7" of Separation

Ellyn and I took to top 40 hip-hop on the honeymoon… and now Kid Cudi has come along and crammed all our favorite lines into one self aware video:

I’d never seen this… but thanks to Netflix instant viewing, I’m now a fan. Its Emilio at his best, truly.

The new Modest Mouse ep is one the way in August. I’m a big fan of the Mouse. They capture a hopelessly Pacific Northwest state of being with their tunes. So perfect.

Here’s a video for the first track:

I’ve been absent for over a month, I know. Getting married, honeymooning and getting settled in a new life will do that to one’s blogging schedule.

But now, I’m back, and with somewhat renewed interest. The main site is under a heavy redesign and looks terrible. But, the RSS feed is fine, so if you read through a reader, you shouldn’t notice a difference. Reader who visit the site proper will notice a huge difference in the home page. All this will be sorted out soon. So for now, hang with me.

Lots to come.

“When you put on a record,” he added, “it’s an event.”
—Williams, 2008

“Hey mister DJ, put a record on, I want to dance with my baby”
— Madonna, 2000

Introduction

Vinyl records aren’t convenient. LPs don’t sparkle with a futuristic sheen quite like the digital file — the MP3, AAC or WAV. Nor is vinyl easily reproducible, sharable or piratable like the binary, which due to its intangibility can be deconstructed and reassembled as an exact copy, undisturbed by time, wear or maturing physical technology. However, in the shadow of technological renaissance, when a pocket-sized device can house an entire music collection, the LP survives — resurging in the market, providing a material form for the soundtrack of a host of sub-cultural socio-musical movements. In 2008, 1.7 million new LPs sold in America, an 89 percent increase from the previous year. (Not to mention vintage and used record sales, which aren’t included in market statistics.) The growth of local record shows and shops — all while music industry megaliths like Virgin, Tower and Circuit City are boarding up the windows — only proves vinyl’s recent reanimation and reintroduction to the market is viable. (As of April 2009, 670,000 new records had been sold in the U.S. for the year. ) All this growth for a dated, once dead, media at a time when CD sales are plummeting — they fell 19.7 percent during 2008 — and digital distributors such as iTunes struggle against a virtual media-pirate scourge. So why, even after the music industry tossed away their LPs over two decades ago, are consumers, who’ve also fully embraced the technological, forcing record companies to crawl back to a medium that pre-dates the industrial revolution? The answer, I insist, is a complex matter of material authenticity.

Vinyl’s recent success is connected to its inherent negativity, that which it isn’t; becoming legitimate, being made authentic, through its embrace of the dialectic tension that embodies its aura. That tension, born from the LP existing as a physical medium and being tied to the event it represents by a plastic groove, is the undeniable source of vinyl’s mythos — a story crafted by an audiophilicly obsessive cult, which in turn, feeds the form’s acceptance as authentic. Despite the fact vinyl can only strive for the authentic qualities of the actual event it represents, the framework of the digital age provides a new men’s. Due to the hollowness of the MP3, vinyl has been granted a new authenticity, which could only be realized after the act of digital reproduction instilled new authority to the mechanically reproduced. It might be impossible to fully unearth the authentic aura of the LP here, as the issue is a tangled web of ideas drawing from a number of divisions within the study of media, culture and society. However, I believe these pages might provide a foundational understanding, which might be then applied to further suss out the core of vinyl’s authentic aura. First, we must examine the cult.

Cult

The material object — especially the mechanical reproduction of an authentic object or event — defines modern, post-industrial human existence. It seems we are driven by the need for the material, and in the realm of art and music nothing differs. Benjamin understood this drive, claiming forever “the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness.” From this urge, we obsess over form, drawing identity from its aesthetic. Despite being material representations of events — the live performance, the studio session, the impromptu jam — LPs have grown to become a consumer art form, through which the collector, audiophile or scene-driven hipster can display their identity one plastic disc, one gatefold album cover, one 7” at a time. And in the vinyl underground, where subculture hip-hoppers, indie rockers, electro-punks, and music elitists are all vinyl-obsessive, LP’s have come to represent something deeper. The LP has become a ceremonial object.

