NO GUTS, NO GLORY
Oct 1, 2004 12:00 PM, The Remix Editors, Robert Hanson Erin Hutton Kylee Swenson
Just when I, Kylee, thought I was on-point with Björk in pushing creative boundaries, she went and trumped me again. Damn it! It's not like I went out and had a music box made after I heard Björk's “Pagan Poetry” or that I had the money to commission a 60-piece orchestra. But I thought that I had a handle on what it meant to try different things in the studio. Then, I read a quote by Björk about her latest album that said, “Instruments are so over.” And I thought, “Whaaaa? I didn't get that memo!” Meanwhile, I'm still putting instruments everywhere on my tracks, which is sooooo 2003.
And so it is: Instruments are over for Björk for the duration of the 14 songs on her latest album, Medúlla. And bless her heart for taking on one of the riskiest endeavors imaginable. The thing is, vocals are vulnerable and naked without instruments. And they're very hard to make right. A slightly out-of-tune guitar or an off-time keyboard isn't always so noticeable, but pitchy vocals? That's quite a lot harder to hide. And here Björk goes making everything vocals.
Granted, she's been playing and writing music for nearly 30 years, and as a major-label artist, she's proved herself enough to take the leap. Being a superstar means that you can indulge yourself in whatever you want as long as you come back down to Earth at some point. And if Björk was to go off the deep end and never come back, most of her audience would probably still stick with her anyway.
But here's the conundrum: If you follow a trend while it's still on the upslope, do you have a better chance of making it in the music industry? Record labels are always looking for the next group to replicate a certain successful band's album sales. Speaking of which, how much do you want to bet that labels are looking for the next Scissor Sisters or Kanye West or Franz Ferdinand right at this very moment? And if you start now, you might still make the dance-rock train along with bands like The Faint or The Rapture.
It's really a question of how far you can walk to the beat of your own drum. Because if no one is really endorsing klezmer metal music, then such a band's success is limited. On the other hand, do we really want to keep saturating the market with the same sameness that's currently on the radio? Some good music does rise to the top, but then everyone scrambles to copy that artist. Then, the poor innovative artist's ideas are diluted, and everybody gets sick of hearing him or her.
KutMasta Kurt, who speaks up in this issue with Kool Keith, seems to be maintaining a good balance for himself: He keeps up with some of the digestible production styles currently out there; then, he supplements that with his own wacky signature style. 'Cause if he went all-out wacky, who would be ready to listen unless the music machine sanctioned it?
Then, there's Fatboy Slim, also in this issue, who does whatever he damn well pleases and gets all trashed at the controls as one of his vocal collaborators, Blur front man Damon Albarn, drunkenly sleeps with his head on the desk and a microphone in his hand. (Picture the Dormouse at the mad tea party in Alice in Wonderland.)
If you're established, you can probably get away with flipping everyone off and doing whatever you feel like on occasion. But those of us who are more green to the industry, what do we do? I'm always inclined to suggest that we should just make the music that comes naturally and allow ourselves to evolve by trying new things, old things and whatever things we feel like trying. We can always jump on a bandwagon, and maybe we'll have a better chance of success. But by the time we get our albums done, the industry is probably on to the next thing. So I guess we either have to become psychics and figure out what that next thing is or we just do what feels right. Screw it — I'm choosing the latter.
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