Let's talk about preference. Personal
preference to be more precise, and it's impact on opinions. Ok – I
guess it's obvious that personal preference is opinions. It's
impossible to separate one's own personal preference from the
opinions that person develops, and in developing, forming arguments
for or against something that, well, requires or does not require an
argument. As a singular thought machine, it's not just hard, it's
impossible to objectively approach a subject that one cares about.
So, I've always taken a fond interest in entities that rely on
singular beings to state opinions that are entirely representative of
what those entities believe. Just a little observation.
Shackleton has been at this for about
as long as Aphex Twin has not, and he's been doing it about as well
as anyone. Three years ago, when I first discovered him, he had a
label called Skull Disco with an album called Skull Disco. Put
yourself in post-Aphex Twin electronic music three years ago land –
before dubstep was Dubstep, before Skrillex and Bassnectar (re:
brostep) – ultimately go back to Burial's Untrue.
Shackleton was making music many people considered dubstep, but that
genre label didn't matter. Not one person listening to Burial,
Appleblim, Shackleton, Skream, etc. really cared to define what it
was. Or if they did, the definition was never solid. We had our own
ideas (mine): the simple combination of two terms that seemed to
describe the music being made/categorized under the moniker (Dub
music and Two-step). I had no idea what Two-step was – probably
because it mostly existed in the UK underground – obviously I was
over here. But no one really knew what the fuck it was.
Dub music, maybe. But I have a feeling the meaning of Dub is
different to Americans. Just a hunch.
Dubstep meant nothing except bass and
drums. It embodied a certain mystical “new” sound (maybe one of
the reasons it caught on so fervently in the last year). Artists
like Burial and Shackleton gave it that mysticism; cryptic vocals,
atypical dance beats, late-night atmospherics. Shackleton was lumped
into this category for a time, until most critics realized he was
more of an “uncategorizeable” musician and made that fact know.
Now Burial and Shackleton, in my opinion, couldn't be further apart
as 2012 electronic music ticks by. Shackleton's sound was, up until
Music for the Quiet Hour, quite
simply this: tension and release (Bass + rhythm = build + drop). I
too will plead unable-to-categorize. What set Shackleton apart from
a lot of other bass-musicians who followed this incredibly simple
summation of its tendencies was the duration and means he took in
accomplishing said drop. His songs always dropped, that was kind of
his thing, but the build was always radically different from his
peers.
As
hard has been to categorize Shackleton, there had always been a
formula to his music. Despite the idiosyncratic “musicological”
percussion on top, Shackleton, for the most part, stayed true to the
simple structure of tension-and-release; build-to-drop. Up until
now, no matter what he was doing, this formula stayed consistent.
And while Three EP's pushed
the limits of what most would consider acceptable lengths of tension,
the simple-eternal formula was always there.
Music for the Quiet Hour, however,
is startling, foremost in how
far Shackleton has strayed from the arguably rigid backbone of dance
music. Having followed Shackleton for several years now, my
expectations were solidly in place upon first listen – I thought I
knew what I was getting myself into. Of course, no help. The first
“Hour” (it's really more like 64 minutes, but I won't fault Sam),
is a monolithic piece of work – dynamically, timbre-ally,
percussionally, intentionally, et al. The piece is split arbitrarily
into 5 parts. 5 parts that sometimes play as breath marks, other
times as interruptions. Ultimately, it's a demonstration in
electronic virtuosity, new computer dynamicity – paired with one
very obvious mistake.
Now,
I'm going to hypothesize a bit here. A self-conducted interview with
the man is a little unattainable at current, so my estimations will
have to do. Having followed his releases for several years, I've
noticed a certain tenacity for progression within his own work –
sort of this rivalry between albums, one after the other, of
out-doing, well, the previous one. It seems like Shackleton's been
consistently raising his own standard for each record, intentionally
trying to out perform himself. For me, this tenacity is audible on
Shackleton's most recent work Typically, this kind of rivalry exists
between bands or musicians hence it's not always as obvious. But for
a guy like Shackleton, who really has no peers, the human need for
competition plays as if he's trying to outdo himself. Music
for the Quiet Hour, fair to say,
is the soundtrack to Shackleton's self-made electronic obstacle
course. Often, it's just straight-up the
obstacle course. It's the aural representation of Shackleton's
attempt at tackling it, the aural-film of Sam climbing a rope,
jumping over something, crawling through mud – I don't know,
whatever part of this analogy works better for you, throw it in
there. Because of this, Hour is
not as much a challenge for us as it is for him. It's almost easier
to understand the piece through this lense, and in that sense, Music
for the Quiet Hour is
exhausting.
The challenge for
us is understanding where he's going with the whole thing. I would
have liked to have had the capacity to approach this monster without
expectations, but you know, that doesn't really work. Without
expectations (say, the fourth time through), the exhaust isn't there
– it's easier. But I found myself, quite literally, closing in on
the edge of whatever respective seat I was in, waiting for that
fucking drop. It never came – the tension was exhausting. But
really, thank you Shackleton for slapping me silly for expecting that
shit. Cause really, you're (he's) better than that.
The
crowning achievement of the first hour is just that – even if
you've never listened to his music – the tension is so effective
it's hard not to expect some monster beat or hook to emerge. How
this tensions-without-release plays on our view of dance music
altogether is wildly out-there and totally commendable. Hour
is a vast exploration of computer-based electronica. Some people
have described it as a musicological goldmine of textures, timbres,
pitches and sound(s) altogether. For the most part I agree. Not
that this is something entirely new to Shackleton – I've always
marveled at his ostensibly un-preset sound and pattern usage – far
removed from the ordinary in electronic-dance. In relation to his
previous explorations into sound, Hour has
grown immensely.