Even Benjamin himself understood how material objects could amass such cultural and personal importance so to develop cults. In his essay Unpacking my Library, Benjamin “describes a complex relationship between the collector and his books that is not simply about the practice of reading but about the physicality, aesthetics, experiences, and tactility of collecting,” so that the collector, when speaking of his collection, “proves to be speaking only about himself.” That is, we so draw our identity from our material collections that the development of cult to celebrate our related obsessions is inevitable. Through the discourse of its proponents, all supporting a very specialized way of experiencing music, the cult of vinyl becomes solidified.

Gramsci provides support for this sort of material cult with his concept of ideology, which is concerned with the importance of sensationism, a connection to the physical that spawns spirituality. As the record died and a handful of sub-cultural groups continued to cling to the LP, members became more connected to what was sensational about vinyl — the pop-hiss, the crackle, the feeling of warmth, the act of moving the needle, being forced to experience an entire album, flipping the disc half-way through. And from this sensationalism, which could be shared between vinyl-loving subgroups regardless of what genre of music they supported, an ideology was formed. Over time, this shared ideology, one that preaches vinyl’s material superiority, becomes a manifestation of cult.

How then, did the cult of LP become powerful enough to successfully proselytize, launching vinyl’s recent resurgence? Hebdige might argue the cult of vinyl existed for decades as noise beneath the surface of the music industry, until the form interfered enough “in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media.” Once successfully authenticated as counter-culture by the media, the power shifted from the industry standard, to the sub-cultural preference. That is, the cult of vinyl was able to broadcast its beliefs in the authority of vinyl so that the media had no other choice to accept it as an authentic movement. In a thorough review of media reports surrounding the history of vinyl, Yochim and Biddinger found the propaganda of vinyl littered in the pages of Rolling Stone from as early as 1979. In their introduction to the resulting study, ‘It Kind of Gives You that Vintage Feel’, the authors conclude, “vinyl records have been articulated with human characteristics, such as fallibility, warmth and mortality, which, for record enthusiasts, imbue vinyl with authenticity.” Through powerful declaration in the media, the cult was able to exert its mythos on the industry.

While there might not have been any authenticity to vinyl during the medium’s nearly century-long market reign, there now exists such a system of subculture so that vinyl is stamped out as “ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult.” While Benjamin argues mechanical reproduction forever separated art from its basis in cult, DJs who’ve spent years digging through musty stacks of records, and collectors, their thumbs rubbed raw from sorting and resorting their shelves of plastic, have reestablished a connection between vinyl and cult, thereby granting it great power in the marketplace and culture in general. Vinyl then defies the standards that judge other mechanical reproductions for the simple fact that its cult reclaimed the physical form, instilling in it an aura, and granting it God-like status in the ceremony of listening.

This then is one step toward understanding vinyl’s material authenticity. However, the cult is powerless without its gospel. The cult needs a story to tell.

Mythos

What then was this cult so enamored with that it was driven to establish a new ideology surrounding vinyl? Like any religion, it is myth that provides a foundation for support, and there is no format quite as storied as vinyl.

Even a brief rummage through the news headlines concerning vinyl provides proof that there’s little complexity to the mythos of the LP. Barthes was right to claim any object, once provided with an appropriate discourse, is replete with myth. Articles in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and a host of other publications supply an exhaustive history of the LP’s mythical story. As “any material can be endowed with meaning,” vinyl is replete with myth instilled deep within its grooves by over 100 years of discourse — a dialectic primarily concerned with the physical qualities of vinyl so that the myth flows from the pops and hisses, transcending from the artwork on its sleeve. The physicality of vinyl is inescapably tied to its myth. And because of this specific link to its form, vinyl’s system of myth becomes “more amenable… to historical criticism,” thus cyclically burrowing itself further into the cultural consciousness. Like Barthe’s “passionified roses,” the emptiness of an arcane plastic disc becomes full as the signifier of authentic recording by never stepping too far from the myth of a superior aesthetic. “It just sounds better,” is the simple argument so often argued by the cult.

