ALBUM REVIEW///

Poomse

☼☼☼☼

Tomorrow Will Come And It Will Be Fine

Outside of the stereotypical 'Club 18-30' lager-soaked holiday hooligan millieu, the Balearic islands are known for their soporific charm and sunny disposition; ask a Catalan how they are, and the most likely answer one will receive is the ubiquitous 'tranquilo'. 'Peaceful'. It is then, perhaps, no mere coincidence that this, the first long-play offering from Mallorcan native sons Poomse, positively radiates Balearic idyll. Nowhere is this more evident than on second track 'Anhedonia', an exquisitely-crafted slice of psychedelic slacker-pop in the mould of American indie heroes Flaming Lips, whose 'Do You Realize?' it bears a passing resemblance to. Blissed-out and Beatles-esque, this song encapsulates the Poomse 'sound' better than any other, it's laconic groove and starry-eyed melancholia a perfect advert for the rest of the material contained herein. Singer and songwriter Lorenç Rossello delivers his songs in a warm hispanic drawl which creates an atmosphere of fragility and naiveté, almost putting one in mind of Bjork and the affecting feel of her halting English, though it must be pointed out that Rossello's command of the language is largely flawless here. Rossello's plaintive delivery and the warmly sentimental (though never cloying) nature of his song-writing give Tomorrow Will Come... much of its charm, but another key component of the album is the sheer creativity brought to bear on some of the arrangements, which border on the fearless. Several tracks are positively labyrinthine, leaving the traditional 'verse, chorus, verse' pop structure in the dust, instead typically focussing on structures which more closely resemble a 'beginning, middle, end' narrative form; one section opens the piece which then meanders off on a seeming tangent, until the final section brings proceedings to close. When it works (which is, in fairness, often) the results are magnificent; on the rare occasions that it doesn't, the listener may be left feeling a little lost, though may permit him/herself a sly chuckle at the bare-faced effrontery of it all. It is telling that the more concise pieces such as the aforementioned 'Anhedonia' and the achingly tender 'The Lost Years' are the most immediately memorable of those on offer here, but some of the more challenging pieces reward repeated listens, such as in the case of the sandblasted desert mania of 'Dillanesca' or the woozy (think: 'drunk trying to find the right key to his front-door') 'Mathematic Light'. There is much for the patient listener to uncover. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out that this is in no way a 'Saturday night' record. What it is, is a perfect Sunday morning come-down record, trippy without being hectic. Analgesic. And, in fact, an excellent debut album from a band who clearly have a lot to offer. On this evidence, Poomse deserve a much wider audience – whether they will achieve it or not is debatable. But perhaps that's as it should be. A comforting secret, best enjoyed the morning after a heartbreak the night before.

'Mr Fahrenheit': Reading Freddie Mercury

'I know that all through his life Fred didn't think that whether he was gay or not was important...He loved music, he loved his work, and he didn't want anything to get in the way.'

Brian May (qtd. In Luersson)

Every pop-star is a 'text', a created cultural item made up of a series of gestures and symbols, all of which carry various connotations. This creation is not necessarily a conscious process; a 'star text' can be sometimes created via means of sub-conscious reaction to societal and cultural norms, either adopting a stance of opposition to them, or else acceptance and adherence. The public persona (or personae) of a recording artist can be utilised to target discrete generic groups; 'different genres of music have become associated with and signify different images, which in turn connote particular attitudes, values and beliefs' (Negus 66). Certain behaviours, modes of dress, speech or demeanour help to delineate particular audiences, yes, and this is an extremely useful commercial marketing tool, but in some cases it is also a form of artistic expression, a mask worn, a persona performed. Some artists' public personae can differ wildly from their private personalities; there is also a great deal of difficulty in determining where the mask ends and where the person begins. There are even some recording artists who change their names, adopting characters which allow them the freedom to project whatever public image they see fit. These artists are, in effect, a store of symbols, a text which can be consumed and interpreted in various different ways, and it is this that I will examine here.

In this essay, I will discuss the public persona of one Farrokh Bulsara, also known as Freddie Mercury, lead vocalist with British rock band Queen. I will focus on Mercury's portrayal of sexuality in his public life and performance, and the differing ways in which this portrayal can be read. I want to look at why there was such confusion surrounding his sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s, and the part his various outward symbolic gestures played in that.

It seems difficult to believe now, but once upon a time, people were unaware of Freddie Mercury's sexuality. To modern eyes, his demeanour, dress, behaviour and performance style would seem to be virtuoso performances in 'high camp'. What makes such gestures difficult to read? What causes this confusion? The outward symbolic behavioural gesture often has an indexical relationship to that which is being symbolised; for example, the offer of a hand-shake to symbolise welcome, or fellowship. However, as is the case with many forms of cultural expression, this relationship is entirely arbitrary; it is agreed upon within the parent culture. A hand, held out, is simply a hand if one is not in possession of the necessary cultural competency needed to decode the gesture. The same ideas can be applied to seemingly more abstract signifiers; a moustache is rarely 'just a moustache'. Much depends on the context in which it is worn, who it is worn by and for what ostensible purpose.

This creation, transmission, reception and decoding is a form of 'semiosis'; 'the actions and processes by which signs are constructed and transformed' (Tagg 6). This is a theoretically complex model used to explain something which we see as simple, something we almost take for granted: the construction and transmission of meaning. Think of it this way – you have a message you want to send (consciously or not), you transmit that message via means of a medium (in this sense used to mean any mediating factor in the transmission of meaning, artificial or organic), be it speech, dress, or behaviour. This message is received by the receiver, but during the process of transmission it is subject to cultural 'interference'; the receiver may not be familiar with the symbols that you are using to transmit your message. They may be a member of a different cultural group, of which you are not a member, and the symbol might mean something completely different to them. In this way, signifiers can be 'polysemic, 'signifying many things at the same time' (Tagg 7). It is this polysemy which causes confusion and difficulty in the reading of Freddie Mercury as a 'star text'.

