Part Four Undermind
The final section deals with 5 topics. Joy Division and music production. Organum, noise and the uncanny, Nurse with wound, TNB and the cover version. Dante's Inferno and black metal theory and finally harsh noise and harsh noise wall, all 5 were originally papers presented at various symposia.
Supplementing (in) Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures.
First presented at Atrocity Exhibition: A Symposium on Joy Division, 2015. This opens with a discussion of music production which I couldn't follow, Hegarty asserts "The culture industry has always liked to 'do it clean'". This I don't understand. Then the introduction of producers giving a particular – I assume clean sound? such as Phil Spector? And states "The more interventionist the producer (or non-artist involved in the recording process), the greater the danger of noise entering the circuit" Which is at odds with the idea of a cleanly produced sound? Moreover is the producer an artist? Spector I'd say was, as many producers who used the studio as an instrument. What of Brian Eno's work with Bowie. Well Eno IS an Artist. Who then are these non artists who engender noise entering the circuit? The sound engineers? Who I assume are responsible for the very opposite. Slightly on topic, Spector's 'back to mono' – e.g. on the original release of All Things Must Pass was identified as a 'Wall of Sound'. We move on to dub "the forefront of musical experimentation through production." I guess that is because it was pioneered by recording engineers and producers? And from this to Martin Hannet the producer of Unknown Pleasures, the first Joy Division album. Hegarty uses the writings of Peter Hook, Bernard Summers and Stephen Morris on Joy Division, and concentrates on the tracks on Unknown Pleasures of 1979. "Authenticity was a false value to pin on punk. What is peculiar about Hannet's production ... is how a overt level of 'falsity' of something extraneous is able to bring the music toward a more authentic expression." Is this the honesty of open hypocrisy of Post-modernism? Irony? Hegarty goes on to locate this work in the turbulent decade from the mid 70s to mid 80s. I have to disagree with his history though understand an academic in the humanities in 2021 has to accept certain 'givens'. I will say that "I was there", if you look at the image on the left of my Synthi AKS, that was my bedroom studio in my mom's council flat in 1975 in Chelmsley Wood Birmingham. For certain it was a miserable decade. I will say that Hegarty I think is right about the industrial collapse, down to the trade unions and governments, but also by then multinational finance in The City. I found myself working there in the 80s – pure greed. But this is nothing to do with noise, and this history is complex, the oil crisis of 74 because of the Yom Kippur War, whose origins far from beginning with the Suez crisis of 56, is literally biblical in its origins. Enough of this, Lennon was killed in 1980 and so 'The dream was over.'
Less Familiar: The Near-Music of David Jackman and Organum
Originally published in Revue & Corrige December 2017. I'm less familiar with David Jackman's work, though it's now available on YouTube. Hegarty explains "Organum, has been producing a steady stream of strange records, that sit uneasily between noise, industrial, ambient and contemporary classical" These Hegarty writes is "the uncanny and 'the double', as identified by Sigmund Freud" Jackman's work surfaces in the 1980s, "Organum's music is part of a specific movement in the breakdown of generic divides that comes in a key moment in Western 'popular' music." His works are typically short, many on 7 inch Vinyl. (Has collaborated with Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, Christoph Heemann, Robert Hampson, Jim O'Rourke, Michael Prime of Morphogenesis, Eddie Prévost of AMM, Andrew Chalk and noise artists The New Blockaders, and was originally part of Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra between 1969 and 1972.) Hegarty discusses several of his releases, The Tower of Silence (1985), Pulp (1984), Raze pt. 1 Hori (1986), Crusade (1994) "pretty much as close to 'noise music' as Jackman gets" and others "in the early 2000s ... a more resonant minimalism". Hegarty explains that "Noise music, in many forms, attempts to dismantle or destroy the edifice of music" and gives Merzbow and John Cage as examples. Though finishes this chapter saying "Ultimately; this is Jackman returning us to the origins of music, where it was never self-contained , nor simply itself" I have listened to a few of Oranum's works, and they do strike me as ambient drones, In Extremis