The newest edition of Resonant Frequency over at Pitchfork is a really interesting read. Not only does it respond to a Langdon Winner essay (who was, as you may recall, the star of my last posting), but it mirrors something I’ve been concerned with lately. I’ve noticed that since I’ve graduated from Gatech, I’ve not been as adventurous in my music listening as I used to be. I remember recently listening to a recent Pruient release and finding that it gave me a headache (which has always been the case with Pruient, but I used to, at least, give them a chance). I’ve been avoiding Wolf Eyes, Sunburned Hand of Man, and anything labeled “psych” recently. I think part of the reason is that music is no longer a project for me, to borrow the terms from the PFM column. Given the fact that I spend so much time in deep analysis of texts, films, and other social phenomenon, I can’t dedicate as much time to listening to complex music, I think. Rather, I want music to be a space of relaxation, something I can do to unwind. That said, I decided to turn off the Junior Boys’ album, upon reading that column, and spend some more time with the record that was probably my favorite of last year: Nachtmystium’s Instinct:Decay. While this isn’t as challenging as some of the stuff I used to spend considerable time with as an undergraduate, it’s nice to listen to music that is a little more difficult to summarize, explain, or love.
At the same time, I totally get Mark Richardson’s point about records and how they grow your ability to hear music. I put on Fizheuer Zieheuer yesterday while Shawna and I were studying. Despite the rather boring nature of the track (it’s more or less polka-house for forty minutes), something about it had appealed to me. When it came on after Philip Glass’s Solo Piano, I think things clicked. Ricardo Villalobos’s track has more in common with John Adam’s “The Chairman Dances” than it does with dance music. I’m getting this record, now, I think. I’m also interested to get back into some of the rather difficult German tech house I was listening to earlier in the year, in light of how I now “get” it’s relationship to the minimalist classical tradition.
