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| Untitled II Kaspars Groševs, Artist Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland – Black Is Beautiful (Hyperdub, 2012) | |
| Writing about music may not seem all that captivating. There aren’t too many words that can be used to describe one sound or another, new technology no longer creates musical revolutions, while musical lyrics, if there are any at all, rarely go any further than the countless repetition of pointless phrases. But mainly it’s not particularly captivating because everybody knows everything. Of course, these assertions are somewhat exaggerated. However, in order to listen to, for example, all of Frank Zappa’s discography, doesn’t require months of searching anymore – you just have to find the right internet sites, legal or semi-legal, research the artist’s biography a little, and, if your conscience troubles you, to pay also the required amount for the music found. Among other things, Zappa is one of the many musicians who have been credited with the famous quote: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”(1). Just in case someone doesn’t know: Dean Blunt is an East Londoner, Inga Copeland is an Estonian of Russian origin, and these aren’t their real names. Up till now, both were known to be possible members of the group ‘Hype Williams’, the name having been purloined from the nickname of a fairly well known hip hop video-clip director. The few interviews with members of the group have also been misleading, as they tend to avoid giving clear answers, as have the many Blunt and Copeland videos which remind us more of amateur videos, with jerky absurd scenes in which nothing much happens – for example, the one where Copeland washes her fellow group member’s hair for seven minutes. In their latest recording, the group has also given up the name Hype Williams, possibly due to threats of possible court action. But you’ll read these types of statements in just about every essay about the creative work of Blunt and Copeland – the group’s strictly maintained refusal to explain anything at all about their music is patently reflected even in the media that writes about music. | |
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| The intentional silence is most likely a sign of an intentional choice. The short, often even abrupt compositions, soaking with the history of electronic music of the city, have been created just like components of post-conceptual works of art. Just like the rustling of magnetic tape, cured in seeming disinterest and marihuana smoke. Even at a time when many are returning to forgotten technologies, scratched analogue synthesizers and “authentic” sounds, Inga Copeland’s gravelly voice and the murky musical offering sound just as lousy as a fifteen year old cassette found under the bed. However, the frayed quality of the sound binds not just the 15 soundtracks included on Black Is Beautiful, but also the rest of the Hype Williams creative output, which is scattered among scratched disc matrices, vinyl records and strayed recordings of improvisation sessions(2). A rambling Russian pop song, sung by Copeland and possibly once heard somewhere, merges with slowed down voice fragments of equally unclear origin and with wobbly synthesizer sounds. Along with the release of Black Is Beautiful on the internet, two free recordings also appeared – Dean Blunt’s composition The Narcissist II(3) (which doubtless doesn’t even have a first part), as well as Copeland and Blunt’s almost one and a half hour long recording The Attitude Era(4). Without any fanfare, both recordings suddenly appeared in the communications chain, where finding the original source seems almost impossible. In the earliest days of hip hop, when defenders of copyright were still snoozing, unaware of the latest trends and technology in music, works were often based almost completely on “stolen” loops of music. The Narcissist II sounds like a collage of stolen fragments also, although it’s not easy to find hard evidence of this. It is interlaced with film dialogue, a gloomy atmosphere and lazy singing, which sounds almost alienated from the stretched music loops. The Soundcloud sound wave zigzags of short film imagined by Blunt reveal just as much as the writing on the CD with a black marker. It’s possible that the choice to publish the recording in the Soundcloud music collection, in which thousands of hours of music are downloaded each day, is just as deliberate a choice as keeping silent. The Attitude Era, in turn, looks like “demo material” stolen from a recording studio, with the names of the tracks reminiscent of recordings of provisional versions or notes about a technical process. Included as well, judging from the name, is a rejected remix of a song, lasting only two seconds, by a group called Slugabed. The works aren’t numbered (at least 3 possible song lists are floating around on the internet), their quality and volume varies markedly, and really, it’s a computer pedant’s worst nightmare. Like lines in a grubby writing pad, the outline notes in this selection as if reveal a little more about the doings of Hype Williams, but in actual fact nothing becomes clearer. Both recordings have bewildered people whose passion is classifying things. It’s quite possible that this is the beginning of another battle by Wikipedia editors, like the “correction quarrel” which has gone on for years about whether Brazil should be written with an “s” or a “z” in English(5). Although the name of the recording Black Is Beautiful is borrowed from the American black rights movement, and the cover of the recording is decorated with the logotype of a popular Afro-American magazine, its possible political context has remained almost unnoticed. In the album where tracks lack titles, but the lyrics appear only on vague cover versions, additional indicators about any (political) stance by the group are lacking. That doesn’t, however, stop a search for references and hidden messages, for example, in Blunt’s maniacal smile, as a dark-skinned man climbs in through the living room window backwards. However, the Black mentioned in the title of the recording makes one think more about Malevich’s Black and the freedom that came along with it, alternating with deep despair. A freedom which is described by Blunt himself when talking about David Lynch’s films: “They contain the complete freedom to watch something and take in and be given the privilege to completely make up what you want from it.”(6) /Translator into English: Uldis Brūns/ 1 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/ 2 A number of recordings on which other possible members of Hype Williams participate can be found on the Archive.org site under Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band. 3 The recording can be downloaded from http://soundcloud.com/cplnd 4 The link to this recording only operated for a few weeks after the group’s interview in The Guardian, however, it is still possible to find it on the internet. 5 A sizable list of Wikipedia “editor wars” can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars 6 Blanning, Lisa. Hype Williams Transcript. The Wire, No. 324, February 2011. | |
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