Tag: instrumental virtuosity

Musical Appropriation Or Just A Shoe That Fits? : Dirty Loops’ Pop Reversioning

Posted on by Thomas Brett

“Hey, we’re on to so much knowledge and the music industry won’t let us use it in a creative way.”
— Aaron, drummer for Dirty Loops

“Could you please make a cover of every song in existence?”
– Dirty Loops YouTube viewer comment

There’s a lot that’s interesting going on when you watch and listen to Dirty Loops, a trio from Sweden, blaze trough their über-funky cover versions of pop songs by Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Adele, and others.

First, you’re surprised to see, well, three very young-looking Swedish guys making such a funky and soulful sound that draws so heavily on the harmonic conventions of jazz and gospel. Plus, the keyboardist also sounds like Stevie Wonder. But I’m setting myself up here. I was going to say that as far as stylistic appropriation goes, Dirty Loops pulls off a virtuosic feat. This might be unfair though because why should we say that Dirty Loops are appropriating anything? Don’t their clear musical skills suggest a kind of ownership of the musical idioms and eras they’re working in? Does it matter if those idioms– like the jazz-funk fusion on display in Dirty Loops’ pop song covers–have been around since the 1970s? And does it matter that the members of Dirty Loops were not even born until well after the heyday of these musics? I think the group’s airtight playing makes such questions moot.

A second interesting thing going on when you listen to Dirty Loops is that you get to revisit some very well-known pop songs that have been transformed through re-harmonizing and intricately syncopated arrangements. Part of the pleasure here is hearing how light pop hits like Bieber’s “Baby” can be transformed to yield so many riffs, off-beat unison hits, big spacey jazz chords, spirited Wonder-esque vocal runs, Jaco Pastorious-esque bass solos, and drum clinic drum fills. But as you listen with not a little astonishment at Dirty Loops’ instrumental virtuosity, you also wonder if it’s really true that the tune is most important thing in music (the quality of the tune is what makes a song valuable), or whether what matters is what the musicians do with/to the tune (the quality of the musicianship is what makes a performance of a tune valuable). In the case of Dirty Loops, I’m not sure I know the answer.

On The Trickle Down Of Electronic Dance Music Aesthetics III: Acousmatic Sound And Authenticity At The 2012 Grammy Awards

Posted on by Thomas Brett

“All cultural change is essentially technology-driven.” – William Gibson

This year’s Grammy Awards featured the first ever performances of live electronic dance music, showcasing the DJs David Guetta and deadmau5 with R&B singer Chris Brown, rapper Lil Wayne, and the rock band Foo Fighters in what the Los Angeles Times aptly called “a confused, if well-meaning, picture of dance music’s place and influence in current pop.”

There were two catches to the performances. The first is that they took place outside the Staples Center in a tent designed to resemble a 1990s rave–complete with lazers and audience members wielding glowsticks. Evidently, turning the main auditorium into a club space wasn’t going to happen; better to keep “serious” popular music safe (for the moment) from electronic enchroachment. The second catch to the performances is that both DJs–Guetta and deadmau5–were paired with other artists, telegraphing the message that manipulating digital turntables still does not quite constitute a “performance.” What are we supposed to look at? And where exactly is the demonstration of instrumental virtuosity? So as Guetta worked his turntables on his infectious song “I Can Only Imagine”, Chris Brown and Lil Wayne stalked the stage in Auto-Tuned perfection to reassure viewers that this was pretty much like a traditional show—except that Guetta’s DJ rig replaced the whole band. The TV cameras occasionally showed close-ups of Guetta’s hands moving fast over wheels, buttons, and sliders. But unlike a typical epic DJ set, the song lasted just 3 minutes.

Next up were the Canadian producer deadmau5 and the Foo Fighters. deadmau5 had remixed the Foos’ song “Rope” in 2011 and their collaboration at the Grammys was a demonstration of how remixing works. First, the Foos performed one-and-a-half minutes of “Rope” in the song’s original rock incarnation. As the song’s finishing chords rang out, deadmau5 entered with a quantized (and slightly slower-paced) four-on-the-floor stomp, and the Foos played along as if resigned to the metronomic pulse. This collaboration lasted all of 55 seconds (hey, it’s for TV after all) and seemed to drain the song of its original energy. Then deadmau5 played one minute of dubstep from his song “Raise Your Weapon.” It was probably the most musical moment of the whole 6-minute performance–just pure dubstep groove–though Deadmau5 is known more as a house music producer than as a bonafide dubstepper. And just as Guetta had Chris Brown and Lil Wayne on hand to provide visual spectacle, deadmau5 wore his tradmark giant LCD-lit headpiece to give us something to look at. Unlike the Foos’ hands which could be seen picking away on those electric guitars, deadmau5’s hands and his DJ rig were hidden from view.

And it’s precisely this that’s at stake when people talk about what makes rock/pop music authentic and electronic music lacking in authenticity: we can see rock/pop musicians generating sound, while the techniques of electronic musicians are either hidden (we can’t see what they’re doing to make sound) or diffuse in the sense that their music making was done over the days, weeks and months of a solitary and private production process that assembled a track bit by bit. So when it comes to time to “performing” an electronic music mix, it’s not always clear to the concert-viewer what the DJ/producer is doing besides playing back a track and tweaking a few elements here and there. (Was Guetta doing anything substantial to “I Can Only Imagine” or were his rapid hand movements just to convey a sense of musical busyness?) This is most of all a problem of what the French musique concrète composer Pierre Schaeffer in 1955 called acousmatic sound: sound one hears without seeing its source, sound emanating from a loudspeaker without a musician in view who is the unmistakable creator of that sound. Even today, this makes some people in the popular music establishment nervous, especially considering that electronic music seems to be eating rock and pop music wholesale, one song at a time.

The complete Grammy performance of all five artists is here: