Try to understand my anguish here. I’m not only am music lover, but a life-long collector. I’m nowhere near as anally retentive or obsessive as some, but I do make every effort to look after the music I own: I don’t leave records or CDs kicking about out of their sleeves, and handle them with care. Having spent a lot of time in record shops and collectors’ fairs on both sides of the counter, I’m extremely aware of the importance of condition, but more than that, it’s about respect. Ok, so the whole issue revolves around the fetishization of an object, but so what? Presentation is important, and where physical formats are concerned, music becomes a multisensory experience that renders the artefact an integral aspect.
So imagine my horror, the agony I experienced, when I realised that to access the CD contained within the eye-bogglingly designed black and white gatefold card sleeve, I would have to actually cut the thing open. A small neat slice down the sticker that covered the opening, opposite the spine would do it, but what if I left the edge ragged? What if it nicked and tore? Regardless, to cut into it would be to deface it, to ruin forever its perfect state.
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Having carefully and lovingly but nevertheless brutally defaced, desecrated and devalued the artefact, I’m able to access the sonic experience therein: a single track, 29 minutes in duration, containing tense, minimal instrumental work, that’s sometimes so quiet as to be inaudible, then builds to squealing, squalling crescendos. To describe the sounds as drones would be to misrepresent the frequencies created by the three violins and pieces of electronic kit that are so acute and penetrating as to set the teeth on edge.
Pleasant it isn’t, at least for the most part: intense and quite remarkable, and occasionally disturbing and a little painful it most certainly is.
Antoine Chessex Online
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