November 2024: Here's One I Programmed Earlier
Pre-recorded live performance, computer metal from Master Boot Record, and Geordie Greep
Fetch the Acousmatist
October is peak gig season: the post-summer festival lull draws to a close, and bands pack stages nationwide to support their pre-Christmas album releases. All four opening bands I saw at shows this month featured heavy use of pre-recorded instrumentation. Backing tracks get a bad rap - “it’s not real unless you play it live” and all that - but are an increasingly prevalent aspect of modern performance. Interestingly, each of these four performances fell into quite different experience classifications for me as a listener. (This is not a complete taxonomy.)
The Accidental Cabaret
A journey to Oxford to see the excellent Desperate Journalist at the famous but small Jericho Tavern - always a pleasure to visit one of my favourite cities, and to experience the slightly bizarre Enjoyable Listens as an opening act. If you close your eyes and don’t look at the stage, then Enjoyable Listens sound like Future Islands injected with some good old British dry humour and wit. Open your eyes, and you see a man alone on stage, armed with just a microphone and a laptop plugged into the PA.
The effect is quite jarring, primarily because of its historical evocations. Singing to a backing track in the upstairs room of a pub in Britain was a lousy staple of mid-20th century performance, the local pub singer a step above karaoke night but only just, murdering post-war swing songs as people get shit-faced on crap beer and, I dunno, complain about miner’s strikes or something. (Not exactly my era, you understand.) Play out the mental counterfactual of a single keyboardist on stage, or the singer Luke Duffett clutching an instrument, and you realise there’s a professionalising effect; something that legitimises the way we think about live performance.
But why should this be the case? Sure, your man Luke could fiddle about with a Casio keyboard or bass guitar on stage. But that misses the nature of his dynamic, sweeping performance, full of physicality across the stage as he croons his way through an amusing setlist. He has written and recorded all of these quite good songs, full of complex instrumentation, himself. Maybe the problem here is the mental model? It’s frustratingly difficult to overcome.
Tell and then show
My oft-referenced favourite music YouTuber, Adam Neely, has naturally done a video on this topic. It references the concept of acousmatic versus non-acousmatic performance - the former is that of music associated with physical instruments on stage, the latter where that connection is broken, the sound divorced from an understood visual source. There’s a great moment where he talks about an old solo James Taylor performance which features some pre-recorded backing vocals; to sell it to his audience, Taylor puts a reel-to-reel player on stage under a spotlight, giving the listener a visual driver for the sounds they can hear.
Chiptune producer arottenbit understands the importance of this link. Supporting Master Boot Record (full review below), he blusters onto stage armed with a wheelie bin, which he dives through to retrieve a Game Boy wrapped in cable ties and other devices. He then explains that the set will consist of music composed entirely on said Game Boy. From a musical perspective, the only “performance” happening is him pressing play on the tracks on a 90s handheld gaming device.
Does it matter that he’s only pressing the Play button? Not really. This is music he’s composed in a specific, complex way. Good thumping electronic music, too, prompting moshpits and pogo-ing. arottenbit plays the role of an emcee, hyping the crowd, sending his wheelie bin on a Most Excellent Crowdsurfing Journey. He also ensures that the Game Boy is foregrounded, never leaving his hand, aloft in the air at all times; even when moshing amidst the crowd. Fred again.. and Fatboy Slim do the same with DJ decks, I suppose. The acousmatic link is maintained; all is well.
“Neither of us learned drums”
Music is slowly becoming an expensive game. Especially touring - even with ticket prices at record highs, you’ve got to sort travel, accommodation, possibly import documents, and be able to pay everyone in the band for their work. Every penny is precious at the support act level, with no other valid income streams available (record sales and streaming royalties a rounding error). Economically, the incentive is to have as small a touring band as possible - just go yourself with a backing track (c.f. Enjoyable Listens), or bring your mate if you must. Less arguments (no one to argue with); less profit-sharing (or at least minimised losses); and modern DAWs and plug-ins mean you can still execute your artistic vision faithfully.
This has to be some of the thinking behind Zetra - the goth duo opening for HEALTH (see my Distorted Sound review here), whom I also reviewed at ArcTanGent this year. The budget is ploughed into costume and stage design, leaving just two musicians on stage - sharing vocals and armed with a guitar and a synth deck. The songs are catchy and visceral, and they do well to foreground the acousmatic elements - the drums are machine-like, consistent and straightforward in the background, so your brain can accept their non-physical nature.
This does break towards the end of the set. The last song shifts gears from a plodding kick-snare to a full-on blast beat, which feels… wrong. With no visible exerted effort, the energy is sapped out of the moment. But there is no mental discordance so long as the band stays in their mid-tempo gear. A drummer is just another mouth to feed - why bother?
