So what does Alfredo, one of the Godfathers of the whole scene, think? “Originally, it was as simple as me trying to make a party with a very cosmopolitan and different crowd very late at night, or very early in the morning!!! A crowd that came from another places and was open to a special experience. This fact gave me the opportunity to play all kinds of styles and tempos of music, and not only English, also Italian, French, Spanish, Brasilian, African, South American… That was the beginning. In actual terms – a mixture of chill out, lounge and dance music. At that time in Ibiza I could play soul, reggae, rock, pop, Latin, and if I like it, the crowd would like it. They where kind of ready for that. And I think they where looking for that `cos I was one of them!”

It’s certainly true that Alfredo was the original DJ and there are those like Farley who believe his playlist in those two years is where it began and ended, but there are thousands more around the world that picked the baton up and ran with it, loving the anything goes spirit of the genre that allowed DJs and producers to take in folk, ambient, house, R&B and whatever suits the mood.

Manchester duo Moonboots and Jason Boardman of the Aficionado club probably have a better take than most on the overall sound of the modern balearic beat. “Its all about playing anything good outside of the four-four mainstream for minds and feet with a balearic edge. Referencing the multi-tempo playlist of Ku (above in 1985), Shoom and the Cafe Del Mar, disco has been added to the mix alongside electronic and folky oddities.” Bill Brewster, author and DJ, shows the extremities of the genre, “Balearic Beat in 2012 is the same as it was in 2011, 1999 and 1984. It’s shit pop records and brilliant EBM records. It’s everything and nothing.” We disagree on the shit pop records but then we like The Blow Monkeys. Mark from International Feel, the label behind DJ Harvey’s recent releases amongst many others, also goes for the anything goes angle. “Balearic Beat is anything I want it to be… Anything you want it to be. In a world of digital noise, black sausage waveforms and ringtone pop music, its pure atmosphere and melody, the last bastion of real emotion in music. Or it maybe just Terje’s moustache!”

The Terje he mentions is Todd Terje. Norwegian Terje, a DJ, producer and maker of edits (we haven’t got space to go into those now), has recently show his ‘man most likely to’ colours and has been getting a big worldwide response to his recent ‘Inspector Norse’ release – a record that takes in disco, electronic sounds and his love for an analogue synthesizer, its the perfect track to show the dancefloor side of our sound. With the Pitchfork website taking notice of Terje’s release it seems the time for the balearic scene to step up is soon coming. Mudd, owner and producer of the uber-balearic label Claremont 56 agrees, “Modern balearic music seems to have upped it’s game. Last year saw some wonderful new music made with a few more band albums coming to the shores. This year will hopefully see some more of it being vocal led and with a fresher look on the style.”

The DJs find it hard to pin down. When asked for his thoughts, Swiss DJ Lexx, one of the scenes finest mix-tape meisters and respected DJ, says “I have no idea how to describe balearic beat in 2012.  Is it really up to me to say/define what it is? Is there such a thing as balearic beat in 2012? I’m struggling with this one…” Its the undefinable that makes it almost like a secret society. You either get it or you don’t. In or out. Stuart Leath, long-time clubber and owner of soon-come record label Emotional Response thinks the DJing style of Lexx sums its up. “Just listen to how he puts it all together in his mixes and that for me pretty much captures it… No-one else is really close in my mind.”

So, what does it all mean to us at Test Pressing. It means the beautiful sounds of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra with their fusion of world and classical music in the 80s. It means finding strange records no-one has ever heard or hoping to find a B side on an Italian pop record with ‘that’ sound. It could be any of the host of new producers and DJs bringing the sound full circle to the current day and starting to bend its edges into new shapes. It’s getting a new mix for our website and marvelling at the amount of music that fits our world. It’s not just music. Anything can be balearic. The art-house film ‘Bagdad Cafe’ is very balearic for example, and on the subject of video, if you want to watch the most balearic thing ever then check the Ku Tourist clip ‘Look De Ibiza’ linked to below from the mid-80s with its amazing soundtrack. To summarise, to us its an attitude.

We’ll give the final word to Alfredo. A don and Ibizan legend. “My definition of Balearic; its a music mostly, eclectic, happy , sexy, not cheesy, that gets its roots in the origins of dance music and flourishes on the dancefloor, as a sound that makes you forget genres, or categories and you just enjoy it, listen to it, dancing and sharing it. Beat poetic, but real!“

by Apiento on Feb 9, 2012 • 10:06 am

http://testpressing.org/2012/02/what%E2%80%99s-it-all-about-balearic-beat-in-2012-2/

Gettin’ Next to DJ Harvey from chris cruse on Vimeo.

