VOTD 3/27/2023

 Nurse With Wound: Space Music (Beta-lactam Ring Records)

Purchased at The Attic

I'm caught between two fundamental ways of thinking about music. One is that it is an expressive art. We use music to find ways to "say" something that can't be said in words, or any other medium. Then there's that attitude I can trace to John Cage, that is it's an inherently futile act to try to "express" anything in music, and just accept it for its beauty. Dionysian vs Apollonian? I forget which is which.

I don't come down strongly on one side or the other. Music can certain have a "mood" without trying to express something specific. One wouldn't describe Beethoven's 5th symphony as moribund. It has a liveliness and intensity that suggests something else.

Yet I also have sometimes pushed back against some musicians' attempts to make a piece expressive when it's not appropriate or desired. Sometimes....just let the sounds be. In my Concerto for Orkestra, the movement "Incline" reduces in middle of the work to a piano playing a single note repeatedly. It's supposed to connect to two halves of the work while wiping clear the first half. It's also meant to be uncomfortable: why is this one note being played over and over? Until, quietly, the first bass note in the piano is played, and a dramatic tension is released.

I should have sent these notes to both of the pianists who played the work, because they both tried to make it something it wasn't intended to be. I didn't want it to be expressive. I didn't want it to be interesting. Its lack of interest was much of the point. Both pianists tried to do something to it, make it more dramatic, more expressive, make it more interesting than I wanted. Why can't a note just be a note? Why can't wind players play a long tone without swelling it? Why can't it simply be a beautiful tone? Why do we need to pour our emotions into every possible event? Do we think our emotions and our expression of them is actually that important?

Another day, another fatal shooting at another school. What do I choose to put on my stereo while I contemplate yet another senseless, grotesque reminder of current reality in the United States?

Part of me was about to reach for something angry and gloomy, such as the doom metal album from yesterday's post. That would certainly be "expressive." As I've written before, I listened to only dark and severe music for weeks after Donald Trump was declared president-elect. Today, I wanted something atmospheric, something that seemed removed from this world, from everyday life. Today's news is a reminder of how ugly life can be.

I'd listened to this album once before, which I found used at The Attic. It's harder to find good and interesting used records than it once was, but here's a good example of why you look.

I've read the music was a commissioned work for a planetarium. I would have liked to have experienced this under those circumstances.

Nurse With Wound is primarily Steven Stapleton, with a number of others coming and going through the years. This was crated by Steven with Colin Potter and Andrew Liles, the latter seemingly being one of his longest-lasting collaborators. I followed as much of NWW's music as I could during the all-analog era, and started to lose track and interest when everything was being realized and released digitally. Much of that no doubt had to do with me burning out on it. Exactly how long Andrew and Colin have been involved, if they still are (Andrew is, I understand), I'm not certain. And it's always been a bit of a mystery who exactly does what NWW records: concept, performance, realization, process, engineering.

There's a cinematic to quality to many NWW albums, which is true of the first side of this LP. Things happen unpredictably, it's mostly quiet except for a few much louder, noisy outbursts. I don't think the creators intend to express or evoke anything in particular. There's a logic to it, but that logic is unknown to me as the listener. 

The second side is of a quality similar to the more recent Trippin' Musik. There's a filtered, soft-edged sound happening constantly, with a tremolo effect that stays consistent through its side. Notes/tones fade in and out, but nothing stands out. It's in stasis for its length. This was what I wanted to hear right now, something that doesn't go anywhere and just sits for a length of time. I'm listening to side two a second time as I write this. 

Take me away. As Sun Ra was quoted, "Leave this God-damned planet!" I won't live long enough to see if any serious colonization of outer space happens; it might not at all. If it does, it could be the opportunity to leave behind the failings of human beings, our capacity to do awful things. But the pessimist in me says no, we're going to be just as shitty to each other in space as we are on Earth. At least the music is an escape to inner space as outer, briefly.