The forces that collided in 1989 around the release of Trent Reznor’s “Pretty Hate Machine” caused major shifts in several genres of modern music, and in the overall critical trajectory of alternative music. This record succeeded in tapping the rich underground traditions of industrial electronic music, and by combining it with strong melodic songwriting both catapulted the sub-genre to a larger audience, as well as brought a new sonic palette of inspiration to multiple artists from other genres. But this single debut album became a monument in the musical landscape not only because of its transformation of genres, but also as work of the auter – the masterwork of a single artist as opposed to a group or band effort. This single source creativity would go on to inspire further music as digital music and recording technology became more widely available to non-professional and, importantly, musicians not sponsored by the recording industry.
In context, “Pretty Hate Machine” wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. Its release in 1989 shows its clear sonic link to the industrial and electronic dance music of the time. The whirring mechanical rhythms, dark ambient synth fills and grinding white noise distorted guitars were lifted directly from the playbooks of underground dance groups like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, and Front 242. But within 40 seconds of the first track, Head Like a Hole differentiates itself from its peers. The song builds predictably enough through whirring mechanical percussion loops and visceral vocal grunt/scream sounds reminiscent of the implied bodily violence of the electro-dance movement to a throbbing bass melody. But at the 40 second mark, the inhuman composition fades back in the mix for the entrance of the vocal. Unlike the vocals of typical industrial music where the human voice is either a percussive chant, or a distorted/over processed textural fill (Ministry’s Stigmata being the ultimate object lesson for this aesthetic), this vocal is something completely different: a lyric. And not only is it a lyric, but it’s composed in melodic rhyming couplets conceptually rooted in a single theme, all gathered together in a verse chorus framework. All this of course is a very convoluted way to say: popular songwriting structure.
Song by song “Pretty Hate Machine” proves again and again how the sonic palette of industrial music can be translated into popular songwriting. From the rock-anthem styling of Head like a Hole, to dark pop songs like Sin, to the rap driven Down In It to even haunting ballads like Something I Can Never Have, Reznor unflinchingly indulges the driving beats, harsh mechanical textures and distorted guitar noise of his influences. But instead of using these elements to dominate the song and bury the listener in the abstract isolationism and dehumanization that is the core of the industrial aesthetic, he uses them as independent instruments in arrangement to support the vocal. The lyric content itself then takes the next step of the transformation and anchors the dysfunctional / dystopian aesthetic of industrial music around the personal confusion, anxiety and tortured self-pity of the singer. In this, he succeeded to embody and personify the emotional and psychological alienation and dehumanization of modern life that the industrial movement sought to express in abstraction, by paradoxically giving that alienation a very human and emotionally identifiable persona.
The slow building popularity that built up around “Pretty Hate Machine” in 1989 became a fevered pitch which kept the album on the charts for two years, and became not only a commercial success for Reznor and his indie label TVT, but it sparked a new interest and new audience for industrial music. Though they were his initial inspiration, bands like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Einsturzende Neubauten and KMFDM rode the coat tails of “Pretty Hate Machine” to a new broader audience by taking lessons from Reznor’s new use of traditional songwriting. In turn, the sonic elements of the genre found their way into the songs of new generations of bands to follow who further explored the crossovers between techno, metal, and alternative genres – Filter, Marilyn Manson and Garbage to name only a few.
But the innovation of this album doesn’t stop at this crossroads of genres. The importance of the recording is best captured in an anecdote that embodies the emergence of Nine Inch Nails at the time of its release. When I was first introduced to Pretty Hate Machine by a friend in 1989 it was the classic word of mouth marketing that indie music was built upon in the late 80s. A friend asked me if I had heard this “new band called Nine Inch Nails”. When I said I hadn’t, my friend told me “Well it’s really not a band, it’s just this one guy, but he recorded this album playing all the instruments himself and recorded it at home on his Mac…” From here a myth was born. From my first listen and my own limited knowledge of new computer recording techniques, I could easily imagine Trent Reznor building samples and drum machine loops in a basement studio somewhere in Ohio, creating this dark brooding soundscape as a backdrop for his own tortured personal psyche. And the music holds up to this myth. Compared to the “wall of sound” noise-scapes of the industrial music of the time, this music seems pared down, almost simplistic. Yet it’s simple enough for the listener to hear isolated textures, sounds and rhythms that would otherwise be lost in the sonic onslaught of Reznor’s peers. Listening to “Pretty Hate Machine” for the first time in 1989 was in many ways akin to listening to a Velvet Underground album in the late sixties – it seemed suddenly attainable to grab a guitar, form a band and write some songs. But in this case it was the realization that you could hook some instruments up to your computer and start creating music. In effect, “Pretty Hate Machine” shattered the idea that industrial and electronic music was an experimental, rarified genre of music, and brought it to the level of immediacy that was characteristic of Rock and Roll.