Text: Michael Kucyk

Spanning many scenes and sounds, Harvey Bassett has been unconsciously carving his global cult notoriety for almost 25 years. As a DJ, Harvey is like no other. His infectiously positive personality seeps into his eclectic sets that aren’t limited to meaningless genrefication and often journey for six hours. Harvey will play whatever he feels, how he feels, and will never spin a lyric out of context. Inspired by his encounters with Larry Levan, he started the lewd label Black Cock with fellow Englishman Gerry Rooney and released legendary reel-to-reel edits which became heavily sought after and widely bootlegged. With a long list of credits as remixer, producer and session player, he has been involved in recording outfits Map Of Africa and Food of the Gods, as well as his recent solo project Locussolus. After overstaying his Visa, Harvey has spent the last 10 years bouncing between Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York. A newly acquired green card finally allows him to visit Australia for the first time.

Michael Kucyk: Are you enjoying the freedom of having a green card?

Harvey Bassett: Yes I am, this year I took a tour of Japan and Europe, which was fun. It was nice to get out and about. I don’t want to spend the next 20 years on the road. It’s nice to be in one place for a couple of months so I’ve been enjoying Venice since I got back.

MK: With such a large gap between visits to Europe, the UK and Japan, have you noticed a dramatic change in any club cultures?

HB: Not dramatically, no. I mean there might be a whole new generation of kids that have come through in that ten years but there was definitely a percentage of the old school represented too. It was good.

MK: Are there any new countries that you’ve toured recently with scenes that have excited you?

HB: Nothing so far. It seems like the scene is small. The venues are maybe only up to 1000 people but globally it seems to be pretty healthy with all the digi-communication and all the rest. People tend to know what’s happening.

MK: You’re involved in thirtyninehotel, a club in Honolulu. How’s that going? Does it have a community following?

HB: Pretty good, chugging along out there. I actually haven’t been out there for ages because I’ve been touring. There are definitely people there but I don’t know if they’re thirtyninehotel people. We’re open five nights a week and stuff goes on there. It could be anything from a seminar of lawyers or earth mothers to a wedding or a jazz band, reggae band, rave party. On the weekend it tends to be R’n’B based music on Fridays and dance music on Saturdays. There are regulars that come out for those nights.

MK: Has this international travel encouraged you to start digging again?

HB: When I was away in Europe I got into it but I think that was more to do with the guys I was hanging with. They’d be like “Harvey there’s a warehouse two miles from here with five million records,” and I’d be like “Let’s go then!”. I don’t purposely go out searching for them anymore but if stuff comes by way or if someone has a bright idea then I’ll go off and dig for some tunes.

MK: Did you have much luck at the warehouse?

HB: That particular spot was in Switzerland. Usually at a place with that many records it takes a whole day just to understand what’s going on in the room. It’s like “OK I’m getting a vibration from this area.” I found one or two records but I actually gave them to the guys I was digging with. Knowledge swapping.

MK: Can you recall your strangest digging experience?

HB: I remember once being in a warehouse somewhere in New York and we had a packed lunch and got locked in for a couple days with mountains high. We uncovered a full working record player so we got to listen to the tracks right there. I’ve had various rooms ankle deep in water with rats and the records are covered in dog shit from the guard dogs at the storage units. Some awful, stinking, brutal stuff. There’s also AIDS hospices where you get gay guys who have been disinherited by their families and all their loved ones have died so all their possessions end up in a warehouse. You go down there and pick up some disco records. That’s maybe morbid instead of strange but at least they go to a good home.

MK: Have there been opportunities for you to tour Australia in the past?

HB: Loads of people have said it but nobody ever made the call or took the kangaroo by the horns. I’ve always been down. I’ve even got some distant relatives and a few good old buddies out there. But this is the first time it’s actually come together and its perfect timing in many ways. It’s a good time of year and it seems like the scene is healthy.

MK: I hear that you’re an avid surfer. Are you looking forward to hitting some waves out here?

HB: Yeah man! As long as it’s not too strenuous! I might drag out a long board. I just bought a new wetsuit and I’m considering bringing it along so I don’t have to borrow someone else’s stinky beaten up wetsuit.

MK: You should watch some cult Australian surf movies like Crystal Voyager or Morning of the Earth. Both have classic psychedelic soundtracks.

HB: I’ve seen both of those. I’m big up on the surf movies.

MK: Earlier in the year I saw you play at Cielo in New York’s Meatpacking District and you opened with a medley of Justin Vandervolgen’s edits. Is he one of a few producer-DJ-edit makers that inspire you?

HB: Yeah I think he’s really good, he’s a friend. Actually I think that was the first three songs off his Golf Channel mix. I was like “that’s fucking great, I’m going to play it!”. So that fantastic mixing wasn’t me. It was Justin making it super smooth although I was adjusting it as it was playing. There’s a thing called Hot Q on the CD player which you can edit on the fly so that’s handy.

Loads of people inspire me. So many European cats making new records and edits and obviously Rub N Tug with Eric Duncan and his C.O.M.B.i stuff. On my European tour I played alongside 20 of the most happening DJs on my scene and everyone gave me a CD with 30 edits on it. And I was like “Whoa!”. Just mind-boggling amounts of rare cosmology. There’s some sublime and some ridiculous, you just have to check them all out.

