Meekly Entering The Arca Fray

About Arca…
In order...
Energy Flash (including important quotes from The Wire's review, otherwise unavailable online)

And now ME. ! ?

As always, I don't know where to start so I will.

The music is ok. I do find the textures fairly entrancing but, like some others above, feel that there is no end towards which they reach.

I agree with Sherburne that it sounds as if we could be possibly theoretically on the cusp of something new, maybe. I wonder how many more qualifiers I could fit into the preceding sentence.

But I am not optimistic. I want to be. I figure at the very least that the lo-fi, gritty sound that has been popular for a few years now has gotten a bit boring and am glad others feel this way too (it was always a bit reactionary, wasn't it, though I'll keep my overdrive pedals just in case). Arca, along with some productions on Pinch's Cold label, certain DJ Mustard instrumentals, and the last Egyptrixx album, have had a certain "clean darkness" to their sound that I have generally found to be, well, laden with a potential, but a potential, that hasn't quite arrived. I don't think it will.

Here's why.

But not yet.

Almost a year ago I went to the then-new Rough Trade shop in Brooklyn and I had a fairly negative reaction. You don't need to bother (re-)reading what I had to say. The gist of it all: alternative culture is dead. Yup. A pretty big statement. Possibly wrong, though, you know, I'd love to be wrong. I'd love to go to a show or hear a record and start to believe that the world can change, or, more importantly, that people really, really want it to. Because I want that feeling again, and am sure that I am capable of feeling it. I want to believe. Because, otherwise, it's just this, and this sucks. 

Anyways, why dead? Well.

The alternative culture, in the broadest sense, gained much of its energy and tension from the competition between the desire to democratize the construction of social meaning and the desire to do away with social meaning altogether. The intrinsic desire of consumer capitalism is to do away with social meaning altogether. "Alternative" culture is over because that tension no longer exists. One side has already won. Guess which.

If I were really a great essayist, I would talk more about the following, but I'm not, so you'll have to infer more, and better, paragraphs than actually exist.

A quick note on architecture.

It's always been funny to me that architecture always seems to be a few steps ahead than other realms of culture. Or maybe I'm wrong. I just figure post-modernity happened there a long, long time ago. Robert Venturi built that house for his mother in the early 1960s, after all. That's like a decade before Autobahn-era Kraftwerk (who were, I guess Modernists and post-Moderns with a semi-ironic love for Modernism at the same time). Why funny? Well, building buildings, especially when public money and public oversight is taken into account, is harder than making a record or painting a painting, so you would figure…

Regardless, at least on an aesthetic level, we've been out of that phase for a long time. Gehry, Hadid, etc., seem a lot more Modern to me. The sanctity of the object, the use of technologically-advanced materials, etc. No corinthian columns deployed ironically, or any of that crap. But, putting aside the difference in rigor, for a lack of a better word (though maybe it's a perfect word) of their buildings (i.e. no boxes, rigid symmetries, etc.), there is another difference. 

There's this book I read a few years ago, From a Cause to a Style. A collection of essays. From what I can remember, not bad, but sort of predictable. Suburbs ruined cities. Ugly Modernist buildings did, too. OK true, somewhat, but sort of instantly dated. Because people have been moving back from the suburbs into the cities for a while now and sometimes I just wished they had all stayed there because that is where the problems come from now. Nobody is building tower blocks anymore, are they?

Anyways, that title, From a Cause to a Style, sums up the descent of Modernism from something political to something aesthetic. It's actually always been something that has depressed me a bit. What happened? Before WWII and after? That's beyond the scope of this increasingly-meandering discussion.

Let's look at the last part. Style. What distinguishes the old Modernism from the new Modernism in architecture, to me at least, is the lack of the desire to "reproduce". Modernism in the past wanted to take over (and many preceding historical styles actually did, for a time). Sure there was Lever House and the Seagram Building and all but there was an expectation that all buildings should be built like that, that everything should look like those. The style was meant to have an impact, to affect change, to change context. 

Even post-modernity, too. Amusingly enough. Yeah there was the AT&T building, but also your local mall.

What's new is that this is no longer the case. Gerhy's buildings. Well, they are only his, and nobody else's and there seems to be little desire to spin it out, to design neighborhoods, cities, anything, really, larger than the distinct and separate and distinct and separate building along his lines (or anyone else's). These buildings are not meant to accomplish anything besides standing alone being themselves and not affecting or being affected by anything. Man I wish I was eloquent today.

Here's a case.

Aesthetically speaking, I love some work by Herzog and de Meuron. Can't help it. I'm a Modern at heart. Brownstone Brooklyn is beautiful but I'm pissed we either haven't done better or don't believe we have. It's all a matter of faith. Save the Port Authority.

Two pictures. Both Herzog and De Meuron buildings.

The top one is nice. A bit gaudy, but definitely "future". Whether you like it or not, here's the thing. You are judging it all by itself. The site, the intrinsic attitude of the building and it's design: it all stands alone and is meant to. There is no context. The second building is on Bond Street in New York. Sort cool-looking, tech-forward, etc. But also, it stands alone, and this time, this matters. Because it doesn't stand alone. There's a building on the left and a building on the right and more buildings across the street and, you know, the rest of New York. And what is this building's attitude? Fuck you. And fuck context. Look at how the window lines don't match. Look at how squat it is. Taller than the buildings next to it, it still feels shorter. Had they kept the window lines going, had they broken up the facade to try and accentuate the vertical, well, it would look like the building gave a shit, and that the designers did.

