For those of you who aren't in my tutorial (and who happen to read this blog), I should start this entry by saying that I LOVE Colin Stetson. If you don't know who he is, go look him up on Wikipedia.
Really, go ahead. I'll wait.
...
Ok, so now we're all up to date on the fact that (other than being a beefcake with a *mean* playing face) he's a multi-instrumentalist who primarily plays bass sax. He tours and records with scores of huge pop acts but also records his own music. Stetson's most recent solo release, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, was nominated for the Canadian Polaris Prize. This prize is a pretty big deal in the artier side of the pop music world - former winners include Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy, and Patrick Watson (as well as F***ed Up, but I don't think I can swear on this blog).
Those names should tell you a little bit about the sort of music that gets attention from the Polaris Prize committee - usually the nominees are genre-bending in some way, and the winning albums challenge notions of what "pop" music is. This totally holds true in the case of Stetson and his latest record.
To begin with (and this is going to get a bit recording-type-nerdy here for a second) the entirety of the instrumentals on NHW were recorded in a single continuous take, rather than by multitracking and layering various parts. This isn't entirely unheard of in instrumental music, but what is particularly interesting about this album is the textural depth that Stetson was able to attain. I played "A Dream of Water" in class last Friday, but I think it would be better for you to listen either to "Home" (the track that comes immediately after "A Dream of Water") or "Red Horse: Judges II."
In fact, I'll include links to youtube clips, for your convenience:
Home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwJ0FUw9ZmE&feature=related
Red Horse: Judges II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0tKKyEXYTI
(Oh, also, if you get a chance check out "Fear of the unknown and the blazing sun" - it's another example of the incredible musicianship on NHW)
Through the use of 20 creatively placed microphones, imaginative mixing and a mastery of extended techniques (circular breathing - he does it) Stetson is able to create a soundworld that amazed critics and fans alike.
He also managed to confuse people.
The promotion of NHW was fairly tied up in how it was recorded - it was important that the album was considered live. I could go on and on about how that's not really possible, since it's a recording, but that's not the point of this post. This connection between what Stetson had produced and a single, untouched performance is pretty telling about the market the music was being sold to. In pop music circles the term "live" is usually reserved for recordings of concerts, and overdubbing is a common practice. Colin Stetson and his PR team sold this record on the freakish playing ability and creative tracking and mixing solutions dreamed up by Stetson and his engineers - this record was sold as experimental.
This point is further hammered home by the fact that the album was released on Constellation Records - a Montreal-based label that deals with artists like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Do Make Say Think.
But experimental what? Some critics felt the urge to label the album as a jazz excursion. That's even how NHW was labelled on Wikipedia, but I don't think I totally buy that. This article by Nick Butler at Sputnik Music touches on the reasons why music critics might feel inclined to think that way. However, as Butler goes on to point out, the pieces are highly structured and that blows the connection between Stetson and free jazz. And from listening to the record, it's certainly not a type of more traditional jazz, either.
A number of critics have drawn comparisons between Stetson's work on this album and Steve Reich's compositions. I think this is a particularly apt connection to draw; though I hear more Philip Glass in this album than Reich, trance-inducing repetition and sonic experimentation are clear themes here. Once you get past the sheer awe induced by the number of things Stetson is doing at once with a single instrument, the interest in this recording seems to come from a musical minimalist place. The variations from human error inherent in a single, unedited performance color the tracks and lend the variety needed to keep the interest of the listener.
This perhaps most pronounced on the track "Lord, I just can't keep from crying sometimes," which consists of vocals - overdubbed after the original sax recording session, by Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond - and a single, sustained C on the bass saxophone. Outside of the vocal line, which is itself pretty provocative, Stetson's inhalations, the rattles of the body of the sax, and the occasional squeels of the reed as Stetson leaps from one octave to another are the "hooks" of the track. That's not too far from what we talked about in class with regard to 4:33" - when you remove from a composition (or recording) what would traditionally be a focal-point, other aspects come into focus.
And then there's the connection between Stetson and electronic experimentalism via Laurie Anderson's work on the album. Anderson is a visual artist and composer who invented a tape-bow violin (the horshair on the bow is replaced with a section of tape with something recorded on it, and the violin has a tape-head mounted onto it). Anderson's work on NHW is purely in a spoken-word context, but the connection to the avant-garde past is still there.
Is it possible to have an "avant-garde past"?
I think it's clear that Colin Stetson's NHW is a complex case-study for where the lines between pop, jazz, classical, western art music, experimental music, musical minimalism and electronic music all meet, and how they can blurr into an indistinguishable mess. Perhaps we're too close to the music, time-wise, to be able to clearly pick apart the genre distinctions.
In any case, there's clearly some cross-pollination between previously established genres happening here - and it seems to be a very good thing.
AL
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