Songwriter Tempted By Formalist Devil

"I'm the devil, I make the temptations. Here, I'll throw in a brand new IM-style applet and free roaming charges."

Having talked briefly about lyrics and all elsewhere just now in the love songs thread, if I were on the side of Good, I'd argue that lyrical messages may not necessarily be immediately focused on (certainly not my situation personally, in general), time will let them sink in. But in terms of strict musical form -- the politics of noise, if we want to call it that, has already been discussed by the likes of Adorno and Attali (and Simon Reynolds ;-)), and I'm not about to try to either rehash or directly spell out the implications either they created or indirectly suggested. I would say, however, that ultimately the person brings his/her politics/ethics to the performance/performer -- and is under no guarantee to be changed by them in the slightest, and that means *with or without lyrics.* If you want an example -- a sad one on all fronts, the more so with time -- consider Kurt Cobain's plaintive message in Incesticide raging against the two 'wastes of sperm and egg' who raped someone while chanting the lyrics of "Polly." There was somebody who placed value in the world of words, who desparately tried to suggest something non-macho -- and got stuck with that as a burden. My answer to the 'you' in the question is to note that ultimately once in the public sphere there's no immediate control over how a message is taken/interpreted anyway, musically or lyrically.

But this, as I mentioned, would be if I'm on the side of good. The devil's case would likely be bolstered by the note of how, say, rave was demonized in the UK to the point where the 'repetitive beats' bill was passed. But was that a specific historical/cultural moment or not? And could something like it happen again?

Well, no one wants to go to hell. Formalism is too much porn. Without content ,comment and meaning, art becomes decoration displaced from its mantle piece. Every day as I walk into the Museum of Fine Arts Boston I am greeted by what looks to be a large bronze stump. "Good morning Mr. Stump" I say, and it never answers me. The point being laptops and samples and sounds and beeps are for interior designers. Momus records are different from anyone elses' because they have the Mind of Momus living within. We need more digibards, not more G4 warblers.

Who says interior designers can't be talking about inside themselves? And I'm serious, by the way. Slamming one medium to praise another seems sorta pointless...and besides, don't we all design our own places to live? :-)

Clearly the devil has several answers to chose from :

1) Sure, listen to this Stock, Hausen and Walkman / Justified Ancients of Mu Mu / John Oswald / Negativland album. They can be witty with just sound and reference ...

2) Sure, listen to these fine results of Momus's Little Red Song Book karaoke competition. See, by creating soundscapes Momus could inspire his avid fanbase to write their own perverse, witty lyrics.

3) Sure, go on indulge yourself, look at Radiohead, they got away with it.

4) Sure, go on indulge yourself, you can always do an album of spoken word poetry to compensate afterwards.

Or how about...

Suddenly the Formalist Devil, who has been speaking (all the better to win you over) in the old-fashioned literary style of parable and persona, switches into his real language, the language of form. 'Rotate Flash sprite 47.3 left!' he instructs. 'Apply VST ring modulation plug- in! Morph from Pantone CMYK 274395 to Pantone CMYK 675847! Blue, blue, green, blue! Pink, orange, then yellow burst. Clusters of quarter notes in 7/8 time! RGB scatter and VCF sweep!'

You have no idea what he's talking about, but the light show looks good. So you step decisively into Formalist Hell. As just about anybody else would.

Your Satan bears a very strong resemblance to Frank Zappa, Momus. So I guess your future would be either as Captain Beefheart or Steve Vai?

can I rebuild Worldview with form, texture, colour and sound alone

I would think Momus you would be able to do anything.

Imagine that you do make this record and push it into the public domain. People are surprised and a bit confused by this change of direction, however after the initial shock people come round ' it's Momus being playful and witty with the form' or 'it's pushing new boundaries' or even 'he's going through a crisis'. Whatever it's part of the Momus canon and thus informed by his worldview.

Release the same record under a different name, something German or Japanese perhaps. Pick an interesting sleeve. Something stark and industrial or even some comic cartoons. Give the songs some good titles, numbers or names of artists or something random picked out of the dictionary. Watch how perceptions change. I think that a worldview will be imposed on this record whatever the artists intentions and often with nothing to do with the music.