“Do we need to play all those notes?”
One case where the effect breaks down is if you sense an unnatural disconnect between the music and the visual. One song has a saxophone part, but no saxophonist is on stage? OK, I’m sure it’d be nice to have that done live, but that’s a guest spot that can’t tour every show. We can accept that rationale and the use of a pre-recorded version as a substitute. The curtain slips in the case when there are tracks in the background for instruments that you can see on stage.
I regret to say I felt this keenly with Halo Maud in their support slot for the excellent Public Service Broadcasting. A guitar/bass/drums trio and music which fits all those instruments? Perfectly fine, perfectly inoffensive. But then - there’s a song where a particular drum beat has a hi-hat triplet flourish, and you can see that the drummer is not playing that; it’s overlayed. Why? Maybe it’s not physically possible to play it - but why have it in that case, especially with such a natural drum sound? Later, the singer/guitarist sort of gives up playing their instrument to focus on a more theatric performance on the floor of the stage; the transition is weird, bizarre, and doesn’t work for me, particularly given that the pre-recorded guitar track sounds near-identical to the live guitar, and isn’t exactly complex. Again, perhaps some artistic choice is coming into play, but these brief windows feel jarring and unnecessary.
It’s not as simple as to say that backing tracks are bad for laziness, good for artistic vision, and grudgingly acceptable for economics. However, it is an artefact of the modern forms of making music, where digital tools and a lack of financial impetus make music creation an increasingly solo activity. Richard Osman recently made a dull observation on his podcast that there are “no bands anymore”, citing singles charts of each decade to chart the decline. This is a stupid take - the singles chart has been broken for a while due to streaming, most mega-artists are massive multi-person operations distilled into a single figurehead for Marketing, and album charts regularly feature bands. But perhaps he’s right for the wrong reasons. Much of the history of music is focused on community, of coming together to create and enjoy music in folk traditions or broad classical performances. Now, a single producer can make a track you then listen to on your own through headphones.
It’s lazy to wave one’s hands at this and bemoan, “Capitalism! Reagan! Zuckerburg!” But it’s undeniable that music is more individual than at any other point in human history. The balancing act is to leverage that as a different option, a gear suited for broader musical expression and creativity alongside folk traditions, community, collaboration, group listening - and not as an inevitable trajectory, an accelerating inflationary effect on the human creative universe that sees the stars slowly fading out until we’re all alone in the darkness. Or at least, not having to put up with overlayed natural drums on top of live drums.
From the Pit: Master Boot Record
O2 Academy2 Islington, London, 22 October 2024
After that Game Boy-driven performance from support act arottenbit, it was time to Spread The Code. The Italian self-described “computer metal” band Master Boot Record began life as work on a soundtrack to a video game. It soon transcended that effort when the compositions were clearly on another level, gaining a cult following and surging popularity on Bandcamp. The stage is bedecked in nostalgic computer gear: twin CRTs and a collection of old game consoles next to the synths. A projection screen sets the tone for what’s to come with the Amiga floppy disk loading screen before the trio - mastermind Victor Love, accompanied by additional guitar wizard and drummer - take the stage.
It’s a big heavy metal performance from the band - merging neoclassical guitar shredding heroics, evocative of Yngwie Malmsteen in his pomp, with the electronic synth aggression of a nightmarish computer game and relentless double kick assault on the drums. This reflects the feel of the new album HARDWAREZ - pulling back on the classical Bach influences of their earlier releases and the keen melodic ear heard on 2022’s Personal Computer for a heavier, more visceral metal assault. Some of that older feel is retained in the performance of RAM, which fuses the two well with progressive chord arpeggiations breaking into a high-energy riff-fest.
The projection screen is a full-on PC gamer’s nostalgia fest. Among the cuts I spot are clips from Sensible Soccer, Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis, Doom (particularly during an intense cover of E1M1), Lemmings, X-Wing, and a whole host of other PC and Amiga games I was too young to know and my dad not cool enough to own or play. Interspersed are other geek 80s/90s computer visuals, including some homebrew 3D animations, which my dad spent lots of the 90s making use of Economy 7 energy plans to run overnight renders of bouncing spheres and cubes. The occasional crowd interaction references vintage technologies in the song names, particularly FTP (“This song is about one of our favourite internet protocols”) and IRC (“You can join our IRC server, or use the Web Chat, I guess”, the latter said with dripping disappointment).
