Hungry for the Drone
At thirty-three I’ve all but abandoned the idols of my teenage years. I discovered early on that guitar solos made me feel nauseous. I became increasingly interested in bands that had no stars, that were ensemble bands that cost £15 to see in London’s smaller venues. They looked older and addressed the audience with nothing but a goodbye wave. They wore plain shirts. They exuded self-assurance because they didn’t need all the trappings and paraphernalia of Rock. It was just their music. And that was cool. Even vocals seemed unsubtle to me, with their potential to steal any personal meaning away from the listener should they listen too hard; overshadowing the subjective language of the music.
I realised a growing fondness for film soundtracks, game soundtracks and field recordings. I discovered the labels Kranky and Constellation and knew that I had found something very special. It was initially hard to explain to others why I liked it so much. No egotism. No prescribed meaning. The ability to be both foreground and background. The image of a space and the motivation to create something transcendent. Later, I found feelings well articulated in the sleeve notes to Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports‘. A manifesto promoting subtlety, seemingly the furthest thing from Rock.
Today, the world is moving at double time. Music, like food and cinema, caters for impatience. There are songs we’ve heard a hundred times without ever pressing play, as our days begin to resemble a barrage of unwelcome intrusions. We are conditioned by the restraints of adverts, music videos and chart radio to find comfort in familiar song structures that sit inside a three to four minute duration. It’s comfortable and familiar, like Wetherspoons.
There are no surprises. You will not be challenged. But after a time your proclivities become kiln-fired and you develop an aversion towards anything that deviates from the model. For me, ambient music is a welcome antidote. I’d go as far as to say that it’s political. Often without a beat, arguably the anchor for many people’s enjoyment of music, it is protracted and sometimes challenging. Works like William Basinski’s ‘Cascades’ have the potential to infuriate listeners through the perceived use of repetition.
But with experienced listening (often passive listening), what might initially seem infuriating becomes hypnotic and beautiful. Ambient music also rejects the instant gratification endemic in culture. It promotes the dying virtue of patience and the simple activity of ‘being’. Waiting out the the slow build of A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s ‘A Symphonie Pathetique’ makes the gentle mid-track crescendo all the more sweet. Its strange that modern society is so perplexed by the idea of a twenty minute drone performance when you consider the genre’s deep ancestral roots; the Aboriginal didgeridoo, the Indian tanpura and the Byzantine chant, to name a few. It’s interesting, too, that many of these historic examples have clear links to transcendence and mindfulness, concepts in decline within the modern age. Like the use of breath in meditation, the drone is repetitive/constant and often without measure. This has a transportative effect on the listener as there is little to mark the passing of time. Within the drone there are complexities that would remain outside of our awareness if long duration and a minimal palette were not employed. Dynamics and textures are somehow heightened with active listening. However, as Brian Eno noted, it can also be experienced incidentally, becoming what Erik Satie might have referred to as ‘furniture music’. The listener is free to decide. So there it is. A remedy for an egomaniacal, spiritually hollow society moving at breakneck speed and an opportunity to connect with our ancestors for whom this music was so enriching. This is my case for ambient music. Slow it right down and smell the roses.
Richard is a member of Canterbury based band Pillowspeaker.
http://soundcloud.com/pillowspeaker