Ideally it should be blank sleeve, no titles, no other cultural signifiers. Like viewing a Rothko or Newman painting in that the listener will have to create there own response to it. Of course it's almost impossible to view a Rothko without thinking of the artists depression, which show's how difficult (impossible) a task it is.

Anyway may not be hell, could be heaven playing with all those knobs and buttons and splashing that colour around.

Release the same record under a different name, something German or Japanese perhaps.

Which of course makes me suddenly realize -- what if he's already done that? ;-)

So DJ Momus then? :)

I am the walrus, koo-koo-ka-choo, here's to you Mrs Robinson, doo doo doo, a wop bob a loo bob betty boo

I've been in this situation. And MY devil said, "What, are you afraid of a challenge? What's the worst thing that could happen? It's not like your literacy will evaporate if you try this!"

doing a GOOD album of pure form makes demands on you - but is rewarding in that it may change how you hear/texturally create any more song-based stuff you do afterwards ( radiohead ?)- OR - youll do a reeally trad album afterwards to make up for it ( grateful dead ?)

look at bowie's development - i predict if you do a formalist thang next - the one after will be the bollux

'Voyager', I know, wsn't a strictly formalist album, but the lyrics were deeply submerged within it without losing any of their bite. And sometimes it's my favourite momus album. Another suggestion; a listen to Chris Morris' Blue Jam. I think I recall Robin mentioning it over on alt.fan.momus one time. Your words can float in and float out at will. Voices are instruments as much as messengers. It think words are essentially sonic metaphors with which we associate meaning. Other sonics are maybe similar signifiers of less fixed and less popular meaning. "In other words, can I rebuild Worldview with form, texture, colour and sound alone?'" There's a Japanese artist yuo may have heard of named Cornelius. He is pastiche as much as Momus is pastiche, but with sonics. Oh, wait, this hypothetic devil wasn't actually talking to hypothetic you?

Rubbish! Interior decoration doesn't express wry political insights!

There's a Japanese artist yuo may have heard of named Cornelius. He is pastiche as much as Momus is pastiche, but with sonics.

I don't wish to make anyone jealous -- alright, I do. Cornelius' management just handed me this evening the first CD-R of his new album, his first since 1997's 'Fantasma'. It's not even mastered yet! Titles:

1. Bug 2. Point of View Point 3. Smoke 4. Drop 5. Another View Point 6. Tone Twilight Zone 7. Bird Watching At Inner Forest 8. I Hate Hate 9. Brazil 10. Fly 11. Nowhere

Haven't even listened yet!

Quick! Release it under your name!

Damn you, Momus, damn you.

Now get thee to a CD burner. My address is . . .

Rubbish! Interior decoration doesn't express wry political insights!

Mike, you need to have a look at Nest magazine.

Dear ILM,

For some reason, all I can think of when I read this question is U2. Am I ill? Please advise.

Suspiciously,

I don't read magazines. Only Instructional manuals.

Satan's smarter, better-dressed brother says, "Give up music! Write a novel! Study interior design! Paint a fresco! Make porn! Assassinate a politcal figure! Reinvent modern dance! Sculpt the 21st century's answer to the Sphinx! Read more Nietzche!"

The rest of the angels, however, are all on your side, Momus. They hand you new Cornelius CDs and say, "We like your funny, literate songs! We don't care if they're in Latin--give us more!"

I don't think the question makes sense to me. It seems to be saying that 'formalism' = making instrumentals. I am not convinced that formalism = making instrumentals.

I don't think that I understand the imperative that seems to lie behind the question. I don't think that I can share the sense that it articulates that one might think that words were an impediment in songwriting. I don't think the question makes sense to me - which is where I came in.

Dear Sean,

Stop drinking so much Old Theakston's before posting.

