Album as Event versus Album as Sessionable

[blissblogger]

Spinning off the chat about Trout Mask Replica, it struck me that there are albums that you only need to listen to once (only want to listen once?) (are only capable of listening to once? ). Undeniably towering and overwhelming aesthetic experiences, something everyone should submit themselves to, should undergo... but they are not things you can integrate into life on a regular level. They are Events.

So a bit like a certain kind of movie, by Pasolini or someone like that. Once is enough. More than enough! This kind of film hasn't got that rewatchability that, say, The Godfather movies have. (Of course this is infinitely arguable and no doubt there are those who can and do watch Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom as relaxing fare).

Conversely, there are albums that are sessionable. Is that a term in use in the UK? Beer that you can drink large quantities of without passing out, vomiting, etc. This is a category of albums that are great but repeat-playable, they slip easily back and forth between focused foreground listening and a background sound.

The sessionable Beefheart album is Clear Spot. There's even a sessionable microcosm of Trout Mask Replica on it in the form of "Golden Birdies".

So what else fits into this Album as Singular Event category?

For me contenders would be:

Scott Walker's The Drift. (But also Tilt, Bish Bosch - anything after Climate After Hunter, which is lyrically and vocally super intense but also palatable and playable - Barney Hoskyns once described the sound as "male Armatrading", which amused me)

Early Swans (e.g. Cop, which I bought but am not honestly sure I played more than twice. It's too much. You get the point! No need to go through that again).

Diamanda Galas - awe-inspiring, terrifying, but impossible to do other things while the record is on.

Perhaps the Album as Event loosely corresponds to the Sublime in the Burkean sense. Beauty that is shattering and inspires fear and trembling. Not a place you can live for very long. A life never visited by the Sublime would be a diminished one but yes, practically speaking, not a place you can dwell.

 

[entertainment]

Yes I know what you mean. Portishead Third is one. Remember really liking it but just haven't gone back really. Only for snippets to get recall the taste.

Then there is another case, one where the music itself seems sort of exhausted by first listen. Not really that once is enough but that more than once is sort of pointless. You "get it" and move on. A lot of the conceptronica stuff I've listened to would fall under there. Even though I've liked it there's just no point.

 

[thirdform]

can't say I understand this in album format. Certain sour boulez pieces I can only occasionally listen to though. Totemic nature notwithstanding, they are just difficult work.

 

[thirdform]

I used to feel this way about Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures but I think it clicked with me around 2018 and I don't feel like its a chore to listen to anymore.

 

[sus]

Seems like sessionability reigns supreme in an era of Spotify.

Not sure I've had an Album Event since I was a teenager, and would sit down and listen to an album all the way through without much multitasking. Maybe Xiu Xiu was an Event for me? Hail to the Thief? Some Wagner? Nowadays I prize music that can be both background or foreground—you can have Joni's For The Roses on without thinking twice, but when you're between things, or catch yourself ambiently listening, certain lines will pop out and just floor you—"The Minus is loveless / He talks to the land / And the leaves fall and the lake over-ices."

I don't feel too bad about this state of affairs because it seems, well, lindy—crowds talking over 18th century operas, cats hanging all night in jazz clubs. Things come in and out, catch you and shake you and then recede.

 

[sus]

Same way, I guess, that I think "wanting visual art to put in your house/hang on your wall" is completely reasonable and not some philistine midbrow take. Artwork that's ambiently productive but also rewards attention, for those times in your life where you have the time or mental space or inclination to contemplate it. Artwork that you live alongside, discovering its secrets gradually, through prolonged exposure, the same way you get to know another human being.

 

[sus]

It also strikes me that Album As Event is often tied to a sense of history, be it a cultural or a personal history/progression/chronology of development. It's an Event because it's transformative, but once the delta's accomplished, once your schema's shattered, once it's shown you a new world of possibility—in other words, once either you or the culture has been transformed—it loses power. A one-time pill—like Neo, there's no going back.

Not always of course, but often.

