PondaBlog

a little while ago i posted some thoughts on listening and technology, and how technology is changing the way we listen. if you haven’t read it – and yes, i’m a little hurt if you haven’t but i’ll get over it – you can check it out here.

interestingly, i’ve stumbled upon a couple of other recent musings by Simon Reynolds and Geeta Dayal that also probe similar thoughts on how today’s tech is changing the way we listen to music – and, indeed, the way we relate to the world.

a lengthy quote appears below from reynolds, part of a larger essay that appears in Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture (don’t let the title scare you off) that examines the debate around a particularly virulent sound called the hardcore continuum. 

anyways, debate aside (and what’s to debate really? of course the ‘nuum exists, haters!)  what particularly struck me was this bit:

“Here I’m getting into a more speculative area, but the impression I have is that for many of the younger generation, historical thinking has grown foreign to the way they relate to music. The musical past has become spatialized: sounds from all the different eras of history are equally available to us, and, furthermore, they are just as available as the music of the present. In one sense the past is totally present, all of it, in a way that it’s never been before. But historical depth drops out, the original context or meaning of the music becomes steadily more irrelevant; music is just material to redeploy. If you’ve grown up, as anyone under the age of 30 really has, with a relationship to music based around total access, superabundance, and the erosion of a sense of sounds having placement within an historical or temporal scheme, then thinking about music in terms of causal links and development through time becomes ever more alien to your consciousness. The idea that jungle led to UK garage, or 2step evolved into grime (so crucial to those, like me, who lived through these transformations, thrilled to them and puzzled over them in real-time), becomes both irrecoverable and simply irrelevant to their practice as DJs, or producers or consumers. Leaps across the genrescape, through affinity of sound, seem more persuasive, even if there’s no actual historical connection there.”

reynolds admits he’s getting into a more speculative arena here. but i side with him (no big surprise, if you read my post above) – instant access does erode historicity, linkages, a sense of connections. increasingly, we’re ending up in a world of surface, not depth. as reynolds writes, ”The musical past has become spatialized.”

and so we come to dayal’s piece, which appears in frieze. here, she reflects on the effect of having endless downloadable mixes at the tip of your fingers:

“After many years of engaging actively with dance music – tracking every notable 12-inch release, digging for vinyl in crates, writing reviews – I felt a bit like Herbert in ‘Leipzig’, a lone wanderer in an empty club. I was downloading more music than ever – bleeding-edge dubstep mixes, obscure German techno podcasts – while becoming numb to the experience of listening. It was almost impossible to keep up with the avalanche of DJ mixes posted to Facebook, Twitter and various blogs. Despite all this social media, I felt less connected to a larger experience than ever before. In some cases, social media seemed to have backfired completely; some DJ friends recently lamented that fewer people were attending their nights; instead they are waiting until after the event to look up the photos on Facebook and download the recordings.”

“On this new online dancefloor, I was more in control than ever – constantly pointing, clicking, downloading and hearing new tracks practically instantly. But I had forgotten how to surrender to the music I loved so much, to an experience more expansive than myself.”

i feel a real affinity with what dayal’s saying. having dug for music for decades in all sorts of nooks and crannies, the availability of a seemingly infinite amount of mixes has been, in one way, awesome. i’ve managed to get my hands on so much dance and electronic music, which can be particularly difficult – and yes, pricey – to track down in the physical world. and for that i’m grateful.

but the experience can also seem overwhelming – the sheer volume of material that’s available online starts to, as dayal notes, make one “numb to the experience of listening.”

her comments on social media are also illuminating: “Despite all this social media, I felt less connected to a larger experience than ever before.” yes, everything and everyone is increasingly bound in all sorts of ways, but we’re also becoming more atomized by the nano-second. so are we just more isolated, all together? or is something else coming – some other way of listening, dancing, being – that we just can’t envision in the midst of this flux and noise?

again, i’m not one to preach for the abolition of iPods and MP3s – far from it. but technological developments do not occur in vacuums. technology is not just a tool; it also bleeds into our very sense of being and identity, whether we’re listening to music or relating to another human. personally, in this age of access and demystification, i’d argue for a remystification of sorts – a bit more surrender now and then.

perhaps that’s a future post. right now i’m off to download the new mix from xxxy - which is ace, by the way.