Yours, ILM

Contrary to popular belief, meaning does not translate cultural boundaries all that well. So music is not the universal language insomuch as the musical cues are specific to cultural references unduplicable even through translation. Which of course dumps us into the whole relativism bit, where it seems interpretation is up to the interpreter. Then you have the problem of why making art at all if all you've got is an audience who is going to take whatever they want from a work. Rorschach for the hearing imploded.

So then you drag Calvino into it and take his rather middling point that arts differ, some are ready for interpretation and some are so that the artist can tell you something. So you sit down with all this in your hands and decide that maybe formalism has already taken hold in the "words" area. Paint-by-numbers Beatles to Skinny Puppy to Sparklehorse and John Fahey, darlin', it's all been deconstructed until you've got skin and bones and a roadmap to sincere irony.

So we realise that sarcasm and being scared has made us into a bunch of recidivists who like nothing more than being reminded of the idea of feeling something. So new music is almost like icons. You listen to Primal Scream to hear someone do an imitation of a sneer that was analoguely sampled from the netherworld of deadpopstar and you listen to Thievery Corporation to remember that you once saw a film about the 60's and how cool was Terence Stamp anyway?

And then one wonders, well, what's so bad about that anyway? Which is akin to lobotomists with a sneaking suspicion that there was once something more. Music for commitment-phobes, dancers in the dark, too cool to believe anything for more than one fab second.

Thank God I'm only 24.

Thank god I'm only 54; a little Oil of Olay helps!

The development I fear is the sacrifice of beauty for novelty. Dada is the most exciting art movement I know of, but Dadaist art isn't lovely or moving, unless it moves me to disgust. Someone brought up Radiohead as an example. Kid A is okay, yes, but most of the songs are distant and don't inspire thought or emotion in me. I prefer their albums wth songs I could sing and dance to.

If you can create moving things with form, texture, colour and sound alone, that will be amazing. I don't know if it's possible though.

I'm not sure I agree--unless the terms form and sound exclude melody and harmony. I mean, reams and scores of classical music move me and countless others without the weight of words. And if nothing else, have stood the test of a couple of centuries. So I think there's plenty of room for that sort of thing, if the audience can decode the meaning and be alert for nuances that don't involve wordplay.

There's a loophole in the devil's prospect

There's nothing to prevent you from sampling spoken content and arranging it with the rest of the work.

If you reveal it as being sampled content (by cutting it up, or whatever), people kind of listen to it from a textural perspective and lyrical perspective simultaneously. You've then trounced the formalist devil and extended the range of your work.

To Acia -- oddly enough, I find that Dada art can be very moving in and of itself, just the sheer beauty of textual rearrangement alone, a sort of beauty of print/font aesthetics. Similarly, I can sing and dance quite a bit to Kid A -- "Idioteque" demands both of those reactions in me. ;-) The point in both cases is that I don't see either example as strictly a specific prizing of novelty over beauty, or rather than there can easily be novelty *in* beauty -- the two surely should never be considered totally mutually exclusive.

I'd seriously wonder why the devil would be pursuing this dichotomy when rap+hiphop has been combining both lyrical and formal worlds for the past 2 decades. True, you can play Faust to your Monochromatic Mephisto, or you can indulge both yr pro-tools fetish and bust yr rhymes in similar fashion, involve wordplay (making fun of people) and soundplay (playing out various colors and designs).

Actually, I've been sort of regretting my first, fast, flippant answer all day. There's actually something touchingly vulnerable about Momus's cry for guidance, a part of him which we seldom see in his confident, confrontational art. Makes me almost want to pat him on the shoulder--if I weren't afaid of the porcupine barbs. Artists who come to these kind of musical crossroads in hell and aren't afraid to admit they don't know which step will lead them back to paradise are rare indeed.

Not being a musician or songwriter but instead a very avid and eager listener, my wish might not be very feasible but nevertheless is genuine--that he TRY to bend the rules, break the rules, create new rules. In other words, fly in the face of danger and failure and do what might seem impossible now but will seem all too necessary later. There's no one answer because there are so many answers; the results might be agony for the artist but may very well be ecstacy for his audience.

