Music & vinyl : The Art Form

Amin
Amin
Aug 9, 2017 · 10 min read

Artists are the people driven by the tension between desire to communicate and desire to hide — D.W. Winnicott

Probably like anyone else, my exposure to music started from a very young age. Nursery rhymes, kindergarten songs or any songs that appear on TV or radio, they’re always there, during the infancy of musical experience. Growing up, I listened more and the fascination towards that form of art grew gradually over time.

Contrary to the earlier stage, where it tends to be any kind of music, the music that I listened during teenage years seems to be narrowed down to a very similar fashion.

Looking through the collection of music that constantly played at that time, it became apparent that they share a common element in it — a guitar. I find it interesting as it wasn’t a conscious decision to listen to guitar-driven music at that time.

Picking up a guitar and teaching myself to play was liberating. It made sense to me from the first note. It was an instant connection. You know if the instrument is for you or not.

Playing the instrument unlocked a vital path for me as it leads me towards a new perspective of music. You start to understand music as a crafted piece. It stop just being an entertainment then, it’s a creative process.

As you delved into it, every aspects that made the piece suddenly became more intriguing. The genre, inspiration, arrangement, instrumentation and songwriting process .


Vinyl discovery came at the right time for me, it started when I’ve noticed the musicians that I’m interested in always mentioned the format. It’s a big deal for them to release their works on the platform and the characteristics of the vinyl, from a sonic point of view and the vinyl as the entity itself are something that they still cherish.

As the vinyl format sales significantly declined during early 90s and the fact I’m born in around the same time, I’m kinda very late to the party.

My family not really a music enthusiasts and I don’t have any records to inherit, but that’s make it more interesting, discovering it by myself. It’s not like jumping into the void or anything.

Vinyl is a forgotten art form in the society I lived in at that time, no one really mentioned it, not even my friends that really into music Not that I remember, at least.

I like many aspects of the vinyl; the fact that it’s tangible, the discipline or ritual, if you like, of the music listening and owning the piece of art that you love. In the age of streaming and purchasing music as mp3, owning physical copy might not be attractive anymore to majority of listeners.

I can understand the convenience of it, to be able to listen music on the go, almost anywhere. But how many times you’ve really listen to it, rather than just becoming audio files that happened to be on anyone mobile devices ?

The idea that you’ve to be committed to listen to the music once you put the record on is great, in my opinion. You can’t skip tracks, you have to turn the record over as the music on one side finished — which add to the experience.

Some might find it odd, unable to skip tracks and just let the infinite sounds at your disposal flow freely must be a disadvantage really ? It isn’t, in my case.

Committing myself to listen to the record never really a task, it’s an experience that I’m pretty fond of. Especially if you looking for a precedence of a way to play or write. If you came across a record that speaks to you, it’s like a crescendo of inspiration.

Discovering interesting instrumentation or arrangements as you went through the record is always a treat, it’s always interesting to discover the creative process of writing songs. For instance when the first time listening to sitar part in Norwegian Wood, a track from Rubber Soul played by George Harrison.

Many artists or musicians put a lot of thoughts on recording their albums as an LP, which songs to be included on which side, the sequence of the songs on the record that will influence the dynamic of the listening experience.

Not to mention the ritual of the record listening, taking the record off the sleeve, deciding which side do you want to listen to, dropping the needle on the groove and in many cases, listening to the record with lyrics sheet or eyeing through the artwork in hand.

The artwork on the record also a big draw, it give the chance to the artist to be creative in a visual art form apart from the sound format.


As we’re on the subject, here’s my 6 favorite records in my collection. I listen a lot more than the records in my collection, mostly digitally but picking only 6 is difficult enough.

The Smiths — The Queen Is Dead

First memory of myself listening to The Smiths was when I go through their ‘Best of’ album. Listening to the track How Soon Is Now, it was quite confusing. The guitar sound with heavy tremolo, it was dark and groovy at the same time. I thought, ” There you go, another miserable band “.

Then suddenly This Charming Man, a melodic, pop track came in and thrown my initial perception out of the window. I thought the diversity of the songwriting is amazing and I need to seek out who plays the guitar or wrote those tunes.

Morrissey and Johnny Marr took the songwriting to the next level, in my opinion. Although their first two records were already heavy with political, social or even vegetarianism comments, I felt they nailed it with The Queen Is Dead, both musically and philosophically.

With direct anti-royal families message on The Queen Is Dead, sorrow ballad on I Know it’s Over, poetic take on what’s seems to be a dull subject on Cemetery Gates or classic romantic tune in There’s a Light That Never Goes Out, both Morrissey and Marr really showcased their ability to write lyrics and music.

Cemetry Gates from The Queen Is Dead

Radiohead — Ok Computer

It took me a while before I get them, musically. I’m not a fan of Creep or their first record in general, it felt like another alternative rock with heavy grunge influence. There’s some bright moments on The Bends but it’s not until Ok Computer I think they finally cracked it. The band went to rent a minivan to record different songs at different venues to capture emotions specific to each location.

