At some point in the last century, musicians or producers or listeners lost the ability to appreciate the sonic space between instruments. Possibly they were seduced by the potential of 32 48 64 track recording facilities. Possibly they were afraid that someone would realise that they weren’t actually very good musicians. Still, I don’t think there is a truly adequate explanation for the preference for musical sludge. No explanation that would justify this slide into decadence.
Listening to The Last Shadow Puppets album The Age of Understatement, the egregiousness of this lack of space immediately becomes apparent. Overlarded with strings and brass, the album is supposed to be Arctic Monkey, Alex Turner’s, take on the Walker Brothers and early Bowie. To me it sounds like some snotty kid with a screw loose whining over the top of the most leaden indie orchestral work that I’ve ever heard. Am I getting old? Maybe.
Last night finally got around to watching Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped version of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. I never much liked the novel A Scanner Darkly, finding one of the least engaging of Dick’s works — the stuff about hemispherical breakdown in the brain was too literal, the drugginess was tedious rather than unnerving as in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, only the scramble suit idea was really good. As such, I wasn’t that surprised that the film was something of a non-event. It is done really well and accurately captures the spirit and action of the book but if you don’t like the book you’re stuffed.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Leave a Reply