I would like to examine some key components of Freddie Mercury's outward persona and discuss their polysemic natures. I would like to make it clear that, in this essay, when I refer to 'Freddie Mercury' it is as the performative persona, the character; by the same token I will refer to the artist himself, the man, as Farrokh Bulsara for ease of distinction.

Killer/Queen

Mercury was flamboyant, there can be no secret about that. After all, how could there be? His on-stage antics were theatrical, 'over-the-top' – outrageous even. He was no stranger to lycra jump-suits, PVC biker outfits – even going so far as to close concert shows by parading out onto the stage in an ermine cape and jewelled crown to the strains of 'God Save The Queen' reworked on electric guitar by Queen lead guitarist Brian May. Mercury was a lover of opera, and the operatic aesthetic. This manifested itself in his song-writing, but also his personal bearing on-stage, his every gesture and raised eyebrow exaggerated so that no-one could miss a single move he made. He almost over-enunciated every word he uttered in between songs, using perfect 'cut-glass' English (no doubt a result of his studies at an exclusive English school whilst living in India), creating what, for the time, was an anachronistic-sounding verbal style which recalled music-hall performance, Noel Coward and perhaps even the work of Oscar Wilde. In addition, there was always something of the 'dandy' about Freddie Mercury in the performance style, and in his 'private' life as a performer. I use parentheses here because the 'private' life of Freddie Mercury, chameleonic pop-star, is a completely different consideration to the (actually) private life of Farrokh Bulsara, British-Asian, bisexual recording artist and former art-student. Farrokh Bulsara was, by all accounts, a very sensitive, private individual, a man who became increasingly reluctant to give personal interviews as his life drew to a close. Indeed, he continued to deny that he was HIV positive right up until the day before his death from AIDS on the 24^th of November 1991. Yet, when he was being Freddie, which included any and every time he was out in public, he was the life and soul of the party, sexually aggressive, mischievous, puckish and pugnacious. He was every inch the 'diva of rock and roll' (Freestone 82). He wore ostentatious clothing and make-up for most of his life and had a love of glamour which probably dated back to his pre-Queen days selling second-clothes on London's Kensington Market in the late '60s. Even back then, he was identified as being someone who already looked like a rock-star, even before he was famous, as his former personal assistant and biographer Peter Freestone attests:

'Freddie's charisma took over the place he occupied...Freddie ensconced in his seat with his long black hair and dressed in the short fox-fur jacket really turned heads.' (Freestone 15)

He was gay, in other words. He was, at least, definitely bisexual, having had numerous relationships with both men and women. But without any intimate knowledge of Bulsara's life, how do we conclude this from the outward behaviour and mannerisms of Freddy Mercury? Is it because 'homosexuals are simply supposed to be histrionic, flamboyant' (Sinfield 43)? This is problematic, not least because, plainly, not all gay men are flamboyant. There is a certain amount of association of 'dandyism' with 'camp', and of 'camp' with 'gay' in the popular consciousness, yet in the 1970s hard-rock scene, such androgyny, 'irresponsible wit, affectation and high spirits' (Sinfield 52) was common, de rigueur, perhaps. Even such supposed paragons of heterosexual male virility as Robert Plant could be seen bare-chested and bejewelled, in skin-tight trousers, capering limp-wristedly to the monolithic sounds of Led Zeppelin. Long hair, for example, was not always seen as a symbol of untamed masculinity, and was interpreted as 'gay' in the earlier days of rock and roll. The aspects of Freddie Mercury's personality and performance style which could have been read as displaying homosexual indicators were also present in the personae of other leading performers of the time; 'his campy (sic) demeanor and flashy outfits did not seem to raise many eyebrows. "Ambiguous sexuality was par for the course then," recalled one former band-mate.' (Highleyman) Even Brian May, Queen's guitarist, and arguably Mercury's closest working colleague, claims to have been unaware that the lead vocalist in the band was interested in men:

'No, I didn't know. I don't think even he was fully cognizant in the beginning," May told British newspaper The Daily Express. "You're talking to someone who shared rooms with Fred on the first couple of tours, so I knew him pretty well...I knew a lot of his girlfriends and he certainly didn't have boyfriends, that's for sure...I think there was a slight suspicion, but it never occurred to me that he was gay.' (qtd. In Luerssen)

There was an abundance of camp connotations not just in the personal text, but also in the musical texts that Freddie Mercury created. A lover of innuendo (to the extend that he named an album after it), it has been suggested that Mercury very often performed gender substitutions on the subjects of his songs, one notable example being promoter Eric Hall's claim that an infatuated Freddy Mercury wrote 'Killer Queen' (1974) about him. Mercury, however, claimed that:

'It's about a high class call girl. I'm trying to say that classy people can be whores as well. That's what the song is about, though I'd prefer people to put their interpretation upon it – to read into it what they like.'

(qtd in www.queenarchives.com)

And of course, they did. The song can either be read as a self-portrait or as a paean to another gay man ('queen' being a gay slang term used to refer to effeminate gay men). However, many people readily accepted the explicit meaning of the text, either having no knowledge or interest in gay culture, or else being unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of such implications within the text. A slightly more problematic text in this regard would be 'Don't Stop Me Now', taken from the 1978's Jazz album, which is fairly widely considered to contain references to gay sex. The song itself certainly presents a strong likelihood that sexual activity is the main topic of discussion, with lines such as 'I'm a sex-machine ready to reload, like an atom-bomb about to oh-oh-oh-oh EXPLODE!' leaving the listener in little doubt as to the implicit meaning. That this is coupled with 'I wanna make a supersonic man out of you' presents the possibility that the object of Mercury's amorousness is, in fact, a man. Or woman. In 'Don't Stop Me Now' the same line is repeated in the song several times, twice using the word 'man', and once with the word 'woman'.