Of course the myth of the auter in this case was not completely true. While Reznor wrote and recorded the demos for “Pretty Hate Machine” on his own, for the final recordings he paired up with renowned engineer/producer Flood for the studio recording. Flood undoubtedly deserves the credit for being able to boil down and isolate the samples and drum loops in the mix to allow this recording to walk a fine line between the overwhelming wall of sound passages, and the subtly textured flares and sequences that fill in the gaps between Reznor’s vocal and the more aggressive musical bursts. (If there’s any signature sound to Flood’s approach behind the mixing board this may be it!). But as remarkable as the production is this record, it’s most remarkable in the way it disappears behind the myth of the auter. Even today, part of this album’s appeal is it’s artifice as a “one man show”, a soundtrack to a highly personal journey of introspection and, importantly, a singular burst of creativity. With all heady notions of musical theory and historical genre stirring aside, it’s the hallmark of a great work of art that despite the circumstances of its creation, it inspires the listener to creativity of his or her own. As “Pretty Hate Machine” seemed to lay bare the process of connecting a computer to a guitar; of joining mechanical music to the human vocal; of a connection between the digital and the analogue in the pursuit of music – this album succeeded in sparking creativity in its listeners to not only understand the means of its creation (Greenbergian modernism at its core) but also to pick up an instrument and create for themselves.
Showing posts with label techno. Show all posts
Showing posts with label techno. Show all posts
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Friday, November 16, 2007
Exit Planet Dust - The Chemical Brothers
“Exit Planet Dust” in 1995 heralded the birth of “Big Beat Techno.” A subgenre of electronica/dance music characterized by it broad, almost bombastic and “in your face” hook laden high energy music. All pigeon hole labeling aside, this album successfully bridged the gap between dance/techno/house/electronica and the rock/pop/indie audience effectively bringing techno and dance music to the masses in a way that never happened before.
First coming together in the “Madchester” era of the British Rave scene, Tom & Ed began their career as The Dust Brothers (in homage to the producers of another landmark album, “Paul’s Boutique”) performing in the rabid club scene and progressing on to remixes for more established indie and alternative artists like Primal Scream, The Charlatans and The Prodigy. In these early days, they inadvertently tapped into what would become their signature sound; a meeting between house influenced psychedelic techno and hook heavy indie pop/rock. At the time, their DJ and remixing style hit a perfect niche in the market. The salad days of the infamous Hacienda nightclub were transitioning away from the indie dance band days epitomized by New Order, through the short lived style of “baggy”, and now into the psychedelic-techno laden music of characterized by Paul Oakenfeld and his crew. But instead of hard-grinding of the gears away from the formalities of songwriting and diving headfirst into the abstractions of pure house, The Chemical Brothers proved you could do both. They brought trippy electronic effects and high energy, polyrhythmic techno flair to high profile bands with already established signature sounds, hooks and cult’s of personality. The result was artists you knew from the radio now in a style with new infectious and irresistible dance energy.
Giving up The Dust Brothers moniker for legal reasons, and taking on The Chemical Brothers name, they took the next leap of creativity with a gesture that moved them the famous DJ category, to Artists in the Own Right. Quite a jump. Music critics and fans alike were long divided and firmly entrenched in their camps. You either liked techno, or you liked rock. There was no middle ground. A few DJs had made the leap to “Artists in Their Own Right”, but none had done so and successfully bridged the two genres. Even their previously name-checked idols The Beastie Boys, despite their creativity, seemed to be only able to live in one world at a time as they moved from style to style in their successive albums. But the manifesto was clear in the opening sample of Exit Planet Dust: “the Brothers’ gonna work it out.”
