Caspar Henderson Dives Deep Into the World of Sound

 

A Book Of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous – Caspar Henderson (2023)

 

            Around eight years ago, I read and reviewed a very cool book titled “The Book of Barely Imagined Beings”, by Caspar Henderson.  Mr. Henderson explored the world of animals via the conceit of a bestiary where each chapter coincided with a letter of the alphabet, and an animal whose name begins with said letter.  It is an amazing book and one that opens the mind to the infinite variety found in the natural world around us.  Having dipped my toes into the mind of Caspar Henderson, I was very happy to find A Book of Noises while browsing the library shelves.  This wonderful book explores the vast landscape of sound, divided into chapters with titles such as Cosmophony: Sounds of Space, Geophony: Sounds of Earth, Biophony: Sounds of Life, ending with the chapter Anthropophony: Sounds of Humanity.  This is right up my alley!

            Caspar Henderson comes to the topic of sound and noise from the very best angle, that of wonder and awe.  The idea came to him after a visit to a nature preserve on the Norfolk coast where he witnessed tens of thousands of knots, a short stocky bird that migrates from the Arctic each year, flying overhead.  Within the cacophony Caspar could distinguish individual wing flaps.  He coined the term “Auraculous” to describe such experiences, the word meaning a marvel for the ear.  This is the true theme of this book.  Mr. Henderson explores the vast world of sound we live in and create and does so with a sense of poetry and beauty fitting to the magical world that sound provides to us.  As he puts it, “writing this book has been an attempt to listen more deeply and hold on to a sense of aliveness, in which each moment is a validation of what came before and a preparation for what comes after.”  We live out our lives ignoring most of the aural sensory input around us, much to our detriment. 

            My favorite chapter, Biophony: The Sounds of Life, explores the aural world of our plant and animal brethren.  I enjoyed reading about the various sounds plants make, many of which our modern ears just ignore.  One of the old Buddhist koans, meant to encourage introspection, famously reads, “If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”  I have always found this inane.  Of course it makes a sound.  Sound exists whether anything “hears’ it.  Sound is merely the vibration of the gas, liquid, and solid matter of the world.  Sound existed on Earth far longer than life has been around and will continue to do so long after humans reach extinction.  Only the inflated egocentrism of humans (which I think is the REAL lesson behind the koan) allows us to imagine ourselves as the primal source of experience in the world.  What a disservice this is to our fellow living beings.

            Caspar Henderson uses the last chapter of this book for an exploration of the many sounds created by humanity, from onomatopoeia and musical instruments to noise pollution, and even to a rumination on silence itself.  In this chapter Mr. Henderson extrapolates the future of man-made sound, including the ability to utilize sound for healing as well as for weaponry.  As with anything in the world, whether it is used for good or evil is dependent on the human making the decision.  Sound can heal and it can harm, therefore it is up to us to determine how best to use it to improve not only humanity but the beautiful and varied world around us.  The path towards good or towards evil is one we embark on in our hearts and minds, way before any action comes.  Books such as these help us maintain our proper distance from our own ego and allow us to replace ignorance and supposition with facts and logic.  Caspar Henderson does us all a great service through his writing.  I have now read two of his works and will look forward eagerly to the next one!  To Mr. Henderson, and everyone reading this who loves to search for the Auraculous, I sign off with the rejoinder made famous on the now-defunct Sonic Youth Gossip Forum, which exhorts the recipient to live a “Sonic Life!”

 (This great book can be purchased here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo200525016.html )

An Overheard Conversation Leads to a Fabulous Book Detailing Postpunk Music and Times

 

Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 – Simon Reynolds (2005)

 

             Yes!  Once again, a recommendation from a Library patron turns out to be amazing.  Overhearing a discussion between our Librarian and the patron in question, the words “Rip It Up and Start Again” rang in my ears.  I interrupted them to ask if the book had any relation to the Orange Juice song, which, by fortuitous occurrence, I had just listened to on my daily post-lunch walk around campus.  The patron stated that, yes, the books title was taken from the Orange Juice track, and that the book was a history of postpunk music, well-worth reading.  After a quick request through the Inter-Library Loan program, the book was in my hands days later.