MK: You’re bringing DJ Garth with you on this forthcoming Australian tour. Do the two of you share a similar spiritual vision?

HB: Spiritual vision (laughs)! There’s not a spiritual bone in my body mate. Me and Garth go back a long way. We’ve been friends for 20 years. He’s a gentleman and a scholar and a real good time DJ. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather be on the road with for a few weeks. He’s definitely part of and a purveyor of the style of DJing, if there is one, that came out of our scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He’s a great DJ and has a great bedside manner as I would say.

MK: How did you two meet?

HB: I don’t really remember. Probably at the Zap club or a TONKA party in Brighton many years ago.

MK: What about Gerry Rooney? How was Black Cock a collaborative effort?

HB: He would often come up with the tracks that we would edit. He’s been a collector, dealer and DJ for many years and has access to unbelievably incredibly great music. We would have some fun cutting up and editing those tracks and putting them out. Although we haven’t done anything together; although we did do a remix kinda but even that wasn’t really together. It was sort of a Black Cock record but he remixed; it was kinda official but he was in London and I was in LA and we basically did a mix each. Gerry was definitely instrumental in the Black Cock thing, for sure.

MK: He seems pretty illusive. What does he do now?

HB: He’s still DJing and dealing records. I’m not sure if he has a website that you can buy records from him or if it’s by secret phone appointment only. I know he DJs out on the scene in London and gets around the world.

MK: The names Black Cock and Map of Africa are pretty potent with a sense of perverse attraction. Were you channeling some raw sexual energy when creating the music?

HB: To a certain extent. Obviously it’s all about sex – the potency of the Black Cock, the double entendre and the tongue in cheek font. And the same with Map of Africa. Just to have fun with word play, and also secret meanings that aren’t that secret. It’s a joke but it’s kinda cool at the same time. To me so much of music is sort of a version of fourplay, especially on the dancefloor. You’re sizing each other up and it’s a version of sexual play in many ways – the way you move and express yourself, shake out or dance with someone. I like names. I often like inventing names and concepts. Obviously Black Cock and Map of Africa are prime examples of the sort of fun we like to have.

MK: Food of the Gods doesn’t feel as erotic.

HB: That’s because I didn’t make it up (laughs)!

MK: Are these just recording projects?

HB: We’ve never performed live as such. It would be nice to be able to put a live unit together and play out but me and Thomas [Bullock] basically never have the time. He’s in New York and I’m in LA, and when I’m in New York, he’s in Europe. To get a tight act together it really takes a couple of months of living together and working together every day for a few months. A couple of years later we’re deep into other projects and our solo projects so I don’t know if Map of Africa will ever play live.

MK: What can you tell me about the Rwandan Ice Cream Project?

HB: Basically these drummer girls came over to New York from Rwanda. They were holocaust survivors and had come over to learn to make ice cream so that they could take the knowledge back to Rwanda and get some parlors going to make a living. It turned out that they were members of this all woman drumming ensemble so we put them in the studio and recorded a couple of hours of songs and chants. It will be released and all the profits will go towards a Rwandan good cause.

MK: Have these girls since returned home?

HB: Yes. Hopefully they’re ice cream millionaires by now.

MK: What does a regular day for Harvey consist of?

HB: Wake up, have a cup of tea, let the fog of the night before clear, decide if I have anything to do, go to the studio, jump in the ocean. You could say I’m awfully romantic and that I get on my motorcycle, drive up to the surf and have a macrobiotic sandwich on the way. It swings between that and peeling the kebab that I slept on the night before off the side of my face. Finishing off the can of hot special brew that I left on the windowsill. Straggling down a very oily 50/50 spliff before staggering out into blinding daylight. In the last couple of months I’ve been pretty healthy and productive. I’m all about good food. A friend of mine catches a lot of fish in the ocean right in front of the house and brings back lobsters and flounders. I would imagine Australian’s are quite used to that behaviour but it’s pretty exotic for an Englishman to actually be able to cook local fish caught a hundred yards away.

MK: Are you eating some quality tacos?

HB: Yes. Without question, the best Mexican food in the world outside of Mexico is in Los Angeles. There are some phenomenal tacos of every variety. I like to eat the ones from the traditional Hispanic taco trucks that feed the workers. You can get three carnitas tacos, a seafood tostada and a Mexican coco cola for five bucks and you’re stuffed and ready to go back to cleaning toilets. Happy and full.

MK: What do you think you’d be doing if you didn’t get into DJing and producing?

HB: Absolutely any kind of mundane brainless job like greeting people at the supermarket. A job that wouldn’t take up any of my brain so that my brain could be left to meditate. I once worked in a factory where the speed of the machines was such that you couldn’t day dream, or you’d loose a finger or two in the blades. I actually learnt to slow the entire productivity of the factory down by turning a particular knob. It was just slow enough so that everybody in the factory could daydream and everyone was happy and could get the job done. But this is where the party’s at and I don’t want other people spoiling party time.