Another aspect of Freddie Mercury's character is that of machismo. He exuded the air of the strutting peacock onstage, and many of his performative gestures were implicitly aggressive or phallo-centric; for example, punching the air to punctuate certain passages of songs, or his use of his specially modified microphone stand as a surrogate penis, alternately fondled, stroked, or else thrust at the audience emphatically. This all combined to create an image of sexual power and bravado, of 'hyper-masculinity'. As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, Mercury appropriated a sartorial style which was, at the time, en vogue throughout the American gay clubs of New York City and San Francisco: The 'Clone' look. He began to crop his hair short and took to wearing a moustache, as was the 'clone' style, so called because the rugged, hyper-masculine, working class-aesthetic took on an aspect of uniformity as the fashion spread. Another related stylistic characteristic was a particular style of dress, tight denim jeans and tight t-shirts or muscle-vests, which Freddy can be seen wearing in Queen's famous performance at Live Aid in 1985. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that people attempting to decode Mercury's outward gestural symbols would run into slight confusion, as regards Freddie Mercury's overtly masculine dress; the clone aesthetic was partly intended to make the subject look 'manly' – something which at that time was not traditionally associated with gay culture by a largely homophobic, or else homo-ignorant, mainstream culture. The wearer's outward sexuality was supposed to be ambiguous as a result of the clone 'look'. It was meant to look 'butch', which it did. It is only later, and with increased openness and acceptance of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-gender) culture that people began to decode 'butch' as gay.

In Conclusion

As we can see, ambiguity is key to the construction of Freddie Mercury's identity as a performer, and as a possibly bisexual man. Some cultural commentators suggest that this ambiguity is a firmly-embedded aspect of the wider gay identity, historically as a matter of necessity in the face of an world which did not tolerate homosexuality; 'The closet (as discreet homosexuality was named when it came under scrutiny in the 1960s) did not obscure homosexuality...it created it.' (Sinfield 48) The argument is that, for so long, it was not possible to 'come out of the closet', meaning that 'the closet' comes to define and shape gay experience and gay culture. Instead of being expressed, homosexuality was implied, through modes of speech and behavioural aesthetic. For the gay performer, 'homosexuality might emerge through the veil of discretion into misty visibility as the alternative that must, for the conventional... audience, be held at the boundary of thought.' (Sinfield 57) The emergence of Queen in the early 1970s meant that, despite greater visibility of androgyny in the hard rock scene of the time, Farrokh Bulsara would be targeting his band's music at a largely conventional rock audience. It would have been difficult for him to ascertain whether or not it was worth the risk of openly displaying his sexuality, even if, as noted earlier, he was aware of it. For Bulsara, the creation of Freddy Mercury provided a possibility to express himself and his sexuality, but to do so in such a way that it would not alienate the wider audience; for the public 'there is a frisson of naughtiness, but because it is only that, and is placed as that, the customary boundaries are confirmed.' (Sinfield 58) In a more modern context, it would, perhaps be easy to judge Farrokh Bulsara – in modern western culture 'being yourself' is everything. Anything else is seen as dishonest, or somehow inauthentic. But let us remember: Bulsara had no choice. He had to 'pass for' most of his adult life in order to succeed. Farrokh Bulsara was an Indian emigrè of Persian descent, and bisexual. He was an outsider. However, 'a feature of subordinated cultures often is inventiveness in negotiating the conditions of their subordination – it is forced upon them.' (Sinfield 60) In order to fulfil his destiny as one of the greatest rock stars in musical history, Farrokh Balsara had to wear that most elaborate of masks; the one which allowed him to both exhibit and obscure his true sexuality - Freddie Mercury.

Bibliography

Books

Freestone, P. 2001. Freddie Mercury. London. Omnibus.

Negus, K. 1992. Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London. Edward-Arnold.

Journals

Amico, S. 2001. ''I Want Muscles': House Music, Homosexuality and Masculine Signification'. Popular Music. Vol. 20: (3) Gender and Sexuality, pp.359-378

Glick, E. 2001. 'The Dialectics of Dandyism'. Cultural Critique. No. 48: (Spring), pp.129-163

Sinfield, A. 1991. 'Private Lives/Public Theatre: Noel Coward and the Politics of Homosexual Representation. Representations. No. 36:(Autumn), pp.43-63

Online Resources

Author Unknown. 1974. NME Archived Queen Interview. Available at:http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_11-02-1974_-_NME

(Accessed on 7^th January 2011)

Highleyman, L. 2005. Who Was Freddie Mercury? Available at: http://www.gmax.co.za/think/history/2005/050905-freddymercury.html

(Accessed on 7^th January 2011)

Luerssen, J. D. 2008. Queen Guitarist Didn't Know Freddie Mercury Was Gay. Available at:

http://www.spinnermusic.co.uk/2008/12/22/queen-guitarist-didnt-know-freddie-mercury-was-gay/

(Accessed on 7^th January 2011)

Music Technology in Dystopia: Martin Hannett and the Psychic Geography of Joy Division

'As history becomes mere change – discontinuous, directionless and meaningless – it is replaced by a sense of fragmentation and rupture, of oppressive materiality, of powerlessness and relativism.'

