Come Closer Acousmatic Intimacy in Popular Music Sound
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Emil Kraugerud Come Closer Acousmatic Intimacy in Popular Music Sound A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Musicology Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo 2020 Contents Acknowledgements V 1. Introduction 1 Aim of the Dissertation and Research Questions 6 Clarification of Terms 7 Knowledge Aims 10 Analyzing Recorded Popular Music Sound 16 Interviews and Their Role in Hermeneutic Research 26 Outline of the Dissertation 29 2. Perceptions of Physical Proximity 33 Intimacy as Interpersonal Proximity 34 Mediated Intimacy 38 Portrayed Intimacy 43 Conclusion 47 3. Acousmatic Intimacy as Relation 49 Intimate Awareness and Interaction 51 Recorded Song Persona 54 Authenticity 59 The “Realism” of Virtual Performances 64 The Double Paradox of Acousmatic Intimacy 67 Domestic Intimate Space 70 Metaphorical Intimate Space 74 (Positive and) Negative Notions of Acousmatic Intimacy 76 Conclusion 80 4. Technological Facilitation of Acousmatic Intimacy 83 The Microphone and its Intimate Affordances 87 Magnetic Tape and Multitrack Recording: Reduced Noise and Increased Control 92 Dynamic Range Processors: Controlling Intimate Proximity 95 Reverb and the Construction of Intimate Space 98 Stereo Recording and Pseudo-Stereo Techniques: Exaggerated Presence 103 Noise as Signifier of Silence 105 Hyperintimacy: Intimacy Beyond Intimacy 107 Conclusion 112 5. Soft, Intense, and Close 115 Background 116 Intimacy, Closeness, and Smallness 118 What Happened Is What You Hear: Siv Jakobsen’s “To Leave You” 121 Hyperintimacy by Contrast: Jordan Mackampa’s “Teardrops in a Hurricane” 132 Conclusion 139 6. Constructing Relational Closeness 141 Background 142 Intimacy as Perceived Relational Closeness 144 Portrayed Intimacy and Human Imperfection: David Byrne’s “My Love Is You” 148 Intimacy in Failing Technology: Bumcello’s “Je Ne Sais Quality” 157 Conclusion 164 7. Conclusion 167 Summary of Findings 167 Acousmatic Intimacy as an Analytical Framework 172 Acousmatic Intimacy as an Approach to Record Production 173 Acousmatic Intimacy as a Means for Listeners to Connect With Recorded Music 174 Further Research 175 References 177 Bibliography 177 Podcasts 196 Videography 196 Referenced Lyrics 196 Discography 197 Appendices 199 Acknowledgements Thanks to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo for providing the financial support to develop and execute the project that resulted in this dissertation. This work has taken a great amount of help and encouragement from a lot of people whom I wish to thank. First of all, I am deeply grateful to my supervisors, Ragnhild Brøvig- Hanssen and Eirik Askerøi, for their invaluable support and insightful comments. Ragnhild has followed this project from the very beginning, and has contributed greatly to how the project has turned out via her detailed and constructive feedback. We have had many enjoyable discussions on the sometimes confusing nature of acousmatic intimacy, which have been of massive help for me in shaping the project. Eirik has provided critical comments at the later stages of the project, which have helped to situate the project more clearly within the field of popular musicology. Ragnhild and Eirik are both truly inspiring scholars, and their research has been of great impact to my own academic path. I am very thankful to Susan Rogers and Matt Ingram for taking the time to share their thoughts about intimacy in record production and thus enrich this project. Thanks also to Siv Jakobsen for putting me in touch with Ingram. Thanks to Nils Nadeau who copyedited this dissertation, thus ensuring an as pleasant reading experience as possible. Thanks also to Gisela Attinger for helping with references. Several people have offered comments and critique at various stages of the project, and have thus impacted its end result. In particular, I want to thank Mads Walther-Hansen for commenting on my midway assessment, including two early chapter drafts; Ulf A. S. Holbrook for elaborate comments on two thesis seminar presentations and for all our discussions on spatiality in music; Tore Størvold for reading and commenting on two chapters in the final stages of writing. In the fall of 2018, the Faculty of Humanities granted me financial support to spend four months at Université Laval, Québec. I am deeply thankful to Serge Lacasse for inviting me to be a visiting scholar, for including me in seminars and for letting me attend his inspiring classes. Thanks also to Méi-Ra St-Laurent and Todd Picard for their friendship and for introducing me to Québecois culture. VI Acknowledgements I have presented drafts of this dissertation at several conferences and seminars including Art of Record Production (ARP) conferences and those organized by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). Thanks to the organizers as well as everyone who has commented on