was the most 'noisy' I could find. I think Hegarty has a problem with the term 'noise' and its application, such that at times it (for him) can more or less apply to anything, but then sees it as being negative, and as above Crusade gets close to noise music, so I would assume therefore isn't, in Hegarty's terms? The other problem I have is his assertion that "Organum's music is part of a specific movement in the breakdown of generic divides that comes in a key moment in Western 'popular' music." Firstly just what is popular music. People in SI will no doubt know of The Rita, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow got some Red Bull sponsorship- but popular? In terms though of popular, and this kind of music, I think The Orb and The Future Sound of London etc are better examples of both being popular and breaking down generic divides. But what of Brian Eno - Ambient Music - 1978 earlier work with Fripp and his Obscure Records label of 1975 – examples being his Discreet Music, David Toop / Max Eastley New And Rediscovered Musical Instruments, Michael Nyman Decay Music et al. all of 1978, and popular, my mates had copies. OK back in 1972 when I tried in a local record store to get Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air, they'd never heard of him and wanted to sell me the Curved Air LP (English prog rock band). Though latter there was the collaboration with John Cale. As for drone, La Monte Young - 1962 The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys (1964–present) - based on the air pump for his terrapin? Obviously not popular, but avant garde? OK picking out Black Metal, Jackman, NWN & TNB etc. maybe OK, and to cover the Avant-garde would need volumes, but my problem is that though genre's blur, with Noise, as in HN and HNW there is something different, something missing, even the idea of 'performance' which singles it out from others.
BUNK: Origins and Copies in Nurse With Wound and The New Blockaders
From an article which appeared in Organised Sound – 'Just what Is It That Makes Today's Noise Music So different', a riff on Richard Hamilton's famous pop collage, 'BUNK' a term used by Eduardo Paolozzi, another Artist associated with Pop Art. Hegarty begins by making several assertions which I'm not in particular agreement, but as a précis, I'll do just that, and number my replies which anyone can then skip. First we can't fix what noise is & "Noise raises the question of an avant-garde as such.... Noise is a negativity: defined in opposition ... to something else, for example, meaning, music, structure, skill, beauty, etc. [1]... the noise is in how noise and music relate, the noise is the differential" [2] ... "The recognition of originality, of avant-gardness, is not the end of the story but the place around which noise circulates" Hegarty goes on to discuss the problem of defining noise with examples... "many types or instances of music can become noise, through the process of assessment, rejection or acceptance, disruption or assimilation. This is not a subjective way of seeing noise as a thing that is personally found to be good because noise, or bad because noise. It is instead based on statistical or normative listening that deems something to be outside." Hegarty then rasises the question of influence – "literally, and obliquely" which "might be one way of identifying something as noise music." He then begins a review of Nurse With Wound and The New Blockaders. NWW centred around Steven Stapleton, who claims "Nurse music is surrealist music". NWW first album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella "live improvisations, free of rehearsal, plan or pretty much any other sort of musical convention... blank materiality of the music (free of meaning, explicit purpose etc.) is counterposed with the accompanying materials..." A list of influences numbering hundreds. "The sounds within are to be imagined as a crystallisation of those influences... We have to remember that in 1979 there was no established discourse of a history of experimental music". [3] The work is "a new subversive canon" Hegarty describes the sounds and those of the 2001 reissue, and work following Chance Meeting... "atmospheric collages.." comparing these to Schaeffer's musique concrete. "if an experimental artist does a cover, it raises curious questions: how does the artist who wishes to break with musical convention engage with respect? Is an homage by Nurse With Wound any different to a pop 'diva' doing the same? Possibly not..." Whatever, NWW avoids, Hegarty states, the use of irony and kitsch (despite Sylvie and Babs announcing itself as kitsch). In summary "Nurse With Wound have managed to summon influence without either letting it go, becoming slavish to it or even adapting it."