The crowd energy is a little muted - no doubt due to creaking knees and tired eyes after a busy day of 10x software engineering for all present. But it is great fun, even if the move to a more straightforward metal sound loses some of the original magic Master Boot Record had in their earlier work.
On Rotation: Geordie Greep - The New Sound
Released 4 October 2024 on Rough Trade Records
I have not seen Joker: Folie A Deux at the cinema this month, nor do I intend to. I was dragged along to the first movie and found it insufferable - Todd Phillips trying to emulate his fellow frat pack director Adam McKay (Anchorman, The Big Short) in transitioning to Serious Material. More than the movie, I hated its audience - the fellow cinemagoers who found the horrible moments to be laugh-out-loud; the idea that the Joker, rather than a mentally deranged man, is somehow an aspirational icon of anarchy and libertarianism? Like the weirdos who see Patrick Bateman in American Psycho as a goal rather than a warning. Not for me, Clive.
It’s a subject that sits at the heart of the new solo album from Geordie Greep, the former black midi guitarist who unceremoniously cancelled that band in a filter-less social media post. It posed the question - was the undeniable thrill and talent of black midi a product of their alchemy, or do Greep and his former bandmates have something to say as individual artists? The New Sound occasionally lacks the creative drumming talent of Morgan Simpson (though he appears on a few of the best tracks) or the driving bass and occasional post-hardcore tendencies of Cameron Picton. But that’s about the most substantial musical criticism I can summon.
If anything, it’s hard to draw a line of difference between this and the typical black midi album structure. Opener Blues is right out of the 953 / John L frenetic starter playbook, speedy intricate guitars interweaving with a Morgan Simpson guest spot. Greep paints a repetitive picture of crude self-loathing before building into an unhinged outro at a blistering pace. There are some heavy moments in the early stages of Walk Up and in the hell-for-leather guitars on Motorbike (which brings in Seth Evans as a Cameron Picton surrogate for an alternate vocal feel). The instrumental title track shows off a range of guest spots in its attention-deficit jazz fusion style, like Pat Metheny with a wah pedal and a handful of amphetamines. Somehow, it’s an island of peace amidst the lyrical desperation elsewhere.
That desperation is in service of a broad picture Greep is trying to paint over and over - a set of avant-garde anthems mocking the male loner, the incel, and their delusions of grandeur. Early single Holy, Holy is a tale of extreme self-aggrandisement, starting with an Andrew Tate-esque character boasting of his sexual prowess and popularity (“Everyone knows I’m holy (…) All the Jihadis too”), salt slowly injected with increasing self-doubt and a fear of actual intercourse. Ultimately, it degenerates into a series of unconfident queries, always followed by the pained “How much will that cost?”. It’s a similar story in the descent into nihilistic madness of the opening track. Through A War and As If Waltz both drive at this neediness, a desire for acceptance and love from some angel figure. In the former, it’s the garrulous leader, weak at the knees at the prospect of love, knowing only how to brag of unspeakable acts (though you could easily see those as being of some real-time strategy video gamer in their crassness). In the latter, it’s the fantasies of a man eager for genuine connection, forever limited to the single hour he can pay a sex worker for; there’s never any sense of an alternate option.
The whole album builds to the 12-minute epic The Magician. Greep has finally managed to execute the West End musical number he’s strived to put together with mixed success in black midi. It’s a tour de force of his talent, with a sparse arrangement and lustrous guitar strums building into his best vocal performance yet, accented with Lloyd-Webber-style piano. The song moves through three distinct acts - the big opener, the piano-led ballad of despair, and the cathartic closer, with a twist of weird guitar distortion. All of this lies in juxtaposition to the arch nihilism of the lyrics: a pit of self-pity and doubtless unrequited love again for some misunderstood object. (None of the subjects of affection in this album are afforded characterisation; the self-obsession is the point.)
It’s a dark and overwhelming listen, a brain firing off a hundred different musical ideas across tales of masculine self-importance and impotence. The musicianship is spectacular, always wrong-footing you, never afraid to be indulgent or cheesy. The sexual imagery is crude and disturbing, and in a casual listen (you can’t really do a casual listen), it will jar and make you feel uncomfortable. But it’s a pretty stunning feat of an album - even if you’re not sure whether you’re supposed to be revulsed or feel pity for these characters. At least there should be no doubt that these aren’t figures to aspire to. As I said, I’ve not seen Joker: Folie A Deux, and now I don’t need to; I’ve got a big Broadway incel musical right here.
Listen on Spotify | Listen on TIDAL
Also out this month - The Cure return with their first album in 16 years, and it’s glorious. Their album launch show at the Troxy was live-streamed on YouTube; I can highly recommend it.