#ive got at least 4 etho videos to watch | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ericwollersberger · 5 years ago

Text

Death Grips and Jaques Attali’s Networks of Musical Production

In her essay “Extreme Noise Terror: Punk Rock and the Aesthetics of Badness,” Angela Rodel argues that extreme subgenres of punk, along with 19th century art music use an aesthetic of extreme noise and egotistical, non-communicatory strategies of composition to escape from what she describes as a “network of repetition” in which “music becomes a weapon of disguised violence, used to silence people through the illusion of choice and the banalization of any oppositional messages.” Using framework from Pierre Bourdieu, she describes how punk music, although often claiming to be musical resistance to social power structures, can become co-opted by the industry it claims to be rebelling against and used to trivialize genuinely subversive music. She then compares Bourdieu’s model to that of Jaques Attali, which describes four “networks” of musical production. First, that of “ritual,” the power of music itself, “representation,” where music is passively consumed by an audience, “repetition,” in which music becomes a commercial product designed for exchange and profit, and “composition,” where music is played “for self-enjoyment alone” and cannot be absorbed “into even a symbolic economy” due to its private and non-commercial nature. Attali’s model differs from Bourdieu’s in its inclusion of this final phase, which Rodel characterizes as being the only way to escape from the cycle of “repetition” (Derno, 2004).

Rodel’s essay was published in 2004 as part of the book Bad Music: The Music We Love To Hate and although it is sparse in terms of specific musical examples, the musical context she is specifically describing is that of “punk,” which in the context of her essay, she defines as “a general aggregate of musical styles and their associated subcultural ideologies that have developed over the past twenty-five years.” Since punk’s influence was so widespread and arguably transcended the genre of punk itself, I take this to include a wide variety of non-punk genres like ambient, electronic harsh noise, and a wide variety of internet based niches that didn’t exist at the time of the publication of Rodel’s essay that operate using similar strategies of “self-alienation.” I also believe that although she describes the four phases as “potentially overlapping,” I don’t think she was able to take account just how much it is possible for the four phases to overlap as they do now thanks to platforms like BandCamp and SoundCloud. While there is certainly no shortage of clearly “self-alienating” DIY noise music out there that clearly exists within or at least approaches Attali’s phase of “composition,” I believe it would be more interesting to look at an example where more of these phases overlap, and for this post I want to discuss how the ethos of Sacramento band Death Grips subversively combines the seemingly contradictory phases of “composition” and “repetition” (Derno, 2004).

Comprised of vocalist MC Ride, drummer Zach Hill, and audio designer Flatlander, Death Grips first made waves with their 2011 mixtape Exmilitary, which they released for free without a label. While it dealt in dark topics such as drug abuse, voyeurism, and violence, and existed on the fringes of any kind of genre classification, it was very popular upon its release and eventually landed them a major label record deal (Diver, 2012). Although it was released for free and its antisocial themes would seem to indicate that this album was purely within Attali’s phase of composition, its prominent use of easily recognizable samples from artists ranging from Pink Floyd to Link Wray to Black Flag suggests a little of the phase of repetition, albeit the repetition of other artists’ music rather than their own. It could be argued, however, that due to the album being released for free, it can be inferred that the samples were probably not legally cleared and thus not commodities in any kind of economical sense. However, it is hard to argue with the symbolic capital of invoking an artist like Syd Barrett or using a quote from Charles Manson to open the album to a band who have claimed that they are “essentially outsider music” (Diver, 2012).

They would more interestingly flirt with the phase of repetition after signing a deal with Epic and releasing their debut full-length album The Money Store, the title of which already demonstrated a level of self-awareness about their alleged “selling out.” “We spoke to many labels,” said Hill, “and we’ve talked amongst ourselves about how no representation is better than the wrong representation. But Epic were clear at the very beginning that they would let us handle ourselves. They went into this deal already aware of the ideology that we’re driven by, and they’ve worked to help the team move forward” (Diver, 2012). Thematically, the album explored their relationship with internet culture and the commodification of their art, especially on tracks like “Hacker” (”The tables flipped now we got all the coconuts bitch”) and “I’ve Seen Footage” (”Desensitized by the mass amounts of shit/I’ve seen it, I’ve been it”) (Genius, 2019c; Genius, 2019b). It would not be long, however, before they engaged in the self-alienation of the phase of composition by leaking their third album No Love Deep Web, causing them to be dropped by their record label. The opening track “Come Up and Get Me” could be read as an affirmation of this self-alienation: “When the world comes knocking/Fuck this world, fuck this body” (Genius, 2019a). The video for “No Love” saw them interfering with the repetition of their own music, abruptly interrupting the audio and pausing the visuals to flash text on the screen that read “1000%!! I USED TO GIVE A FUCK” while harsh digital noise played (Death Grips, 2014).

