Repetitive Music is God

Repetitive Music is God - Review Pop Music v. Multiples: Phil Smith
by 0018922

I liked going to raves when I was a teenager. I liked to dance to House, Trance, Breakbeat and whatever music. I still listen to a lot of electronic music. What is the purpose of this music?
Well, if you look around at animals, plants, the stars or the sun, you tend to notice that in our real life time is cyclical rather than linear. The linear perspective is mostly a human viewpoint.

So, the whole critique of repetitive music rings very hollow to me. I don't think any death instinct or reflection of late commodity capitalism is really very likely. I surely think about such cultural theories when I get into a trance like state with repetitive music. The music itself does not suggest it. Music is repetitive and allows me to think clearly. Other times it is distracting. There is more significance in the medium of recorded delivery, which automates and repeats consumption, than the content of this art. Recording takes away human intimacy and that can be isolating. Perhaps 'inhuman' repetitive music is a compensation for this.

If you look at other areas of art, the visual, objects... then repetition is a more significant aesthetic issue and can be grouped by that characteristic. It is not 'natural' in biologically essentialist terms to repeat the same picture in the same way with a printing press. It is 'natural' to use the same sound or word repeatedly. Look at this page of writing. How many of the exact same words do I use over and over again? My use of the word "is" is surely indicative of my death instinct? I reject the application of Freud to music culture theory.

It would be an extremely difficult task to make music without repetition. It would not be possible unless you defy most all musical conventions including rhythm and chorus. Dialogue about repetitive music ought to seriously distinguish normal music from abnormally repetitive computer music. In such computer output the repetition itself serves as the 'musicality' that distinguishes this 'music' from 'noise' or ambient sound.

But, we didn't get to listen to much Kraftwerk. And we never listened Orbital.

The focus of the talk was on pop music, which is generally quite far from the robot music that can seriously be classified as repetitive as a distinguishing rather than normal feature. The only example we were given was Donna Summer's I feel love. Still, the obviously organic sexual character of the singers voice, not even looped, was terribly important to this being mainstream.

Phil Smith's talk was mostly about copying of music, sampling, covering and the sharing of ideas between people. Musical creation is a collective not individual act. That specific authentic originality is a disingenuous trope. But we didn't talk about copyright. Too pithy. It's not about repetition so much.

I liked the music that was played. However, I know a thing or two about music myself, I'm a bit of an esoteric musicphile. I don't think the music played as example served as a good frame or model to examine repetition. There were 3 possible topics and none were chosen clearly:

1. robot repetitive music such as a loop of a door slamming or something equally absurd
2. the influence of such music [mentioned in #1] on pop music; the creeping technology is sinister because instead of being critical or ironic, it's simply the background to the Britney Spears. The dialogue of the academic art music is dropped.
3. copyright issues: musical sharing, and the social position of music in our culture as a tool of communication. You can't write a song that's never been sung.

It seems that this presentation was mostly about 2, though claiming to be un-naive about 1, yet only really having any conclusions of relevance to 3. He connected ABBA and Madonna, Memphis Minnie to the Beastie Boys, and showed us how invariably referential music is. A more narrow focus would have better served the presentation, and given more of an arguement. The idea of a repetitive society wasn't really connected to remixed music.

Rather than pick on repetition, which may be like picking on all music at once, we ought to just pick on the commercialised pop music system. It force feeds musical paradigms in a way which disempowers the listen from being able to talk, to own the language. Entire genres are passed over for a more simplistic understanding. However, filesharing on the internet may expose these genre's to the mainstream, penetrate the episteme, by killing pop music. Hopefully.

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I was listening to Blondie's Parallel Lines (Darkside_RG), and Annie dj kicks. Both were downloaded off the internet for free using Bittorrent and on random mixed playback on my computer as I wrote this.

• Phil Smith. "Pop Music v. Multiples: Re-mix/Re-model." Art History 333. Interdisciplinary Forums: Studies in Contemporary Praxis. Emily Carr Institute, 2 March 2006.
• Darkside_RG. "Darkside Ripping Group." Anonymous illegal filesharing brand name. 9 March 2006. http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=81446