Sonic Utopia and Social Dystopia in the Music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Boston University Institutional Repository (OpenBU) Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2015 Sonic utopia and social dystopia in the music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5 https://hdl.handle.net/2144/15988 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation Sonic Utopia and Social Dystopia in the Music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5 by EVAN FRANCIS BARROS B.A., Boston College, 2004 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 © Copyright by EVAN FRANCIS BARROS 2015 Approved by First Reader _________________________________________________________ Victor Coelho, Ph.D. Professor of Music Second Reader _________________________________________________________ Bruce Schulman, Ph.D. William E. Huntington Professor of History DEDICATION For my parents, Jack and Rose. !iv ACKNOWLEGMENTS Thank you to my wonderfully supportive dissertation committee: Victor Coelho, Bruce Schulman, Brita Heimarck, Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman, and Andrew Shenton. Special thanks to Dr. Coelho for serving as my advisor and guiding me through this journey with invaluable advice, perspective and inspiration. This project would not have been possible without the support of the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University, and the faculty members and staff who have helped along the way, especially Kim Sichel, Nina Silber, Marilyn Halter, Robert Chodat, Anita Patterson, Jessica Sewell, Paul Schmitz, and Tony Barrand. Thank you to my loving family: Manuel, Maria, Lilly, Gloriana, Devin, Maggie, Victor, Ester, Kenny, Stephanie, Anabela, Selina, Joaquim, Candida, Isabel, Ethan and Bradnee. Cheers to my friends who were there in good times and bad: Morris and Melissa, Mikal, Sophie, Hank, Clare, Mary, Karen, Kathleen, Mel, Liz, Nahla, Keejay, Chad, Jeff, and Dan. Finally, my deepest thanks to my parents, Jack and Rose, for their endless love and support. !v Sonic Utopia and Social Dystopia in the Music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5 (Order No. ) EVAN BARROS Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2015 Major Professor: Victor Coelho, Professor of Music ABSTRACT Twentieth-century popular music is fundamentally associated with electronics in its creation and recording, consumption, modes of dissemination, and playback. Traditional musical analysis, placing primacy on notated music, generally focuses on harmony, melody, and form, with issues of timbre and postproduction effects remaining largely unstudied. Interdisciplinary methodological practices address these limitations and can help broaden the analytical scope of popular idioms. Grounded in Jacques Attali’s critical theories about the political economy of music, this dissertation investigates how the subversive noise of electronic sound challenges a controlling order and predicts broad cultural realignment. This study demonstrates how electronic noise, as an extra-musical element, creates modern soundscapes that require a new mapping of musical form and social intent. I further argue that the use of electronics in popular music signifies a technologically-obsessed postwar American culture moving rapidly towards an online digital revolution. I examine how electronic music technology introduces new sounds concurrent with generational shifts, projects imagined utopian and dystopian futures, and engages the tension between !vi automated modern life and emotionally validating musical communities in real and virtual spaces. Chapter One synthesizes this interdisciplinary American studies project with the growing scholarship of sound studies in order to construct theoretical models for popular music analysis drawn from the fields of musicology, history, and science and technology studies. Chapter Two traces the emergence of the electronic synthesizer as a new sound that facilitated the transition of a technological postwar American culture into the politicized counterculture of the 1960s. The following three chapters provide case studies of individual popular artists’ use of electronic music technology to express societal and political discontent: 1) Jimi Hendrix’s application of distortion and stereo effects to narrate an Afrofuturist consciousness in the 1960s; 2) Trent Reznor’s aggressive industrial rejection of Conservatism in the 1980s; and 3) Deadmau5’s mediation of online life through computer-based production and performance in the 2000s. Lastly, this study extends existing discussions within sound studies to consider the cultural implications of music technology, noise politics, electronic timbre, multitrack audio, digital analytical techniques and online communities built through social media. !vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEGMENTS ......................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................viii CHAPTER ONE - SOUND STUDIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO MUSIC AND ELECTRONICS ...........................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO - SWITCHED-ON: THE FAR-OUT NEW NOISE OF THE ELECTRONIC SYNTHESIZER .......................................................................................46 CHAPTER THREE - TRANSMITTING FROM STATION EXP: JIMI HENDRIX AND ELECTRIC CONSCIOUSNESS NOW IN STEREO .....................................................100 CHAPTER FOUR - SURVIVALISM IN THE PRETTY HATE MACHINE: NINE INCH NAILS AND MULTITRACK MUSIC ............................................................................152 CHAPTER FIVE - THE HAU5 OF THE MAU5: DEADMAU5, ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC AND ONLINE COMMUNITY ...........................................................205 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................251 DISCOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................257 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................258 !viii CURRICULUM VITAE ..................................................................................................273 !ix CHAPTER ONE - SOUND STUDIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO MUSIC AND ELECTRONICS Twentieth-century popular music is fundamentally associated with electronics in its creation, recording, consumption, modes of dissemination and playback, and this relationship between music and technology has been the focus of an increasing amount of scholarship over the past fifteen years. Music historians Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco point to the uniqueness of the synthesizer, which uses an electric signal rather than acoustics, in arguing for its revolutionary impact on twentieth century music.1 In The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records, musicologist Albin Zak chooses to focus on “recordists,” rather than musicians.2 While most analysis references chords or lyrics, Zak breaks a musical “track” into five components: musical performance, timbre, echo, ambience, and texture, including important distinctions between a room’s ambient reverberations and the purely mechanical effect of adding echo. It is a different way of thinking about music that considers the process as more production than performance. 1 Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 2 Albin Zak, The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001). This shift is meaningful in that it considers the permanent sound recording as the essential musical document rather than the typically privileged written score, lyrical content, or harmonic arrangement. It also extends the musical conversation beyond songwriters and performers to engineers and producers, as well as the recording and mixing tools used in making a record. !1 Still, the layers of electronic technology that are integral to music’s existence remain the least studied or understood aspect of music making. In this dissertation, I argue that the growing presence of electronics in popular music signifies a technologically-obsessed postwar industrial culture moving rapidly toward an online digital revolution. Using a case study approach, each chapter is centered around a popular artist and selected electronic technology that informs their work, beginning in the 1950s with the invention of electronic instruments, such as Robert Moog’s synthesizers, through electronic dance music producer Deadmau5’s use of computerized technology to create a soundtrack for online digital culture. Employing new theoretical models from the fields of history, musicology, and sound studies, and approaching this topic from an interdisciplinary American studies perspective, I will demonstrate how this electronic “noise,” as an extra-musical element, impacts cultural history and creates modern soundscapes that require a new mapping of musical form and intent. Lastly, I