Are there rules when it comes to edits? Should there be? RA’s Will Lynch explores all sides of a thorny issue that shows no sign of going away.

A few months ago I had lunch with the guys from Soul Clap, Eli Goldstein and Charlie Levine. We met up at their usual Berlin haunt, The Michelberger Hotel, and ate schnitzels and maultaschen while we talked about something central to their craft: edits, and more specifically, unauthorized edits. In terms of producing as well as DJing, edits are a big part of Soul Clap’s sound, and their rerubs of other artists’ songs have earned them both admiration and criticism. For some, tracks like 2010′s “Extravaganza” are a clever reuse of pop culture that make for great moments on the dance floor. For others, they’re unoriginal at best and examples of plagiarism at worst. In one of RA’s more controversial reviews, Jack Haighton gave voice to the second opinion by saying of “Extravaganza,” “Yes, it’s catchy enough. (It should be. It’s taken from a platinum-selling album only five years old.)”

Like many successful DJs, Goldstein and Levine have an interesting way of being both very serious and very laid back. Talking about edits brings out both sides: they take the subject very seriously, though their stance on it could hardly be more laissez-faire. “Where do people get these rules?” says Goldstein. “Part of what makes this music so amazing is that you really can do whatever you want. It doesn’t make sense when someone comes along and says ‘oh, that’s not allowed.’” As they see it, edits have been around since the days of disco, and what they’re doing isn’t anything new––in fact, it’s one of the most essential building blocks of production. “Think of Ice Cube, ‘Jackin for Beats.’ Or Moby, ‘Go,’ one of the biggest rave anthems ever. You know what that samples? The Twin Peaks theme.”

As for the ethical side of things—the problem of benefiting from someone else’s art—they’re not convinced they’re causing any harm. “For me, when you’re doing vinyl-only, it’s a pass,” says Goldstein. “You press 500 copies, you’re going to lose money. The whole reason you do it is because there’s a demand, you want to give people something they want. You don’t do it to help yourself.”

Levine thinks about this one for a minute. “Well, you could definitely say edits helped our success.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but the edits aren’t so different from the rest of what we do––our DJ sets, our original tracks, our mixes, it’s all the same thing.” They also maintain that they would never make a fuss about someone else sampling their work, as long as it sounded good (though they were a little irritated by Joel Alter naming a recent track “Soul Clap”—”Maybe we’ll make a track called ‘Joel Alter.’”).

Soul Clap’s line of thinking is common, and not just within their immediate scene: the free-for-all mentality is shared by countless techno, hip-hop and even pop artists. But that doesn’t mean it’s agreed upon—far from it. Though they’ve been around for nearly 40 years, edits remain one of the slipperiest aspects of electronic music culture. For some artists, they’re a lark, something done just for fun to pass around among friends. For others, they’re a serious form of artistic expression, in the same league as original productions. And for some they’re lazy, not something you should take credit for and possible grounds for a serious lawsuit. One label manager who falls somewhere in the middle put it this way: “I guess it’s kind of like drug dealing. We all know it is a big part of our scene, but only the really stupid drug dealers are going to talk about how they do it publicly, which in effect shows they have nothing else going on for them or nothing else to lose.”

The basic meaning of “edit” is itself a source of disagreement. Originally, the term referred to a song that’s been lightly modified for club use. This is what Tom Moulton had in mind when he cooked up the first dance edits back in the mid-’70s. “I worked at a bar on Fire Island, and I watched people on the dance floor,” he said. “Back then everything was edited for radio play, so the songs would end after three or four minutes and you could see this confusion—people didn’t want to stop dancing to the old song yet.” Moulton became famous for what were known as Tom Moulton Mixes: new versions of pop songs that extended rhythm sections, repeated hooks and tweaked the levels here and there to better suit a big sound system. These relatively minor adjustments made the track infinitely better for clubs, and the words “Tom Moulton Mix” became something DJs looked for in the bins at record stores.

Back then the only way to make an edit was with scissors and reel-to-reel tape, but even in the age of Ableton, many edits follow Tom Moulton’s blueprint. “Sometimes when I hear a track, right away I start thinking about what I’d change,” says Ryan Elliott, the Panorama Bar resident and head of A&R at Spectral. He makes edits all the time, but instead of putting his name on them and selling them, he keeps them for himself and his friends. “[Ryan] or Shaun Reeves will send us these zip files full of edits, everyone loves them,” says Berlin-based DJ Bill Patrick. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make the track way better. Mathew Jonson has this track, ‘Cold Blooded,’ it has this amazing bassline that leaves and then doesn’t come back in. I wrote [Matt] and was like ‘I love that track but I want to fucking kill you for not bringing that bassline back in.’” Rather than playing the original and working around this detail, a producer like Elliott or Reeves might fix the bassline and play out their own version instead.