But enough music history, what about the music? What is it about the music on this record that’s so special? Technically, there’s little new to be found here. Indeed from the opening sample, to the following sounds and beats that get folded into “Leave Home” The Chemicals seem to be purposefully retro, foregoing the synthetic sounds and textures of modern techno for old school funk guitar and sonically fat “real drum” percussion loops. Like the metaphoric cover photo of the album with its late 70s imagery, within the first 2 minutes of the first song, you are aware that this is not a typical techno album, but instead music that is built upon the relics of a different age, a different style. Now you could belabor the point that this return/recycling and reinventing of a fetishized past is an artistic move based in whatever post-modernist theory you embrace, but music here kind of insists that you shut your brain off in lieu of a more visceral response. Throughout the rest of the album, the Ed and Tom continue to resurrect old samples from funk, rock, and indie sources in a sort of Proustian pastiche that simultaneously resonates with the listener as both a historian of music, as well as a love of pure raw sound in two ways: in the selection of the sample itself as well as the more digital effect treatment they apply to the sample as they update it. This is really the root of The Chemical Brother’s treatment of samples that falls into two basic categories on this record: Selection and Treatment.
First and foremost is the selection of the sample. Instead of following the methods of the dominant DJ scene of hoarding an esoteric record collection of obscure beats and hermetically sealed creativity loops of records made by DJs for DJs, they followed the “Paul’s Boutique” method of selecting samples that were both recognizable to a large audience, and focusing on the singular, bombastic and sometimes dominant HOOK of a song. Where the House DJ selected samples based on their intricacy and cleverness when juxtaposed against other samples and rhythms, the Samples here are based on their ability to stand alone; and ultimately how remarkable they are as pure sound isolated from the context of their source. The listener can almost imagine Tom and Ed in their bedrooms sifting through each other’s record collection and picking out “the coolest parts” of their favorite songs. Not only a stylistic innovation, this approach of building a techno song around building blocks gleaned from recognizable and explicitly rock/indie sources actually brought a new audience together, as listeners who favored British Indie bands over techno, no had a touch stone in the abstract audio soup of house music – the recognizable sample.
Of second but equal importance to a Chemical Brothers’ sample is the treatment, or the effect processing they apply to the source material. Often grabbing a snippet of a hook that was in the middle of its musical phrase, they isolated the elements of the hook into a more abstract sonic flourish, forcing the listener to hear the thick analogue and poly-tonal qualities of guitar based samples. Then sequencing the sample itself into a tightly rhythmic loop they push that sonic flourish to the limit between hook and texture. Taking a cue from the sonic indulgence of the so called “shoegazer” movement (and even sampling them directly) the samples themselves form a wall of sound which on one level embody a driving energetic and visceral rhythm, while simultaneously carrying a sonic richness that rewards close listening. It’s not until this framework is established in the song that The Chemical Brothers add in the more traditional techniques of the DJ genre utilizing digital effects and sequencers to layer in atmospheric effects and more traditional techno/dance motifs. The innovation here allows the songs on Exit Planet Dust to sound very analogue and rich in texture, while still using the crisp exacting digital techniques of modern electronica. For example the slow pan of the bucket flange over the tightly wound funk guitar sample of “Chemical Beats” takes away the harsh repetitive edge of the sample itself and allows the listener to wallow in the pure sound. Furthermore, the slow filter pan application to their sample repertoire helped to blend the old school analogue sample sound with the slick new 303, and modern sequencer driven elements of the compositions.
Finally, The Chemical Brothers bring to Exit Planet Dust the element that had for so long been truly lacking in electronic/techno music: Songwriting. Raised on the indie band standards of the 80s and 90s, Tom and Ed didn’t forget their roots – these songs have structure. Unlike the long sonic arc’s of a Paul Oakenfeld album or a typical house groove where one song is often indistinguishable from the next in a DJs set, the songs of Exit Planet Dust seem to have a verse/chorus/bridge structure similar to pop and rock. Indeed tracks such as “Life Is Sweet” or “Alive Alone” go so far as to even employ vocals and true songwriting (anathema to the faceless manifesto of modern techno). Yet, these songs don’t need vocals to feel like cohesively structured songs. The dynamics of compositional choices made as they weave samples and rhythms together follow the familiar “8-bar blues” format of traditional rock songwriting where the dynamic grouping of samples, melodies, rhythms follow predictable groupings within the meter of the songs. Take as an example again “Leave Home”: the samples that comprise the main groove of the song are introduced in successive groupings of 4, after each repetition of 4; the next sample is introduced, and so on, until the main groove is established. They let this main groove ride in the center of the composition on another multiple of 4, before breaking it entirely in a dynamic counterpoint introducing the next section of the song. This is a major departure from the slow sonic progressions of traditional house where sounds and textures gradually transform themselves over an interminably long stretch of rhythm, where the only major dynamic change is the infamous “drop the base” move: removing either the high end or low end of a groove for a period to highlight an intricacy of the remaining textures, only to then experience the rush of the return of the main beat to the groove a few bars later.