Lawrence Grossberg, Another Boring Day in Paradise: Rock and Roll and the Empowerment of Everyday Life

There is a strong case to be made for the acknowledgement of Joy Division as Britain's foremost dystopian rock group. This very concept, that of the 'dystopian rock group', the 'cyber-punk', is replete with implicit meanings, and the attendant readings thereof. One could argue that dystopian imagery in British popular music was nothing new; John Lydon's howl of 'no future' was less clarion call and more horrified shriek of realisation, not merely a call to nihilism, but a strident insistence that there was, in any case, nothing to believe in. The future of the United Kingdom looked bleak in the 1970s; as a new generation came of age, it was hard for them to accept this austere vision both of things to come, and things as they already were – it suspiciously resembled no future at all. The 'grind-and-hum' of songs such as 'Welcome to the Machine' from Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, and Dark Side of the Moon's psychotic episode in the face of of modern life, reflected the fears and concerns of young men and women expected to join the workforce and, if they were lucky, sign their lives away to the industrial treadmill. 1984 felt close in more ways than one. 

The cruel irony was, of course, that factories and mills up and down the country were shutting down and dole queues were steadily lengthening. In the north of England there were fewer and fewer 'jobs for life' available to young working-class males as the UK began it's painful transition from export and manufacturing-focused economy to one based around financial services. Britain seemed to be a nation on the verge of flat-lining – 'the Sick Man of Europe'. Industrial strikes were in danger of crippling Britain's already precarious economy, there were black-outs, three day weeks, civil unrest, terrorism and racial tension. The extreme right-wing was on the march, and it was around this time that 'white power' fascist groups such as the National Front and Combat 18 began to pierce the national consciousness with their brutal tactics of violent direct action. Worryingly, young disaffected white males were beginning to flock to their banner. In Bedsit Britannia, the feeling of terminal decline was unavoidable. The stench of decay was everywhere.

Into the pop music landscape of the late '70s, by turns convulsed with rage, or else paralysed by ennui, stepped Joy Division: a band which seemed to combine both in one singular dystopian vision. Producer Martin Hannett, a man whose 'fascination with the whirring 'clink-clank' of heavy machinery and the... subsequent echoing, hollow silence when all that was left was vacant warehouses' (Sharp 11), would be absolutely vital to the sonic articulation of not only Ian Curtis' desolate and hallucinatory lyrical nightmares, but also the psychic landscape of the English north-west in in the late 1970s.

In this essay I will examine some of the methods and techniques employed by Hannett, and the studio technology used to create the compelling sonic landscape of Joy Division.

'Zero'

Within the post-punk idiom, Martin 'Zero' Hannett has attained mythical status. He was, by all accounts, a somewhat eccentric person and there is a tendency, by music journalists in particular, to depict Hannett as a crude cartoon character of a 'mad scientist', or wastrel junkie stereotype. There is precious little, if any, academic writing on the man and his work, most accounts of Hannett instead focusing on apocryphal tales of drug-fuelled debauchery or his occasionally erratic and violent behaviour. That said, there is a reasonably sound argument that Martin Hannett actively pursued legendary status, and was partial to myth-making behaviour. One oft-cited incident has Hannett in the producer's chair instructing a hapless Bernard Sumner to go for another guitar take, only this time to make it 'faster but slower'. Then there's the time he instructed Joy Division Drummer Stephen Morris, sessioning for John Cooper Clarke, to 'do it again, but this time make it a bit more... cocktail party.' Incidents such as this can become veritable 'meaning sponges', soaking up every reading and every meaning projected upon them, until they are vastly inflated in terms of size and importance. 

Music fans and journalists cite such pronouncements by Hannett as evidence of his genius (an image he most certainly did not discourage), his madness or his 'magic'. It's probable that he purposefully cultivated the wizardly image, that of the alchemist. There is strong evidence that his behaviour in the studio; getting musicians to repeat takes endlessly, making them disassemble drum-kits and reassemble them on the roof, using the air-conditioner to reduce the studio control-room to icy temperatures – even his 'quirky', idiosyncratic production directions, were calculated attempts to throw the musicians off-balance. A form of 'psychological judo' used to foster confusion, frustration and disorder with the intention of capturing these emotions on tape. In fact, in Colin Sharp's biography of Hannett, Who Killed Martin Hannett?, Sharp recalls Hannett's thoughts on the matter: '“I just say that 'faster but slower' shit to confuse them”, he confides. “And it's quite funny.”' (Sharp 111) Hannett was not mad, not initially, in any case. He was methodical. He was, after all, a man who would program millisecond delay effects, and who could assemble an entire drum track from individually-recorded drums. Hannett was patient and thorough, but what he also was, was an individual fatally prone to experimentation; 'he would learn mathematical equations and theorems and then test himself. He was drawn to quantum physics at a very tender age. He loved neat rows of digits and sines and cosines (sic).' (Sharp 10). Perhaps, then, he had an emotional disconnect which allowed him to remain detached as he, in effect, experimented on human beings. He may even have been a sociopath – there is certainly evidence for that in his dealings with other people.

It was whilst completing a degree in chemistry at Manchester's UMIST in the late '60s that he began to experiment with music in earnest, at first playing bass-guitar in an 'acid-rock' combo before later gravitating toward sound production once his formal education was complete He would go on to become an influential figure on Manchester's nascent punk-rock scene in the mid-to-late '70s, recording and producing the Buzzcocks seminal debut EP Spiral Scratch to widespread local acclaim. It was this, and later work with the likes of John Cooper Clark, Slaughter and the Dogs and Jilted John, that would eventually bring him to the attention of Tony Wilson, leading to the foundation of Factory Records and his subsequent era-defining work with Joy Division.