Shedding “the drop” aesthetic throughout the piece frees him from
tendencies he once relied on. Part 1
feels like a build, and upon first, listen it is. As I said above,
new sounds are at work here. The rhythms are far more organic, a
glorious exploration of implying time. Where his previous releases
always felt programmed, Part 1
is the first time Shackleton relies on texture above rhythm, working
a level above the cinematic build.
Part 2, then,
feels like the drop. For a
minute it is. But Instead of an all-out dance party somewhere around
minute three of Part 2,
he shifts the cymbal (4 against 3) and fucks everything up – that's
first-time-through-me speaking. The metric modulation here is
fascinating, it's a complete break from everything Shackleton.
Instead of climaxing via poly-rhythm around minute mark 3:30, he
let's the poly-rhythm become the rhythm entirely. Instead of routing
the tension created by this rhythmic layering back to the original
tempo for that Deadmau5 fist-pumping moment we expect, our fists
quite literally detach themselves from their respective appendage(s).
The thumb-piano drops out completely as the thin-cymbals usher us in
to completely unchartered Shackleton-territory: pure noise. Minute
mark 5 is a glorious anti-climax - one of several instances on this
record where Shackleton reminds us that he's not in it this time for
the jams; he has other intentions.
Crickets
chirp over sub-sonic demon-bass in anticipation – I mean even Arvo
Part couldn't not do
something with this now thirteen minute build. Then 6:10 hits – or
13:45 if you're counting this by the hour. Remember that minute
mark, that glorious 13:45 journey into all things technically
electronically virtuosic. Actually, you might just want to skip to
“(For the) Love of Weeping” right around 13:44 because it is at
this precise moment that I (and you will) find out what the build is
actually for.
Vengeance
Tenfold. That's what it's for. Some quick Internet research says
he's some spoken word “artist”. But I'd rather not give this
“artist” credit – I hadn't heard of him, I wasn't planning on
mentioning his name, had no idea there was any kind of collaboration
underway for Shack's new LP, and sure as hell did not
expect this. What follows these jubilant thirteen minutes and
forty-odd seconds is one of the biggest mistakes I've witnessed on
record in a long while. Send in the clowns, Sam. It's a shame that
the bulk of my review ends here – points off my unscathed record, I
know.
In a recent
interview for pitchfork.tv's Call and Respond, God himself (J
Spaceman), in describing some of the reasoning behind his mixing
techniques, said, “as soon as you put a voice on a record, that's
fifty-percent of the space used.” In Spaceman's case, devoting
fifty-percent of said space to the voice is necessary –
Spiritualized lyrics tend to carry some weight. But I'd argue, in
the case of Music for the Quiet Hour, that this guy deserves,
at most, five-percent at any given time. When those first 13-minutes
of one-hundred-percent Shackleton genius find themselves so rudely
interrupted, our entire focus shifts to this guy and what he's
saying; we're human. We like human sounding things - so the
remaining fifty minutes focus on this entirely. Even when Tenfold
isn't talking, we're anticipating what he'll say next.
So
back to that whole personal preference thing I was ranting about
above: you should still give the rest of this “hour” a chance.
You might like it, might understand what it is, what it's trying to
accomplish, might think nothing of his voice (like most people). But
I absolutely hate this guy, or at least how he sounds in a spoken
word context (re: his voice). It's the most unfortunate pairing of
two worlds: an entirely organic, spacious, exhilarating world of
modern computer-music underneath
the most annoying, hyper-extended, over-produced,
trying-to-hard-just-because shit. I mean, there's probably a point –
and when he finally stops talking,
there's kind of this “Oh” moment, like the moment everyone
experiences at the end of Blade Runner. But
unlike Ridley Scott's masterwork, there's no value in trying to
figure out what's going on – even if there is some kind of message
this dude is spewing, there's no way the meaning could undo what his
egregious presence on top of the beauty does. I mean, at least Blade
Runner was visually amazing the
first time through, even if I didn't really get it. At least there
was something there aesthetically to latch on to amidst the
confusion.
It
would be misleading to say Tenfold speaks for the rest of the hour
because he doesn't. The last third of Part 2
into the majority of Part 3
finds us entirely immersed, again, in Shackleton's domain. But Part
4, which also happens to be the
obligatory centerpiece, relies entirely on Tenfold's phantom
conversation with another character played by none-other, ending in
that “Oh” moment I mentioned above. By the time the hour
finishes and we've tried (at length) to discern and make sense of
what Tenfold has spewed out, there's no reward. It's startling how
quickly one ultra-confused component can effect something that makes
so much sense.
I'd also be kidding
you if I didn't say this: I do appreciate the effort. Electronic
music has a rich history of blending -or- attempting to blend these
dualities: the computerized and the living. The irony in all of this
is that Music for the Quiet Hour shows us how alive
Shackleton's music is. How much he's transcended the mechanized.
I'd like to think that this was their sick goal all along. The
intention of both Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold may very well have
been to trade roles (Shackleton as alive, Tenfold as totally not).
In doing so, Music for the Quiet Hour may function better as
an eye-opening critique on the nature of musicians today: technology
is far more alive than we are. At the very least, it'd be a little
easier to swallow such an egregious mistake if we viewed Vengeance
Tenfold as a fucking martyr.
Photo: Justin Farrar
Foxydigitalis