            As a devoted music fan, specifically of the more subversive and transgressive music from the 80’s and 90’s, I had read plenty on the Punk revolution of 1977, and of all the progenitors to that scene, artists such as the Velvet Underground, The Stooges, The Ramones, etc.  While people to this day play and perform “punk” rock music of all types, the initial incandescence of Punk was extremely short-lived.  Between 1976 and 1978, the Punk scene rose and died, mainly in the UK.  The ideals of a return to simplicity, to the feel and vibes of the initial rock legends everyone idolized, were a reaction to the inherently bloated and self-important nature of what was seen as rock music in the 70’s.  The rise of anemic, glossy, adult-oriented “rock” coincided with an explosion in the complex, obtuse, and difficult music or “progressive rock” and the inflation of the rock superstar mentality.  This led to the seemingly-regressive ideals of punk rock.  It was no longer important to be a trained, expert musician, or to pose as an “artist” creating important music. 

            The initial death of Punk coincided with its appropriation by the record companies seeking new money-making material.  Most of the early punk bands self-released their music, which sold well enough, but once the fad of “punk” hit the suburbs, the record companies sought to cash in.  In the aftermath of all this, a new crop of bands appeared, seeking to move forward, not backwards, and to seek new ways of making music more resonant with their modern world than the throwback Punk music of the previous few years.  To them, the retro-worshipping stance of the early punks was invalid, for in seeking to make the sounds of the future they simply reiterated the initial rock sounds of the past.

            The 7-year period covered in this book was one of infinite creativity, cynicism, and wild musical exploration.  The adoption of synthesizers, the refutation of the standard bass, drums, and guitar set-up, and the plunge into atonality all contributed to create wholly new music.  Although I was too young to experience most of it, many of my favorite acts were heavily influenced by the postpunk bands.  Groups such as Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers, and Big Black were my bread and butter.  Reading about the bands and times that influenced them helped me understand my faves more.

            Books such as this one provide first-hand context for the bands and music of this time.  They also help shine a light on bands that otherwise would stay vague memories in fans minds.  I learned a lot about bands such as The Fall, KLF, Scritti Politti, The Mekons, and others whose records I had seen, or whose music I had heard praised by the bands I like, but have never explored sonically.  I also learned many new things about bands I have loved for years, such as Public Image Limited, Suicide, and the aforementioned Orange Juice. 

Much like the experience of reading Thurston Moore’s “Sonic Life,” this book transported me to a world I have only seen referred to or mentioned tangentially.  The bands and music scenes detailed within ‘Rip It Up and Start Again” attempted something original, to try and create new music without the oversight and control offered by the record companies, music attempting something new and modern.  It was these bands, not the punk bands, that paved the way for the DIY and independent music scenes of the 1980’s in the USA and UK, allowing home-grown networks of promoters, clubs, record labels, and independent bands to travel the country and answer to no one but themselves.  Too often, artists who do not make it into the mainstream culture are forgotten, and their contributions are ignored, or bypassed in favor of the cleaner, generic acts that normally populate the charts.  Simon Reynolds has done all music fans a great service by writing this book.  Highly Recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291130/rip-it-up-and-start-again-by-simon-reynolds/ )

Thurston Moore's SONIC LIFE Became My Sonic Life

 

Sonic Life: a Memoir - Thurston Moore (2023)

I am a Sonic Lifer. In my heart, I truly came into my own when I first heard the sound of Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation" at age 16.  I had finally discovered an aural equivalent to the skronk in my own head.  There was no turning back.  While Sonic Youth was not the first band I rocked to, or first loved, or first thought of as "my fave," they were the band that crystallized me.  Because of this I hold them, their music, and the individual members in very high regard.  

When the inevitable happened, and Sonic Youth ceased operations as the premier skronk-machine live act around, I accepted it, and thanked them for the long musical ride.  Not many bands can continue to make new, interesting, challenging music for nearly thirty years.  In 2015, Kim Gordon published a wonderful book, "Girl in a Band." Part memoir of her formative years growing up in California and the fine art world, and part personal air-clearing about the break-up of her marriage.  After decades of fandom, I was allowed a peek into the mind of someone I had both idolized and adored.  It was as beautifully written and insightful as the Artforum essays she wrote in her early life.  

Many people thought Thurston would write his own version of the events, because that is what a public wants to see, the airing of grievances.  Instead, Thurston Moore wrote this memoir to his first and one true love, loud rock music, and the thrills of a truly transcendent performance.  

Thurston begins with his older brother playing "Louie Louie" over and over on a scratchy vinyl single.  This resonated with me deeply.  As a child who started paying attention to bands and music in 1981, I grew up in a house surrounded by music, stereos, 8-Track players, turntables, etc.  Music was of primal importance in our house.  My mother's oldies station would play some songs that I just loved, including 'Louie Louie."  I was always attracted to the wilder, more propulsive oldies.  I liked things that rocked and began looking for such music.