Studio Methods

The process of articulating the music of Joy Division, creating the correct atmosphere and 'feel' fell to Martin Hannett in his role as producer. The music of Curtis et al. inhabits the darker corners of the human psyche, exploring themes of encroaching desperation, looming shadows, fear, pain, control and debasement. Their songs reflect not only these themes, but also their relationship to the physical and socio-cultural landscape of the north-west of England. Manchester was a dark place in the late '70s. The streets were dirty, the faces desperate. Over it all loomed the moors, desolate, beautiful – the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. They seemed to frown down at Manchester's rain-lashed metropolis. It is this oppressive atmosphere that Hannett was tasked with conveying, an atmosphere that 'seems to exist in its own world, with only distant echoes of the real world' (Sharp 82-83). It was an emotional landscape, a Manchester 'felt'; a bedsit of the mind. Hannett would puncture this 'nightmare-scape', this dystopia, with 'real-world' sounds – breaking glass, the sound of a service elevator – each sound fragment loaded with potential semiotic significance.

As alluded to earlier, Hannett was keen to experiment with drum sounds, studio effects and recording techniques. He was heavily influenced by the 'motorik' rhythms employed by certain German avant-garde rock-groups of the time: 'around the insistent cyclical rhythms created in real time, on real kits, buzz and vibrate all kinds of interesting sounds, flanged and phased guitars, pulsing bass and muted synthesizers' (Sharp 106).

Recording Drums

This 'Motorik' rhythm, so beloved of his favourite 'Krautrock' bands, was a key influence to Martin Hannett's approach to the recording of Joy Division's drum tracks. The percussion was made to sound clinical, harsh – tinny almost. Although Stephen Morris did not employ the Motorik rhythm wholesale per se, some of the guiding principals were present in 'Morris' goose-stepping drum patterns' (Cooper), the spare, hypnotic pulse; almost robotic but at times exploding into bursts of of frantic activity to create a kind of 'rhythmic doomy Motorik' (Sharp 2). This effect was sometimes achieved by dismantling the kit and recording individual drums one at a time. Morris says: 'Martin wanted everything recorded separately, so we started with just the bass drum – literally just the bass drum and me. Then the snare again, then the hi-hat again.' (Sharp 84) This technique can be heard in use on 'She's Lost Control' from Unknown Pleasures, where it is employed to menacing effect. The almost stilted, mechanistic sound creates an inhuman feel, which lends the track an unsettling air. Martin Hannett also augments the rhythm track of 'She's Lost Control' with drum-machine sounds triggered by Morris. These are mixed tightly with the acoustic drum-kit, and the result is that the drums 'sound even more rhythmic and mechanical than even (Morris) could have hoped.' (Kennedy 118) 'Synth' drums would feature ever more prominently in the repertoire of Joy Division as the dank industrial feel of Unknown Pleasures gave way to the 'colder and more clinical' (Sharp 132) feel of second album Closer. Morris and Hannett used a variety of of electronic drum set-ups 'including the Simmonds twin-channel synthesizer, the Synare three-drum synthesizer, the Musicaid Claptrap and the Boss DR55 drum machine at different points.' (Kennedy 53)

Synthesizers

'Martin Hannett' and 'synthesizers' became synonymous as a result of his work with Joy Division. Prior to this he had eschewed their use, as they were seen as inappropriate to the stripped-down punk-rock idiom. Synthesizers carried the whiff of 'prog' for many punks, and were not concurrent with the 'three chords and the truth' ideology of the DIY punk scene. This must have been difficult for Hannett, as his ear 'was always finely-tuned and he found it difficult to accept music that was lazy, muddy or ill-defined.'(Sharp 17) In addition to this, 'he experienced punk as being limited in it's insistence on the three chord bash, paucity of musicality and suspicion of invention. In contrast, he applauded the wild experiments of Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Amon Düül and the more imaginative of the krautrock German bands.' (Sharp 17) 'Post-punk' would provide Hannett with the opportunity to give free reign to his experimental proclivities, an opportunity he seemed to grasp with aplomb, as electronic synthesizers are seen as an intrinsic part of the Joy Division sound-world. Indeed, 'Hannett... brought his fascination with electronics to the mixing-desk. Boxes of the latest studio toys would arrive from the States. While the group rehearsed, Hannett would rig them up. He streamlined them... giving electronically enhanced definition to their ragged edges.' (Rambali) Even early synths were able to produce a dizzying array of otherworldly sounds, from harsh metallic buzz-saw, to the futuristic sound of soothing ambient washes. With them, Hannett and Bernard Sumner were able to create the feeling of desolate indifference on songs such as 'Atmosphere', with its 'huge oceanic washes of synthesized sound' (Sharp 131), and its lyrical entreaties to not 'walk away in silence'. Here, the ARP Omni-2 synthesizer creates a sense of wide open space, of monolithic size, and the glacial pedal chords played on it help to reinforce this feeling of emotional wasteland, the aforementioned 'psychic geography'. Other synthesizers used include the ARP Solina String Ensemble, the Powertran Transcendent 2000, the Maplin ETI International 4600 and the Computer Music Melodian, which was a sample-based synthesiser.

Studio Effects

One word: 'delay'. Martin Hannett is renowned for his pioneering work in the use of digital delays, particularly on Joy Division's recorded output. In a 1992 interview with Jon Savage, Hannett recalls that 'when digital effects came in at the end of the seventies, there was a quantum leap in ambience control. You had as many flavours as you could invent.' (qtd. in Savage) Hannett's use of studio effects served an array of purposes, a principle one being the feeling of 'place in space', as Tony Wilson, Head of Factory records remembers: 'Martin explained to me what he was trying to do with his production. As I understand it, every time you hear a sound, you don't know it but your brain is telling you where you are and where the sound is coming from according to the amount of reverb, delay and so on. It creates an imaginary room... What great producers like Martin do is create a different room for every mood.' (qtd. in Kennedy 59-60) Indeed, one of the most notable aspects of Hannett's use of effects is the way in which he uses them to actually distort the feeling of space, alternatively creating the sonic image of impossible distance, and panic attack-inducing claustrophobia. This creation of 'impossible rooms' is a potential source of the psychic disquiet in the recorded music of Joy Division, something which is a common dystopian theme, that feeling of something being 'not quite right'; 'at moments you are in some cavernous underworld, the next in a dungeon, then trapped in a metal box, then stranded in your own cranium.' (Sharp 69) Drums and vocals, in particular, were equalised and treated in order to produce results that would unsettle; Ian Curtis' voice variously close-mic'd and intimate, other times Hannett using a slight 'slap-back' delay, it's short report time giving the echo-y impression of barked orders through a megaphone, with all the fascistic imagery that implies. Hannett's treatment of the drums too would be unconventional: '(Hannett) chose a minute report time so the delay is imperceptible. You can feel, rather than hear, the effect.' (Sharp 85) The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly also recalls that Hannett 'used that digital delay not as a repeat echo delay but to make a tiny millisecond that came so close to the drum it was impossible to hear.' (qtd. in Sharp 85)

