things that are big
When I set out to do this I told myself I wouldn't use it to talk about music, at least not primarily, because then no one would stay subscribed because I have a bad track record of being able to talk to most people about music... but...
I've mentioned Anna von Hausswolff's live album a few times in various places since it was released in January. It gave me a lot of physical chills when I listened to it for the first time (and still does), which I didn't realize were a different thing from ASMR but are, I guess. It was interesting to read that for many people, physical chills from music are usually induced by a familiar, anticipated passage of high intensity, especially when it involves unexpected sonic textures or turns--that's certainly my experience, but I hadn't articulated in that way. It explains why this live album was literally causing goosebumps to break out all over my body, because I knew the song structures and melodies but was constantly being surprised by new peaks and valleys compared to the studio recordings.
I'd already been spending a lot of time with AVH's discography for the past few months, but that interest got renewed after listening to Live at Montreux. I always come back to this live performance of "Deathbed" when I'm thinking about organs.
When the first low note hits at 1:54, something in my guts flip over. There are a few things that fascinate me about organs, both related to physicality: first, the visceral quality of their sound, and second, the way they occupy physical space (in terms of scale).
The way that pipe organs are inherently well-suited to drone because of their ability to sustain notes is also something I find deeply compelling. They contain this contrast between very sharp, crystalline, tones intended to carry religious melodies and these very bone-chilling, impassive sounds that are sometimes too low for human ears to hear--and that, too, is part of its spirituality, because you can physically feel the sounds.
I've mentioned Anna von Hausswolff's live album a few times in various places since it was released in January. It gave me a lot of physical chills when I listened to it for the first time (and still does), which I didn't realize were a different thing from ASMR but are, I guess. It was interesting to read that for many people, physical chills from music are usually induced by a familiar, anticipated passage of high intensity, especially when it involves unexpected sonic textures or turns--that's certainly my experience, but I hadn't articulated in that way. It explains why this live album was literally causing goosebumps to break out all over my body, because I knew the song structures and melodies but was constantly being surprised by new peaks and valleys compared to the studio recordings.
I'd already been spending a lot of time with AVH's discography for the past few months, but that interest got renewed after listening to Live at Montreux. I always come back to this live performance of "Deathbed" when I'm thinking about organs.
When the first low note hits at 1:54, something in my guts flip over. There are a few things that fascinate me about organs, both related to physicality: first, the visceral quality of their sound, and second, the way they occupy physical space (in terms of scale).
The way that pipe organs are inherently well-suited to drone because of their ability to sustain notes is also something I find deeply compelling. They contain this contrast between very sharp, crystalline, tones intended to carry religious melodies and these very bone-chilling, impassive sounds that are sometimes too low for human ears to hear--and that, too, is part of its spirituality, because you can physically feel the sounds.
Anything that makes pitched sounds contains color tones above the fundamental tone. It’s a series of tones that goes up by an octave, then a fifth, then two octaves above the fundamental pitch and on and on. All these color tones affect the quality of the tone. That’s why in its simplest form a trumpet sounds distinctly different from a violin playing the same pitch. It has to do with the overtone series and how these overtones interact. So when you’re hearing an extremely low note, you are actually hearing more overtones than fundamental pitch! Your mind constructs the fundamental pitch particularly in descending lines that go lower than your hearing. [...] you’re not hearing something you can’t hear but your mind makes an image of that low tone in a convincing way.
Secondly, they remind me of Gundams, or large-scale infrastructure... the kind of thing I've referred to as "industrial sublime". Things made by the human which dwarf the human.
(From "Inferno Reflections" by Daena Key)
AVH was an architecture student, which makes sense... her work is conscious of its ability to occupy space. It's very cavernous. There's room to contain a lot of visceral emotion, including fear, within that acoustic environment, even on recordings. It makes me feel bittersweet because of the pandemic--during which I've spent an enormous amount of time listening to music in isolation--and my personal struggles with experiencing live music in recent years, because of how susceptible I am to getting migraines from audiovisual stimulation. I hope that someday I'll have my teeth rattled by really big noises again without it causing me pain and brain fog, because otherwise the experience is very euphoric. It's good for the spirit to sometimes be made to feel small in comparison to something which is trying to communicate with you.
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