I've been reading Drew Daniel's (one-half of Matmos) analysis of Throbbing Gristle's album 20 Jazz Funk Greats for the Bloomsbury series 33 1/3. It's a very good book, especially the sections I'll be primarily focusing on for this article: the Preface and the first chapter, "I Don't Give a Cat's Whiskers." The reason why I like the book so much isn't because of its analysis of the album (I've only recently listened to 20 Jazz Funk Greats which had enough going for it that I thought I'd venture a Google search), but because of how it explores music's extremities with a convincing remove.
The past couple of years have seen me go into the depths of music's less savoury areas. I've been a long time fan of extreme metal's various branches and thought it would be interesting to venture into more abstract forms of dark music. Noise music was there waiting for me and, a few list and collages later, I was listening to Whitehouse, Hunting Lodge, Francisco Lopez and Deathpile.
My relationship with this branch of music is still ambiguous to me. There's a lot of interesting ideas orbiting here, but there's still something lacking and it wasn't until reading Daniel's overview of 20 Jazz Funk Greats that I came across a convincing argument for this feeling.
Noise music like that of the artists mentioned above, make some pretty lofty assumptions that scream a lack of self-awareness. Lying underneath noise music is a need for its legitimisation. I don't think I've come across a genre of music that is so concerned with others taking it seriously, or at the very least, have others believe that by "not getting it" is to admit some kind of defeat, or inferiority. I don't want this to be seen as a criticism so much as the way in which noise music understands itself and how this "problem" creates a space for more expression that further affirms the noise genre as something worth while. I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's get back to fleshing out this idea that noise music has an inferiority complex.
There are seemingly two assumptions made that allow noise music to legitimize itself; one, that the negative aspects of life are too removed, which leads to assumption number two, that this remove skews our collective sense of reality. Noise music is framed within a debate surrounding truth. How it tends to go about this, however, is a little suspect to say the least. These legitimizing assumptions bleed into the relationship between artist and consumer. What the noise musician assumes is that, by concentrating their entire project upon the less positive and thus "hidden" aspects of life that occur all the time around us, the consumer is being confronted with a reality that they are unaware of. This is what I mean by the genre's lack of self-awareness since it's more than likely that the consumer is not only aware of these things, but savours them to an extent. The piece of art is not a form of confrontation, but a space for a self-enjoyment that is, paradoxically, shared through the social act of art.
Going further into this, I completely disagree with the notion that people live in some kind of bubble where they're not exposed to violence of everyday existence and this is because of the built-in social rebukes to these confrontations. To say that these are secrets is to simultaneously believe that people, when confronted, will not have a means to respond. This is not the case in the least. When you show someone something disgusting, that person is at the ready with various means of response, especially when what is being presented has been filtered through the medium of art. I've never seen a dead body, so I have no idea how'd I respond, but I have seen the album art to Pissgrave's latest Posthumous Humiliation (solid album, btw), and when this photo is presented in this context, I'm able to respond and not because I'm stronger, but because humans have been building our responses to tragedy of the most horrific and gory for time inconceivable. When you ask someone to confront the truth and they say they'd rather not think about, that's not a weakness, that's a response. There is no ignoring in the case of a response. A response is an acknowledgement and, in this case, the acknowledgement would rather not continue if it can be avoided from here on out.
In exploring his relationship with Throbbing Gristle before 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Daniel touches upon a lot of the things I just covered, though from a more personal and sympathetic place. Daniel presents his adolescence as one consumed by the mundane evils surrounding our quotidian. Industry, and its physical embodiment within the factory, become beacons for the self-exploration of one's sensuous limits (another aspect of noise music, and of course variants of gore metal, is its focus on grotesqueries as the primary source of affronts). The "negatives" of life are concealed in the physical and rational space of industriousness. Daniel presents his relationship with industry as both a personal and political issue. Personal in the sense that, like many adolescent boys, there's a masculanist obsession with one's mettle. Political in the sense that ignoring these aspects of life (again, are they really ignored?) is deficient and unjustifiable. Perhaps the impression is that through ignorance there's the threat of nothing being done to make things better. However, Daniel is ready to admit that, like most of our positions as youth, these were half-formed ideas.
It's in this framing that Daniel investigates the lead up to 20 Jazz Funk Greats and Throbbing Gristle's attempt to confront its audience through an aesthetic shift meant to challenge the expectations of those most anticipating the band's latest offering. How this was to be achieved and whether or not it actually was is something Daniel, smartly and deftly, side steps. What Daniel is more interested in are the ideas informing Throbbing Gristle's decision. This part of the book is its most intriguing and it's this section that gives us the question of what it means to challenge something through its own means.
In order to challenge the status quo that Throbbing Gristle saw themselves being pigeonholed within prompted the band to react using the very tools it felt were being used to diminish their raison d'etre; to confront. But here's the paradox, in order to confront something, something has to be established that is worth confronting. What results isn't a challenge so much as a reaffirmation sourced from a reflection; a reflection that objectifies itself as something worth challenging. It's challenging industrial music through industrial music and, regardless of the results, industrial music will come out in the end as a worthy practice for not only critiquing its surroundings, but also itself.
Unfortunately, the productivity of this paradox is lost on Daniel, who seems to be under the impression that this paradox is actually Throbbing Gristle succumbing to a knee-jerk reaction. Daniel posits that this self-critique, and thus self-enjoyment, is deficient for its masturbatory quality and because of how it simultaneously belittles while also reaffirming its audience's previously held assumptions. Daniel sees a lack of forethought in the logic of "We want to challenge the audience who take us for granted by making music that utilizes these assumptions for its own existence". The only audience that will get the confrontation being posed is the audience Throbbing Gristle has already amassed, which achieves the same amount of limited framing as if Throbbing Gristle continued what they were originally doing.
Given the goals of Throbbing Gristle, Daniel is spot on and right in seeing this as a feeble attempt at confrontation. However, by positing there art as both a part of and a challenge to the genre of industrial music, a problem is both presented and answered within itself. What results is industrial music's further assurance that it itself is the best answer to its own problems and that, should future issues arise, its should be through reflection that they be resolved. This is the productive paradox in action.
But it would be a mistake to assume that industrial music is no different. What occurs after this challenge is, yes, a reaffirmation of the genre's existence and usefulness. However, this should not be mistaken as non-evolutionary. How a challenge and its resolution become ingrained within a system's functioning is always remaining to be seen until it isn't. Given that time has passed since 20 Jazz Funk Greats was released, many much more informed than me can certainly use the album as a point of reference to further understand, and thus solidify, how industrial music does what it does. But, when the album was originally released, this could never have been seen. Change is, after all, a temporal thing. The results certainly weren't conforming to Throbbing Gristle's intent, but I feel comfortable in believing that industrial music has changed since 20 Jazz Funk Greats was released and that this album can't be discounted when considering these changes.
Now, if you've been following my blog (you haven't), you'll know that I've made some similar comments in the past regarding Hans-Georg Moeller's The Radical Luhmann and how it presents Luhmann's ideas in the scope of post-1968/Frankfurt School sociology. What I took issue with particularly was the argument that what the Frankfurt School and their colleagues were trying to achieve was not only fruitless, but also ignorant of how society functions. Do I think that the Frankfurt School's political ambitions were shortsighted and misinformed due to their reliance on a shallow understanding of society's complex functioning? Yes, without a doubt, but I take issue with the idea that challenging something isn't worth while because it only reaffirms the very thing being challenged. Why I take issue with it is because its a concern that cannot be properly addressed because of science's reliance on what has already happened and complete inability to address what could happen. By addressing contemporary political concerns, I'm not trying to dissolve politics; I'm using it. By challenging contemporary political concerns, I'm not even trying to achieve anything as much as I feel obliged to engage. But I can be sure that something will happen in my taking part in politic's mechanisms of reflection. Revolution is not a worthy endeavour, but a rebellion that recognizes its functioning within the very thing it wishes to challenge seems to me not only a crucial part of a social system's functioning, but also a roll of the dice that could see the change I want becoming the change that is.
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