That’s what you could call the classic model of an edit, but these days edits often involve a much greater level of artistic input. The easiest examples of this can be found on W+L Black, Wolf + Lamb’s vinyl-only edits imprint. This is the label that gave us most of Soul Clap’s edits (the ones that have been released, anyway) and a couple dozen more by artists like Hot Natured (Lee Foss and Jamie Jones) and Nicolas Jaar. Though they’re stamped as edits, these tracks usually act more like remixes, albeit ones made without the stems (or separate parts) of the original track. Take the label’s latest release, Jaar’s remix of “Work It” by Missy Elliott. Everything aside from the a cappella is completely different from the original, especially the overall mood, which is eerie and subdued instead of crass like the original. In other words, the way it’s reinterpreted is more artistic than it is utilitarian.

“For me, making an edit is like going on vacation,” says Jaar. “It’s a way of getting out of your head, your usual creative process, and just doing something totally different.”

For other artists, the edit is much closer to the core of their creativity. Eduardo de la Calle is the DJ and producer behind Analog Solutions, a low-profile, vinyl-only techno label that sold nearly 8,000 records in 2011, its first year of operation. His productions are highly original pieces of work—modern, imaginative, stylistically fresh—but also heavily indebted to the past. “The idea was to develop a label to pay tribute to the art of sampling,” he says. “Creatively remodel old gems maybe unknown to the younger generations.” Most or all of Analog Solutions’ records sample classic house or techno artists: Carl Craig, Aaron Carl, Basic Channel. At times the samples are indiscernible, but sometimes they make clear references to older songs—for instance, one uses the inspirational speech from “Transitions” by Underground Resistance. De la Calle goes to pains to make clear his respect for the original artists: in the second pressing of the label’s catalog (the first sold out), there is a large sticker on each sleeve itemizing what’s been sampled, sometimes over an image of de la Calle wearing a Metroplex sweater and a ski mask.

“The idea to put the stickers on the covers is one way to say thanks to the people who really influenced me to do the music that I am doing today,” he says. “But some people get confused and think it’s some strategy to get famous or something.”
De la Calle’s tracks are often confused for edits—Berlin record store Space Hall calls him “Mr Edit”—but that’s not how he sees them: in his mind, all but a few are original productions. His opinions on sampling etiquette are in many ways identical to Soul Clap’s: as far as he’s concerned, sampling is one of the essential building blocks of electronic production, everything is fair game and there’s no hard distinction between original productions, remixes and edits—these are just three different points along the same continuum.

This kind of sampling has earned de la Calle a few detractors—one Berlin record shop stopped stocking Analog Solutions because of it—but he is by no means alone in this approach. Greg Wilson, the English DJ and master of the reel-to-reel edit, says this kind of thing reflects a musical tradition that predates even disco. “It’s the same as it’s always been with music,” he says. “Music of the ’60s was drawing from rhythm & blues and the blues itself, taking guitar licks from old tracks. There’s nothing new in that—it’s something that’s always happened and always will happen.” Colin de la Plante, better known as The Mole, takes this line of thinking beyond music altogether: “Even Nabokov ripped off Lolita,” he says. “There was another book, also about a guy who’s obsessed with this girl name Lolita, same name and everything. Nabokov’s book is way better, but he got all of the basic ideas from someone else.”

Some artists feel that, more than being just permissible, edits do a valuable service to the original. De la Calle says that he “rescues” classics from Chicago and Detroit by making them sound cutting edge again. Soul Clap half-jokingly compare themselves to history teachers, chronicling dance music for a younger generation. “The music ceases to be old,” as Wilson puts it. There’s evidence that many original artists feel this way as well. In 2006, the French DJ Pilooski released an unauthorized edit of Frankie Valli’s ’60s tune “Beggin.” Valli heard the track and liked it. Instead of suing Pilooski, he and his label worked with him to release it officially. The original track had been largely forgotten, but the edit brought it back to life: Pilooski’s version made it into an Adidas commercial, and even spawned a cover version by a Norwegian band called Madcon. Soul Clap went through something similar with their edit of “Bakerman” by Laid Back. After their edit had been out for a while on W+L Black, Laid Back’s management got in touch with them with an offer to clear the samples and release it on their own label, credited as Laid Back vs. Soul Clap.

So what’s wrong with edits then? It depends on who you talk to. Maybe the simplest objection is a legal one: unauthorized edits violate copyrights, and copyrights exist for a reason, namely to make sure artists get the money they deserve. Plenty of artists go through the trouble and expense of clearing their samples, and those who don’t are only making the market more dysfunctional.

“I don’t think it is constructive to do things that are basically illegal,” says the aforementioned label manager, who asked to remain anonymous. “Let’s not beat around the bush—it is effectively stealing. I know people dress it up in polite terms, that it is reinvigorating old music or it is this and that and the other, but the bottom line is that anyone who makes edits and do not pay mechanical property rights to ASCAP or GEMA, and are probably not paying anything to the original artists, are effectively trading off other peoples’ work.”