Thurston Moore was such a teenager, always searching for new sounds, driving to NYC with a friend to explore the record stores, eventually spending weekends in the city seeing shows and buying used books.  He found himself drawn to the seedy lower east side and the Bowery, areas where the fringe bands could perform, and where an underage kid could sneak in if he arrived to the show early enough (a method I also employed at various Houston area venues.)  It was at such a show that he witnessed an early performance by the duo Suicide, one of the fiercest, most transgressive acts ever to come out of the NY scene.  Thurston had a front-row seat to something completely new, what became the No Wave scene.  Bands such as Suicide, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, and others forged a separate sub-underground for themselves where the musical goal was not to craft songs, but to destroy the very foundation of song structure and performance.  

Apart from No Wave, the avant-garde music coming from people such as Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, stylistic innovators and sonic risk takers, also shaped and forged Thurston's musical sensibility.  Throw in a healthy dash of hardcore punk and a deep love for the absurd, and you have what Thurston brought to Sonic Youth.  

Those looking for a deep dive into Sonic Youth themselves and the workings of the band will need to wait for a different book, yet to be written.  This is a tale about one person's inner musical life, and the many people he meets.  Thurston is a music fan, first and foremost.  His life outside of performing music appears to be spent looking for old records, books, and poetry ephemera.  His interactions with the fellow musicians he befriends are recorded faithfully, and it is amazing how much Thurston can remember, not just about a person, but about the bands they were in, the music they released, etc.

As a Sonic Youth fan, part of my joy came from discovering new music through Thurston.  He was always careful to select opening acts that would challenge the typical Sonic Youth audience, who, although normally open minded, had aged along with the band.  In the late 1990's, as most of the band reached their 40's, many acts 20-years younger gained wider exposure through their association with Sonic Youth.  I was fortunate to attend a 1992 concert where Houston's Pain Teens opened up, followed by a very early iteration of Pavement (3 guys, including the OG drummer doing handstands between songs).  It was amazing.

Many memoirs are either hyper focused on a few short years of an otherwise boring life, or they seek to pack every detail and aspect of a human's life into one hasty, and unsatisfying tale.  Thurston Moore has written a specific, informative, moving tribute to his life in music, and the glories he found within it.  These are not the glories of an international superstar such as Gene Simmons or Taylor Swift.  They are the glories of a man whose preferred state of being is attending an intimate performance, talking to musicians and fellow artists, and experiencing the bliss of a great show.  In this respect, Thurston is a truly blessed and fortunate man.  He has lived the sonic life many dream of, and provided that very same to his fans.  Few people are so lucky.  I highly recommend this book.

(I must give a shout-out to the always-wonderful Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas, where I found this book, a signed first edition, and the last one they had in stock. My wife and I were out about town, seeking a nice day after a sequence of unfortunate occurrences, and the good people of Brazos Bookstore helped us start off right.  Brazos is a haven for anyone seeking to explore the current landscape of literature.  The staff work like curators at a museum, and the selection of books is exemplary.  Books for all ages, all subjects, and all manner of curiosity.  It is a beautiful place. - RXTT)

(Sonic Life can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706260/sonic-life-by-thurston-moore/ )

ANGER IS AN ENERGY! John Lydon tells it like it is.

Anger is an Energy – John Lydon, w/ Andrew Perry (2014)

            John Lydon, known by many as “Johnny Rotten,” was involved in two bands that helped set the stage and shape many of the forms of music that I grew up listening to.  His first band The Sex Pistols were like a bomb exploding in the world of music.  The effect is long-lasting, even though the band itself was very short-lived.  One official album recorded, a few years of existence, and it all went up in flames, perhaps for the best as their “manager” Malcolm McLaren was an incompetent business person with delusions of being accepted into the world of ass-sucking sycophants that is High Art.  The Sex Pistols inspired countless thousands of disaffected people worldwide, and still do to this day.  Lydon’s next band, Public Image Limited (PiL), was more experimental, more of an attempt at an actual band, and through their 30+ years of existence in some form or other helped influence many of the underground acts that eventually were lumped together into “alternative” music.  Whether it was the Pistols or PiL, John Lydon was always at the front, in full attack mode, ready to slay the stupidities of the world with caustic wit.

