Identity Theft 3.0

almost pop December 12, 2011

1. So I’ve been reading Pitchfork again. When I was in college, I savored their high-concept prose like good wine. I revered their elevated critical perspective, holding it at arm’s length like something holy and dangerous. It was a while before I began to resent Pitchfork’s contented position as part of the Internet Tastemaking Machine, before realizing that the task of assigning value and context to art is a task that gets you drunk on imaginary power. After becoming something of a music writer myself, spending most of 2010 writing two or three reviews a month for Tiny Mix Tapes, I realized how strange it is to pass judgment on the work of people who you will never meet, whose perspectives will never become real or threatening to you. I realized how easy it is to dismiss something that you misunderstand as if it is unworthy, how easy it is to applaud something simply because it meets you where you are and fills you with a shallow sense of satisfaction.

   As difficult as it is to sculpt a coherent written judgment of a (presumably) coherent work of art, the struggle for clarity sometimes masks the fact that criticism never exists on the same plane as the art it criticizes. The only way to really judge a work of art is by making another work of art. Revision cuts deeper than commentary. Criticism sometimes pretends to support art in its aim of embodying beauty; other times, it plays at being art’s enemy. Neither stance withstands scrutiny.

   This compulsion to evlauate is located…in the works of art themselves….they refuse to be compared. They want to annihilate one another….Beauty, as single, true and liberated from appearance and individuation, manifests itself not in the synthesis of all works…but only as a physical reality: in the downfall of art itself. This downfall is the goal of every work of art, in that it seeks to bring death to all others. That all art aims to end art, is another way of saying the same thing. It is this impulse to self-destruction inherent in works of art, their innermost striving towards an image of beauty free of appearance, that is constantly stirring up the aesthetic disputes that are apparently so futile.

   -Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

   This is what my intuition whispered in my ear: in the same way that art suggests its own death, criticism suggests its own futility.

2. There’s always a gap between what exists and what can be said about what exists. So while I read Pitchfork’s review of Emika’s new self-titled album, already being sufficiently acquainted with the over-discussed genre of dubstep and the well-developed but underappreciated identity of the Ninja Tune record label, my intuition whispered to me that although I had never heard Emika’s music, there was a fundamental disconnect between her self-titled album and all the things Jeff Weiss was saying about its origins and influences. Not that this was the fault of either the artist or her critic. Who can blame a critic for looking for sources? Who can blame an artist for trying to mask and evade them? But these aims contradict each other; the critic and the artist both seek the end of self-definition, and if they dream of success, they seek the realization of that dream through their chosen craft.
3. I listened to most of Emika’s album on YouTube, and after reading Jeff Weiss’s Pitchfork review about the uncommon breadth of her influences, about her subversion of convention, and about a personal endorsement from Thom Yorke, I was disappointed to find that her music didn’t provide the synthesis I expected. Not that I felt the reviewer was exaggerating, that Emika’s aesthetic sense was off-balance, or that Yorke was amiss in endorsing her. I decided that my expectations had wandered astray. Her music synthesizes a lot, but the synthesis is merely a process; it’s not the point.
4. While watching the video for “Double Edge,” I realized two things: Emika herself is the subject of this music video, and Emika is using the music video to hide. By “music video,” I mean both the music and the video. The song itself uses a shallow but elegant melody as a bewitching charm, juxtaposing the strange vocal stutters and silences with the unwavering emotional directness of Emika’s lyrics, framing the fragile simplicity of the lite classical piano melody against the aggressive futurism of the rhythm track. She murmurs her threats instead of snarling or shouting; her words creep out of her mouth like clouds of smoke while her drum patterns and bass lines punish the ears with unblinking violence. And the video itself fixes its eye on her face, on an expression that might be considered vulnerable and honest if its owner didn’t allow digital postproduction to drown out the implications of both eye contact and implied nudity.

   This whole thing is about image, it’s about product, even though in this case, every relationship between subject and object is a negative one. Emika negates image by denying herself, she negates the power of her production by hiding her emotions in her voice, and she negates the power of her voice with her guarded, understated singing, and by letting the track’s low end dominate the entire sonic texture. There’s not much going on musically, and the music itself doesn’t have any message or intent besides provoking a profound effect on the listener.

   This content-poor, effect-oriented existence is what links Emika’s music to pop, but the fact that her music achieves this end through negation rather than affirmation is the reason I bothered to listen to it and think about it. It’s the only reason I give a shit.