Old Is The New New

 

This boutique front snapped on a recent jaunt to London - or was it taken in NYC? - at any rate, their slogan "Old Is The New New" reminded me of a London vintage store called Pop Boutique that I once spied, whose pitch to consumers was: 

"Don't follow fashion. Buy something that's already out of date."

But the pro-vintage sentiment above has an eco-fashion tinge - recycling garments is not only cool and requires a sophisticated eye, a finely-tuned sensibility - but it might just be planet-saving too. 

C.f. the campaign against fast fashion, the ultra-wasteful turnover of trends and outfits, as campaigned against by Farmer Alex (with his "Slowing Down Fashion" documentary of a few years ago) among others. 

"Retrokultur-Experte"

Well I suppose I am, aren't I? And in that capacity I chatted with Ann-Kathrin Mittelstrass of German Public Radio for a program about retro trends of the present, the Nostalgie-Epidemie, etc, including the Beatles Get Back mega-doc (which I loved-loved and meant to write about here but then the moment passed). 

Friends, again

"We spend our days in front of screens which broadcast us more information than we’re able to handle about things we aren’t able to change. Is it any surprise that safe and familiar relics are being dug up to soothe us?" - Olivia Ovenden

What with being Mr. Retromania, I am quoted in Ms. Ovenden's Esquire piece "The Pull Of The Past: How We All Got Hooked On Nostalgia In The 2010s", an interesting deep dive into the memory-surfacing algorithms of social media etc, with a particular focus on Nineties-nostalgia and the widespread recourse to Friends as a sort of televisual eqivalent to ambient / Ambien.

empire of retro signs

Oriental Magnetic Yellow was a parody band of Yellow Magic Orchestra, formed by VGM composers. The members were:

* Shinji Hosoe as Haruomi Hosonoe (細野江晴臣), a parody of Haruomi Hosono
* Nobuyoshi Sano as Ryuichi Sanomoto (佐野本龍一), a parody of Ryuichi Sakamoto
* Takayuki Aihara as Takayukihiro Aihara (相原隆幸宏), a parody of Yukihiro Takahashi
* Hiroto Sasaki as Hideki Sasatake (佐々武秀樹), a parody of Hideki Masutake

Adam Curtis on stuck pop / me on "emotional compression"

“In making this most recent show I’ve begun to actually think about music politically. The thing that fascinates me most is just how stuck music has become. And I love music, I know a lot about pop music, but it is now completely reworking the past, almost archaeologically”--Adam Curtis, talking to FACT  about his collaboration with Massive Attack


“I know everyone loves Savages but if you listen to Savages, they are archeologists! They are like those people in pith helmets who used to dig up the bones of Tutankhamun. Savages have gone back to the early 1980s and unearthed a concert of Siouxsie Sioux or The Slits and literally replicated it note for note, tone for tone, emotion for emotion. It’s like some strange curatorial adventure. They’re not new. It’s good to go back into the past and take something and reinterpret it and use it to push into the future but they’re not doing that – they’re like robots.”

From which he concludes, worriedly and worryingly:

“Pop music might not be the radical thing we think it is. It might be very good and very exciting and I can dance to it and mope to it, but actually it just keeps on reworking the past. If you continually go back into the past then by definition you can never ever imagine a world that has not existed before. I think true radicalism…comes from the idea of saying this is a world that has never existed before, come with me to it....   Music may actually be dying at the very moment it is everywhere. There comes a moment in any culture where something becomes so ubiquitous and part of everything that it loses its identity. It will remain here to be useful but it won’t take us anywhere or tell us any stories. It won’t die in the sense of not being here but in the sense of not having a meaning beyond itself. It will just be entertainment."


A lot of interesting things in this interview - similarity of punk and Thatcherism as promotion of absolute individualism, and this bit on emotionalism as trap, or as FACT phrase it, "the modern demotion of music as means to simply titillate– a kind of emotional masturbation".

Curtis: “I love emotions, I’m a very emotional person, but how limiting is it to live in a world where your relationship with music is just emotional? It’s appropriate at certain times like when you go dancing or you’re lonely and home late at night, but the idea of being emotional in everything might actually be trapping us into a very limited view of what we are as human beings. The focus on our own emotions comes from the central ideology of our time: individual freedom. But what this ideology really says is that what you feel and what you think is everything. Well, actually, human beings can be far more than that. In other circumstances you can lose yourself in something grander, whether it’s for an idea or for love, when you surrender yourself to someone else. These things actually liberate yourself from your feelings and it may be that this idea that your emotions, which this modern music is encouraging to reinforce, might actually be part of the problem because it’s trapping you just with yourself and if you’re trapped within yourself you can’t lose yourself in something grander. It’s not only limiting – it stops the world changing, because it’s only when we are together that we’re powerful.”

This relates to a thought I had listening to songs on the radio full of emotion-melody blasts and those chorus-uplift rushes that Dan Barrow calls the Soar. The songs are meant to be super-emotive, but it's all too hyper-real to feel. It struck me that as well as compression in the audio sense (the loudness wars, brickwall limiting -- the flattening out of volume dynamics, so that it's at max impact all the way through, no dips in the levels) there was something you could "emotional compression".  The emotion levels aren't allowed to fluctuate; the verse is like the chorus in terms of intensity. But it's also on the micro-level of every single line, every single word sung. The melisma. All the extra tremulous twinges you can work with a voice using AutoTune and other FX. It's like every syllable has been injected with emotional collagen.

