Hole 51
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno - Pink Lady Lemonade - You're from Outer Space (2008)
This is an album that is best listened to loud. The louder you have it, the better it sounds (though obviously only to a certain point, determined by comfort and context). This is definitely true for a lot of music, virtually all dance music being the most obvious case. And while all music benefits from a certain level of loudness (i.e. we like actually hearing it), there is a lot of music, like this, where volume has an outsized effect on our experience of it.
For example, while I like listening to Arthur Verocai relatively loud, I don’t mind having the volume quite low. And importantly, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. This is not true for albums like Black Up or Weeks & Co, for example, where turning up the volume feels like unlocking their potential (the former), or something I am compelled to do, given I know what I am missing out on by not having it louder (the latter).
The problem is, I don’t have an overarching theory about what makes this the case, given any piece of music whatsoever. Indeed, given the heterogeneity of music that happens to have this property, picking out exactly what kinds of sounds have an outsized influence on our experience of them, just by virtue of them being played louder, is difficult to pin down. However, I do have a couple of thoughts about what might make this album in particular (and albums that share its features), like this.
The first thing would be its spacious, cosmic atmosphere which somehow makes you feel like you are hurtling (peacefully) through space. This is especially true on Pink Lady Lemonade Part 1, this summer’s unlikely anthem. Turning up the sound makes its atmosphere envelop you entirely. And to great effect. Atmospheric music does this best not just when it sounds like it is enveloping you, but when it is literally felt to be enveloping you too, something only loud music can do. (Another classic example of this is Dark Side of the Moon.)
The second thing is the repetition. Most of these songs are extended jams that repeat the same few ideas over and over. Most of the melodic variation comes from the ornamentation of these ideas. This repetition produces a groove that burrows into our experience, in a quasi-hypnotic way, until we go along with it willingly, and affirmatively. Loudness helps groove establish itself in our experience, lodge itself in our bodies. Hence it sounding better loud. The music of James Brown and Fela Kuti are testaments to this.
Third, mere melodic repetition is not all this album is doing. It also creates and releases tension. It does this through two things: the gradual increase of tempo and the regulated introduction of chaos, which jointly work to wind our bodies up with the music and gnaw away at the breathing room afforded by its spacious atmosphere, only to give it back again. See especially Message From Outer Space for this feeling.
This kind of musical tension is thrown into sharper relief the louder the music is. Unsurprisingly, this is because louder music makes us feel this tension more intensely. Indeed, I think that under a certain threshold, we are all but incapable of actually feeling the intended tension throughout our bodies. The music must be loud enough to cross the threshold that circumscribes our habitual or everyday intensity of feeling to even begin really feeling it at all.
For example, take Screen Shot or Oxygen by Swans. Part of the point of those songs is the tension they build and the tension you consequently feel in listening to them. You are straightforwardly missing something about the value of their sound in listening too quietly.
And so it is for this album too.
- Rowan
Recommended Songs: Pink Lady Lemonade - You’re from Outer Space - Part 1, Message from Outer Space
Listen: Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube
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