Pop culture treasure, high culture trash.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Here slum the warm jets

Also in re: the Arctic Monkeys--Pants noticed today that the Monkeys' song "Only Ones Who Know" off of Favourite Worst Nightmare has the same opening chords as Brian Eno's "Some of Them Are Old." There are worse subconscious/accidental musical influences. Eno is a smartie with words as well as notes:

Years ago I realized that the recording studio was becoming a musical instrument. I even lectured about it, proclaiming that "by turning sound into malleable material, studios invite you to construct new worlds of sounds as painters construct worlds of form and color." I was thrilled at how people were using studios to make music that otherwise simply could not exist. Studios opened up possibilities. But now I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. This transfer is not paying off.

The essay is from 1999, but it's obviously still hyper-relevant today. See also this more recent lecture from Pop!Tech.