Reading Dave Sitek

Producers are to music what editors are to writing. They oversee the totality of a creative project, guiding the cohesive scope of what the artist has in mind. A band comes to a producer with a few kickass trees, and the producer makes them into a kickass forest.

In the same way that you can see a similarity in style between authors who've shared the same editor, you can also listen to music from the same producer and find links. Dave Sitek is one shining example of a producer with a noticeable stylistic earmarks in his work. He's produced bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and is a member the insanely inventive TV on the Radio. To read the consistency of his style between artists, we can look at some cool production similarities between tracks on Yeah Yeah Yeah's first album Fever to Tell, and TVOTR's Return to Cookie Mountain.

For the first comparative example, check out these two cuts back-t0-back. Y Control and Playhouses.

It's hard to talk about music you've played to death without slipping too deep into your own subjectivity, so I'll try to be straightforward. To start, notice the noise in both songs. As much as guitars carry the melody, they also provide a palette of distortion that fills out the space of the mix. A good deal of the tracks on both Fever and Cookie Mountain are noisy by their own right, but I picked out these two for their tempo and energy. The soundscape of noise has a similar way of floating on top of the driving, energetic drum track, which is equally relentless in both songs. And while "Playhouses" veers a little more towards the abstract side of things than "Y Control," the percussion pins the noise-nebula down and keeps it from floating too far away.

When I hear both these songs, the sound textures remind me of machines. The opening riff on "Y Control" is akin to an alarm or siren of some kind. When the guitars and drums kick in, its emotional and melodic character changes in the context of the noise-scape. In "Playhoues," the guitar riff at :47 and the following string pads remind me of the noises you hear while driving on a highway. Different textures on the road make different noises as you drive over them. All the road sounds in "Playhouses" would be abrasive if they weren't blended together so smoothly and ingeniously. Is it intentional that sounds we associate with traveling over long distances carry so much melodic weight in the song? I'm not one to suggest any one interpretation, but I think that might be one way in which the melody reinforces the lyrical content.

These next two tracks are also brothers-in-noise, but in a different way:

Whereas "Y Control" and "Playhouses" have a faster tempo and driving percussive energy behind them, "Modern Romance" and "Tonight" show Sitek's use of noise in a more subdued way. The noisescape here is ambient and free-floating in a way that's more suited to a ballad. Notice the similar use of what appear to be instrument samples played backwards (cymbals, chimes). "Modern Romance's," intro is shorter, but it provides a glimpse into the kind of ideas and experimentation that would come about full-circle on Cookie mountain. The two songs are analogous to each other in that sense, since they're both the slowest songs on their respective albums and they're found at the end of the track listing.

What's mindblowing in light of all this is that both Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TVOTR still sound like completely different bands. While Sitek's penchant for noise and texture is apparent on both albums, the bands' respective sounds aren't drowned out by it. More remarkable than the artistic talent of the producer alone is the ability for it to enhance without overwhelming or stifling the talent of the artist. The good producer indeed plants a kickass forest, but the trees are still permitted to grow as they please. And where any artistic medium will attract its share of egotists, it's reassuring to see how the collaborative aspect of artists working together still flourishes as a talent by its own right.

Self-indulgent meta blog post #1

Man, I can't write anything personal in a blog any more without reading what I just wrote and thinking "Dan you're such a self-indulgent asshole writing about that who cares what the fuck bro fffffff" and then deleting it.

See, even reading that just now made me think that, 'cause that's self-indulgent too. You can't see this probably but I have a special system rigged up so that I can't delete anything in this post, so you're getting a full on blast of unfiltered/unedited words, just like a Henry James novel. Except hopefully it won't make you fall asleep. Unless you like Henry James. If that's the case, then ignore the sentence 1 sentence before this one and substitute it with "Except hopefully you will really enjoy it because Henry James is a good writer."

Alright, so I'm trying to be a good normal internet 21st century person and update regularly again and say insightful things and whatnot and hey. I went back and read my old blog for the first time in a while yesterday. I started it when I was 14 and kept it updated more or less consistently throughout the whole 4 years of high school. Reading it brought back a good deal of memories. It also made me realize what an arrogant little shit I was. Seriously, on behalf of all hormonal angst, I apologize to everyone who knew me at age 14/15/16/17, and probably at scattered moments up into the now as well. I laughed at the stuff I wrote back then, but mostly cringed. Cringed at the whininess, cringed at the dim worldview, cringed at the overtly pompous tone I had in writing damn near everything. Hopefully some of that has changed by now. If not, hopefully it will eventually. And when/if it does, hopefully I will have the objective distance to realize some kind of progress has been made.

DAMN. See, there's the self-indulgence again.

But all cringing aside, I'm kind of glad it's all chronicled there. Even though it burns my eyes, there's still a good deal of life experience preserved there on the interwebs, a lot of which I'm thankful to have a record of - both the good parts and the bad. And I'd like to keep that kind of preservation going right now, although lately I've found that trying to preserve the space-time of your past is kind of pointless, 'cause then it feels like you're trying to quantify the thing itself instead of just enjoy the sensory impression that the thing left.

What else. I just watched the first Hellraiser, something that's been on my to-do list since I first laid eyes on the giant Pinhead cardboard cutout my dad put in our basement. (I was 7 or so, it was kind of traumatizing). The ultra-grotesque demononic mutilation scenes were pretty rad, but there weren't enough of them. It was slow at parts but good wholesome fun otherwise. And It made me be sure to re-evaluate my interest in extreme BDSM before I touch a rubik's cube again anytime soon.

Holy fuck bro.

Leaving for london on the 17th, where a lot of fun will be had. If this turns into a generic "OMG I'm going aBroAd!!1" type blog, you will have permission to shoot me. But hopefully that won't be the case.

Yeeyuh.

Expect semi-regular updates again.