Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen Music in Bits and Bits of Music Signatures of Digital Mediation in Popular Music Recordings Music in Bits and Bits of Music Signatures of Digital Mediation in Popular Music Recordings Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Musicology Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo 2013 Contents Acknowledgments vii 1. Introduction 1 Methodology 5 A Digital Revolution? 12 Opaque and Transparent Mediation 14 Studying Technological Parameters 22 Outline of the Thesis 29 2. The Spatiotemporal Disjuncture of Music 33 The Mechanical Era of Schizophonia 35 The Magnetic Era of Schizophonia 38 The Digital Era of Schizophonia 42 The Development of Different Recording Paradigms 49 Conclusion 57 3. Making Sense of Digital Spatiality: Kate Bush’s Spatial Collage 61 Conceptualizing and Fabricating Spatiality in Music 63 A House of Surrealistic Spaces 69 A House of Terrifying Spaces 78 Conclusion 83 4. The Rebirth of Silence in the Company of Noise: 85 Portishead’s Lo-Fi/Hi-Fi Music Digital Silence and the Holy Grail of “High Fidelity” 86 Past Medium Signatures Revisited 91 Portishead Going Retro 95 Conclusion 104 5. Cut-Ups and Glitches: DJ Food’s Freeze and Flow 105 Digital Cut-Ups and Signal Dropouts in “Break” 106 The Double Meaning of Aestheticized Malfunctions 114 Music within the Music 119 Conclusion 122 6. Mash-Ups and Digital Recycling: 125 Justin Bieber featuring Slipknot Mash-Ups as a Digital Signature of Music Recycling 127 “Psychosocial Baby” 133 Consumption as Mode of Production 141 Conclusion 148 7. Popular Music in the Digital Era 153 A New Compositional Palette for Popular Music Making 154 A New Era of Schizophonia 160 Historical Listening Constraints and the Tuning of the Ear 163 The Significance of Mediation to Popular Music 166 Conclusion 167 Coda 169 Bibliography of Cited Works 171 Select Discography 195 Acknowledgments I am deeply thankful to the Faculty of Humanities for providing me with the financial support to embark on the stimulating three-year journey that has now produced this thesis. Many individuals made my work both possible and pleasurable. First and foremost, I owe profound gratitude to my supervisor, Anne Danielsen, who has been a source of inspiration for me throughout the process. Serving as my supervisor while I was a master’s student, Danielsen first introduced me to the work of Louis Marin, who greatly influenced this thesis. She also granted me a master’s student scholarship to participate in her research project, “Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” from which I learned a lot and to which I owe my decision to continue with music research after I had finished my master’s degree. She has always been open-minded and generous with her time and knowledge, and I also appreciated her detailed and constructive comments on all of my drafts, and her general encouragement and support along the way. I am also very grateful to Nils Nadeau, who copyedited this thesis, as well as most of my published articles and paper manuscripts. In addition to his thorough and well-considered improvement of my language, he has offered clever and constructive queries that have enabled me to improve the content considerably. I want to thank all of my colleagues at the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo, in both the academic and the administrative staffs, for the pleasure of their company and for their help and valuable insights. In particular, I am very grateful to Stan Hawkins for his constructive and detailed feedback on papers and drafts, for his invitations to various seminars at the University of Oslo and the University of Agder, and for his introductions to distinguished scholars such as Simon Frith, Allan F. Moore, Derek B. Scott, Philip Tagg, and Robert Walser. His guidance has helped my awareness of where I position myself intellectually within the field of popular music. Tellef Kvifte has also been a great inspiration to me, and I thank him for his sharp-eyed readings of drafts and for his instant exposure of my leaps of logic in our discussions. I am also grateful for the many interesting and inspiring (academic and nonacademic) discussions I have had with Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen, whom I have been so fortunate to have as my office neighbor. Special thanks go to Arnfinn Bø-Rygg, Rolf Inge Godøy, Alexander Refsum Jensenius, Mats Johanson, Jørgen Langdalen, and Ståle Wikshåland for guiding me to many valuable academic resources. I have benefited much from my fellow PhD students, in particular those with whom I have met regularly in discussions and reading forums: Eirik Askerøi, Kjetil Klette Bøhler, Marita Buanes Djupvik, Peter Edwards, Håvard Enge, Mia Göran, Marion Hestholm, Risto Holopainen, Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby, Eystein Sandvik, Marie Strand Skånland, Maria Witek, and Mikkel Broch Ålvik. Special thanks go to Hedda, who read through two of my chapters during