This Week's Essential Reading

10 Friday, July 1, 2011 www.thenational.ae The N!tion!l thereview The N!tion!l thereview Friday, July 1, 2011 www.thenational.ae 11 this week’s essential reading ‘The ghettoisation of pink: how it ‘It’s not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though has cornered the little-girl market’ it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance’ music { by Peggy Orenstein, The Observer } playlist " Releasing the pressure: four artists who spring to mind when listening to F&L’s new album Scritti Politti Absolute (2011) The old Green Gartside and company are perennial favourites of these pages and, indeed, impossible to ignore in this context. Emergency Room, F&L’s recent single, sounds so true to the brand of perfect pop that Scritti Politti crafted in the mid-80s, it wouldn’t look out of place on this recent new wave retrospective of their work. Jan Hammer Miami Vice: Complete Collection (2002) Hammer is also hard to ignore A growing force in Brooklyn’s vibrant underground music in this context. F&L used his studio to record their debut, scene, Ford & Lopatin use analogue synthesisers and old drum a nod, perhaps, to the kit they machines to take sounds recognisably rooted in the 1980s and expected to plunder in pursuit of their sound and, obviously, recast them as something entirely new, writes Andy Battaglia because nothing says mid- 80s more than settling down Ford & Lopatin, two young artists at htrix guise is more ambient and on the sofa and listening to work in New York, make music that experimental, but Lopatin pulls all Hammer’s belting theme tune. teaches a new lesson for the ages: of what he does together in the end. vintage matters less these days than And he does so with a full aware- vantage. Every tone and note they ness of what it might mean in an era manufacture, using old synthesiz- when technology is all around him. Thomas Dolby ers and MIDI sequencers, sounds In an interview in 2009 with Im- The Flat Earth (1984) rooted in a particular era – specifi- pose magazine, Lopatin sketched cally the 1980s. And not just the im- out the contours of a context for his A few fan sites are awash pressionistic whole of the decade, own work and that by similar artists but carefully chosen moments with- of his generation. More important with the influences F&L wear in it – montages from certain mov- than any one particular sound or on their musical sleeves, ies, scenes of leisure on the patios of style, he said, is “something even Joel Ford and Daniel Lopatin. Courtesy Shawn Brackbill from Depeche Mode to Gary particular pools, forgotten stories of grander in scale that is happening, Numan – and this man. By idle everyday happenings. something that deals more broadly his own estimate, Dolby It’s all very period-faithful even Channel Pressure with new technologies that en- Museum of American Art, thanks To that end, Lopatin has spoken of side of the TV screen in Poltergeist. that doesn’t want to be cut up.” of wonder isn’t always easy to lo- has released 26 albums. He though Ford & Lopatin’s music is Ford & Lopatin able us to detour rigid works into in part to a breakthrough piece in his new home as “a vertically inte- The music sounds like that, That goes a long way towards sig- cate, as evidenced by any number will (one suspects) be best not really Eighties at all. It’s true malleable works”. He continued: which he removed everything but grated label studio” where he and too. After a flurry of introductory nalling what’s most interesting of musical acts who go through remembered for this gem, that many of the tools used to make “Really, we’re entering into a very the slowly floating clouds from the Ford can produce their label mates sound-effects and a calming title about Ford & Lopatin: the way they the motions of touting their his- which includes Hyperactive, a it are the same as they were way ing history inside-out so as to push crude, very rude age for the dig- graphic interface of an old copy of and friends, some of whom – Laurel track, Channel Pressure strikes take sounds, tones, and timbres torical lineage too closely to leave big hit in both the US and UK. back when, and the results could it forward and ultimately dispense ital arts. The dreams of 1970s and the Super Mario Bros video game. Halo, How to Dress Well, and Autre out most forcefully with Emer- so recognisably rooted in a cer- anything to the imagination. But easily have made sense on that era’s with it altogether. 