my presentations. Special thanks to Gary Bromham and Joseph Coughlan-Allen for many inspiring conversations about acousmatic intimacy and record production. Thanks also to Bjørnar Sandvik, my ARP travel partner since 2015. I would like to thank my past and present colleagues at the Department of Musicology for the encouragement and company the past three years. Stan Hawkins has been incredibly supportive and has kindly included me in seminars both at the University of Oslo and the University of Agder. Thanks to Rolf Inge Godøy for organizing the department’s PhD courses and for giving feedback on my papers. Thanks also to Peter Edwards for the feedback on the same papers. Thanks to the administrative staff for all their help. Special thanks to Anne Danielsen for the encouragement and inspiration. Thanks also to Ellis, Kyle, Victor, Alan, Áine and Kai Arne for their friendship. A big thanks to the wonderful crowd of fellow PhD students for their friendship and inspiration: Tejaswinee, Ulf, Tore, Bjørnar, Marek, Agatha, Kai Arne, Kjell Andreas, Stéphane, Alex, Çağrı, and all the rest. There is no musicology without music, and I have been so fortunate to spend my time away from writing by playing in bands with a bunch of beautiful people, including Stian K, Simen, Mats, Kristian, Ellis, Tore, Kyle, Unn, Sigurd, Espen, Stian E, Krister, Hanne, Trond Helge and Stian F. I would also like to thank all those who I have recorded or otherwise worked with in the studio. Thanks to all friends for their support and not least for the occasional breaks from research. Special thanks to Stian K and Jens for all our hikes, Lars for the coffee, Magne and Martin for the brew, K72 for the sushi, and Stian E for being a wonderful flat mate. I am also deeply grateful to my family, and especially my parents Dorte and Ola Kraugerud for their encouragement and for being there. Finally, I want to express deepest appreciation to Hannah for her support and patience. Emil Kraugerud Oslo, August 13, 2020 Chapter 1 Introduction [N]o amount of engineering has ever allowed a concert situation to recapture the intimacy that studio recordings offer the human voice. (Gracyk, 1996, p. 26) It was time to listen to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot again. Several years had passed since I last listened to it, and as a Wilco fan since 2008, I relisten to all their albums once in a while, though some more often than others. Before downloading the album this time, I felt a certain reluctance. In recent years, my engagement with the songs on that album had mainly been through live shows whenever the band stopped by Oslo, and to be honest, I like the songs but don’t love them as much as other parts of the band’s catalogue, which made me skeptical about dedicating fifty-one minutes of my life to listening to it for the umpteenth time. I did it anyway. The opening song, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” (2002) starts with forty-four seconds of random sounds, including synthesizers, a piano, a drumbeat that comes and goes, and some kind of noise (possibly the sound of an electric coffee whisk iterating piano strings), before a Hammond organ and a wide-sounding doubletracked acoustic guitar kick in. Next appears a brilliant combination of bass riff and drum fill beneath a melodic theme played on crotales that returns at several points during the song. Then, Jeff Tweedy starts singing. I was already happy with my decision when the acoustic guitar entered, but I was positively swept away by Tweedy’s soaring, pitchy voice, which evoked a profound sense of vulnerability and weariness. It was as though his voice could break at any time—as though he was not just performing a role when he sang “What was I thinking when I said it didn’t hurt?”1 It sounded like he was really feeling it, and somehow, when listening to the recording, I felt it too. Listening to the album version of the song was meaningful on a very different level than listening to it live (or listening to or watching a live recording of the band performing it). Although I always enjoy seeing and hearing 1 Lyrics written by Tweedy (2002), my transcription. 2 Introduction Wilco perform “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” it is a far cry from the intimacy of hearing Tweedy share his concerns with me in a meticulously constructed recording. This cursory glance at my rediscovery of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” does not do justice to what goes into a recording, but it points to some of the ways in which recorded music can engage the listener in ways very different from live performances, especially in terms of experienced intimacy. This condition also forms the fundament for this dissertation: the sense of intimacy one experiences when listening to certain recordings is often the result of specific production and performance techniques. It is further connected to what that sound means to us, and how it means to us.