            I have always been a huge fan of people that tell it like it is, or at least how they see things to be.  I respect that.  I may not agree with them always, but I would much rather listen to someone espouse a deeply personal idea that they have thought about and arrived at and to which I disagree than to listen to someone so concerned about what offense people may take that they choose to play it safe always.  Nothing is more irritating than that!  Many of the most outspoken people I admired are dead now, (Lemmy Kilmister, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S, Thompson, George Carlin) and many more are smack dab into old age (Don Rickles, David Letterman).  There are not many people left out there in the entertainment world willing to really say what they feel. (Thank Mario for Steve Albini, still taking cares biznass)

            While I am not a big autobiography reader, I did want to get into this book because I like hearing things from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  I had read or heard countless tales about John Lydon, and most were very unfavorable in a manner that made me think, “It is not him but those he angers that are actually unbearable.”  Reading about his childhood and growing up in dirt-poor England was very emotional, even though Lydon does not get sentimental at all.  It was emotional for me because so many people forget the truth about punk music, and they imagine it to be just another charade put on by record companies with no real bearing on actual living and dying.  Punk music was and is about something other than a genre or a musical sound/style.  Punk music was about bypassing other people’s ideas as to what makes a song “good” and instead doing what you think is good, and sharing it as equally viable and valuable.  You want to write a song?  Go write a song!  There are no rules.  Reading about the early days of the Pistols and the aftermath really shed light on how difficult it was to NOT be co-opted by the music machine, always on the hunt for the next money making gimmick.

            The fake punks, the posers, the hacks, they live and die for the gimmick.  They see a very narrow idea of what punk music is and then seek to emulate it to the exclusion of anything else.  This happened very early on and Lydon describes his feelings as he saw the very same narrow-mindedness and bigotry against anything different that he railed against on stage grow and destroy punk music from within.  He was indeed very angry and when he began Public Image Limited it was to be a team effort, crafting music they felt strongly about, with no regard for maintaining the same sound from record to record.  The early PiL albums are varied and “difficult” to listen to at first (unless you are already familiar with the many abrasive bands that were influenced by PiL), but they are very rewarding upon further re-listens.  This is the sign of well-made music.  Anything new will sound alien to one’s ear, but if it is quality, if it is honest, then its charms will grow on you and expose themselves, and you end up loving the damn thing more than you could ever think possible.  This happens with all music, whether it is Schoenberg’s atonal symphonies, Coltrane’s wall-of-notes hard-bop solos, Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad’s harshly abrasive mixes, or the cacophony of the PiL album Flowers For Romance.  This difficult music is always my favorite music.  (Hence my all-time favorite musical act, Sonic Youth, who even at their most melodic and temperate still utilize squalls of feedback drenched skronk to tickle my inner ear.)

            The chapters in “Anger is an Energy” are of two sorts.  Some are strictly chronological descriptions of the events as they happened, and others are feel more like John Lydon is directly talking to you laying out his personal feelings and ideas about life, music, the world, and his place in it.  These are my favorite chapters.  John Lydon is a very, very funny man.  I agree with him on so many specific things, and yet we could not be more different.  That is the beauty of thought.  It does not matter what your physical situation is, or who you claim to be.  Your mind and your thoughts are yours and yours alone and a true individual guards that with his life!  There is nothing more important!  It is a fight for your mind/soul that you are engaged in, whether you realize it or not.  There will always be someone telling you to shut up, telling your ideas are shit, telling you that you need to “know your place” and behave.  FUCK THEM.  John Lydon has lived that life as honestly as anyone can, and I love him for it.  

Towards the end of the book he details how the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame “inducted” the Sex Pistols, and how they realized it was all a pathetic co-opting attempt to emasculate the most in-your-face band.  Instead of shelling out thousands to fly people over and over $25,000 for a table at which to sit and watch the proceedings, they sent in a letter written by Lydon himself, and approved by the remaining band members.  It was everything I expected, and I respect the Pistols and Lydon even more because of it.  The full letter can be read here.

To their defense, the RnR HoF actually read this letter aloud during the ceremony.

This book taught me a lot about John Lydon’s life, the Sex Pistols, the creation and maturation of Public Image Limited, and gave me a great window into a man who the media chooses to portray as a pure anger cartoon.  Lydon is quite complex and interesting and I would love to meet him someday and listen to records with him.

(To read a sample from Anger is an Energy click here:  https://sample-88bc6515b3c71886b139f3cc1d45dbca.read.overdrive.com/?p=anger-is-an-e86ce7 )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  ) 

100 years ago a man wrote about the need for Noise Music! Amazing!