[4] "The New Blockaders combine use of non-musical instruments, art inspiration and a critique of musicality that is designed to renew." The first album Changez Les Blockeurs!, 1982 also on CD1 of Gesamtnichstwerk - "made up of objects and bits of rooms being scaped, dragged, thumped, scratched etc." They are dissimilar to Einstürzende Neubauten in that "the German group are using destruction, where The New Blockaders are destructive of instrumentation." [5] "The New Blockaders set themselves apart from Nurse With Wound: the former are genuinely rehearsing and re-presenting the purpose of Dada – a continual questioning and destruction being in its own right creative..."[6] They have 109 releases according to Discogs, many are collaborations and before discussing these Hegarty spends some time discussing Gesamtnichtswerk a 4 CD 'Antiology (1982-2002)' with particular reference to Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence in which the poet struggles to free themselves from anxiety, and which, Hegarty maintains, NWW and TNB manage to do. TNB's work being both influenced by Dada and the writing of manifestos in high modernism. Hegarty finally discusses the 2018 NWW "remixing, undoing, thickening" of Changez Les Blockeurs!, which "managed to make a harsher yet smoother Changez Les Blockeurs, a cover , an homage that turns in on itself, on the Nurse With Wound list and The New Blockaders manifesto alike ... and on musical performance"
[1] But many in and making noise uses just these terms 'meaning, music, structure, skill, beauty' to describe noise and or their work.
[2] Hegarty says he can't fix what noise is, but it's negative, and yet elsewhere it is other things. And
the term Avant Garde – 'new and experimental' is not circular, or was noise in the sense it is used here new by the 1980s.
[3] Michael Nyman - 'Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond' first published 1974
Ballantine, Christopher. 1977. "Towards an Aesthetic of Experimental Music".
Benitez, Joaquim M. 1978. "Avant-Garde or Experimental? Classifying Contemporary Music".
Beyond first published 1974
Cage's definition, "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen" 1961.
In the 1950s, the term "experimental" was often applied by conservative music critics—along with a number of other words, such as "engineers art", "musical splitting of the atom", "alchemist's kitchen", "atonal", and "serial"—as a deprecating jargon term, which must be regarded as "abortive concepts", since they did not "grasp a subject" (Metzger 1959, 21).Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. 1959. "Abortive Concepts in the Theory and Criticism of Music"
[4] "without either letting it go, becoming slavish to it or even adapting it." ?
[5] Destruction – Metzger was a tutor of Pete Townsend.
[6] The Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) was a gathering of a diverse group of international artists, poets, and scientists to London, from 9–11 September 1966. Metzger. I don't see how TNB could be considered avant garde. I think, as TG sort, it was more an Avant Garde for the non elite? Like NWW, Surrealism was by the 1980s long gone. What replaced it was Abstract Expressionism – which IMO relates to HN, and Minimalism, HNW? The current problem in Noise is Что дѣлать? Наболѣвшіе вопросы нашего движенія (What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. Vladimir Lenin -1901).
To have the category 'Noise' (or 'Tree') and look for examples, which I think Hegarty is in danger of doing, is to put the cart before the horse, or resort to Platonism. In the latter there is a perfect ideal horse, to which horses are botched shadows. The Platonic forms exists first, things then are identified by being their shadows. Art IMO doesn't work like that. There wasn't the idea of impressionist painting, which Monet and Manet came along and manifested, any more that the idea of 'Tree' was prior to actual trees. Noise, like trees are more 'family resemblances', in Harry Potter you never see a Weasley, you might think you do, but you only see specific examples. Here the danger is in the word 'example' – example of what, not of anything that exists (other than a family resemblance). Without Ron and his family no thing called Weasley would exist, and no Weasley can exist as a pure non specific thing. Same with Impressionism, same with 'Noise' or HN / HNW. Now 'Noise Music' IMO is like noise (in nature) as it doesn't represent anything other, has so been called "noise". If Power Electronics represents – like surrealism, it's not IMO 'noise'.