Another prevalent argument has more to do with artistic merit. When Tom Moulton and his peers made the first edits on reel-to-reel tape, they were, intentionally or not, designing a musical experience that had never existed before. The same could hardly be said for many of today’s edits. “You have this glut of edits which are no longer interested in diving deeper and deeper,” says Finn Johannsen, the DJ, music critic and Hard Wax employee. “Back then, there were no computers, so beatmatching and the convenience aspect was not the point of it. Today, there are a lot of edits floating around where the only purpose is to make DJing easier.” He finds many of the arguments in favor of edits “valid but lazy. You can always say ‘It’s always been this way,’ and of course it was, but to make that your main mission… it’s just a question of what you’re aiming for as an artist.”

There is of course the ethical angle as well. Some would say that an artist who makes an edit takes credit for something that is largely not his or her own. This opinion was at the root of Haighton’s review of Soul Clap’s R&B Edits: is it really enough to tweak a platinum-selling record and put your name on it? It doesn’t help that many edits, not least those in the Wolf + Lamb camp, replace the original artist’s name with that of the editing artist (“Soul Clap – Extravaganza” instead of “Jamie Foxx – Extravaganza (Soul Clap Edit)”). Granted, this is only meant to keep snooping lawyers from stumbling upon an illegal edit through Google, and when the edit is of a widely known pop song, the assumption is that listeners will recognize the original. But is that valid?

“I think it’s just the opposite to be honest,” says our anonymous label manager. “I think that a lot of kids out there don’t have the musical knowledge or depth and background to understand the historical references being made. I know people that have used a Todd Terry drum loop and have gone, “oh no no, that came out of my sampler,” because they don’t know any better. I think ten years ago, if there was a big sample people would know the sample and maybe be more respectful about it. Now I think everything is up for grabs, it’s a free-for-all and nothing is sacred anymore.”

It’s worth noting that a number of artists either didn’t want to be interviewed for this article or agreed to do so only if they could remain anonymous, mostly because they’ve done their share of unauthorized edits and don’t want their name linked to something that is, after all, illegal. Contrary to what many producers think, however slim the chance of repercussion may be, there is reason to be concerned. “I know of people in this business that have used illegal samples and have been sued in the past, and they have lost more than 100% of the record sales…,” says the anonymous label manager. “So look, if you have some young kids and they are telling you some stuff about edits, please just remind them what they are doing might be illegal and they may not know exactly what they are doing, because once it is on the internet that is it, it is published.”

Even if you’re not convinced by the legal risks, some argue that since listeners will associate an edit with the original artist (and perhaps assume it’s their work), that artist should have the opportunity to sign off on it. “People are going to hear your edit, and they’ll hear the original artist, but maybe he or she never would have done it that way,” says Ryan Elliott. “To release your edit of somebody’s track without even showing it to them, I don’t think that’s right. You at least owe them the courtesy of getting to say ‘yea’ or ‘nay.’”

Meanwhile, there’s a much broader opinion that sweeps all of these discussions aside: in a place as chaotic as today’s music industry, why bother doing things by the books? Most artists have stopped expecting to make money from their records, copyright laws are ill-fitted to the culture and erratically enforced, and nearly everything is on YouTube or illegal download sites anyway. None of this looks set to change anytime soon. In this lawless environment, it can feel a bit quixotic to play by the rules, especially when no one can agree on them.

Greg Wilson describes the same situation in rosier terms. For him, it’s “open season” or “the wild west,” a place that can be very exciting to those who accept it. “We’re in an unprecedented moment,” he says. “Recorded music has been around for about a century, so we have this incredible amount of material to draw from. And then we have this situation where hip-hop, the most successful music form of the late 20th century, is basically about taking two records, extending those records and putting a rap over the top of what was in reality someone else’s music but making a new thing. So for a lot of artists, especially younger people, that’s what they’ve grown up with, that’s all they’ve ever known, so they look at things in those ways. That’s their way of expressing themselves, and it’s the language they use.

“Old fashioned people might find it a bit out of control,” he adds, “but this is where we are. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Published / Tuesday, 31 January 2012

The amplified champions

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, its protagonist Rabo Karabekian muses on the origin of special talents and the diminished opportunities in modern societies: “I think that could go back in time when people had to live in small groups of relatives – maybe fifty or hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn’t afraid of anything and so on. […] of course a scheme like that doesn’t make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communication has put him or her in daily competition with nothing but the world’s champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness.”^[1]

Science has had a thought on this subject, too. This development has been named the Superstar Effect^[2], in which presumably only minuscule differences in talent or slight advantages in competitive situations snowball into the domination of a whole market by one or a few performers. If you want to buy a recording by a soprano opera singer, you’ll most likely want to buy one by the best — the number two soprano will have a hard time moving any CDs, since the presumably slightly better number one will have preempted the market. The CDs cost about the same, so why spend any second thought on lesser talent?

