fact that all music is a collective encounter 208 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
between human and nonhuman bodies. So does quite understand what it was saying. At the very least, it electronic dance music as, even in its moniker, provoked affects in me … a nameless awareness of [its] it summons both the nonhuman and corporeal impossible singularity… (Ibid.: 4) movement. In fact, once we “flatten out” the dif- If a thing is to reveal its singular power, it must ferences between human and nonhuman (elec- appear to us in the right place at the right time – tronic and sonic) bodies, the difference between as the idiosyncratic placement of the EDM beat close listening and collective dancing to EDM is in “Capricious”, in the context of Miura’s infa- likewise revealed not to be as vast as we might have believed (Ibid.: 9). mous obscurity, reveals its transcontextuality. At the same time, though, we must harbor “a cer- This is not to say that the relationship of equality tain anticipatory readiness,” adopting a perspec- between humans and things or sounds is in any tive or “perceptual style” that is “open” to things’ way simple. Sounds change our minds about them affective power Ibid.( : 5). Sound object analysis even as we change them by hearing them in cer- tain ways. Sound objects, in particular, are ontolo- summons just such an “open perceptual style” gically determined by listeners’ subjective choices, by inviting us to hear sounds “vertically” as indi- memories, and so on. In a sense, then, we are the viduals, rather than as moments in a trajectory; sounds and the sounds are us. “[T]he us and the and by following in the footsteps of Schaeffer, it,” the human and the nonhuman sound object, who recognized that we can change how we hear “slip-slide into each other” (Ibid., 4). Nevertheless, at will, enabling sounds to “shimmy back and despite the fact that it is shaped by the activities forth” between various characterizations as our of listeners and artists, the sound object possesses attention continually mutates, waxes and wanes. being and affectivity of its own, separate from All the same, as we’ve seen, perception is not a those of the artist, his equipment, and his liste- mere looking-on but a participation-with and a ners. This is evident in Miura’s “Capricious”: sound creation, a rendering-manifest. “To ‘render mani- objects constitute both the artist’s creative acts and fest’ is both to receive and to participate in the self-sufficient entities, alternating between these modes of being in the analyst’s attention. Gene- shape given to that which is received,” with the rally, as Bennett puts it, things such as sounds and understanding that, as participants within it, we sound objects: cannot see or hear absolutely everything about a thing or sound. Bennett counsels us to relish our shimmied back and forth … between, on the one hand, stuff to ignore, except insofar as it betokened mystification. “Vital materialists will thus try to
! n° 10-1 human activity … and, on the other hand, stuff that linger in those moments during which they find commanded attention in its own right, as existents themselves fascinated by objects, taking them as in excess of their association with human meanings, habits, or projects. In the second moment, stuff exhi- clues to the material vitality that they share with
Volume bited its thing-power: it issued a call, even if I did not them” (Ibid.: 17). 209 Listening to Electronic Dance Music...
Conclusion such, sound object analysis engages with EDM on a level that is historically attributed only to club Vital materialism can serve as a comprehensive ontology for sound object analysis, and demons- dancing, and offers a vocabulary that accounts for trate that this analytical mode is literally a col- EDM’s defiance of norms as well as the embodied lective movement and interaction of material nature of listening. The point is, we can encounter bodies. This interaction is democratic rather than EDM in a variety of ways, via multiple, embodied dogmatic, permitting sounds and listening sub- activities, and “shimmy back and forth” between jects to affect and be affected by one another. As them. Volume ! n° 10-1 210 Mandy-Suzanne Wong
References
Alwakeel R. (2009), “IDM as a ‘Minor’ Literature: Ferreira P. (2008), “When Sound Meets Movement: The Treatment of Cultural and Musical Norms by Performance in Electronic Dance Music”, ‘Intelligent Dance Music’”, Dancecult: Journal of Leonardo Music Journal,18, pp. 17-20. Electronic Dance Music Culture, 1(1), pp. 1-21. Gaillot M. (1998), Multiple Meaning: Techno - A Bennett J. (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology Political and Artistic Laboratory of the Present, of Things,Durham, Duke University Press. Paris, Dis Voir. Translated from French by Warren Niesluchowski. Chion M. (1983), Guide Des Objets Sonores, Paris, Buchet/Chastel. Godøy R.I. (2003), “Motor-Mimetic Music Cognition”, Leonardo, 36 (4), pp. 317-19. Collin M. (2010), Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, London, Serpent’s Tail. — (2009), “Music Theory by Sonic Objects”, in Gayou E. (ed.), Polychrome Portraits: Pierre Cox C. & Warner D. (eds.) (2004), Audio Culture: Schaeffer, Paris, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Readings in Modern Music, London, Continuum. pp. 67-76. Translated from French by F. Couture. Cutler C. (2000), “Plunderphonics”, in Emmerson — (2010), “Gestural Affordances of Musical Sound”, S. (ed.), Music, Electronic Media and Culture, in Godøy R.I. & Leman M. (eds.), Musical Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 87-114. Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning, Demers J. (2010), Listening Through the Noise: New York, Routledge, pp. 103-125. The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music, Matmos & Pozo C. (1999), “Matmos Interview”, New York, Oxford University Press. Perfect Sound Forever, available at
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Schaeffer P. (1966), Traité des Objets Musicaux, Electronic Music,” Transcultural Music Review Paris, Éditions du Seuil. 14, available at