Live Music: The Importance of Image
The Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify is a thing of technological beauty — it knows my musical taste better than I do myself. Every Monday, when I’m introduced to new artists, Spotify allows me to become more eclectic, subtly nudging my taste into new genres which are somehow linked to my prior listening. I need music in my life, and this keeps things fresh.
My thoughts inevitably turn to live music events after this digital discovery. I search Spotify, YPlan, Facebook to see when these artists are arriving in London, if at all. Then I see the prices — as a student in London, a few tears are shed. So I’m left to arrange my musical interests hierarchically, weigh the costs and benefits, and ultimately question which gigs, which experiences, are worth the money.
I say ‘experience’ because today’s music, so easily accessible, has to somehow be adapted or refashioned when it’s brought to large venues. A unique selling point needs to be found. A show should be just that — a ‘show’ of musicality and, hopefully, visual flair; it has to be more than an experience that can be simulated by pressing play on Spotify.
Fundamentally, the joy of witnessing live music is being able to see each vibration emanating from an instrument, each note escaping a voicebox, in close proximity. Humans must be biologically wired to respond to instruments being played, ever since the first drums were beaten by cavemen. Live music should be a visceral experience in this respect, the audience brought together like an atavistic tribe.
Electronic dance music (EDM) has risen in popularity in recent years. It’s made megastars out of young artists, from Martin Garrix to Kygo to Oliver Heldens, playing worldwide to sell-out crowds. Yet, EDM gigs are often bereft of instrumentation, instead featuring laptops, buttons, and a whole lotta jumping. This isn’t to say live DJing is mundane, but once the event is removed from a routine nightclub and expensively repackaged in an arena, consumers should expect more.
Talent and popularity are hard to differentiate in the music business, with the electronic middle-man serving to obscure what is true and what has been constructed artificially. This is what makes live music increasingly crucial: other industries — namely cinema — struggle to maintain the convention of experiencing the medium as a social event, as individuals can be satisfied solely through online consumption.
A common criticism of EDM artists is that they’re ‘glorified button pushers’, as the DJ deadmau5 points out here — he acknowledges this, seeing himself as more a party centrepiece than a musical virtuoso. In a recent Q+A at London’s Red Bull Studios, the Disclosure brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, spoke about how they aim to make live shows worthwhile despite of the opportunity to simply press a spacebar. Basic actions subtly allow the audience’s experience to become more exclusive: drum beats are taken from songs, separated onto a machine, and physically struck — the duo said they emphasise the action drumming in live shows to enable those further away to feel drawn in to the music.
Disclosure, though popular for house beats, are musically trained, and seek to show a level of craftmanship on stage to make tickets worth their price. The aural and the visual are considered in tandem, as they ensure both that tickets are sold and that their gig is heard and seen as a physical experience. As the video below shows, they make their process as technical as possible; in the Q+A, Guy stated that for a gig to be truly live, the music would have to turn off if he and his brother walked off stage. For other artists, he said, this wouldn’t be the case.
Another recent event in London, U2’s ‘Innocence + Experience’ tour, showed a different approach: live music as art installation. The commercial aspect of proceedings isn’t a concern for U2, with their platform already set. Biographical and political themes become the focal point, projected on extremely wide screens; animated films provide visual art that illustrates the music. Even if the gig is worth attending simply to see Bono and co. on stage, the additional visual content is exclusive and impressive, allowing the occasion to feel special.
Ed Sheeran’s success, meanwhile, is testament to the fact that identity is crucial in live music. Sheeran’s gigs are unique in that they’re stripped down, with just a man and his guitar — a man able to hold the breath of 87,000 at once. Like U2 and Disclosure, he constructs his live music around his unique image, far removed the homogeneity of bestselling DJs today.
Some DJs clearly have musical pedigree — here’s Kygo playing the piano, which is nice — but, without much in the way of musical variation, all a typical arena gig offers for a fan is a chance to be part of a huge, wild crowd. Some might see this as worthy of its huge entry fee; I’m looking for something more visceral, visual, and valuable.