The superstars obtain what I’d like to call a “first call” position: it is not just about income, but mainly about opportunities. That’s where things strike culturally. Everybody prefers the top performers. A festival wants to present and a label wants to sign the best artists, a movie producer wants to hire the best actors and playwrights, someone who goes to court wants the best lawyer, and so forth. Only affordability and availability seem to give the rest of the list any chance. That’s why the superstar gets the greatest choice to pick from the best opportunities, earning disproportionately more rewards and spreading out to even wider recognition, while the other contestants service whatever is left over.

This cumulative aspect of superstardom has been described by sociologist Robert K. Merton as the Matthew Effect, named after the verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto every one that hath, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” In other words, the rich get richer, the poorer get poorer and success breeds success.

What are rewards?

An artist feels rewarded when she receives the attention of the audience and of those mediating between artist and audience. Rewards are people coming to hear a performance, spending time listening to recordings, learning the specific style, recommending the music to others and following the further offerings of the artist. Rewards are receiving critical acclaim by experts and peers, finding followers who copy the style, getting the aesthetic message distributed with the help of those who service the media or manage the venues where artists meet the audience. In short, the more social interactions the artist’s efforts produce, the more those efforts have been rewarded. That’s the way society views an artist to be “excelling.”

On the economic side, all these interactions produce fees, royalties and other sorts of material exchanges. People pay to attend concerts, to listen to recordings or to consume media coverage. In varying shares, these payments eventually reach the artist. Usually income will develop in parallel with these social interactions. Respectively some economists have argued that social relevance and monetary rewards match, i.e. whoever ends up earning more is also the better artist, offering the higher quality works of art. Such reasoning makes most of us cringe simply because we don’t trust the market to be a good judge on matters of quality and relevance. Investigating this assumption, in what follows I’ll discuss some theories that separate quality, relevance and the rewards system and examine how they interact.

Birth of the star

But how do we decide who is “best”? Even experts often disagree on the qualities and talents of top performers. And we all have encountered the notorious prevalence of some cultural product that no one we know in person seems to consider even “good,” yet it is inescapably all over the place. It’s not as if we’re all listening to the Rolling Stones or whoever dominates the stadium act category in music. There are many artists who comfortably occupy a place of their own without having the reach of a stadium act. So there must be something else going on as well.

Reasons given for the emergence of superstars range from differences in talent, amplified by mass media^[5], to the need to communicate about the same topics when socializing with others^[6]. I don’t think these models match what we experience in reality. I’d like to offer a different explanation based on the effects of mental shelf space limitation and social proof. The concept of mental shelf space is analogous to the shelf space limitations in retail: a shop can store only so many CDs, books or brands of cereal. In any given category our minds only comfortably deal with between three and seven items and zone out on the Long Tail, limiting the number of names we can memorize^[7].

Most people will not bother to regularly follow more than a few novelists, musicians or movie actors. There are simply not the psychological capacity, enough time and funds to compare thousands of contestants in order to figure out who should receive our limited attention. The search costs would be too high. Therefore we try to minimize them by employing shortcuts. Sticking with the best is one of those shortcuts. And in order to quickly identify the best we look out for social proof. Social proof is a psychological principle that states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct^[8]. We assume that enough of the others have gone through the search process and have identified the best when choosing one over the others. Whenever we are uncertain of what to look for, we’ll try to figure it out by looking at the choices of others.

This can go to bizarre lengths: Participants in an experiment were told that two shown, obviously different geometrical objects were the same. Astonishingly, when social proof is overwhelming (actors pretending to be other participants identified the objects as being identical), an MR imaging of the brain indicated that the objects were actually seen as being identical^[9]. In other words: In the right social context, we override our own judgments and rewire our brains to see, feel or hear what’s actually not there^[10].

Music is a means of social distinction, too. We actually do want to associate with certain groups of people and disassociate with others. With social proof we can figure out what others do and match our behavior accordingly. Social proof is so attractive because it helps us socialize, identify our group and save a whole lot of time, too. We might end up watching a mediocre movie, but we’ll enjoy the company of like-minded friends. In cultural contexts we rarely ever experience severe pain from following that strategy. Well, unless the movie was “Cowboys & Aliens” of course. In the bigger picture, social proof and limited mental shelf space promote diversity of categories and monoculture within categories at the same time.

These psychosocial factors are the reasons why the Long Tail doesn’t work (within one category) and people flock to the upper end of the scale. Against what a lot of propaganda claims, no distribution model or technological measure has ever changed this. Only a few geeks and professionals will ever bother to check out more than a few alternatives, and we all end up with the superstars. In a self-fulfilling prophecy these eventually do get better than the rest since they are exposed to better opportunities, get more funds to reinvest in their work and education, as well as better access to and allocation of other supportive means.

Quality is overrated

A nineteenth-century French novelist named Arsène Houssaye coined the phrase “the 41st chair” to describe the plight of talented individuals, deserving of rewards or recognition, who are nevertheless bypassed as these rewards are garnered by a select few. Houssaye’s phrase was inspired by the Académie Francaise. This elite institution, founded in 1635 during the rule of Louis XIII, was designed to identify and reward the nation’s greatest talents. If you are elected to one of the 40 seats you retain your position for life.