1980s engineers working in the Nowhere are such practices more Ne Veut, among many others – have gency Room, a song that goes big tain time – in this case the 1980s it’s all over Channel Pressure, in radio playlists. But the whole mind- That might sound like a lot for a field of media arts are now easily prevalent, however, than in the been gaining in terms of notice and on 1980s pomp and drama while of new-wave designs and synth- songs that sound totally 1980s but set of the music is different, not to pop act to take on, but Ford & Lopa- retrieved, processed and ultimately murky margins of underground regard. managing to subvert the expecta- pop dreams – and recast them, by which, if they were to travel back in Carly Simon mention the presence of a ques- tin seem smart enough – and defi- dispatched back into society with- music where Ford & Lopatin thrive. The most focused attention, how- tions of what such sounds are nor- way of contemporary computer time, would totally freak out any- Why (1982) tion that continues to linger: what nitely technologically agile enough out all the smoke and mirrors. Lots Practising their craft in public for a ever, has gone to Ford & Lopatin mally made to service. Borderline- tools and holistic ways of thinking body who heard them. does the idea of the 1980s mean to – to do such a project justice. of crazy new artists are finding a few years now (until recently under themselves, who just put out their embarrassing splodges of MIDI common among young artists for In the same interview with F&L use this as the closing those who can barely remember liv- Lopatin, especially, has estab- value.” the stage name Games), the duo live debut full-length album, Channel bass – imagine something Ferris whom computers themselves are Altered Zones, Lopatin likened his ing within it? Joel Ford and Daniel lished himself as a sort of sage phi- One need not look far for work in the hi-fi hinterlands of bohemian Pressure. A good way into it comes Bueller might have tapped out on tools, as something new. working process to “something track on a recent mix Lopatin met when they were kids in losopher and theorist of the young that adheres to such values, from Brooklyn, where old analogue syn- by way of the cover: a stylised photo- his keyboard while goofing off in It’s not quite deconstruction, ei- more in line with hybridisation compilation that also features high school and have made music, and humming musical under- odd web experiments that use thesizers and computer modules graph of a guy splayed out in bed in his room – angle the song towards ther; instead of channelling their or alchemy.” At their best, Ford & (naturally) Scritti Politti. together and apart, for many years. ground, in New York and further remixed video and repurposed have increasingly come to replace an iridescent bedroom. What else the past, but then there’s a vertigi- energy into dressing such sounds Lopatin make one wonder where Originally produced by Nile Not that many though – they are afield. Under his alias Oneohtrix sound to ambitious ventures into things like guitars and drums. They do we see in that image? There’s nous swirl to the production of it down or pulling them apart, Ford & the two of those – clinical hybridi- Rodgers and Bernard Edwards both only 28 years old, born in 1983. Point Never, he’s charged to the top hacking old software for estab- are figureheads of a scene, so much a big TV, a joystick, a keyboard, that couldn’t have actually hap- Lopatin manage to build up a sort sation and mystical alchemy – of Chic-fame, the song is a The allure of Ford & Lopatin is of the list of young artists using old lished galleries with white walls. so that they’ve started their own sets of looming speakers, blink- pened decades ago. of mutant form of tribute or hom- begin and end. perfect fit for the duo’s chilled more than mere historical simu- gear – analogue synthesizers, crud- In New York for instance, digital imprint (called Software) for a size- ing screens, floods of alternately Speaking about such an effect age that steers around the senti- sound. Getting lost in music lation, however. Theirs is less a dy vintage drum machines, and so artist Cory Arcangel has become able indie record label, Mexican soothing and eerie white light. It in an interview with the web- mental aspects of nostalgia and Andy Battaglia is a New York- has rarely sounded this good project in recreating history than on – to make sounds fit for inclu- the youngest artist in nearly 40 Summer, whose ownership also set looks like an idyll of a teenage boy at site Altered Zones, Lopatin said: drives down into the sense of won- based writer whose work appears in or (oddly) this contemporary. an exercise in revising, rewriting, sion in the old new wave. years to garner a full-floor exhibi- them up with their state-of-the-art home, or else the aftermath of a visi- “We’ve always wanted to experi- der that has yet to fall away from The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, recapitulating – an exercise in turn- The style he favours in his Oneo- tion at the prestigious Whitney studio to work and mess around in. tation by whatever was on the other ment in this way, to cut up music aspects of the past. That sense Spin and Pitchfork.