on Listening to Albums and Connecting on Zoom
“Actual Life (April 14 - December 17 2020)” by Fred Again.
5 February 2022
"Only connect" says EM Forster. I have no idea what this actually means. I've never read him. I only know the quote because an ex-client had it on their web site. He was a bit of a knob (the ex-client, not EM Foster who I’m sure was lovely), with inflated ideas of his own cleverness, and used to boast to my friend who worked there that he didn't pay me enough for the quality of work I did for him. Let's upgrade him to knob. All knob. Complete knob. No bits of anything else.
I designed record sleeves. Absolutely loved it. Then CDs were invented and sucked all the joy out of twelve inches of unreconstructed cardboard. Especially reverse board, where the unfinished fibrous side is printed on. A pleasure to hold. Unlike a jewel case, being a textbook example of marketing hyperbole. A plastic case. A shitty plastic case where the hinge bit snaps off should you drop it, and then the 'jewel' front wont stay on anymore.
So by the time mp3s came along, I welcomed them with open hands. Open ears, technically. I loved the world of random, your whole music collection a giant mixtape. I did not miss the album. I lived in a land of gleaming pop songs, no filler tracks. I programmed an mp3 player that found every song on your hard disk and then played them randomly one by one, until each had been heard, before starting all over again. I made a “wibble” skin for the Audion mp3 player. Two years later the iPod appeared. The album was dead.
A recent Independent newspaper article asked "When was the last time you listened to an old album from start to finish?". I can answer that, I thought. “Actual Life (April 14 - December 17 2020)” by Fred Again.. on the 25th of October 2021.
Ironically it was seeing his name appear multiple times among various Spotify playlists, nestled alongside other artists I enjoy, that prompted me to listen to a track. "Kyle (I found you)". Mesmerised. Half an onion and a knife in hand. I listen to Spotify playlists cooking. Played two more songs. Bought the album.
This was a rare weekend spent alone. I sat down and played it from the beginning. After five or so tracks, I stopped, opened the sugar jar, indulged, and restarted it again from the beginning. All the way through. Then played it again. Somewhat emotional. I may have danced.
Its use of found recording and samples weaving through the album, rather than being isolated in a single track, make it play well as a single long-form piece. It's a bit concept-y.
I like it a lot. A lot. And recommend it.
It caused mild interest on release for the use of found vocal samples instead of house music’s usual practice of guest singers. It features clips taken from live performances on YouTube of artists personally unknown to him. Strangers. It also features people he had met in bars and recorded on his phone, and on the break out track "Marea (We've Lost Dancing)" a snippet from a Zoom call with the Blessed Madonna.
Dance music has long sampled found speech and spoken samples. From the dramatic rhetoric of equal rights speeches to aspirational cries of "Bugatti". Here the tone is different, not just the obvious lossy quality, extracted from low bandwidth video calls, but the manner. Intimate, casual, conversational.
With his second album Fred Again makes explicit mention of lock-down and the isolation it brings. The use of the sample in 'We've Lost Dancing' is a war cry against outlawed dancing, but it also seems to me to herald a cultural artefact mirroring the way our social relationships were navigated afresh in the age of Zoom. I think it resonated so well, not because of the clubbers’ cry to the battlements, but because we've all sat in darkened rooms discussing what we were missing and what we've found, learning to share our feelings through a video call. Unable to touch, to find ways to be intimate.
“These Things Will Come To Be” by DJ Seinfeld makes this recognition of connection, the value of a friend asking if we're alright, more explicit. No famous house DJ discussing clubbing, an anonymous voice asking ”Hey, I'm kinda glad you didn't pick up, I kinda just called to hear your voice, so your voice recording was enough. I've been thinking about you and I miss you. I hope and I wish that you're doing OK. I want to go back to the old days because I miss you and I just thought of you so I thought I'd call you to tell you that you crossed my mind and I took that as a sign that I should call and hi. That's all. Hi". Two years ago we would have assumed it was an ex ringing, or someone wanting a sexual liaison. Now it sounds like us. Checking in on each other. Making sure we're all OK. Down the wires.
“Just For The Times” by Everyone You Know elevates this to an anthem. No samples. They sing it, what we’ve learnt from those two years connecting through screens, and what to celebrate now the end is in sight. "And it don't matter where you are. It don't matter what you're doing. What really matters is who you're with. 'Cause none of this means anything if we ain't together, you know? That's what it's all about, it's about being together". An updating of The Streets “Weak becomes Heroes”. Instead of celebrating the pleasure of dancing with strangers on ecstasy, the celebration of just simply being with each other. Again.
Facebook have just published their figures and for the first time ever they have lost users, roughly half a million in the fourth quarter of 2021. I can't help but think this is the flip side. People needing to connect. Directly. Camera to camera. Station to station.
References
1. "Marea (We've Lost Dancing)" by Fred Again and the Blessed Madonna, released on 22 February 2021
2. These Things Will Come To Be by DJ Seinfeld, released 03 September 2021
3. Just For The Times by Everyone you know, released 01 October 2021
Further reading
“Weak Become Heroes” by The Streets