These positions are so important to French society that the members of the Académie are called the “immortals.” The immortals that have held seats include some of France’s most famous citizens, from Dumas to Poincairé to Voltaire. It is intriguing though that the likes of Descartes, Molière, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Diderot, Stendahl, Flaubert, Zola and Proust never got in. It was not that they lacked the ability. It was just that the limitation in numbers made them inhabitants of the “forty-first chair.”^[11]

Houssaye’s phrase is a good analogy to what happens to the other contestants within one category. Once the shelf is full, they are relegated to the forty-first chair no matter how great or valuable their actual contributions are. Mental shelf space has two varieties though, a vertical and a horizontal one. Vertically, within one category there are a few superstars and many inhabitants of the 41st chair. Horizontally though there are many more individual categories, each with its own superstar structure. That’s why we don’t all listen to the Rolling Stones exclusive, but also Theo Parrish, Carsten Nikolai, Pierre Boulez, Meshuggah or Fred Frith.

This is intriguing, since horizontal mental shelf space for anything seems to allow for the coexistence of much more items than vertical: we know more separate supermarket product categories than brands of ketchup for instance. In marketing theory the according strategy is known as category positioning: if you can’t be number one in an existing category, create a new category. That might be a good explanation why culture is always changing. The contestants’ determination to reach “first call” status (and the impossibility to get ahead on crowded paths) makes them invent categories. Whoever creates a new category into people’s minds is likely to be associated with it due to social proof snowballing effects.

The horizontal dimension is a social one in the first place. Individuals don’t follow all categories available, but have preferences of a few, becoming “fans” of a style and its representatives respectively. Still, whenever we decide to engage with something less familiar (“let’s go to the opera tonight”), we consult social proof again. Then we join the already existing fans and skyrocket the chosen superstars’ social exposure. That is why the artist who is considered best by the public is not defined by talent or social chatter, but by category leadership, which is usually obtained when the category receives its initial public recognition (“Oh, that’s interesting — who does this?”).

That’s why the actual quality, say of works in a new style of music, doesn’t matter much for success. This explains why often artists creating great works later on receive seemingly unjustly little recognition, while others reap the rewards. Some had their names identified with the category earlier on. Deepening a category is an activity that leverages those already on top. It is a paradoxical situation in which increased competition actually helps the predetermined winners by inflating the category’s rewards (more attention and funds flowing in).

This failure of readjusting the “class” structure within a category once the positions have been distributed is also named the Ratchet Effect^[12]: those on top do not fall much behind. It would cost the audience too much brainpower to readjust regularly. If you wonder why someone is still around artistically despite failing to keep up the quality that’s the reason. “Once a Nobel laureate, always a Nobel laureate” as Merton put it.

That effect is not always obvious. For instance, I recognize that virtually all techno superstars of the last decade now seem to lose their grip on dominating the distribution of recorded music. Their singles and albums don’t move that much anymore and their labels are shrinking to levels where they have to be cross-subsidized (even if that’s through the cheap labor of and endless supply of new interns). Still, their touring schedules are packed to the max. They do lose some ground, but no one replaces them. The Ratchet Effect applies to the internal hierarchy, not to the category itself. Categories often decline or get repositioned by other (sub-) categories, but even the captain of a sinking ship is still its captain.

Categorical morphology

In music, categories are often defined by but not limited to styles. One might be the leader of post-minimal technocumbia, but acting in a movie or wearing a mouse mask might do the job, too. “Gimmick categories” like these are usually exactly one artist deep, but at the same time they are subcategories of wider styles of music, too.

Things often get mixed up and attributes from outside music often define what artists stand for. A lot of pop has been highly influential with unimpressive musical foundations and inflated political, social or other agendas. Eventually such agendas help to break new aesthetics, too. Punk’s social and political relevance was probably earlier understood than its groundbreaking musical implications.

An initially small stylistic category might grow big and then split up into subcategories. Think of rock, having branched out in tree-like fashion with countless levels of subcategorization. It is sometimes hard to draw the line whether contestants happen to be in the same or in separate categories. Each of the 40 members of the Académie has his own story, and so have the artists on top in a bigger category. They share an audience, but develop individual profile in order to make it worthwhile for the audience to engage with more than one artist (even if that means putting on the mouse mask). The clearer the differences are the more likely we look at separate categories.

At a higher level, a subcategory might grow to become so enormous that entire other subcategories get repositioned. Once minimal outgrew loop techno (you know, the stuff Adam Beyer used to do), the leaders of minimal automatically became “bigger” than those of loop techno. The personnel’s structure within the subcategories didn’t change, but the metacategory (“techno”) found itself being transformed.

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label. stefangoldmann.com

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/quality-is-overrated-the-mechanics-of-excellence-in-music-pt-1/

Footnotes:

Here’s a little primer..

Interview with Waacking Legend Tyrone Proctor

Willi Ninja clip from Paris is Burning. *required viewing*