Monday, April 13, 2009
Monday Music #15 (Hecuba, Kym Brown)
My last post was all about how compelling I found that little synth-generator utility. What I didn't mention is that not only did I play with it for over two hours, but I had one pattern going for half that time. Surely part of it was laziness, but if it was really offensive, I would've changed it long before the one-hour mark. And all that from a machine and a few minutes of effort on my part.
It's perfectly plausible that one day I could be happy listening to machines forever, and a bit disturbing. Sure, there has to be somebody on the other end telling the machines how to arrange the numbers, but presumably they're not pouring their hearts into it. Or if they are, there are several layers of functions in the way.
I don't think this will happen, though. If there's one thing humans are great at, it's blurring lines and making things new. It's taking machines and painting faces onto them. It's making the Turing Test totally irrelevant. And this applies to music as much as anything.
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I read about the Los Angeles group Hecuba because they're supporting Bat for Lashes on tour (a tour I probably won't get to, unfortunately.) In a way it makes sense - their images complement each other - but in a way it doesn't. Bat for Lashes are lush; they're stark. This isn't a good/bad distinction though. They're just two different styles.
Take "Tom and Jerry." There are all sorts of noises happening in the background - or is it the foreground? That's not really a clear distinction. They're rarely where you'd expect, or what you'd expect. As it goes on, a straightforward melody starts to emerge, but it's despite the noise, rather than instead of it. The vocals, though, are what really stand out. Isabelle's voice isn't just an instrument - it's a beat, staccato and perfectly measured, sometimes processed. It's infrastructure. When she clarifies, "in 3D - actual 3D," it's as dispassionate as AutoCorrect. And about halfway through, where they pick up some verve, it almost seems unnatural, as if every bit of singing was made out of steel in the first place and re-animated. If these don't sound like compliments, they are. It takes skill to pull this off and sound purposeful. And this does.
Listen here.
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If Isabelle's voice is almost mechanized, Kym Brown's voice is anything but. Every note she sings Pygmalion, which was a good album, if dense. At times it got almost oppressive - on purpose, of course; the lyrics bear it out - but sometimes overwhelming. But her new songs have a bit more air to them. You can hear it in "Tell Me Now" and, even more strikingly, in "Got the Stuff."
The song starts out sounding like it's going to turn into a riproaring audience-participation anthem, all handclaps and stomping. But then Kym's voice comes in and it's not like that mold at all: pleading, at times strained, at others glottal, and at all times oozing with personality. That isn't really her style, at any rate. And she quickly turns it into something almost patchwork. The undertrappings of the anthem are still there, but cut, pasted, and interspersed with synths and various snippets of Kym's singing. Maybe it was recorded like that, one take; maybe it took a human to rearrange it; maybe it happened at random. No matter which way it happened, the result is compelling.
Listen here.
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