> Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. Itβs the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
This Eno quote is the best part of the post, and better than the article. :) As someone who makes some lo-fi electronic music, it really is an expression of limits, where you create and release tension against those limits, and this is what makes it evocative.
Two tracks in particular I created use that sense of old familiarity to draw out memories, using melodic tools from minimalism (Part/Glass), reproducing 1970s blade runner synth sounds, and samples that will only be familiar to a very 'leet few ("requiem for a hacker"), and another that uses sub-bass harmonics just at the edge of what headphones will take to get into the listeners chest register ("sleeping dogs"). Not linking my stuff directly because it feels a bit opportunistic (they're on soundcloud), but lo-fi music is not just technical production mistakes, it's intended to share a direct experience of the moment.
This applies perfectly to every HN discussion about "the old web". The gaudy artifacts of that time are now iconic landmarks of a more innocent era that we can never experience again.
- visitor counters
- "under construction" banners
- marquee scrolling text banners
- Sign my guestbook / View my guestbook
- "this site uses frames" / "best viewed on Netscape 4.0"
this is very true, coming from a guy who collects thousand dollar modern drum machines/samplers designed to emulate 'crappier' ones from 2 decades ago..
> Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. Itβs the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.