Low End Theory. A book by Nomos

luka

Well-known member
I've ordered this great book by dissensus stalwart nomos. It's going to be a great book can't wait to read it. So impressed with our boy. Let's all read it together.
 

luka

Well-known member
Dissensus is in the acknowledgements! I've pulled the book out the bin and started reading it! It's guna be great.
 

luka

Well-known member
So far this book looks to me like it is twinned with the work me and Barty started here in earnest on the feminine pressure thread. The objective experience of music with this notion of the sonic body being much the same as what I call the sugar glider. I'm really getting a buzz off it but also feel disappointed that someone with so much to say hadn't shared it with us here.
 

luka

Well-known member
"We point to the problems that arise when work in this culturelist mould attempts to bracket out aspects of material existence. This stance explicitly keeps nature and materiality at a remove, holding that they can only ever be encountered through our ideas about them and denying the possibility of influence in the other direction"
 

version

Well-known member
"a global mystery called The Hum"

sounds like cyclonopedia but for dubstep instead of oil

I think they eventually came to the conclusion that it was caused by shifting tectonic plates, but it's probably a cover-up for Godzilla or Cthulhu or something.
 

luka

Well-known member
Good to see that he gets that the imagination uses a synesthetic super language. He grasps a lot of the foundational things we've hashed out here over the last however long. Such a shame he didn't join in much. Could have helped a lot.
 

luka

Well-known member
I asked myself why these projects always seem to lean so heavily on Deleuze and Guattari (with Spinoza & Nietzsche hovering in the wings) and it's really just cos they're the only ones who allow you to have fun without the finger wagging isn't it.

If you have to perform contortions in order to justify enjoying yourself you'll struggle to write about dance music.
 

luka

Well-known member
Halfway through. Disappointed in you lot for your lack of interest in this book as in many ways its written for you.
 

luka

Well-known member
You'll have to make allowances for the writing. It's in the theory genre but by the standards of the genre I think it's very limpid and sure footed and balanced.

" the materiality of sonic experience "

" the chronic elision of materiality in the study of popular music "

" in the throbs of an east London dance floor "

" liminal events that can only be called sound-like"

" but bass is a slippery thing to study "

" this contingent, imaginative body that emerges in its sonorous relations, is what will be called THE SONIC BODY "

" this sonic body can be productively mystified by anomalous vibration (which works as an incitement to imagination, experimentation and invention) "

" rhythmic air pressure fluctuations, ubiquitous force, vibration separating from tones, not-quite-sounds, half felt presences of indeterminate shape, perception confounded, imagination stirred "
 

luka

Well-known member
Basically he really likes dubstep so he finds loads of other things which are also dubstep such as air conditioning units, big bronze bells, church organs, caves, passage tombs.

It does have to work within the very conservative constraints of the genre which is a bit frustrating. I think he should use dissensus to do some actual active theorising (that is, making stuff up) but I'm enjoying it a lot. (And I hate dubstep)
 

luka

Well-known member
A lot of it rhymes with this very famous passage from the poem Prediction Tablet, although here the context is word

"Now a lot of it is transmitted as pressure alone
So weight of it, as force transmitted through it- see it?
Degree of tenderness degree of strength,
as touch, felt at skin receptor site
Maternal to paternal axis
Weights and measures
Where the force locus?
Where generated?
How applied?
Torque inclement
Gale force precipitating
Cyclonic
Atmosphere disturbance
Abnormal fluctuations
In instruments
Spatial acoustic dimensions of the
Frame-cavern-extent-cave-chest
Echo location very advanced sensing equipment
Speaking out of what depth, what extremity torn this utterance/against that cyclonic torque withstood
In that tearing
Lashed that is, to the mast"
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i haven't read the book, but i do feel a bit like bass as a theology is a little worn out

i'm afraid the very title "low end theory" makes me droop a little bit

by the time people started going on about "bass weight" - circa the height of dubstep - it felt like something that had been canonised into almost a form of sonic virtue, after a good decade or two of writings about dub etc

and also given a kind of quasi-political power that it doesn't really possess

like is it really that threatening, is it really a form of sonic warfare, are the walls of citadel really shaking and about to collapse?

and then on another tangent;

nowadays with so many people listening on ear buds or not-that-good headphones or computer speakers, the shift in music does seem to have gone over to the mids and the highs, in the sense of where the action is - those little ear-tickling intracies of production

that Wayne Marshall academic dude wrote a blog post about treble culture a decade ago, and he was partly picking up on earlier pointers from people talking about the trebletastic aspects in 2step and bassline and the dizzy-making gloss of Auto-tuney pop, Afrobeats etc
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
i haven't read the book, but i do feel a bit like bass as a theology is a little worn out
...
by the time people started going on about "bass weight" - circa the height of dubstep - it felt like something that had been canonised into almost a form of sonic virtue, after a good decade or two of writings about dub etc


been trying to verbalise this for a decade. on point. dubstep is about as weak a genre as i can think of. early stages excepted.
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
i should say i still enjoy a good b-line, a bit of oozy low end, as much as ever

having listened to trap mostly via the radio through a not terribly good car audio set-up, and also off my computer, when i recently upgraded my computer speakers and got this enormous black block of a sub-woofer - i was knocked out by how much bass is contained on those records still. the Auto-Tune wavery vocals and the IDM-ish wistful melody loops and the ambient sound-design catch your ear in a lot of listening contexts, then those mid-pitched snare and hi-hat rolls. But they are still investing a lot of attention in the low end of the spectrum, despite the medium being soundcloud, spotify etc etc

when i was trying out the subwoofer for the first time with Migos and that type of thing, the door in this sort of rickety shed-like room at the front of the house that serves as my workspace, it was shaking in its frame and making a horrible rattling sound - the window glass was wobbling. exciting / alarming!

i suppose what's gone for me though is that feeling that i had with especially jungle but the whole spectrum really, of bass as dangerous - like you really did feel like there was some connection between the visceral impact and social-energy shockwaves

it felt like power... and there was a fairly easy connection that suggested itself between sub-bass and what the academics called sub-altern populations
 

droid

Well-known member
You can get amazing near audiophile earbuds from China for about €40. Orders of magnitude better than anything Apple or most most phone manufacturers sell. Just received a new batch in the post and the bass is delicious.
 
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