Yesterday, I posted the following response on a
want-to-buy thread. No doubt it belongs here, where, for the moment, I'm pasting it as-is. I'm about to leave for the day; perhaps I'll see a few of you at the HES show (though you won't see me).
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Originally Posted by DJShadow /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Quote:
Originally Posted by scrypt /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Another reason to buy the vinyl version [of Autechre's Tri Repetae++] and transfer it digitally yourself:
Every copy I've ever seen bore a sticker with the following legend:
"Incomplete without surface noise."
In other words, vinyl imperfections are intended to add to the album's aesthetic.
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Do you think the vinyl version of Tri Repetae is superior to the CD or vice versa? What are these 'vinyl imperfections'?
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It isn't that the source version differs but, rather, that the vinyl format itself creates difference. Ever-increasing surface noise, progressive FR mutation, midrange emphasis, imminent rumble, low frequency artifacts, ambient vibrations (unless your turntable is dampened well, as those used by local DJs and clubs seem never to be) -- all these can add extra helpings of glitchiness, aging effects and complexity to compositions that are meant to sound pre-aged and glitched already. Stephen Betke's LF-exploitative mixes on
Pole 1-3 seem to sound best on vinyl; on CD, people with extremely bad speakers are sometimes unable to hear the very bass lines which comprise the primary musical content. Boards of Canada's pastiches of damaged 80s school documentary soundtracks can also benefit from vinyl imperfections and frequency emphasis.
1994 to 2001 seemed to me to be the golden period of pomo vinyl rediscovery: hindsight allowed not only DJs but also source artist-engineers to track for the turntable as if it were an expressive but endangered musical instrument -- one that needed to be exploited in every way possible before extinction. Hence the carefully inscribed dates, sigs, locked grooves and graphic patterns in the lead-out; hence the search for special densities, mixtures and coloring schemes to add handmade touches, and to foreground vinyl as an inspiring and idiomatic format for retro-futuristic music. The time's signature glitch turntablist/engineer might well have been Thomas Brinkmann, with his dual-tone-arm-modified turntable and artfully mutilated discs (he gave props to Christian Marclay for the latter).
The easiest way to make something artificial appear to acquire depth and authenticity is to introduce flaws. In an essay that appears in one of my long-ago books, I called this the
whipstitch effect -- after the conspicuous thread-scar Jame's Whale added to his version of Frankenstein's neck.
Conveniently, vinyl is its own whipstitch (though arguably not exhaustively before
Tri Repetae++'s decade). Why else would 50s-70s horror writers have used skipping records compulsively to emphasize brutality and murder ("Ya do the hokey-pokey . . . Ya do the hokey-pokey . . . Ya do the hokey pokey . . .")?
I'm also remoanded of Ian Curtis, Manchester's muttering Sylvia Plath, who summoned the moxie to hang himself while listening repeatedly to Iggy Pop's
The Idiot on vinyl. No doubt the hissing and clicking at the lead-out only reinforced Curtis's depression. As an adolescent, I believed the record was still on repeat-play when Deborah Curtis discovered his body. I liked to think "All Aboard for Funtime" was running its course when they cut him down.