 

[sus]

I guess Koyaanisqatsi or Einstein on the Beach are examples of (what for me were) Events, that were not necessarily either culturally or personally transformative, but which despite enjoying once I have little desire to return to.

Whereas I can always relisten to Glassworks.

 

[blissblogger]

Same way, I guess, that I think "wanting visual art to put in your house/hang on your wall" is completely reasonable and not some philistine midbrow take. Artwork that's ambiently productive but also rewards attention, for those times in your life where you have the time or mental space or inclination to contemplate it. Artwork that you live alongside, discovering its secrets gradually, through prolonged exposure, the same way you get to know another human being.

This is one of my favorite things about music, the way you drift in and out of levels of attention - and yes how lyrics reveal themselves slowly, a different line will pop out. Or you'll notice some new feature of the arrangement or instrumentation. Outside the reviewing situation, I tend not to listen to songs or rap tunes and follow the lyrics focusedly all the way through - different bits will leap out - the whole idea of a song as a story is a bit foreign to me (although obviously there are exceptions, where there's a narrative pay off, or a sense of build towards something)

Sessionability relates to this thing I think is fairly unique about popular music which is repeatability. There are films that you like to watch many times, usually over the course of a life, but sometimes in the first weeks of release, you'll hear of people going multiple times. But almost no one, I should think, would watch a film again immediately after watching it. But that is very common with pop songs - you hear it, you want to hear it again immediately, and possibly again, and again. Or with whole albums.

It's a fairly unique thing with pop music. The way that there's repeatability that doesn't wear out the pleasure. It delivers the hit again and again. (eventually you'll get tired or wish for a bit of variety, but it might not be a long time).

You wouldn't do that with a book. Well, I seem to remember one of my kids finishing the latest Harry Potter then immediately reading it again from the start, reading a little slower to savour it. But generally not... generally it'd be a matter of years before rereading a favorite book, which is a whole unique set of pleasures in itself, almost voluptuous in the sinful sense of not reading all the other books you ought to be reading but indulging this nostalgic delight)

Perhaps it's just to do with the unit-size of the aesthetic object. Songs being in the 2 minute to 6 minute range. Perhaps if films were typically 10 minutes long then people would watch them over and over. But somehow I doubt it.

With other kinds of music, where the duration is longer than in pop, it's probably got less repeatability. Although classical music has kind of been pop-ified, with the most catchy bits pulled out of their context and played on light-classical radio stations.

And maybe it's the non-narrative, non-story nature of most pop songs - they are loops of feeling, emotions freezeframed, or units of action smaller and shorter than a narrative, perhaps more like a vignette or scene - that also contributes to this repeatability. If songs had plots like films, at a certain point the suspense element or resolution element would get worn out. (Mind you a song like Harry Chapin "Cats in the Cradle" which has an emotional twist in the tale does seem to always work, never wears out).

 

[sus]

There's something intrinsically pleasurable about the form, when arranged properly, which goes way beyond the pleasures of any other medium. And it has this power to synchronize your moods to its moods in a way, again, few mediums are able to so effortlessly accomplish. Sometimes I wonder if pop music has been operating with such an advantage that it has prevented the medium becoming the best version of itself. The bar is so low, lyrically—when you have a massive head-start/are already intrinsically attractive on form alone, why bother tuning minutiae of lyrical content?

Longer tunes that move between a large array of motifs—rather than cycling between verse & chorus (I-IV style, this then that, that then this)—e.g. Roy Harper and Newsom's Ys, or loads of jazz, tends to last longer. More parts, more kinds of "hit."

 

[sus]

It seems like there's a whole phenomenological terrain to be explored w/r/t the way songs and albums "wear in." It's always made me wonder when, in the long progression of familiarization and increasing weariness, a critical review should be written. Reviewers who are expected to have a take by an LP's release date are in a tough spot—they have to project a bit, in guessing how a record will age (not just culturally, but personally). You see mentions in reviews sometimes of "grower" albums, or of a pop song's "immediacy," but not a ton gets made the specific ways a listener's relationship to a record might change over time.

But like you say, this temporal dimension is central to our experience of music. Removing it impoverishes our understanding.

