Listen To Real Music, Part II: The Record

Lucas – an Apple Crisp member, music-lover, and musician – discusses
“real” music: the appreciation of music not just as sound, but as part
of a broader social, physical, and artistic context. Click here for Part I.

You may have noticed: there’s been a renaissance of the vinyl record
lately.  Sales of vinyl LPs and 7″ singles have gone up in recent
years for the first time in a decade.  It’s still a decidedly niche
market – all of last year’s vinyl sales totaled to less than the
first-week CD sales and downloads of Tha Carter III – but its
persistence in spite of its supposed obsolescence raises a few
questions.

After all, it was pushed out of the way for a reason.  Vinyl
recordings are difficult to copy, while CDs and other digital formats
allow for infinite reproduction with minimal cost or effort.  Records
are far less portable compared to CDs and especially compared to
compressed computer files.  And vinyl is more expensive to produce and
hence to buy: a single LP averages twenty bucks, with the lower end of
the spectrum dipping below $15 and the higher end reaching as much as
$40 (for that Icelandic import printed on high-grade vinyl).

In short, the new technology outstrips its predecessor by all
practical means.  Why bother going back?

For some there’s nostalgia.  Many modern bands prominently display
their influence from prior eras of music, maybe using fuzzy old guitar
amps, or outright copying a vintage synth sound.  Pressing to vinyl is
a means of completing the throwback; an 80s electro jam deserves 80s
electro treatment to the end.

And there’s the “cool” factor.  Perhaps due to its relative
obscurity, vinyl has a certain mystique to it.  In addition to
listening to music your friends haven’t heard of, you’re also using a
format your friends never use.  In the right crowd, showing off your
stack of LPs imparts an air of sophistication, the musical equivalent
of prominently displaying your copy of A Brief History of Time.
It’s a form of cultural haughtiness; your music is too good
for iTunes.

That elitism isn’t always vanity, though.  There are many who insist
that vinyl is the best-sounding medium of sound reproduction.  In any
internet discussion on the topic, you’re bound to find someone who
boasts a ten-thousand-dollar speaker system and can write out
extensive mathematical calculations and esoteric technical jargon to
“prove” the superiority of the LP.

Is that it, then?  Nostalgia, trendy elitism, and rich electronics
nerds?  Those things seem too fleeting or supercilious to sustain the
life of a technology decades past its obsolescence.

For me, and I suspect for the majority of vinyl lovers, the appeal of
the LP is more abstract than that.  It’s a kind of psychological or
emotional attachment to the format itself, rather than any calculable
aural superiority or cultural elitism.

There’s something special about putting the needle on the LP and
watching it spin.  It’s as if you, the listener, are actively engaged
in the musical process, even if your involvement is no more skillful
than pressing a play button.  There’s a sense of tactile fulfillment
in flipping a record, akin to turning a page in a book.   There’s
something precious about slipping the LP back into its sleeve, like
you’re tucking it into bed before its next play.  The album doesn’t
end when the sound stops; it ends when the record slides back onto the
shelf.

So far this has sounded like an infomercial for the greatness of the
vinyl record, but that’s not what I’m getting at.  What I mean to
communicate is the importance of the album as a whole experience, an
entire work of art, not just as a vehicle for sounds.  The LP is just
the most obvious example; the tactile elements of playing a vinyl
record are part of the overall experience of the album, and they
enhance the music in subtle, maybe intangible ways.  But whether it’s
vinyl, cassette, CD, or digital download, I feel it’s important to
appreciate music within its broader artistic context, in the same way
that it’s important to appreciate music within its social context, as
in a concert (as I wrote in Part I).

In a number of interviews, Don of Constellation Records (our idols and
kindred spirits in Montréal) has suggested that the entire album be
thought of as a mixed-media art piece, with the music, packaging, and
attached photographs and artworks combining to create a unified
experience.  In keeping with this mentality, Constellation makes all
of their packaging by hand with a dedicated in-house team of about
half a dozen local artisans, working with offset printing,
silkscreening, die-cutting…  Although they are still producing many
identical copies of a package for mass-consumption, the hope is that
the extra care they took in its assembly will somehow, intangibly, be
felt by the listener.

When you sit down with f#a#∞ by
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, you are presented with a red cardboard LP
sleeve with a photograph glued onto its front and the album’s title
embossed below.  Inside, accompanying the record are found images,
original art pieces, some typewritten ramblings, and a penny crushed
by a train.  You play the record and, as you mull over the cryptic
pictures and pass the flattened coin from hand to hand, you hear the
opening narration: “The car is on fire and there’s no one at the
wheel” … This is the type of beautiful and nuanced experience that
is difficult to replicate on a 2-inch iPod screen.