To the cult of vinyl, the LP represents that which the MP3, nor any other digital medium, ever can. As New York Times reporter Alex Williams put it, “[i]n an era when ‘everybody’s music collection is the same’ thanks to file swapping, collecting expensive, unwieldy LPs is a conspicuous way for the superfans to advertise their cognoscenti status.” This line of thought could go far in an argument relating to vinyl’s role in identity creation. However for this argument, vinyl’s authenticity is further tethered to form. It’s not only the sound of vinyl, which is derived form its mechanics, but also its total physical aesthetic — an aesthetic of the material itself, as well as the environment it creates — that defies appropriation by any digital form. A digital recording of vinyl might represent the hiss-pop, but the total effect is lost due to the absence of the physical. Barthes would agree, as “the myth is always there to present the form; the form is there to outdistance the meaning.” Regardless of content, vinyl carries it’s meaning in its form. Here vinyl’s authenticity can be unearthed a bit more, as Benjamin asserts, “[t]he authenticity of a thing is the quintessence of all that is transmissible from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it.” The cult of vinyl, concerned mainly with the aesthetic of vinyl, has provided a complex mythos dating to the birth of the gramophone in the late 1800s. All that has been transmitted about vinyl in its long history had stacked up, collected and, until recently, was waiting for the right moment to support a new authenticity for the form. And as we will now see, the birth of the CD provided the blow vinyl needed to assert a new authenticity.

What It Is Not

Andreas Huyssen, writing on Adorno’s reconsidered culture industry, explains the “crisis of the beautiful,” through which Adorno found for the possibility of legitimate, and one might also add authentic, art if the result maintains an “awareness of the crisis.” Such an art, Huyssen explains, preserves the traditional aura in negativity. Put another way, a form’s embrace of what it is not, that which it cannot represent, is, in fact, a reasonable reason to grant a measure of authenticity, as it is now innate with a certain self-awareness.

Extrapolating this idea for the purpose of vinyl’s authenticity can help explain the medium’s survival in the time spanning the “death of vinyl” in the late 1980s to the current resurgence in popular culture. As CDs became the primary mode of musical distribution around 1988, the culture industry seized them, thrusting the new plastic discs into Adorno’s foggy mist. Here the CD, already born into the world with an aura of decay due to it’s digitalization of the event (the ultimate step in the process of mechanical reproduction), acted as martyr, pushing vinyl out of the culture industry’s grasp, and into a more authentic space beneath the surface. Once free from the restriction of the market, free from the mainstream culture industry, the record could breed subculture into an army simply be acting as the alternative to popular culture. It was no longer the industry standard, an in that anti-authoritarian fact, the cult found pride and grew.

In the transition from LP to CD, vinyl was instilled with the aura of negativity — vinyl was not digital, not new, not the future. Vinyl was messy and full of noise; it was warpable and bulky. It was nothing like the unbreakable, digital, hi-definition savior, the CD. Almost overnight, vinyl also represented the past, standing alone as a musty testament of the past.

The cult accepted these truths, embracing the sound of vinyl despite its supposed lower quality and obsolescence. The cult was aware of the crisis, and by default, vinyl became the beneficiary of new societal tension. By acknowledging all that vinyl wasn’t, and formulating a response championing the form’s negativity, the cult created a cultural self-awareness for vinyl even Heidegger would admit allows for some authenticity. Because vinyl thrives as a result of what it is not, it must be granted some authenticity. And if all this can be concluded from the introduction of the CD, what then happens to vinyl in the context of the MP3?

Record(ings) of the Authentic

Even in its name, the vinyl record presents an authenticity, another example of self-awareness. “Record” acknowledges the form’s mere representation of an event. Opposed to a copy, rather a recording. Vinyl is honest with its fallible; it has no false confidence concerning its existence. Simply by pressing the record to vinyl, the event is forever altered, contained in the physicality of the disc. And, as seen above, in the addition of noise installed in the process of manufacturing, the cult finds reason to celebrate. This must be considered when uncovering the new authenticity of vinyl in the digital age.