 

[WashYourHands]

A one off sessionable pick



part-prurience part-soundscape of a lady looking for someone to have an affair with as hubby is out of town

shit enough to listen to and dismiss for many people, great enough to hold your attention

 

[blissblogger]

Then there is another case, one where the music itself seems sort of exhausted by first listen. Not really that once is enough but that more than once is sort of pointless. You "get it" and move on. A lot of the conceptronica stuff I've listened to would fall under there. Even though I've liked it there's just no point.

Yes that is why I compared it to going to an exhibition or an art show. We don't tend to go museums more than once, at least for a specific exhibition.

Also it seems like a lot of that concepty stuff is really tailored to be a literal Event - like it's prime format is the audio-visual blitz at a festival like Unsound.

That was one of the real differences between C-tronica and first-wave '90s IDM - the IDM was very sessionable, you could integrate it into your life, do other things while it was on. For all the talk of boundaries breaking and no rules etc, it was mostly very pleasant, listenable stuff. I listened to the first Aphex Twin Selected Ambient probably hundreds of times during the course of a couple of years.

Event Albums are ones that have left behind any vestigial trace of function (dance, or relaxation) and are all Statement. Either that or it's about an extreme experience, edging into the aesthetic masochism zone.

(I mentioned Pasolin upthread and I think one of those Scott Walker late albums has a song about Pasolini. At any rate European avant-garde film is totally what he aspired to with his albums - Bergman and so forth).

 

[william_kent]

Event: various ethnomusicological recordings

years ago there was no such thing as "world music", and I would spend time flicking through the records in the ethnomusicology boxes in Housmans ( note: Charing Cross Road in London, UK used to have good bookshops with meagre vinyl selections ) and once I stumbled upon a recording of an Amazonian Ebena ( Anadenanthera peregrina ) ( aka psychedelic snuff ) ritual and as I had seen a documentary where the young lads of the village had the substance blasted into their nostrils by the Shaman and then they danced about for a while before getting aggy and attacking each other with spears, all while huge strings of virulent green snot dangled and swung from their nostrils, I have to admit I was intrigued, but not enough to buy the LP, although while extremely drunk recently I regretted that decision and foolishly bought the re-release, but, seriously, how often am I going to listen to this?



David Toop – Lost Shadows: In Defence Of The Soul (Yanomami Shamanism, Songs, Ritual, 1978)

answer: about the same number of time I've listened to this...



although, I feel the sleeve notes are worthy of the "liner notes" thread, but I'll just post them here:

Recordings from 1978 by David Toop of Yanomani ritual songs, shamanistic ceremonies and rainforest sounds, The voices of the spirits and animal familiars, ventriloquial illusions of sound in dark spaces, secret spirit languages, the clap of thunder that links shamanic trance with the sleep language of Finnegans Wake ... out of these passages of the everyday, intensity flares like flames caught by a gust of wind. Skin burns or oozes blood, the wind blows up havoc as the spirits move about.

the cover of the original version I didn't waste money on:

 

[subvert47]

Spinning off the chat about Trout Mask Replica, it struck me that there are albums that you only need to listen to once (only want to listen once?) (are only capable of listening to once? ). Undeniably towering and overwhelming aesthetic experiences, something everyone should submit themselves to, should undergo... but they are not things you can integrate into life on a regular level. They are Events.

So a bit like a certain kind of movie, by Pasolini or someone like that. Once is enough. More than enough!

Isn't that just about what you want from something?

I'd go with your idea for films. I have watched films for their art, as something I should submit myself to, but only once because I don't really care about film as an art. That is to say, the art is not in itself enough for me.

Whereas for music, if it's an album (or whatever) that I appreciate, then I'll want to appreciate it again and again, especially if it's a towering aesthetic experience. I can't actually think of any album I'd only want to listen to once, unless I thought it was meh.

The sessionable Beefheart album is Clear Spot.