their later stages and offered comments that improved them significantly. Special thanks also go to Paul Harkins (University of Edinburgh), with whom I have co-written an article and discussed many things throughout my PhD period. Susan McClary offered valuable and insightful comments on papers, as well as the drafts of two of my articles, during her time as Professor II at the University of Oslo. I am also thankful for the feedback of Tor Dybo, Allan F. Moore, Michael Rauhut, Derek B. Scott, and Robert Walser during various seminars. My thanks also go to Nils-Egil Langeland and Eivind Engedal for reading and commenting on some of my drafts concerning studio production, to Hildegunn Lauve Hansen for designing the illustrations, and to Gisela Attinger for helping me with the references. The Faculty of Humanities granted me financial support for six-week stays at the University of Edinburgh and at Columbia University. I am very thankful to Simon Frith for inviting me to be a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh, for giving me constructive comments on my early drafts, and for letting me attend his inspiring seminars, through which I met several generous and engaging PhD students as well. My thanks also go to Nick Prior (University of Edinburgh), who met with Paul Harkins and me and gave us helpful feedback on an early draft of our article on mash- up music. I am also very grateful to Lydia Goehr for inviting me to be a visiting scholar at Columbia University, for reading through many of my texts, for offering me valuable feedback and guidance, and for letting me attend her inspiring classes and seminars, as well as several very enjoyable evenings at restaurants with her and her study group. I also thank her for putting me in touch with Bernard Gendron, who was kind enough to read through several of my chapters and discuss them over some very pleasant dinners. viii This thesis has been the basis for several publications. Parts of chapter 2 appear in Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen (2013): “The Magnetic Tape Recorder: Recording Aesthetics in the New Era of Shizophonia,” in Material Culture and Electronic Sound, eds. Frode Weium and Tim Boon, pp. 131–57 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press/Rowman and Littlefield Publishers). Parts of chapter 3 appear in Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen (2013): “The Naturalised and the Surreal: Changes in the Perception of Popular Music Sound,” Organised Sound 18/1, pp. 71–80. Parts of chapter 5 appear in Ragnhild Brøvig- Hanssen (2010): “Opaque Mediation. The Cut-and-Paste Groove in DJ Food’s ‘Break,’” in Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction, ed. Anne Danielsen, pp. 159–75 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate). Parts of chapter 6 appear in Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Paul Harkins (2012): “Contextual Incongruity and Musical Congruity: The Aesthetics and Humour in Mash-Ups,” Popular Music 31/1, pp. 87– 104. Moreover, drafts of this thesis have been presented at conferences organized by the research project “Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” “Art of Record Production” conferences, and the conferences of IASPM. I want to thank the organizers and audiences of the conference sessions, and the editors, publishers, and anonymous reviewers of these books and journals, for providing me with valuable feedback as well. Lastly, I want to express my profound appreciation to my family and friends for their steadfast and unflagging support, and for always being there for me. Very special thanks go to my husband, Henning, first of all for his presence but also for being my greatest discussion partner and for lending me his musical ear and analytical and critical skills. I’m also most grateful to my daughter, Hedvig, for helping me not to disappear in my research. RBH Oslo, 14 December 2012 ix Chapter 1 Introduction A message appears on my iPhone: a package awaits me at the post office. I rush down to find a rare bootleg CD of The Grey Album by American producer Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton). I bought the album on eBay from someone who managed to acquire it in 2004, when the limited edition of three thousand copies was released. The album has since become legendary, partly because of the music’s conceptual and aesthetic appeal, and partly because of the album’s political consequences. The Grey Album combines unauthorized samples from the Beatles’ untitled 1968 Capitol release commonly known as The White Album—and the a capella tracks from Jay-Z’s The Black Album (2003, Roc-a-Fella). (The alternate version of The Black Album was released by Roc-a-Fella as an invitation to remix and reuse Jay-Z’s tracks.) Although the three thousand pressed copies of The Grey Album were intended to be promotion demos or limited-edition collector’s items, the Internet intervened, distributing the project far and wide as it circulated through cyberspace.