Martin Hannett used a number of delay units, the most important being the Advanced Music Systems (AMS) DMX 15-80, which at the time was a state-of-the-art piece of studio equipment, being as it was the world's first microprocessor-controlled 15-bit digital delay. Hannett apparently owned several, and used them extensively on both Joy Division albums. In addition to this, he also made use of analogue tape-echo units such as the Melos EM-110 Echo Chamber, which he used for cruder echo sounds somewhat akin to those used in dub reggae, of which he was something of an aficionado.

In Conclusion

The recorded music of Joy Division is characteristically bleak, futuristic, harsh, unsettling – all these adjectives and many more apply. They also associate with concepts of dystopia, of fractured societies; of uncaring, unforgiving worlds, 'a palpable air of menace, ugliness and paranoia' (Sharp 124). These themes are explored within the lyrics of Ian Curtis, and 'Hannett saw all this internal post-apocalyptic landscape and helped to translate it into an external soundscape' (Sharp 135). Not only that, but he was also able to articulate the landscape of 1970s Manchester, the grimly futuristic and uniform tower-blocks of 'rotting housing estates; encroaching mass drug addiction; the death of dignity' (Sharp 124) – 'mothers hurrying to fish and chip emporia; petty thieves putting on woollen gloves and balaclavas; alcoholic dads breaking into piggy-banks; streetwalkers starting to strut the streets; middle-aged middle-market men cruising in their Vauxhall cavaliers and Ford Escorts looking for nubile flesh to procure' (Sharp 108).

Darkness within, darkness without; the psychic geography of Joy Division, captured on record by Martin 'Zero' Hannett.

Bibliography

Books

Kennedy, J. 2006. Joy Division and the Making of Unknown Pleasures. London. Unanimous Ltd.

Sharp, C. 2007. Who Killed Martin Hannett? London. Aurum.

Journals

Grossberg, L. 1984. 'Another Boring Day in Paradise: Rock and Roll and the Empowerment of Everyday Life'. Popular Music, Vol. 4 'Performers and Audiences' (1984), pp. 225-258

Online Resources

Cooper, M. Joy Division: Permanent. Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=5552 (Accessed: 2^nd January 2011)

Rambali, P. New Order Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=968

(Accessed: 2^nd January 2011)

Savage, J. An Interview With Martin Hannett, 29^th May 1989. Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=14833 (Accessed: 2^nd January 2011)

'Internet Haet Machines': New Media Terrorism and its Implications For The Music Industry

In this essay, I will examine online culture in the 'Web 2.0' era and its potential implications for the way in which music fans interact with the music industry. I will use the umbrella term 'new media terrorism' to describe a set of attitudes and actions arising from certain contemporary online cultural phenomena, the applications of which are potentially harmful to the traditional corporate media superstructure, within which most popular cultural texts are exchanged.

In their article 'The Anthropology of Online Communities', anthropologists Samuel Wilson and Leighton Peterson attest to the fact that 'information and communication technologies based on the internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices... technologies comprising the internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products' (Wilson & Peterson: 449). In light of this, a single unified online culture is understandably hard to quantify. One may as well attempt to identify and delineate a singular unified world culture of literature. If not impossible, then certainly a thankless and, perhaps, an ultimately pointless exercise. Of course, looking at online culture as an entire lived culture in zero-sum terms, excluding other cultures of which one can be a part, is problematic. There are a series of practices which share commonalities; there are modes of expression, and technical necessities which a wide cross-section of web users take part in, use, or are influenced by. For example, even at the most basic level, using a social networking site requires that you behave in certain ways as a technical necessity of its use. This gives rise to a culture of attitudes and activities.  That said, using the internet doesn't exclude other cultures of which you are a part. Rather, one's use of online culture as a lived experience functions in a layered, vertically integrated fashion. There isn't a place where 'British' ends and 'Internet' begins, for example. Internet culture's functions are closer to the uses and practices of a musical subculture; e.g. one can be American, but that will not preclude them being a 'punk-rocker' or 'metal-head'.

Wilson and Peterson assert that 'a focus on interactions that take place online, to the exclusion of those that do not is counter-productive', that 'an online/offline conceptual dichotomy is also counter to the direction taken within recent anthropology, which acknowledges the multiple identities and negotiated roles individuals have within different socio-political and cultural contexts' (Wilson & Peterson: 456). 