I think Pinefox has a very good point here. Momus's persistent confusion of formalism in music with non-lyrical pieces seems to me to be mistaken. I'm not going to advance an argument about music being a universal language here, but the fact remains that musical tropes, cliches, styles and devices in themsleves make up a language of some sort, or at least act as carriers of meaning over and above any lyrical content. Now, the original description of formalism as given in the formalism thread described it as an elevation of form over meaning. So unless you regard lyrics as the only carriers of meaning in a piece there seems to me to be no reason to regard all instrumental music as formalist. Especially since within pop music innovations in instrumental sound or form quickly become part of the musical language and therefore start carrying meaning, no matter how formalist the context in which they were initially used.

I should shut up now. Too much wine is not conducive to good arguments.

I anticipated this argument about formalism being more than just the absence of lyrics in the question. The devil says 'You're already a formalist without knowing it.' In other words, all art has formal elements, it's just a question of whether you choose to background or foreground them.

This takes us back to the distinction between formal and formalist. Art becomes formalist when you draw people's attention to its non- narrative, non-representational elements. In other words, the moment you put a story on top of music -- a story that claims to represent events in, and attitudes to, the real world -- no matter how innovative that music is (some rap, for instance) it loses pride of place. It becomes a backing track. A good one, a fresh one, but secondary. It's then like a car, getting the listener from point A to point B, rather than a sculpture, to be admired on its own terms. And no, a car cannot be a sculpture. Even Jeff Koons hasn't been that cheeky!

...or rather, yes, of course a car could become a sculpture, but the moment it's been so designated, just try stepping into it and turning the ignition and see the outrage that follows! The same outrage, no doubt, as would greet me taking an Aphex Twin track and singing over the top.

I'd take out the engine, then. But in terms of you singing over an Aphex Twin track, that sounds great!

I've actually sung over a lot of formalist techno, which I've sampled shamelessly. It just becomes hi hat patterns and basslines the moment you put a story on top.

Maybe you should try doing more than "putting a story over a track" then. All kinds of music with heavy formalist bents (I think immediately of Stereolab, Lamb, Laika...) is a lot more successful at incorporating singing (non-narrative, but I don't think the narrativity is the catch) into the music than putting a story over a track.

I think what Josh says above is probably sound.

What I was saying, pace Momus, was: language can be used in 'formalist' ways too. In that sense instrumentals are a bit of a red herring.

It could be, of course, that Momus and I have different understandings of 'formalism'. I hardly have one at all. I didn't understand most of that 'formalism' thread.

Sans story, emotion remains. Formalist works encompass worldview as strongly as anything else, partially because all they can be distilled to is visceral response and identification, because their effect cannot be fully verbalized.

I believe that 99% of artists claiming to be 'formalists' THINK they're using a 'formalist' approach, but really aren't.

I think the divergence is this. For Momus and friends, formalism means something like 'pure experimental sound'. For me, formalism means something not very far away from our old friend 'pastiche', perhaps deployed in a somehow systematic fashion.

What I mean is - how are you ABSOLUTELY sure that the artistic choices you are making are purely for reasons of form, and your hand is being subconsciously guided by some other agenda (which would of course sully that form with 'subtext')?

What about the rather old-fashioned concept of "program music"? Classical composers have of course told stories without words, through music for ages--but then they were writing to accompany often well-known texts. But I see no reason why the composer couldn't create his own narrative, outside the music, and orchestrate it from there (of course, it's been done, but how often in pop music?). Why shouldn't one just as easily create soundtracks to design collections or museum catalogues? Or try to write the music furniture might sing (not just "furniture music"), score one's psychoanalysis, or through-compose socio-political theories?

Aren't all these divisions (formalism vs. content or whatever its so-called opposite really is) artificial, anyway? Why shouldn't formalism be cuddly and soft, with a pleasant mouth feel, or otherwise eager to please as a puppy? Just as all these words I write seem to have been written before, I'm sure most of these ideas run the "been there, done that" gamut from Satie to Eno; nevertheless, they haven't been tried enough (to my tastes, anyway) in the three-minute pop song or twenty-minute trip-hop opus.

