Deep Voices #86

Techno/happy birthday

Deep Voices #86 on Spotify
Deep Voices #86 on Apple Music (missing Loula Yorke’s “Staying With Trouble)

---

Each Deep Voices contains a one-hour playlist of underground (?) music and writing “about” that music. This week’s Deep Voices is a brief essay on listening, along with notes on the playlist below. If you can, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you :)

---

I hesitated to include Nikita von Tiraspol’s song “A Lithuanian Fairytale” because, though it’s a moony piece of ambient techno, about two minutes into the track, a man’s voice enters the picture. “Because we are not committing suicide, it’s a revolutionary act.” It’s Jim Jones, cult leader of the People’s Temple in his last recorded speech to his followers before their mass suicide in Guyana in 1978. That statement repeats, eventually followed by another voice from the crowd. This one is blearier. “If you tell us we have to give our lives now…we ready.” 

Two people I know have been effected by suicide recently and I imagined them popping on this playlist and, looking for a little bit of escape, and finding themselves sunk into despair by the callous reference to such heinous an act, one not decades and nations away, but recent, close to home. 

I don’t know anything about Nikita von Tiraspol. Has he been affected by suicide? Did he have family members in Jonestown? What was he aiming to accomplish by adding these samples? To be scintillating? Or did it help him process some of his own loss? Both? Neither? Would context, if it even exists, make a difference to a listener? But why pick on him? He is certainly not the only artist to make work that references death. Every Jesus on the cross in the world is technically a depiction of murder. 

Not that it’s working, but I’m trying to escape the spiral, not go further down it. Music’s usually been the tool to accomplish that. Not so much lately. I’m starting to think it’s not the music’s fault. Today is my son’s birthday. He should be four. It’s been two years since I first wrote about music and his death in Deep Voices. “I love very little like I love music. And I like making this newsletter and I’d like to continue it one day in a more standard fashion,” I said. I think I have. There are many recent editions of Deep Voices which don’t touch on grief. “Fifty-five editions of me trying to convince you to embrace the weirder side of sound, urging you that there is so much humanity in the nooks and crannies of art, a mission I want to return to. But that seems impossible without talking about Renzo’s death. It’s something I need to go through, not around.” This is the 86th edition. I’ve gone through, but not yet made to the other side. I may never.

Though obviously Renzo didn’t die by suicide, von Tiraspol’s song still made me think of him. Death begets death. Sometimes people will bring up Renzo in conversation and then apologize, saying they didn’t mean to make me think about him at that moment, to remind me. I’ve discussed this with other people who’ve experienced great loss and we all think the same thing: no need to apologize. It’s not like we forgot. It’s weirder to not say anything, pretend he was never there. That’s what most people do. No one ever apologizes for that. 

If I had to guess, I’d say that von Tiraspol is just some guy who thought it sounded bad ass to include a sample of Jim Jones in his techno song. He’s right, it does. But it also sounds empty. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A rom com is not an accurate depiction of the complications of love. Sometimes you need to take a sip of simulacra and move on. Not everything can be life or death.

Outside of von Tiraspol’s “Lithuanian Fairytale,” the rest of this week’s playlist is vocal free. It’s cold music, mostly electronic, but it doesn’t feel distant or hostile. Cold can heal. A cold shower can work as well as a hot one. I’ve been really enjoying Erin Hopes’ music, super fast paced techno that still maintains some swing, some heart. It’s a difficult trick to pull off. She may not want to; the song I included here is called “I Don’t Want to Feel.” Me either. Good luck to us both.

Playlist notes:

I’d like to fulfill my aspirations “to convince you to embrace the weirder side of sound, urging you that there is so much humanity in the nooks and crannies of art,” so let’s talk a little more about Erin Hopes! I really love her album, Lucid Dreaming. It’s unfussy and raw. I feel its directness is part of its power. Or the fact that it’s mostly direct and then has moments of totally excellent derangement to break up the high BPMs. Like life! 

Though Hopes’ use of tools does vary from song to song her use of repetition is part of the attraction for me. It’s especially effective across the span of an album. Each song is its own star in a little constellation. Each song has drums, each has keys, and each has a little extra to delineate itself. A gurgle here, a gallop there. The piano on “Elect-Romance” is particularly harrowing. “The Little Mermaid” has a tropical underpinning. But on each, as on all the songs, the kick drum stays kicking. It feels improbably both methodical and adventurous. 

I wrote offhandedly a month or two ago that, as a non-musician, picturing someone hunched over the computer, chopping up rows and rows of drums, that there has got to be a tedium to making electronic music. One artist from the playlist, Greg Z, wrote to me to say that it’s actually a place of great imagination. That’s my mistake. Greg’s music is wild, exciting, constantly in motion. But, as a non-musician (if a constant computer user) when I try to reverse engineer it from the final product to the hard work of its digital creation, I struggle to imagine it. I just see a lot of clicking around. (That’s what writing feels like until you’re done.) But when I think of Hopes’ music, of the pace, the pummelling, the computer seems like an appropriate vessel for urgency. I think of when the laptop fan starts to buzz because you’re working it too hard. Listening to her music makes me want to make her music. To transcend. It’s not intimidating, it’s encouraging. Maybe I’m wrong that Hopes’ songs are simple. There’s a lot I don’t understand. Happy to separate the art from the MacBook. 

Perhaps it’s easier for me to describe what I mean in terms of art, not science. Not an expert in either, but I’m especially lacking in the latter. What I’m saying is Erin Hopes makes Rothko techno. Bold, moody, square, beautiful. Never the same, but not always different. Hard to paint? I see now that that’s the wrong question.