The rest of Death Grips’ albums were released on their own label, Thirdworlds (Stevens, 2013). They would release Government Plates in 2013 and the double album The Powers that B in 2015 before announcing their breakup and cancelling a string of high-profile tour dates with the likes of Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails (Adams, 2014). The decision seemed rushed (the announcement was written on a napkin and then posted to instagram) and the reasons for the breakup were unclear, so many fans assumed it was a hoax. Due to the band’s dislike of interviews, it was never clear whether this was some self-destructive posturing on their part meant to create interest in an upcoming album or whether they had actually planned to stay broken up, but in 2016 their fifth studio album, Bottomless Pit was announced and the band published an “Interview” that compellingly overlapped Attali’s phases of composition and repetition in a number of ways. The interview was in the form of a video uploaded to their Youtube channel. The first few minutes show the band performing for “Tuesdays with Matthew” host Matthew Hoffman while non-diegetic instrumental music by the band plays over the performance (Geslani, 2016). Hoffman goes on to interview each member of the band, but none of the diegetic audio from the interview is included and the video essentially becomes an extended music video for music that would later be released as the Interview 2016 EP (Death Grips, 2016). While this could be read as an affirmation of their dislike of interviews and, by extension, the media machine that demands them, it is worth noting that they are also engaging in self-alienation by blocking out the diegetic music they are playing in the video. What is also interesting is that they are also in the phase of repetition because they are using this subversion of the interview as promotional material for their upcoming album. This seems to be a self-aware decision, though, as lyrics from “Trash” the seventh track on Bottomless Pit seem to indicate (”We upload trash/face down, trash begets trash”) (Genius, 2019d).

The theoretical framework Rodel presents in her essay is especially interesting in the context of a group like Death Grips due to their self-awareness and individualism, and the aesthetic strategies she presents have grown increasingly multifaceted and overlap in ways that have only become more interesting in the internet age. In my own work, some themes I hope to explore are alienation and self-alienation as a form of escapism in the context of music and technology. For this reason I think I will be writing my critical analysis about the section of Rodel’s essay where Attali’s 4 phases of musical production are described and she explains how punk ideology and musical production in Attali’s network of composition can lead the way to a kind of liberation through aesthetic self-alienation (Derno, 2004).

References:

ADAMS, G. (2014). Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden replace Death Grips on Tour with Oneohtrix Point Never, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Cold Cave. [Online] Available at: http://exclaim.ca/music/article/nine_inch_nails_soundgarden_replace_death_grips_on_summer_tour_with_oneohtrix_point_never_dillinger_escape_plan_cold_cave [Accessed 23 November 2019]

DEATH GRIPS (2014). Death Grips - No Love (Official Video). [Online Video] 13th February. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MHhLDCJ57E. [Accessed 23 November 2019].

DEATH GRIPS (2016). Death Grips Interview 2016. [Online Video] 13th March. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtW7Qz0a3o0. [Accessed 23 November 2019].

GENIUS (2019a). Death Grips - Come Up and Get Me Lyrics. [Online] Available at: https://genius.com/Death-grips-come-up-and-get-me-lyrics [Accessed 23 November 2019]

GENIUS (2019b). Death Grips - Hacker Lyrics. [Online] Available at: https://genius.com/Death-grips-hacker-lyrics [Accessed 23 November 2019]

GENIUS (2019c). Death Grips - I’ve Seen Footage Lyrics. [Online] Available at: https://genius.com/Death-grips-ive-seen-footage-lyrics [Accessed 23 November 2019]

GENIUS (2019d). Death Grips - Trash Lyrics. [Online] Available at: https://genius.com/Death-grips-trash-lyrics [Accessed 23 November 2019]

DERNO, M. & WASHBURNE, C.J. (eds.) (2004) Bad Music: The Music We Love To Hate. London: Routledge.

DIVER, M. (2012). Suspicious Minds - The Resolute Mission of Death Grips. [Online] Available at: https://www.clashmusic.com/features/suspicious-minds-the-resolute-mission-of-death-grips [Accessed 23 November 2019]

GESLANI, M. (2016). Death Grips release bizarre video dubbed “Interview 2016″ - watch. [Online] Available at: https://consequenceofsound.net/2016/03/death-grips-release-bizarre-video-dubbed-interview-2016-watch/ [Accessed 23 November 2019]

STEVENS, J. (2013). Death Grips to release New Album under Record Label Thirdworlds. [Online] Available at: https://www.nme.com/news/music/death-grips-31-1260274#:~:targetText=Death%20Grips%20have%20announced%20that,dropped%20in%20November%20(2012). [Accessed 23 November 2019]

0 notes