Just an afterthought after reading Tardent's post. This is interesting at least to me because I attended an Ibsen forum the other night, where one of the crucial points being made was, "Ibsen makes the subtext his text." That is, the characters say exactly what they really mean, Nora tells her husband they better sit down and talk in "A Doll's House," and modern drama (and maybe everything else) is born, in my opinion.

How much music makes its subtext the text? Is this what Momus is trying to do, in part? Does the music always create its own subtext for the narrative, or should it be the other way around? Pardon the lit-crit talk, but the confluence of these ideas seemed noteworthy.

XYZ: your posts were interesting and well-put. A few points.

1. Naturally, your more avant-garde ideas don't appeal to me. Why do I want to hear furniture music? I think your idea here may be perverse without end.

2. Your cuddly-formalism idea may possibly resemble Momus's 'cute formalism' idea. I didn't understand that one, either.

3. Your subtext-becoming-text idea is really interesting. But can you explain it further? I get it re. Ibsen, but not re. pop. Off the top of my head I am inclined to say that the unspoken subtext of much pop is 'sex' - which has of course been much spoken by now, in one place or another.

Pinefox, you speak wisely. Just a few notes before I have to run--

1. Furniture music, as you no doubt know, was an idea of Satie’s--also known as “wallpaper” music, "immobile" music. In either case, a kind of highbrow background music--thus “ambient” is born. As for myself, I’d love to hear what an Eames chair has to say or possibly a love-song from a loveseat or a conversation between two old and cranky Chippendales or Memphis set to a beat.

You’re right, I am persverse without end but I actually prefer well- structured pop singles to most let-anything-happen avant-garde experiments; or rather, I prefer that the twain try to meet.

2. “Cuddly formalism” is of course a subsidiary of the “girly” branch, and I have very little idea of what I meant or mean, either. Except it’s sort of like user-friendly software, I think. And blobby Italian furniture. Ask those people from that other thread; it's all over my miserable head.

3. Sex is almost always the subtext of pop, but it’s about time some other subtexts were heard--historical, cultural, political. Something honestly honest, too. NOT protest music but maybe protesting music or music that doth protest too much. I’m not sure what I want to hear, but I’ll know it when I hear it. I leave it for the musicians to try to invert sub/texts. And I want it to be catchy!

Sorry to take up so much space here. Does anyone else ever feel totally mortified by what one has written as soon as one clicks on “Contribute An Answer”? And yet like the most devout novitiate I can’t help flagellating myself...

Me thinks an Eames chair would say--pomo killed the rock and roll star! Or maybe Mies should just shut the hell up! So then the Mies chair could go over and bop 'im on the head. BOP! :) Just kidding...

um... well, I hardly think it's fair to say that all classical music is written about texts. I mean, I think a great deal of classical music is written to suggest a feeling or a series of feelings, but not all of them are based on text. George Crumb's Black Angels comes to mind, or a number of Berg's pieces as well--hell, most classical music that I could list doesn't necessarily spring from a literary source, but maybe I am misinterpreting you.

I think the problem that comes up, at least for me as a music creator, is when I have the option of doing both sound/plunderphonics/whathaveyou and then try and convey a lyrical sensibility, how I make my choices. It's all well and good to talk about Adorno or Walter Benjamin or whatever, but what happens when aesthetic theorist sits down with his ProTools or her guitar and goes "plink?" Most of the time, I find that it's very difficult to apply my theories in terms of reallife production--bridging that gap between words and that ineffable beauty. Then I suppose the post- modernist would say, there is beauty in form manipulation as there is in content manipulation. Which is true, provided the audience is geared up to notice it. Which then comes to the ultimate point, how far do you go with your audience? Is it truly a good thing to be able to play the audience? Subvert them and then give them something inside the pop cocoon? Because what happens 30 years from now, when the audience is wiser? Then whatever method you used to gear up that old audience will seem like a special effect from Star Wars (I mean the old ones.) So people will say, just stop thinking, just write whatever you want, but that whatever is hugely influenced by your needs and what you perceive is your goal, whether it be consciously noted or not.