Noise as the binary opposite of music doesn't work. If music is organised sound, much of noise music is organised sound, if music has meaning then many have said that noise has a meaning, if only a negative one. And from that they can argue that such things as a red sky at night can have a meaning, 'a shepherd's cottage on fire' in the joke. Buds on trees mean spring is coming... This is however a mistake, music can be a 'language' – just as any art. In language one thing stands for another. So 'Dog' stands for the actual animal, the word wont bite, or will the drawing of the dog. The word Dog represents something, the buds on the trees don't re-present the Spring they are part of it. Part of its presentation. So before any music, before even mankind existed – there were sounds, noises on the early earth. There was noise from the creation of the universe, though not a sonic 'Bang'. The difference in Power Electronics and Industrial Music, and Black Metal et al is that these do represent, are intentionally representative of. Vomir, some HN, and HNW are non representational. Now maybe the term Noise – in music is a coverall for PE, Industrial, HN and HNW for some, just as 'Modern Art' has within it representational work, Cubism, Surrealism, and non representational Art – Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism. So maybe I'm talking at cross meanings when I see noise as being non representational. Again the sound of a Lark ascending doesn't represent a Lark ascending, it *IS*, The Vaughan Williams 'Lark Ascending' is not the sound of a Lark ascending but music representation of it and connotations of this. Noise as noise qua noise IS non representational.
https://d1oqwsnd25kjn6.cloudfront.net/production/curio_primary_images/11685/original/Aug30_2017_AdReinhardt.jpgVile heretical Misprision: Dante's Commedia as Metal Theory
First delivered as part of the Dante lectures at University College Cork in 2016. Hegarty sets out to use a Catholic Christian text, one of 'one of the greatest works of world literature' based on The Summa Theologiae, a compendium of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church, as a basis for a theory of Black Metal which is generalized by its anti Christian, misanthropic ethos. (some may be puzzled at this seeming incongruity, worse may see the conflation as merely an mercenary act, however IMO too soon to judgement) I know a little of Catholic theology, and very little of Black Metal, well I wikied it, and have had conversations with those I think support some of its 'theories' and watched numerous videos and those of Varg Vikernes. Hegarty begins, "Three beasts circle the intrepid poet [on] his journey through hell and on to Paradise... the leopard [false pleasure], the lion [pride], and the she-wolf [avarice]." Hegarty needs more than the she wolf for his riffing, [a technical term in lit crit] "she is theory, she is metal music, and she is the spirit of these in strange collusion... black metal theory." The chapter, he explains, will not analyse metal music in depth "instead place it in ... an entrapped yet radicalised way out through 'outness' which may, of course, look a lot like being further in." I'll stab at this,I think he is saying 'in providing some supportive theory of Black Metal, this may back-fire and make Black Metal look more non theoretical. I could say- more stupid' – which would be unkind save for many in Black Metal are I think very opposed to intellectual thinking and human beings in general. I must quote "Dante's book is recursively heard as itself metal, an unwitting attack on all that is holy" Tricky? " recursively heard" - read lots of times over (like black metal riffs) and so becomes meaningless (unwitting) and so contradicts (attacks) its own idea of a journey into holiness – clear light of day - understanding? (Black metal is opposed to the light of reason.) "Inferno is full of gleeful descriptions... (The Black Metal bit?) Purgatory ... a relentless bureaucracy (boring everyday work, like Neo's day job in the Matrix) and Paradise is a song filled beatific realm – (religious and political utopias)" Hegarty argues you need the other two to make the Inferno. (Black Metal is a rage against nice liberal healthy living) He adds to the effect to get out of the Inferno and into the paradise of light you need a theory of black metal, hence the above, getting out of black metal, theorizes it, to its cost. But of course this act on Hegarty's part against Black Metal's anti theory, by theorizing it, does it harm, but if you are into black metal that's precisely what you crave- harm. True evil looks at understanding and smiles. He then