The Art of Noise: Futurist Manifesto – Luigi Russolo (1913)

Noise.  My favorite band is Sonic Youth.  Once, while watching videos that I had taped on our family’s VHS recorder, my dad came by and sat with me to see what I was getting into.  I was around fourteen to fifteen years old at the time.  As soon as he sat down the video for Teenage Riot began to play.  This was, and is, my favorite song.  The aural content perfectly matched the static in my brain.  I rocked out to it while my dad sat there silently.  As soon as it finished, with me exhausted from “rockin’ out,” my dad turned to me and said, “It’s just noise.”  I replied that yes, it was, and it was my favorite noise. 

            I have always enjoyed dissonance in music.  I find white noise very soothing, and have a noise machine that I run all night which helps me sleep like the dead.  I like repetitive noises, such as those of motors or machinery, and I find odd rhythms within those noises.  To this day, “normal,” tuneful, pleasing-to-the-ear songs and music leave me cold.  I prefer my music with a jagged edge I guess. 

            While studying Art History I read a lot about the Futurist movement and heard mention of a manifesto titled The Art of Noise.  I knew of the weird band that shared that name and once I read this work it made perfect sense why they called themselves The Art of Noise.  In 1913 the world had been in the thick what is now called the Industrial Revolution, as well as nearing ever closer to the War to End All Wars (WWI) which began a year later.  Philosophers and artists, as usual, were at the forefront of everything, and could sense that the worlds that the Arts had drawn from, the seemingly simple world of Nature and God and the Natural Order, had been bypassed by us humans.  We were now remaking the world.  The simple definitions which once held saw over the art world and the music world no longer seemed relevant.  They would seem even less relevant after the ensuing decades of war, strife, and horror that culminated with the United States dropping the two biggest bombs ever used in war on Japan.  The Futurists were artists and musicians that sought to explore this new world through new art and new methods of creating art.

            Sensing all of this, Luigi Russolo wrote a letter to his friend, a Futurist composer and musician named Francesco Balilla Pratella.  This letter is what has come to be known as the manifesto The Art of Noise.  In it, Russolo describes how the development of our society has created a whole new wealth of sounds, sounds that are normally categorized as “noise,” and that the human ear has evolved to accept and enjoy these sounds.  He describes the development of music itself, from pleasing, naturally occurring sounds, to sounds created by humans purely for other human’s pleasure, to the utilization of this powerful new media by the religions of the world to somehow contain and take advantage of the power of the music to transport the mind to a different state of consciousness.  From there he describes how the formal rigidity of the Greek musical system did not allow for harmonies, leading to the harmony-less church chanting and music of the Middle Ages.   From there it was a matter of adding layers of complexity and invention to reach the musical heights of the masters like Bach or Beethoven

.

            Even in 1913 Bach and Beethoven were considered by many to be old-fashioned music.  Russolo talks about how the human ear, having grown accustomed to the atonal, dissonant, and polyrhythmic nature of the sounds coming from the industrial machinery, increasingly found the old music to be aurally boring.  Even the classical composers who tried to inject the sounds of dissonance into their music could only go so far, having based their music on the normal tonal range expected by the instruments of an Orchestra.  Because of this, Russolo proposed to create new instruments which could convey the sounds/noises that were now integral to the human experience.  He saw the following categories as the “six families of noise:”

1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
4. Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping
5. Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
6. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs

He sent this manifesto to his musician friend so he could use the ideas within to create a new music.  It is odd to think that his words essentially predicted the state of the most avant-garde of music since his time.  Between the sonically harsh works of masters like Schoenberg in the classical arena, the twisted and atonal Free Jazz of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, the drone-driven and atonal rock music of the Velvet Underground, the roaring avant-noise-rock of  Sonic Youth and Suicide, the walls of 30 minute slow drones and skronk from bands like Earth and Sunn-O, the furious and near-incomprehensible noise of bands like the Locust, and the mad, erratic glitch EDM of the past ten years or so, it seems that Russolo was right on the money.  The “normal” sounds of the typical music of the past sounds so quaint to modern ears.  It can still move the soul but it does not feel urgent or currently important.  Our ears continue to evolve and our sense of what is pleasurable grows and grows.  I am so glad I ran across this manifesto as it sheds light on the music I love, why I love it, and where it may be headed in the future.  Long live the Noise!

(To download/read this manifesto in PDF format, click here: http://www.artype.de/Sammlung/pdf/russolo_noise.pdf )