The MP3 is absolutely a product of the age of digital reproduction, where the form is intangible yet offers itself as an exact copy of a physical event. The MP3 represents the original event sure enough, yet it is totally unaware of any specific individuality, all copies are exact. In this way, the MP3 lies to itself. Where each record represents a new take on a specific event, all MP3’s represent the same inferior representation. The MP3 is tirelessly reproduced until all meaning is shaken from the binary coding that renders them so inauthentic.

The tension between the honesty of vinyl and the dishonesty of the MP3 paves a road for authenticity. Benjamin asserts a necessity for the contextual existence of a work of art, claiming reproductions lack a “unique existence in a particular place,” and therefore the aura of the original is inevitably lost. However, stepping forward in light of the digital age, the LP is endowed with new meaning. In a reality where music is virtually transferred and duplicated without degradation, the LP is afforded an opportunity to embody Benjamin’s standards for authentic art despite being mechanical reproductions themselves.

As Benjamin continues, “It is this unique existence — and nothing else — that bears the history to which the work has been subject. This history includes changes to the physical structure of the work over time, together with any changes in ownership.” The lack of a contextualized existence is a major factor when Benjamin then considers authenticity, saying, “The whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological — and of course not only technical — reproduction.” However, within the context of the modern day, when consumers “use a click wheel to sample songs from Miley Cyrus, Nas, Black Sabbath, John Coltrane and the Scissor Sisters within minutes,” the record itself must come to represent a unique event, an original reproduction. Seeing the LP in this light allows it to meet Benjamin’s specific criteria. All of a sudden, each mechanically reproduced LP contains a unique physical history — its own scratches and pops — as well as its own unique existence and interaction with its owner. Each play is, in fact, an event, each spin representing an original occurrence, thus becoming original in a way totally unavailable to the MP3. In that way, the MP3 does much to degrade the experience of music, hiding the auratic experience in a fog of easy accessibility and everyday normalcy. Vinyl still demands work, and for that, it generates awareness in the listener.

For reasons of space and temporality, no two performances are ever alike. Just as no two records, even if they contain congruent content, will ever offer the same listening experience. Certainly, even a single record spun twice would differ more in performance than the same song played back to back on an MP3 player. There is simply a better chance for the record to exist in a unique manor, even if they were pressed hundreds at a time. So, it’s through the lens of digital reproduction that the record is granted a second chance at life, as well as an opportunity for authenticity — secondary authenticity, perhaps.

Conclusions & Predictions

Hopefully then, we can arrive at my original thesis and conclude that through the tension developed by the invention of the CD, and then furthered by the MP3, a sufficient negativity was created to instill authenticity in the record. This negativity was enough to captivate the cult of vinyl, pushing members to establish power for the form through the successful spread of its mythos. Of course, this is an incomplete and jumpy case for the secondary and material authenticity of vinyl. However, I believe the pathway paved provides a sufficient case for the existence of this authenticity. While no plastic pressing will ever capture the full beauty of a truly authentic experience, vinyl does, in fact, create some sort of authenticity for itself in the light of digital reproduction.

Of course, this case must be accompanied by a somewhat ironic prediction. As the music industry rediscovers the monetary power of vinyl, one is forced to ask if the mythos of the LP faces the possibility of becoming vapor once again in Adorno’s foggy mist. Will what little authenticity gained from the tension of digital reproduction be totally stripped from vinyl as it is stocked on big box store shelves? Moreover, as major labels release new “popular” albums, as well as reissues, on vinyl, does a cult that thrives on exotic treasure hunting and an underground mentality become diffused? Unfortunately, I believe it is only too possible for the culture industry’s cold embrace to make all of the above a reality for the LP.

However, perhaps vinyl’s time really has past, and even if the market continues to grow, it will never reach a breaking point. For the digital revolution, with its grassroots promotion and distribution methods, might kill the music industry before it has the chance to squeeze every last penny out of the plastic. Maybe then, the record will remain as a testament to the authentic days of mere mechanical reproduction. Either way, vinyl will always have three authentic decades to be proud of.