But they don't. Action speaking louder than carefully-composed theoretical disquisitions and all of that.

As always, I write until I don't remember what it was I was trying to say.

Oh yeah.

I think what all of this leads to is let's call it anti-social Modernism. There's no desire to create or replace of replicate or push or prod or destroy. It's just indifferent. Self-expression. A building that looks cool (though honestly, I don't like it that much just in terms of my own taste). As if there was anything else for it to do. As if.

Back to Arca, then, before I embarrass myself on purpose as opposed to inadvertantly.

So yeah, I like the sound, but am not optimistic about the possibility. I think when Sherburne says this could be the beginning of something, well, I think the thing is is that that something is not desired. The "rock-ist" desire for "Meaning" being projected onto something or someone that don't want it.

But not quite.

Let's travel a bit more.

Simon quotes at length from Britt Brown. And let's get one thing straight. Mr. Brown is the husband of Amanda Brown with whom he runs the label Not Not Fun (and associated sub-labels). From what I can recall from Simon's profile of this label and its creators is that they are happy releasing music that consists mostly of sort of post-ironic pastiche and seem to revel in the fact that there are "no more Fugazis", i.e. bands all caught up in that Meaning shit. So it's funny, in that context, that Mr. Brown, in his review, seems to be taking Arca to task for not meaning anything, ultimately. And yeah, he's sort of right, but, you know, gee, there's not really a side to pick here.

(So I've gotten word that, actually, the whole "no Fugazis" thing was a bit more ambivalent than celebratory so you'll just have to read the above paragraph again with new knowledge. Still, pastiche.)

(As an aside, yes, Simon, there's lots of dance music that seems to revel in it's own wizardry but then again so many of those records [thinking specifically of UK hardcore, darkcore, early jungle, etc.] seemed to, I don't know, deploy those tricks towards some sort of end - the excitement of that trickery seemed to engender social cohesion amongst those that had just had their minds blown on the floor. Maybe that's more about the people who were listening though and why they were there.)

This all brings us to AdHoc's Mike Sugarman. The article that really frustrates. 

Remember I said alternative was dead because the desire to destroy meaning has won over the desire to create it. And that that desire to destroy was redolent of capitalism. Well it is. How to turn anything into something that people can buy? The process of commodification. Do I have to explain it all? I think if you are hear you've read what needs to be read. And this is obviously not a formal essay. No shit, huh?

Sugarman sees everyone on the Arca-meh to Arca-no side of the spectrum as perhaps nostalgic for the old values of rockism. He seems to enjoy the end of that totalizing desire. See his comments about Wagner vs. Satie. The real pertinent thing I'm gonna quote as opposed to assume you've read. Sugarman sez: my time with abstract music has taught me that music is nothing more than sound, ordered and presented to some end. Well, yes, true, fine (and fuck the rules, for real), barring, of course, the condescending tone of the whole piece. Like we don't get it, man, far out. I mean, is noise really a radical strategy at this point in time? Really?

Because. Right now, "music is nothing more than sound". Not in the rarified world of some noise dude's loft, but, like, in reality. Classical is dress-up for status-conscious adults, jazz caught in endless, repetitive repetitions of non-repetitions, house and techno and descendants emperors with clothes, yes, but no body, and rock and roll, hah! Hip-hop/rap even more fucked. Kanye is like that soccer stadium above. Gaudy or beautiful and alone and impotent, ultimately. For better and worse. Should I even bother mentioning pop?

I guess what I am saying is that noise, or rather the aforementioned attitude towards it, is redolent of the drive towards nihilism that is inherent in the marketization of everything. Can you really side with the mainstream of capitalism and consider yourself a radical (not that Sugarman describes himself as that, but... that attitude, what other word can I use?)? Can you really side with overwhelming tide of history, backed by popular demand, while feeling outnumbered?

I mean, yeah, I guess there is a certain radicalism in trying to demythologize, to undermine and reduce, and clear us all of our sentimental prejudices and predilections, and, if I were to quote Marx here, that whole thing about bourgeoisie (and noise dudes are mostly, you know, that, at least in my personal experience), the stripping of halos, I guess I would come off as the old, whiny, antiquated being that the article presumes I am. 

Fine. But the thing is, this attitude has been winning for decades now. Since when has music meant more than sound? How long as it been since new aesthetic and social formations have cohered towards creating a new way of life? How long has it been since culture has been galvanized and has galvanized? 1995?

How long has it been since we have wanted something different as opposed to merely being something different? How long has it been since anyone has said "no"? How long has it been since that "no" has sounded beyond the minds of those who already say "yes" to "no"? Can you piss anyone off now or only find a different fan club?

It's true, I am someone who wants that meaning thing, more Fugazis. But I could care less about the Sixties, man, or reliving some nostalgic version of a past that, more and more, feels to me as if it never existed, as if it no longer needs to.

I simply find today wanting. And I don't think more of the same will fill me up.

It's been said that power corrupts, but can one really now presume that it has ever been sought for any other reason? Music now seems to be made by the satisfied for the satisfied. Friends, Arca makes some nice music out of some nice textures and maybe he'll beat Satie at the game of melody, but if he wanted what you wanted him to want, you'd never even know he existed. It's because he doesn't want what you want him to want that you can even want him to want what you want.

(what a fucking whimper of an ending sorry - I should brought it back to - Arca architecture or something)

(the thing about atheists is that they are not against religion but belief itself, hiding, disingenuously, their own certainty in nothing by attacking the certainties of something)

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