begins a chronology of Satanism in Pop Music, and its link with Hellraising, which of course goes way back before pop. He says, in the way a reasonable and nice understanding guy would, that this was nothing demonic but just about a good time, sex drugs and rock and roll. But I guess he doesn't believe in the devil, but if there was a devil then having this kind of good time is precisely how such a devil works, from that perspective like the pied piper he leads the children to hell. But that in the light of reason is nonsense. If we replace this devil for a more modern version, 'the id' – or Will - then unbridled pleasure is demonic – in modern agnostic psychological terms - in medieval terms is the work of Satan. Metal in its decent into unreason by ever extremism is 'demonic' in one of these scenarios. And the personification of that is the devil. Eventually we arrive at Black Metal, in Scandinavia, Varg Vikernes et al. Though it wasn't IMO a "heretical take on critical theory" - more simple, it rejected or simply ignored or was not aware of Critical Theory as it was not theory, but pure animal action. Hegarty concludes "Black Metal eats away at sound... the only process that can resist is death" Below I make the argument that this 'death' is a very part of the process of a line of flight which is Black Metal. He continues with his heat death scenario "In the real universe, entropy will one day become total ... everything , has become unified into an absent or zombie existence". I've already pointed out more recent alternatives to this 'Victorian' scenario. And 'to sleep with the fishes' in the afterlife would seem to some not that bad a fate – especially for the hedonist, serial rapist, murderer etc. But in this already overlong exegesis I will give a more 'gruesome' account of the future... "our entire Universe [in the far future] will have some minutely small probability of undergoing a quantum-transition into another type of universe. ... When there is an infinite time to wait then anything that can happen, eventually will happen. Worse (or better) than that, it will happen infinitely often" Prof. J D Barrow FRS. - very like Nietzsche's most gruesome (and nihilistic) of ideas. Some may think to eternally repeat a hedonist life wouldn't be a bad thing... but I think with a little more thought the utter pointlessness in eternal repeating is The Greatest Weight. However I think once unpacked this chapter offers useful insights into not only anti-Christian, misanthropic and ultimately anti intellectual Black Metal, a rejection of liberalism and social justice as the aims of society, whether true or not of western democracies. That Black Metal, it seems flourished in Scandinavia maybe because those countries at least by standards of others, the USA, UK, appear more liberal and have advanced social services and less deprivation than areas in Europe, and the USA. It would also explain the general interest of Industrial and PE in occultism, Fascism violent crime, serial killers, paedophilia mutilation and disease etc. If one other feature is suicide and self harm again an explanation can be given, but I need to use the Deleuze and Guattari model of a plateau. Imagine a plane, or simpler a straight line. Pick an arbitrary point around the centre, that's where (probably) you are. To the left is the place that represents a sedimented society. I.e fixed and unchanging where citizens are robots, examples, the fixed class structure of mediaevalism, and "communist" states such as North Korea. To the right "Anarchy Crowned", total freedom, a Body without Organs. There is a relentless pull towards the left and sedimentation -a sea millions of years ago was alive with creatures and moving sediments, we now find blocks of stone in which they are now dead fossils. Even the extent of getting a good job, *settling down*, raising a family is the process of sedimentation... 'Authentic' life is then the struggle against that, this struggle is a flight from settling, a line of flight. Obviously a "good" thing if one sees oneself as an individual. But it has dangers, move too fast and the power can overcome, "It's better to burn out than to fade away" (Kurt Cobain's suicide note) Hedonism is dangerous. The Fascism of the Futurists... And in collectives, if "communism" is dead sediment, for D&G Fascism, surprisingly, is not. It's a collective suicide of the Will to Power, out of control. You see it historically in the Gotterdammerung of Nazi Germany. If the one extreme today is North Korea, I'd say ISIS is perhaps the other. It's a thought. And one which surprisingly arose from reading this chapter.
Last chapter to come.