This is not to say The Chemical Brothers don’t indulge in stereotypical DJ moves. The album is full of them. But the dynamic shifts, filter pans and space age sound effects are less the foundation of the song, as they are the flourish and ornament over a song framework based on a very different approach
Ultimately, Exit Planet Dust is a landmark album because it exists as that juncture between genres. It is that point where the house/techno genre embraces pop and rock. It does so without sacrificing the energy and aesthetic of electronic music, but still satisfies the ear of an audience that demands more structured musical genre. And like all great landmarks, it inspired a legion of followers, popular radio play, and even commercial appropriation where the sound itself became symbolic of an energetic atmosphere and became and The Chemical Brothers themselves became sampled as the signature sound of Budweiser commercials in 2007.
First coming together in the “Madchester” era of the British Rave scene, Tom & Ed began their career as The Dust Brothers (in homage to the producers of another landmark album, “Paul’s Boutique”) performing in the rabid club scene and progressing on to remixes for more established indie and alternative artists like Primal Scream, The Charlatans and The Prodigy. In these early days, they inadvertently tapped into what would become their signature sound; a meeting between house influenced psychedelic techno and hook heavy indie pop/rock. At the time, their DJ and remixing style hit a perfect niche in the market. The salad days of the infamous Hacienda nightclub were transitioning away from the indie dance band days epitomized by New Order, through the short lived style of “baggy”, and now into the psychedelic-techno laden music of characterized by Paul Oakenfeld and his crew. But instead of hard-grinding of the gears away from the formalities of songwriting and diving headfirst into the abstractions of pure house, The Chemical Brothers proved you could do both. They brought trippy electronic effects and high energy, polyrhythmic techno flair to high profile bands with already established signature sounds, hooks and cult’s of personality. The result was artists you knew from the radio now in a style with new infectious and irresistible dance energy.
Giving up The Dust Brothers moniker for legal reasons, and taking on The Chemical Brothers name, they took the next leap of creativity with a gesture that moved them the famous DJ category, to Artists in the Own Right. Quite a jump. Music critics and fans alike were long divided and firmly entrenched in their camps. You either liked techno, or you liked rock. There was no middle ground. A few DJs had made the leap to “Artists in Their Own Right”, but none had done so and successfully bridged the two genres. Even their previously name-checked idols The Beastie Boys, despite their creativity, seemed to be only able to live in one world at a time as they moved from style to style in their successive albums. But the manifesto was clear in the opening sample of Exit Planet Dust: “the Brothers’ gonna work it out.”
But enough music history, what about the music? What is it about the music on this record that’s so special? Technically, there’s little new to be found here. Indeed from the opening sample, to the following sounds and beats that get folded into “Leave Home” The Chemicals seem to be purposefully retro, foregoing the synthetic sounds and textures of modern techno for old school funk guitar and sonically fat “real drum” percussion loops. Like the metaphoric cover photo of the album with its late 70s imagery, within the first 2 minutes of the first song, you are aware that this is not a typical techno album, but instead music that is built upon the relics of a different age, a different style. Now you could belabor the point that this return/recycling and reinventing of a fetishized past is an artistic move based in whatever post-modernist theory you embrace, but music here kind of insists that you shut your brain off in lieu of a more visceral response. Throughout the rest of the album, the Ed and Tom continue to resurrect old samples from funk, rock, and indie sources in a sort of Proustian pastiche that simultaneously resonates with the listener as both a historian of music, as well as a love of pure raw sound in two ways: in the selection of the sample itself as well as the more digital effect treatment they apply to the sample as they update it. This is really the root of The Chemical Brother’s treatment of samples that falls into two basic categories on this record: Selection and Treatment.