They experiment a lot with songwriting but still able to keep it simple and avoiding overproduction on every songs. Airbag is a straight rock out tune with fuzz guitar pedals without end up being a noisy riff. Several beautiful and melodic acoustic/piano tracks on this record such as Karma Police, Exit Music, No Surprises (with Jonny Greenwood on Glockenspiel) and Miles Davies’ influenced Subterranean Homesick Alien as well.

While Fitter Happier is a weird computerized spoken words track, Paranoid Androidalmost perfectly encapsulated the dynamic of the album being a track built from 3 different parts, merged together and as Thom Yorke described, influenced by The Beatles’ Happiness Is a Warm Gun.

Radiohead went on with a full electronic record on Kid A later on and recently released a more slow burner, expansive, with significant string arrangements on A Moon Shaped Pool. It’s always interesting to see musicians exploring different musical landscape and creative process.

Radiohead performing Paranoid Android on Live with Jools Holland

John McLaughlin — My Goals Beyond

His first acoustic record and the first record of him that I listened to, John McLaughlin is a guitar virtuoso that plays jazz fusion. Some might argue that he’s not at his best on this record (which is still mind bending), but his decision to make an acoustic record adds to the more intimate jazz vibes that quite different to other great jazz record such as A Love Supreme by John Coltrane.

My Goal’s Beyond includes several cover of classic tracks such as Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Something Spiritual and Blue In Green. John McLaughlin however did penned some of his own on this record such as Peace One and Two, Follow Your Heart and Song For My Mother. This record sets an indication of where his musical journey will later be; exploring acoustic and more Indian music as he later on assemble Mahavishnu orchestra with some of the people that contributed on this record.

This record was released in 1970s and been received really well before being one of the classic jazz fusion albums. Considering it was released during Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix heyday, it’s not too bad at all.

Peace One by John McLaughlin

Bonobo — Black Sands

One of my favourite electronic, ambient record; Bonobo is a name of an act by musician Simon Green. As a multi-instrumentalist himself, he incorporated all musical elements from upright bass, classical guitar, vibraphone or harp etc and they were blended really well so the songs on the record don’t sound chaotic. The record itself sounds ‘organic’ and almost stripped down at times, which is great. Bonobo’s simplicity and ability to capture the vibes reminded me of many of Brian Eno’s works.

You can hear the influences from Afro-beats, trip hop and jazz in this record. From a beautiful, oriental sounding strings on Prelude to more electronic beats in We Could Forever and 1009, Simon Green managed to add dynamic to the record by having vocals of Andreya Triana on 3 tracks. Soulful-style singing from Andreya really give the edge to those tracks, especially on Stay the Same before album titled track closing the record.

Good ambient record should be able to transcend the vibe and atmosphere and throughout the record. With this record, Bonobo really provide a memorable journey.

Johnny Marr — The Messenger

Out of all great guitarists, Johnny Marr probably influenced me the most on how I perceive guitar playing. At the time when so many guitarists went crazy over million notes pentatonic solos, he prefers the idea of bringing out the sounds in your head to assemble a bigger picture — an orchestra on a guitar. As soon as I heard his playing, I knew I can relate to him.

The best thing about the record is it’s a collection of upbeat, guitar-driven songs without being showing off. It really shows how he evolved as a guitar player from the days with The Smiths to The The, Electronic and playing with Hans Zimmer for movie soundtracks to his solo record. Track The Right Thing Right has an awesome slide guitar intro, a tongue in cheek protest pop song on Upstarts to more melodic side of him on The Messenger and New Town Velocity.

Johnny himself said that he wanted to make a record that to be listened to on the daytime, when going to work or school- I think he nailed it here.

New Town Velocity Official Music Video

The Beatles — Abbey Road

It’s difficult to choose between this record and Revolver, but Abbey Road felt more complete. It sounds more direct, probably the rockiest record from The Beatles in their discography but still maintain their experimentation with vocal harmonies and utilizing studio as recording instrument.

John Lennon’s simple but clever clapping trick on Come Together intro and heavy guitar on I Want You give the edge on side A while George Harrison wrote probably two of his best compositions in Something and Here Comes The Sun.

Beatles did a great job knitting together left overs works on side 2 with good recording by assembling the side as medley of songs. Those tracks went well together and captured what they did best until the end of the record.

When Paul McCartney approached George Martin to say they’d like to record another album “like we used to”, the band sensed that they were on the verge of splitting up. Luckily for us, all those tensions went into music.

Looking back from their first record Please, Please Me to their swansong in 1969, it’s amazing how they’ve developed as musicians during a short period of time.


I do think that art, in whatever form it is, is relatable to others. Art in written form, films, photography or architecture shouldn’t be million miles away from one another. It shouldn’t always be just an aesthetic statement, it should have substance and inspiration in it. It should be smart and meant something terribly important, whether it is overt or not.

What great music or art usually does is, it inspire other people to become an artist, and an artist to reach to that level of the creative output.

It can be vague sometimes, how you really define good art, how do you really understand it ? It’s something that hard to find the right language to describe, for example, such as to describe sounds.

Maybe we don’t really need to over-analyse it and maybe what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said does makes sense after all.

Maybe

“ Music begin where the words end ”

Amin

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Amin

Piece of thoughts.

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