Someone once said that if you considered the audience at all, then you're sunk from the beginning. Unfortunately, the contemporary artist is mostly incapable of being un-self-conscious, unless they are simply incredible egoists or have no connection with the rest of the scene, the former of which will usually brand you an eccentric or a genius, but not necessarily provide good art, and the latter of which is simpy impossible given today's media climate.

So then we tread metaphorical ground, deploy our cultural references, and hate ourselves for not being original. But the question is, what the hell is original? The brooding artist may have been real in the 1700's, but ever since Byron or Baudelaire, it has certainly been something of an act. If you were truly depressed, would you have enough ego to want to dissiminate your work?

If you're a true 'brooding artist' you probably believe either a)your work WILL get disseminated, by some divine fiat or manifest destiny, or b)the 'work' validates itself ONLY by existing, or c)the lack of its dissemination says more about the rest of the world than it says about the 'work', art so powerful that it defeats art itself, i.e. you've won again.

How would something like ScheiderTM's "The Light 3000" fit into this? Would one argue that the song is just an approximation of formalism, adjusted to conform to traditional "song" understandings?

I do believe that it would be impossible, or very difficult, to recognize chair music as such without outside explanation. I would love to hear something and say suddenly, "Why, that sounds like a chair!"

If Beethoven is an example of formalism (which I don't fully understand either), go ahead. It's not hopeless.

I honestly don't even know what 'formalism' means - I mean, I know what the dictionary definition is, but...well, whatever.

I just wanted to note that 'lyrics' in no way automatically equals 'telling a story' as Momus implied above. From cut-up to free-association there are many ways lyrics can be incorporated in music without carrying a narrative, nor even necessarily any ideas or concepts. One of the reasons I like the lyrics of Jon Anderson under the Yes heyday between 1971 and 1975 is that they, though written with some idea in mind, never made strict grammatical sense and were as much to fit the music as sounds and textures as trying to impart meaning.

But, nonetheless, the original post in this kind of validates my guess that Momus is now reaching for an unlearning of what his years of making music has taught him. Unfortunately, knowledge destroys savantism pretty much irrevocably.

Are you implying there must always be an idiot in the savant? Doesn't knowledge, tempered by understanding, lead to wisdom?

So much text means so little despite seemin g to say so much: so much text and speech is just so much white noise...just forms in flux.

"Go on a walk and destroy everything that's in you."
Knowledge is a curable disease I think.

I'm saying that 'outsider art' and the like is fuelled not by a rational decision to 'do something different', which is what Momus is talking about doing, but just anneed to express oneself in a particular way. Once you learn the more 'proper' way of working in that medium, it's decidedly difficult to unlearn that.

In a sense, he's intellectually thinking about going down a non-intellectual path, it seems to me. And while contradictions like that can certainly be somewhat interesting as mind games, I don't see it creating art that could hold *my* attention, at least.

I may well be reading it wrong, because I still can't get my head around what 'formalism' really is supposed to mean. The definitions I read would indicate that, as far as music goes, you could comfortably drop Britney Spears, Negativland and Kraftwerk all in there without stretching the term much. Seems kind of pointless as an indicator of anything, then.

hasn't simon turner already pulled this trick? clever pop to hopelessly dull "sound".

Careful here, or we're on to a kind of reverse elitism--expecting artists to be "unlearned" if they're to be worthwhile or original. True, many so-called "outsiders" are technically or musically naive, but many others have probably been knowledgeable about a whole heck of a lot of different things. Genius doesn't care if you wear a degree or pedigree, but neither should it flee from the sight of a mortarboard or crest. Talent is as talent does, la la la. Many other artists--Picasso and Klee come to mind-- worked hard to "unlearn" what they knew (through African or children's art, for instance) and were successful at least in producing something new and exciting. Perhaps if an artist is smart enough that artist is smart enough to unlearn some otherwise constricting things--but wise enough not to forget what's really meaningful and good.