No, that would be Trout Mask 😉

Btw I have listened to Clear Spot again but still found it comparatively uninspiring, bordering MOR in places. Only the title track and Big Eyed Beans really stood out. Sorry.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

ive only been to one of those listening party things where they play a classic album and youre invited to listen to it completely still, silent, in total reverence, etc etc, but i hated it. not all albums are meant to be heard like that i dont think. music seems like something that the more enjoyable it is, the less it has to command all your attention; the less enjoyable ('difficult albums'), the more you are meant to sit there to take it all in, and marvel at it.

 

[sus]

Event: various ethnomusicological recordings

years ago there was no such thing as "world music", and I would spend time flicking through the records in the ethnomusicology boxes in Housmans ( note: Charing Cross Road in London, UK used to have good bookshops with meagre vinyl selections ) and once I stumbled upon a recording of an Amazonian Ebena ( Anadenanthera peregrina ) ( aka psychedelic snuff ) ritual and as I had seen a documentary where the young lads of the village had the substance blasted into their nostrils by the Shaman and then they danced about for a while before getting aggy and attacking each other with spears, all while huge strings of virulent green snot dangled and swung from their nostrils, I have to admit I was intrigued, but not enough to buy the LP, although while extremely drunk recently I regretted that decision and foolishly bought the re-release, but, seriously, how often am I going to listen to this?

David Toop – Lost Shadows: In Defence Of The Soul (Yanomami Shamanism, Songs, Ritual, 1978)

answer: about the same number of time I've listened to this...

although, I feel the sleeve notes are worthy of the "liner notes" thread, but I'll just post them here:

the cover of the original version I didn't waste money on:

I think you made the right decision to purchase—closing a narrative loop, securing a charged memento from your past, the gift it's given back in the form of this thread reply.

 

[blissblogger]

Event: various ethnomusicological recordings

years ago there was no such thing as "world music", and I would spend time flicking through the records in the ethnomusicology boxes in Housmans ( note: Charing Cross Road in London, UK used to have good bookshops with meagre vinyl selections ) and once I stumbled upon a recording of an Amazonian Ebena ( Anadenanthera peregrina ) ( aka psychedelic snuff ) ritual and as I had seen a documentary where the young lads of the village had the substance blasted into their nostrils by the Shaman and then they danced about for a while before getting aggy and attacking each other with spears, all while huge strings of virulent green snot dangled and swung from their nostrils, I have to admit I was intrigued, but not enough to buy the LP, although while extremely drunk recently I regretted that decision and foolishly bought the re-release, but, seriously, how often am I going to listen to this?

View attachment 13251

David Toop – Lost Shadows: In Defence Of The Soul (Yanomami Shamanism, Songs, Ritual, 1978)

answer: about the same number of time I've listened to this...

View attachment 13252

although, I feel the sleeve notes are worthy of the "liner notes" thread, but I'll just post them here:



the cover of the original version I didn't waste money on:

View attachment 13253

That and some other ethnological type stuff is a perfect example - I too bought the reissue and have played it a total of one times.

But there is a life narrative loop thing going on as well which is that a friend of mine in student days had a copy of the Toop-recorded original, he was this guy Micalef who would spent his entire grant in the first week or two on records, trawling up all kinds of stuff. Absolutely piffle often but in there would be really weird things. Like the Inuit vocal games record. And this one, which I'm afraid we nicknamed Venezuelan Vomit - from the gargled sounds emitted but also the liner note stuff about strings of snot and drool dangling from the tripped-out shamen's chins.

I can't claim that this release on the original hearing became a regular on the turntable but we did once play it at a party as unsoothing background sounds (trying very hard to be eccentric and unlike other students obviously).

By comparison the Inuit stuff is listenable verging on sessionable - disorienting but entertaining, especially when the pair of dueting / dueling breath-pulse women burst out laughing, derailing the performance.

 

[version]

So a bit like a certain kind of movie, by Pasolini or someone like that. Once is enough. More than enough! This kind of film hasn't got that rewatchability that, say, The Godfather movies have. (Of course this is infinitely arguable and no doubt there are those who can and do watch Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom as relaxing fare).

Haneke said something about it not having done its job if you want to see it again.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

Gaspar Noe has prob seen Salo numerous times lol