Users of internet culture can be said to engage in a kind of 'meta-life', one which is informed by, and informs their everyday life. The widespread use of the 'IRL' trope – an acronym for 'In Real Life' – amongst internet forum users in particular, is a telling example of this conceptual model. Users will occasionally ask questions such as, 'what do you do IRL?' or talk about their 'IRL friends', the opposite to this being 'OTI', or 'On The Internet'. As we can see, the implications of this are that many internet users see their online lives as distinct from, but not actually divorced from, their so-called 'real lives'. An awareness of this distinction is important because, as Wilson and Peterson point out, 'identities are negotiated, reproduced, and indexed in a variety of ways in online interactions, and these often cannot be understood without considering the offline content' (Wilson & Peterson: 457). They go on to quote Agre and Schuler's Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community (1999), which states that 'so long as we focus on the limited areas of the internet where people engage in fantasy play that is intentionally disconnected from their real-world identities, we miss how social and professional identities are continuous across several media, and how people use those several media to develop their identities in ways that carry over to other settings' (qtd. in Wilson & Peterson: 457) . Our online lives are not mere fantasy or pretence, but rather one in a series of constructed cultural 'selves' – net users 'become' their ideologies, a structure of beliefs and 'signifiers' governed by their will alone, their desire to 'be', their identity almost completely detached from their mundane corporeal form. It is this placement of the internet, somewhere between fantasy and reality, oftentimes occupying both positions simultaneously, that leads to the description of an internet 'meta-life'.

How does this relate to music? Put simply, it is a potentially important consideration in terms of its implications for the engagement of individuals with popular culture and its texts. The advent of the internet has meant widespread changes in the dissemination of information, and cultural exchange. The non-physical reproduction of texts has wrought significant changes to the culture industry. Now more than ever, users of popular culture have the ability to possess, exchange, modify, deface and debase cultural products, or enter the mass-market with their own artistic expression, enjoying fewer barriers to participation than ever before. 'Culture Jamming', a term introduced by American experimental sound-collage group Negativland, and discussed by Naomi Klein in her book 'No Logo', is an important example of this new engagement with the culture industry. Here, Klein talks about 'culture-jamming' as it relates to the advertising industry: 'culture-jamming baldly rejects the idea that marketing... must be passively accepted as a one-way information flow... the most sophisticated culture-jams are not standalone ad parodies but interceptions; counter-messages that hack into a corporation's own method of communication to send a message starkly at odds with the one that was intended' (Klein: 281). These principles inform a lot of what I will term 'New Media Terrorism', a tool-box of methods internet culture has developed for changing the use-value of cultural texts, and in some cases completely subverting the exchange value of same.

I want to examine three examples of NMT which I feel are of considerable import when considering the engagement of net users with the culture industry:

'Meme-ing'

The concept of the 'meme' was introduced by Prof. Richard Dawkins in his 1979 book on evolution, The Selfish Gene, and was defined by him initially as a noun which 'conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation' (Dawkins: 192). It refers to stores of cultural signifiers, or repeated and imitated tropes which take shape and are passed on via a means of cultural evolution. The 'internet meme' is a slight misuse of the term which relates to recurring themes, topics, words, phrases and images used to express certain things on the internet. The acronyms I used earlier, IRL and OTI, are examples of internet memes, as is the erroneous use of the word 'meme' to describe this practice. They are the online equivalent of idioms – turns of phrase that just seem to stick. Their use is widespread online, a popular example being 'leet-speak' (LOL, LMAO, pwned, etc.), a linguistic style which has begun to encroach into the wider cultural sphere. Another form that memes commonly take, and one which is pertinent to the discussion of popular culture, is the 'image macro', typically a picture with a humorous caption emblazoned across it in large letters, either used instead of a text response on a message board or forum, or else simply for the purpose of making other forum-users laugh. Image macros often involve pictures of celebrities or other famous people, re-contextualising the images, often to debase the public image the individuals in question put across, and internet memes in general often involve making new meaning from cultural texts, the 'star text' being no exception. The phenomenon is characterised by irreverence; anyone and anything is up for grabs, in terms of appropriation for use as a signifier of something else. The meme is an example of web users creating and propagating their own culture, a culture peculiar to the medium, a form of cultural expression which relies on the technical capabilities of the modern internet.

Mass Online Action

The sheer connectivity of the internet allows people from across the globe, and from all walks of life, to group together and act as one. Message boards and forums create horizontally-integrated networks of interest, where people can work together, either for good or for ill. The concept of 'peering', or 'peer-to-peer' collaboration, is a very powerful engine for change in the Web 2.0 era, as the 2006 treatise on the future of internet business, Wikinomics, attests. Its authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, assert that 'the new web challenges the assumption that information must move from credentialed producers to passive consumers' (Tapscott & Williams: 146). In a free and open peer environment, information is freely exchanged, and collective action is eminently possible. One example of how peering affects the music industry can be found in the case of 'Gene Simmons vs. Anonymous'.

Anonymous is a group of users of an unmoderated anime fan-site, 4chan.org, dedicated to what can only be described as 'malevolent fun', mischief, or, to use the vernacular of net culture, 'trolling'. Not much is yet written in academia about the phenomenon of trolling, but to frame it in basic terms, trolling is the action of causing distress or frustration to a person or group for the purpose of schadenfreude. Such behaviour is rampant on the internet, but Anonymous take the concept to new levels of extremity. Anything goes: racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, images of gore, pornography; they have also been known to relentlessly persecute individuals and groups who have aroused their ire. In some cases even national governments have been objects of their attention, such as the incident they termed 'Operation Titstorm', when the group attacked the Australian government's official web-pages in retaliation for new legislation curbing, and in some cases completely banning, certain web-pages being indexed by Australian web-servers. The assault took the form of 'Distributed Denial of Service' attacks, a form of computer 'hack' which floods a website with requests for information, in this particular case, several million requests per second, effectively shutting down the Australian government's online presence intermittently. The operation culminated in the Australian Prime Minister's official web-page being hacked, and defaced with hard-core pornography, from whence the name of the operation was taken. These tactics are typical of the group, and have thus far been used to attack the Church of Scientology, youtube.com and teen pop-star Justin Beiber. The group even went so far as to attack the Epilepsy Foundation of America by hacking its website and replacing its homepage with a rapidly flashing screen. It's worth remembering that this organisation is avowedly nihilistic in outlook. Most of it's members commit these acts for fun.