First and foremost is the selection of the sample. Instead of following the methods of the dominant DJ scene of hoarding an esoteric record collection of obscure beats and hermetically sealed creativity loops of records made by DJs for DJs, they followed the “Paul’s Boutique” method of selecting samples that were both recognizable to a large audience, and focusing on the singular, bombastic and sometimes dominant HOOK of a song. Where the House DJ selected samples based on their intricacy and cleverness when juxtaposed against other samples and rhythms, the Samples here are based on their ability to stand alone; and ultimately how remarkable they are as pure sound isolated from the context of their source. The listener can almost imagine Tom and Ed in their bedrooms sifting through each other’s record collection and picking out “the coolest parts” of their favorite songs. Not only a stylistic innovation, this approach of building a techno song around building blocks gleaned from recognizable and explicitly rock/indie sources actually brought a new audience together, as listeners who favored British Indie bands over techno, no had a touch stone in the abstract audio soup of house music – the recognizable sample.
Of second but equal importance to a Chemical Brothers’ sample is the treatment, or the effect processing they apply to the source material. Often grabbing a snippet of a hook that was in the middle of its musical phrase, they isolated the elements of the hook into a more abstract sonic flourish, forcing the listener to hear the thick analogue and poly-tonal qualities of guitar based samples. Then sequencing the sample itself into a tightly rhythmic loop they push that sonic flourish to the limit between hook and texture. Taking a cue from the sonic indulgence of the so called “shoegazer” movement (and even sampling them directly) the samples themselves form a wall of sound which on one level embody a driving energetic and visceral rhythm, while simultaneously carrying a sonic richness that rewards close listening. It’s not until this framework is established in the song that The Chemical Brothers add in the more traditional techniques of the DJ genre utilizing digital effects and sequencers to layer in atmospheric effects and more traditional techno/dance motifs. The innovation here allows the songs on Exit Planet Dust to sound very analogue and rich in texture, while still using the crisp exacting digital techniques of modern electronica. For example the slow pan of the bucket flange over the tightly wound funk guitar sample of “Chemical Beats” takes away the harsh repetitive edge of the sample itself and allows the listener to wallow in the pure sound. Furthermore, the slow filter pan application to their sample repertoire helped to blend the old school analogue sample sound with the slick new 303, and modern sequencer driven elements of the compositions.
Finally, The Chemical Brothers bring to Exit Planet Dust the element that had for so long been truly lacking in electronic/techno music: Songwriting. Raised on the indie band standards of the 80s and 90s, Tom and Ed didn’t forget their roots – these songs have structure. Unlike the long sonic arc’s of a Paul Oakenfeld album or a typical house groove where one song is often indistinguishable from the next in a DJs set, the songs of Exit Planet Dust seem to have a verse/chorus/bridge structure similar to pop and rock. Indeed tracks such as “Life Is Sweet” or “Alive Alone” go so far as to even employ vocals and true songwriting (anathema to the faceless manifesto of modern techno). Yet, these songs don’t need vocals to feel like cohesively structured songs. The dynamics of compositional choices made as they weave samples and rhythms together follow the familiar “8-bar blues” format of traditional rock songwriting where the dynamic grouping of samples, melodies, rhythms follow predictable groupings within the meter of the songs. Take as an example again “Leave Home”: the samples that comprise the main groove of the song are introduced in successive groupings of 4, after each repetition of 4; the next sample is introduced, and so on, until the main groove is established. They let this main groove ride in the center of the composition on another multiple of 4, before breaking it entirely in a dynamic counterpoint introducing the next section of the song. This is a major departure from the slow sonic progressions of traditional house where sounds and textures gradually transform themselves over an interminably long stretch of rhythm, where the only major dynamic change is the infamous “drop the base” move: removing either the high end or low end of a groove for a period to highlight an intricacy of the remaining textures, only to then experience the rush of the return of the main beat to the groove a few bars later.
This is not to say The Chemical Brothers don’t indulge in stereotypical DJ moves. The album is full of them. But the dynamic shifts, filter pans and space age sound effects are less the foundation of the song, as they are the flourish and ornament over a song framework based on a very different approach
Ultimately, Exit Planet Dust is a landmark album because it exists as that juncture between genres. It is that point where the house/techno genre embraces pop and rock. It does so without sacrificing the energy and aesthetic of electronic music, but still satisfies the ear of an audience that demands more structured musical genre. And like all great landmarks, it inspired a legion of followers, popular radio play, and even commercial appropriation where the sound itself became symbolic of an energetic atmosphere and became and The Chemical Brothers themselves became sampled as the signature sound of Budweiser commercials in 2007.
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