Clair-Obscur

On musical obscurity and the art of disappearance

1.

In a profile about the art of DJing, Jeff Mills once noted that for him, DJing at its most fundamental is not about bringing tracks in (the easy and exciting part), but about making a track disappear. This also explains Jeff’s infamous jitters on the EQs and faders: he is constantly looking for potential exit points. The exit he is looking for is that of a magician, the act of making something disappear in front of an audience in a way that defies immediate explanation. You are on the dancefloor, you blink; and all of a sudden, what was there just a moment earlier has now vanished, the room haunted by the traces of its faded presence … what interests me about this kind of musical subtraction is that it doesn’t produce the typical euphoric crowd reactions of a build/breakdown structure and instead leaves behind a lingering sense of confusion (where did all that energy go? time to go to the bar…). Paradoxically, the subtraction has resulted in an increase in obscurity, rather than clarity.

2.

My favorite pair of turntable slipmats have always been these slipmats from Mills’ Axis label depicting a closeup of a human eye:

What is it with Mills and the eye? References to eyes and the act of seeing can be found throughout his work. I think it goes back to that gesture of the magician. The art of disappearance threads the line between what can and cannot be sensed, what is visible and what is obscured. A track like “Cobolt” (1996) is both radically present and entirely opaque — you squint, you put your eye-ear up real close, and yes, there is an undeniable presence there … but, much like a cryptid entity, it only ever allows itself to be seen through the crackling¹ grain of the obscure, the onlooker confronted with phenomena that fade in and out of the sensible as they please, remain obscure about whether they are coming or going. Obscurity is disappearance in a state of suspense.

3.

I think obscurity is an interesting concept in a musical context, because, while often applied to writing, it is much less frequently applied to music. Electronic dance music specifically appears to be almost anti-obscurantist by design, because the kick drum possesses a recursive self-explanatory² presence that renders things visible and intelligible, it is the lens that sets everything else into focus. The kind of evident clarity that pop music only ever attains through strenuous effort, dance music is gifted by default. But therein also lies a certain danger, because in the last instance, techno is really nothing but the obscurity that resists the pulse of its own form.

A kick drum by and for itself is the most vile and pointless thing in the world; it is only when it is confronted with the smeared textures of the obscure, the corners and creases of the sensible that resist the light of clarity, that this music has a chance to become ensouled. The obscure dramatizes the clear and distinct in a play of light and shadow, introducing a degree of vague uncertainty onto the stage. Even in a track where there might be seemingly nowhere to hide (it’s a kick, a sequence, and a hi-hat, what else could there possibly be?)³, there will always be a certain degree of obscurity if its structure has been properly set into tension, if the producer has resisted the magnifying ‘principles of good engineering’ and made room for what evades clarity.

4.

A few years ago, I heard a performance of a vocal piece by the German composer Jakob Ullmann — although I should perhaps put “heard” in quotation marks here, because the thing about Ullmann’s work is that his pieces are designed to be performed as quietly as possible, on the literal threshold of hearing. Despite listening as closely as I possibly could, I was never quite certain if I was really hearing music, or if this was all some kind of postmodern performance art hoax. For a little while, I’d be certain that there was a piece I was hearing and following along with, but then, just as quickly, a kind of Cartesian doubt would creep in and fold the presence of this intense focus around itself, back towards the dark embrace of the obscure.

This may sound strange, but I think that techno essentially does the same thing, engages in a similar play with the boundaries of perception, albeit at a hundred plus decibel. Amidst the unassailable presence of a kick drum punching through a sound system, clarity collapses at its outmost point, turns around on itself, and gives rise to all kinds of obscure phenomena and strange disappearances … I remember how after leaving that Ullmann performance, the normal soundscape of the city outside suddenly sounded almost unbearably loud to my ears. I step outside the club, ears ringing, the thump of the kick fading with increasing distance, the sound of the world a watercolor painting: like magic.

1. Burial in conversation with Blackdown (2006): “What I realised is I don’t know what he [El-B] does … quantised them … he’s got kit I don’t have so I started covering everything in crackle, to hide it, bury it, so I could do those drums I love […] That crackle sits over my drums, hides the space between them. When I started making music I could see through it and I was disappointed because it destroyed the mystery for a bit. But when I chuck crackle over it, it hides it under layers, it’s no longer mine. And you get a feel of a real environment.”

2. During particularly dry and tooly techno sets, me and my friends often used to joke that you could probably play nothing but a kick drum for the next few hours and people on the floor probably wouldn’t even notice.

3. See Robert Hood’s “The Figure” (1997) for a good example of this kind of obscurity-in-presence.