Gene Simmons attracted the attentions of Anonymous by declaring open war on internet users who download music illegally, saying the following at an industry conference:

'Make sure your brand is protected...Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line...' (source: www.noisecreep.com)

In response, Anonymous used DDoS attacks on both genesimmons.com and simmonrecords.com, shutting them both down temporarily. Simmons responded:

'Some of you may have heard a few popcorn farts re: our sites being threatened by hackers. Our legal team and the FBI have been on the case and we have found a few, shall we say "adventurous" young people, who feel they are above the law. And, as stated in my MIPCOM speech, we will sue their pants off. First, they will be punished. Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend. We will soon be printing their names and pictures. We will find you. You cannot hide. Stay tuned.'

(source: www.noisecreep.com)

In response, his websites sites were once again shut down. It remains to be seen how this war between a major recording artist, and and an anonymous group of internet anarchists and 'hacktivists' will end, but it's a safe bet that it will not end well.

The Streisand Effect

This conflict represents a textbook example of what Mike Masnick of Techdirt.com termed 'The Streisand Effect'. Originally used to mean 'perversely publicising something you are trying to keep secret' (Arthur: 6), it has expanded to denote the hyena-like behaviour of people who have been told not to do something, and their exponentially increased desire to do so. The term refers to an incident in 2003 when an aerial photograph of singer Barbara Streisand's California beach-house was published among 12,000 other images on photography website, ostensibly as a record of California coastline erosion. Streisand unsuccessfully tried to sue the owner of the site, Kenneth Adelman, for $50m, sparking widespread outrage amongst anti-online censorship activists. As a result, the pictures were viewed and copied by half a million people within a month, and the images spread like wildfire across the web.

It it interesting that many discourses on copyright and censorship in the context of the internet assume that the individuals who flout these laws have a vehemently oppositional stance to legislation designed to protect intellectual property. What is important is not what such individuals believe, but what they don't believe. In the words of Warf and Grimes in their essay Counterhegemonic Discourses and The Internet, 'the internet does not guarantee the emergence of counterhegemonic discourses, but it does facilitate the opening of discursive spaces within which they may be formulated and conveyed. (Warf & Grimes: 270)' In an age when information, including music files, can be so freely exchanged, and the music industry has taken steps to curb people's freedom to do so, it is perhaps no surprise that such discourse has arisen amongst certain concerned parties. However, it seems likely that the vast majority of internet users simply see IP legislation as an irrelevance. These people are not political revolutionaries, they are merely living a part of their lives online that would have in the past been lived in the physical realm. They do not live in a virtual reality, rather a changing one. The music that they want to hear can be obtained at no cost, at the click of a mouse. They can can choose to accept or deface the 'star text'. The power of distributed peer groups allows them to act globally on issues that concern them, but their most powerful 'push-back' method against the music industry is simply their refusal to be mediated by it to the same degree as has been the case in the past.

As a conclusion, I would like to say a few words on the state of the recording industry as of 2010, as a result of my last, and potentially most important, aspect of new media terrorism:

File-sharing.

Much has been written on the subject of downloading, and much more hand-wringing about it has been done by the popular press and leading industry figures. A briefing in the 9^th of October's issue of the Economist reports that '19 out of every 20 tracks downloaded are illegal' (Economist: 90) and that 'rampant piracy means just $19m-worth of CDs were sold in China last year – about the same as in Hungary' (Economist; 90). This is leading some companies to quietly consider simply giving away recorded their recorded music, seeking to profit from it in less direct ways, such as licensing and advertising. Yet, large companies are still able to turn a very healthy profit by ramping up the costs of going to see live music; 'between 1999 and 2009 concert-ticket sales tripled in value, from $1.5bn to $4.6bn' (Economist: 89). Illegal downloading may have all but obliterated the exchange value of recorded music, but the 'aura' (in the Benjaminite sense) of seeing one's favourite performer in time and space can never be copied and distributed to millions of fans across the globe for free, so its exchange value remains, and will remain intact for the foreseeable future.

So, it appears that internet-users may not possess the ability to completely dismantle the music industry after all, but one thing is certain: they undoubtedly have the power to profoundly change it.

Bibliography

Books

Dawkins, R. 1979. The Selfish Gene. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Klein, N. 2000. No Logo. London. Flamingo.

Tapscott, D., Williams, A. D. 2007. Wikinomics. London. Atlantic Books.

Journals

Jones, S. 2000. 'Music and The Internet'. Popular Music, Vol 19: (2), pp. 217-230

Peterson, L. C., Wilson, S. M. 2002. 'The Anthropology of Online Communities'. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol 31, pp. 449-467

Warf, B., Grimes, J. 1997. 'Counterhegemonic Discourses and the Internet'. Geographical Review, Vol 87:(2), pp. 259-274

Wilson, B. 2006. 'Ethnography, the Internet and Youth Culture: Strategies For Examining social Resistance and 'Online-Offline' Relationships'. Canadian Journal of Education, Vol 29:(1), pp. 307-328

Periodicals

Arthur, C. 2009. 'The Streisand Effect: Secrecy in the Digital Age'. The Guardian. 19^th March, pp. 6

Author Unknown. 2010. Briefing: 'What's Working in Music'. The Economist. 9^th October,

pp89-91

Online Resources

Debenedictis, M. Kiss' Gene Simmons Says 'Sue Everybody' Who Downloads Illegally. Available at: http://www.noisecreep.com/2010/10/28/kiss-gene-simmons-sue-everybody-illegal-downloading/

(Accessed 20 December, 2010)