Deep Voices #87

monarchy death music

Deep Voices #87 on Spotify
Deep Voices #87 on Apple Music

Each Deep Voices contains a one-hour playlist of music and writing about that music. And life! Oh, life, the common denominator of all the living. This week’s Deep Voices considers British death music. If you can, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this weekly project. Thank you :)

Reading about Sabres of Paradise, a trio including the legendary DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, I happened upon an article in the Guardian from a few years ago, with a headline I certainly did not expect: How Chillout Music Soundtracked the Death of Diana. In the ’90s, the BBC, in the process of modernizing itself, updated its playlists to reflect both the national mood and the current decade. The tone of reflection they landed on for memorials largely included music for the chillout lounge of the club, woozy stuff for coming down from drugs. As the article’s author, Phil Harrison writes, the music was, “Not too upbeat, not too bleak and, crucially, lacking any lyrics that could be interpreted as offensive, chillout was the perfect music to accompany a national tragedy.”

When confronted with his music’s use as elegy, Sabres of Paradise’s Jagz Kooner found a solid bit of comedy, “I might have to put it on my gravestone!” he said, “Purveyor of Monarchy Death Music!” I think “inadvertently sad music used by British people to soundtrack the death of a royal that was actually created for coming down off of drugs” may be the ideal genre.

I was looking for a way to frame this week’s playlist and, I have to say, this is it. Music with sorrow accidentally embedded in its DNA. It sounds less mopey than I mean. At its most vicious, sorrow is shapeless, which is perhaps why, musically, it's so good at attaching itself to otherwise well-defined sounds. Sure, there are boldly sad songs. But as a listener I’d rather find bits of melancholy in an otherwise beautiful piece of music than overt moroseness, especially when it’s crafted as some schmaltzy pawing at the feeling itself (apologies to “I’ll Be Missing You”). Across this playlist’s hour you have the kind of sorrow diverse to get you through an ecstasy comedown or the death of your most beloved monarch. Or, with some luck and planning ahead, both.

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Playlist notes:

•I believe the royal death music needs to be instrumental, but if the BBC ever makes a change, they could do worse than looking to their countryman Thomas Bush. Bush’s, who could loosely be called a singer-songwriter, a droll, numb voice that carries hefty emotional weight like it’s fairy dust. “Close your eyes and the days keep crawling,” is part of the chorus for “Same Life Flowed,” the opening track from his new album, The Next 60 Years. The music saunters along, woozy and romantic, lead by Bush’s meaty guitar and lilting synthesizer. Does the next 60 years mean of his own life? Like, that’s how long he’s got? Preemptive death music.

(Confidential to music nerds: All of Bush’s music sounds like the only music he ever knew existed was the Everly Brothers and then someone described to him This Heat and he tried to make a record imitating that.)

•I honestly cannot keep track of the billion releases of the Room 40 record label. I do my best, as they have a high success rate in the world of ambient, writ large. But no person can listen to their new releases in real time. But I am a fan of percussionist Maria Moles, and so I made a point to check out her trio Panghalina, including Helen Svoboda and Bonnie Stewart. The Australian trio’s new album Lava is excellent. The music from Panghalina is largely organic in nature, percussive and itchy. It’s spare, and as much like jazz as ambient music (the kind of shapeshifting maybe appropriate for monarch mortality). I like the way “Not Super” appears to arrive out of nothing, briefly declare itself, and slink away, like a dust storm that becomes a small tornado, drifts across a field, and dies.  

•For about ten years, from the mid-’90s to the mid-2000s, the Japanese ambient electronic producer Tetsu Inuoe was extremely prolific. His music was sweeping in scale, textural, deep. The kind of music often called “world building,” and indeed many of his album and song titles point to physical places and nature: Inland, World Receiver, Waterloo Terminal, “Sour Cloud,” “Journey to Ixtlan,” “Bionic Commune.” The track included here, “Background Store,” starts with quiet tones, the sounds of perhaps birds or frogs, and then builds with glimmering synths before transitioning altogether into a field recording of a merry go round. Then, around 2005, after a solid run of releases, he disappeared. 

“Where Is Tetsu Inuoe?” A good question, one first asked by the Phonaut blog in 2012 (thanks to Andrew Noz for pointing me to this post). The two conclusions the author reached, then five years after the Japanese electric musician Inuoe’s last release and his seeming disappearance, were that Inuoe was either “he’s being reclusive”' or “he’s dead.” In the 12 years since the question was asked, nearing a decade since he was heard from, no definitive answer has been arrived at. But the comment section has thrived, with theories of his whereabouts and, more sweetly, notes of appreciation. “[His music] moves my soul in ways I can’t describe, and I felt the need to add my small voice to this chorus,” one commenter wrote in 2018. “I wish you the best, wherever you are.”