Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Wordless bridge
Sometimes you don't need to have lyrics in your bridge. You can just go somewhere different with the music. And it can sound really good, especially if it tells a bit of a story in itself with tension and resolution; majors and minors. I noticed this in Jamie Barnes' amazing version of Joy to the world. There's probably a technical musical name for this kind of thing, it's probably not even called a bridge. Something Italian.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Vocal samples and contextual irony
It seems like vocal samples, at least in indie music, are often used in a pretty narrow way -- ironically. I wonder to what extent this colours even samples intended to be taken at face value. The song that got me thinking was Tuung's Wind-up birds which uses samples from some creaky old BBC series. This is an example of many similar songs: the content and delivery is campy and odd, the content is probably edited to surrealist effect -- the irony is obvious. By ironic, I guess I mean that we listen to the samples in ways separate from the original intended meaning. For example: we appreciate old thespian accents, or we experience nostalgia for our childhood or we are follow a new subversive narrative stitched together from pieces of the old.
BBC series/turn-the-page stories are popular. But another favourite is the hell-fire preacher (see Sons of Apollo from Half-smiles of the decomposed from Guided by voices). The irony here seems to work in a similar but slightly different way. While the delivery may sound old-fashioned and over-the-top, the real irony stems from the seeming outrageousness of the content itself. This seems to be so self-evident, that there is little need for other guidance or commentary on how the listener is to interpret the material. The juxtaposition between the style of music, the aesthetic of the artist and the preacher seems to be enough. It seems to (probably rightly) presuppose a deeply secular audience who, along with the artist, can only wonder at, or scorn the bizarre religious convictions of another time.
I reckon indie Christian artists who insert 'straight' samples from preachers (or even Bible passages such as in Red Letter's One Righteous Man) are fighting against the way our ears have been trained to hear this kind of stuff. But perhaps it's time to start reclaiming some ground.
BBC series/turn-the-page stories are popular. But another favourite is the hell-fire preacher (see Sons of Apollo from Half-smiles of the decomposed from Guided by voices). The irony here seems to work in a similar but slightly different way. While the delivery may sound old-fashioned and over-the-top, the real irony stems from the seeming outrageousness of the content itself. This seems to be so self-evident, that there is little need for other guidance or commentary on how the listener is to interpret the material. The juxtaposition between the style of music, the aesthetic of the artist and the preacher seems to be enough. It seems to (probably rightly) presuppose a deeply secular audience who, along with the artist, can only wonder at, or scorn the bizarre religious convictions of another time.
I reckon indie Christian artists who insert 'straight' samples from preachers (or even Bible passages such as in Red Letter's One Righteous Man) are fighting against the way our ears have been trained to hear this kind of stuff. But perhaps it's time to start reclaiming some ground.
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