Wednesday, November 18, 2015

mouth music (digital abject)

Oneohtrix Point Never – Ezra from guy_do_or_die on Vimeo.




Interesting "review" of Garden of Delete over at Quietus by Ryan Alexander Diduck, which treats Dan Lopatin as an "overproducer" in three senses: super-prolific;  micro-intensive in terms of sound-design; and extensive as regards as the macro-context assembled around the release.

(I say "review" with quote marks because the piece stops short of actually judging the record or saying anything definitive about it as artifact, source of pleasure, etc).


In digi-maximalist terms, Oneohtrix Point Never has a simultaneously implosive-explosive thing going on it and around it. Implosive, in terms of the production process, processing, editing, range of sources brought into play and into friction. Explosive, in the sense of erecting this enormous carapace of what Diduck calls "para-text"  - "the video clips, the fake tribute  band the MIDI file release" so that others can make their own versions of the tracks, fake genres hypergrunge and cyberdrone, etc etc - around GoD....  blurring the distinctions between conceptual-framing, social-media, and promotion.... and causing the notion of album-as-event to be stretched to the limit....  such that consuming GoD adequately would take an enormous investment of one's time and energy.   


Digi-max also in the sense of prog echoes - concepts, the elaboration of a sub-world (Rush coming up as a reference point)

(Bit of a digi-max month with the return of Rustie and Grimes).  

Spiel from the creator himself addressing  the issue of fans getting "the payoff of all the idiosyncratic detail I put into it"

Weird, I subtitled this post "digital abject" , based on the processed vocal-goo, before I even saw the Verge interview where Dan says "The theme is pus. It's things that leak that can't be contained", then connects that to both Kristeva's Powers of Horror and puberty, and then discusses how his intent with GoD was: "how do I kind of vaguely represent things that leak or things that are kind of disgusting but still seductive? But then there's this other part of it which is like, leaks or things that can't be encrypted or things that aren't secure" 

Grunge, in itself, is a synonym for the abject   - originally, meaning grot, dirt ... then noise/distortion... then the socially abject (wasted youth, burn-outs) albeit as a self-chosen identity as much imposed....