 

Some months ago I had a very enjoyable conversation with Lisa Hix from Collectors Weekly about retro aesthetics, vintage, collecting, et cetera - it is now up on their website, with some nice illustrations

following their Monumental Retro-Avant-Garde show at the Tate, Laibach continue in the retro-repro zone with new compilation-not-compilation Reproduction Prohibited

from the press release

Opening with their interpretation of Mute’s first release, The Normal’s Warm Leatherette (here translated as Warme Lederhaut, Laibach premiered the track at the Short Circuit presents Mute festival, Roundhouse in May 2011), the tracklisting demonstrates Laibach’s unique take on the cover version.

From the sublime, Laibach’s interpretation on The Beatles Across The Universe would melt even the toughest of hearts, to their bombastic cover of Europe’s Final Countdown, this is a window into Laibach’s own view of pop music, and to the humour that permeates their work.

Reproduction Prohibited features two tracks from Volk (2006), Laibach’s album of reinterpretations of national anthems which uncovers the violence and the pop intrinsic in the national anthem, surely the ultimate pop song. Here Germania reinterprets Das Lied der Deutschen, originally written in 1797 and used after World War I as the national anthem of the German Empire at the time of the Weimar Republic, while Anglia uses John Bull’s God Save The Queen as its inspiration.

Mama Leone, perhaps not familiar to many in its original version, sold over 20 million copies when it itself was covered by Bino in the late 70s. B Maschina, written and performed by popular Slovenian rock group Siddharta, who asked Laibach to remix or remake their song, was originally released on 2003’s WAT. An additionally remixed version is also featured in the soundtrack to IRON SKY (directed by Timo Vuorensola), a dark science fiction comedy about Nazis invading earth in 2018, after escaping to the Dark Side of the Moon in 1945.

Pop references itself when Laibach take on Juno Reactor’s God Is God, which was itself influenced by Laibach’s cover of Austrian group Opus’ Live Is Life, included here in English ‘symphonic’ version (titled Opus Dei), and in German version, translated as Leben Heisst Leben. Laibach’s version of God is God was also released before Juno Reactor’s released their own, so many people still believe that Laibach’s version is the original one and Juno’s version a cover. 

Elsewhere on the album, Laibach tackle The Beatles and Queen. Taken from Laibach’s album Let It Be, Across The Universe and Get Back both feature, and Queen’s hit song One Vision is here translated into a German Geburt Einer Nation (The Birth of the Nation). The choice of a language, title as well as the genre of interpretation here all reveal themselves as powerful instruments!

Bruderschaft, written by Laibach is included here as a double twist cover. Laibach were invited to cover a Kraftwerk song for a compilation. But instead doing a straight Kraftwerk cover, the band decided to rearrange Laibach’s own - original - song from 83’, known as Brat Moj (Brother of Mine) in German, with the carefully reconstructed Kraftwerkian sounds.

The CD cover art of the ‘An Introduction To…Laibach’, titled ‘REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED’ was painted by member(s) of the group in 1981 as the interpretation of the famous Rene Magritte’s work, ‘Not to be Reproduced’, from 1937. 

The mirror, a fragile and sometimes distorted reflection of reality, was of great interest to Magritte, as it is to Laibach.  When viewing one of his images, or when listening to Laibach’s covers, there is a sense that a content, placed within a frame/the context, might, by a twist of perception, be seen as a reflection in the mirror, a perception that suddenly turns the space of the picture/song inside-out. 

By quoting and interpreting this significant work by Magritte, Laibach offer a clear tool, if not a perfect key, how to solve the riddle of understanding their method, their philosophy and their humour in cover versions, as we hear them on this album.

REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED TRACKLISTING

WARME LEDERHAUT – cover of The Normal’s Warm Leatherette

BALLAD OF A THIN MAN – cover of Bob Dylan

GERMANIA – Version of German national anthem, from the album Volk 

ANGLIA – Version of British national anthem, from the album Volk

MAMA LEONE – originally recorded by schlager legend Drafi Deutscher, made famous by Bino  

B MASHINA – remixed version featured on Iron Sky OST, written by Tomi Meglic (Siddharta)

BRUDERSCHAFT – Laibach composition, from Trans Slovenia Express Vol. 2

GOD IS GOD – by Juno Reactor, originally inspired by Life Is Life, from Jesus Christ Superstars

FINAL COUNTDOWN – classic Laibach cover, originally recorded by Europe

ALLE GEGEN ALLE – originally recorded by labelmates DAF

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE – originally recorded by The Beatles

GET BACK – originally recorded by The Beatles

LEBEN HEISST LEBEN – cover of Opus’ Live Is Life, from Opus Dei

GEBURT EINER NATION – cover of Queen’s One Vision, from Opus Dei 1987

OPUS DEI – cover of Opus’ Live is Life

“The cover version can be seen as a cynical populist tactic by artists lacking in originality, a gesture of contempt or as a respectful example of good taste and seriousness. Laibach's open rejection of originality makes the first view irrelevant and the new originals are too ambivalent to be either entirely contemptuous or totally respectful. A Laibachised song is sometimes more kitsch, sometimes more serious and sometimes more emotional than the “old original” it is based on. Laibachisation re- and de-animates a song, reviving it for long enough to dispatch it again.” – Alexei Monroe, author of Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, from the Reproduction Prohibited sleevenotes