Postmodernism through the Use of Technology in Beck’s Odelay
Many changes have occurred since the end of the 1970s, resulting in the aesthetic, referred to as postmodernism, emerging within popular culture. One of the key changes is the advancement of technology, which has both contributed to, and developed because of, the rise of postmodern consciousness. “One of the most inventive and eclectic figures to emerge from the ‘90s alternative revolution, Beck was the epitome of postmodern chic”, according to Steve Huey on
allmusic.com. In a review in
Slant Magazine, Paul Schrodt emphasises the cultural implications of Beck’s second album, stating, “
Odelay isn’t just the product of one artist, it’s a defining statement of an entire generation in the throes of finding its own voice”. I will attempt to argue that
Odelay, released in 1996, exemplifies the postmodern aesthetic through use of technology.
In
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Mark Katz explains how technology has enabled a form of musical borrowing known as digital sampling, in which “sound is rendered into data, data that in turn comprise instructions for reconstructing that sound”. The pitch and tempo of this reconstructed sound can then be manipulated independently of each other, and “sounds can be reversed, cut, looped, and layered; reverberation can be added; certain frequencies within a sound can be boosted or deemphasised”. In justifying the practice as an art, Katz compares the practice of digital sampling to traditional acts of musical borrowing, in which works may incorporate or adapt “quotations” such as melodies or chord progressions from previous works. “It is sometimes said that while a quotation is simply a representation of another piece, a sampled passage of music
is that music”. However, this statement can be challenged by the aspect that “quotations are notational” – it is the instructions for recreating the sounds that are reproduced, not the sound themselves, and the “quotations are only complete when performed”. Similarly, a digital sample is merely a set of instructions that represent a sound, to be recreated by a computer. “Therefore, if sampling
represents a sound, we cannot say that a sampled passage of music
is that music”. Katz describes digital sampling as a form of “performative quotation: quotation that recreates all the details of timbre and timing that evoke and identify a unique sound event… traditional musical quotations typically cite works; samples cite performances”.
In “Fix It in the Mix”, published in
Popular Music and Society, Steve Lindeman also discusses borrowing and sampling of music. He describes a change in the way music is viewed – as an “original piece of music is not regarded as sacrosanct, but as a pliable, malleable source to be built upon”, likening samples to jazz standards “used as a point of departure and transformed”. From one perspective, music “only exists in time, as a performance; the score is merely the “instruction” of how to realise the music” (Hicks, cited in Lindeman). This perspective sees music as an expression – a particular embodiment of an idea, an idea being “a concept, principle, process or system that is independent of any form” (Katz). Conversely, “the music as represented in the score may be conceived as the “real” work of art: the performance doesn’t make the music, but is a realization of the art that already exists” (Hicks, cited in Lindeman) – that is, the music as the idea itself. Katz explains that sampling “blurs the traditional distinction between ideas and expressions”. While a sample captures and mimics a performance – that is, a concrete expression – it is used as an idea when manipulated and displaced, and becomes a new expression, bearing no resemblance to its original state. Hence, “sampling has transformed the very art of composition. When composers sample existing works, they begin with expressions, transform them into ideas, and then again into new expressions” (Katz). It can be now seen that “every musical work is a potentiality, not a finished work, or that a creative work is never “finished,” but “abandoned,” and perhaps resumed at a later point in time” (Lindeman).
Katz suggests that “sampling is most fundamentally an art of
transformation”. As an art, it displays several aspects of postmodern consciousness. Most prominently, it shows that technology is considered “not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music”. By transforming the roles of scores and performances as ideas and expressions, the practice of sampling “locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers” (Kramer). Sampling also facilitates conspicuous use of genre mixing. By juxtaposing samples from different genres, the “confluence of genres previously thought incompatible” is explored, blurring, crossing, or obliterating the boundaries between popular music and “art music” (Alper), while multiculturalism is embraced by “quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures” (Kramer). This use of collage causes the music to include “fragmentations and discontinuities” (Kramer), and can be seen as “a deliberate and repeated attempt to disrupt the narrative structure of a song” (Alper).
Sampling is used prolifically in
Odelay, not only as additions to the songs, but embedded in the basic construction of the songs themselves. Describing the creative process, Beck says, “It was basically me writing chord changes and melodies and stuff, and then endless records being scratched and little sounds coming off the turntable” (Fink). Genre mixing is explicit, as samples of soul, funk, rock, jazz, blues, folk, electro, hip-hop, bossa nova, and rhythm and blues are fused together among other influences, “collecting the grooves of generations past and reshaping them into a postmodern tapestry, merging countless samples and styles into one cohesive whole” (Schrodt). In a review on
allmusic.com, Stephen Erlewine describes the album as “genre-defying music that refuses to see boundaries. All of the songs on
Odelay are rooted in simple forms… but they twist the conventions of the genre”.
The first song on the album, “Devils Haircut”, contains a horn sample from “Out of Sight” by James Brown and a drum sample from “Soul Drums” by Bernard Purdie (Beck), both associated with the genre of soul. While stylistic elements of soul can still be recognised through the looped drum sample, the blare of the horn has been electronically manipulated to sound alien and futuristic, displacing it completely from its original context. Many other electronic sounds are also used, while effects and distortion are occasionally added to the vocals and guitars. Throughout the song, tones and moods continually morph and break into completely different ones, while maintaining a constant bass riff and repeated drum beat. While the resulting composition of “Devils Haircut” bears little resemblance to soul, it invokes familiarity in the listener through soul rhythms. Also familiar to the listener is the use of vocals and guitar, elements authentic to rock, yet digital effects manipulate them to sound blatantly artificial and inorganic. Similar to Katz’s analysis of Paul Lansky’s
Notjustmoreidlechatter, Beck negotiates the familiarity of the drums, vocals and guitar with the strangeness of the effects and the unnatural and unidentifiable noises and samples. Like in
Notjustmoreidlechatter, this balance also allows for repeatability, as the listener may try to identify the noises and samples with each successive listen.
Using similar techniques to that in “Devils Haircut”, the rest of
Odelay displaces samples of various genres. “Hotwax” starts with bluesy slide guitar, joined by a drum machine and a syncopated funk bass. Beck raps over this, accompanied by highly distorted electric guitar riffs alternating with blues slide guitar riffs. The song also includes samples of accordion and jazz piano, and ends with a rhythm and blues interlude that comprises samples of spoken word, saxophone, piano and African drums. While “The New Pollution” features a sample performed by jazz saxophonist Joe Thomas (Beck), the pop rhythms and melodies overshadow any evocations to the genre of jazz. Meanwhile, high-pitched, synthesised samples, reminiscent of an old computer game or cartoon, are repeated throughout to create a fantastical, dream-like, virtual aura. Similar synthetic samples are heard in “Novacane”, which draws from several genres. Prominently, hip-hop is represented in the scratching and vocal style, while the keyboard chord progressions are reminiscent of funk, and the heavy distorted bass a common element in electro. “Where It’s At” contains several spoken word samples, among which is the title, sampled from an obscure 1969 sex education record for teens (Mason). In the chorus, this sample is interjected with a sample from “Needle to the Groove” by Mantronix, a hip-hop group (Beck). The song is based around a jazz keyboard progression, over which hip-hop elements such as rapping and scratching can be heard. “High 5 (Rock the Catskills)” begins with a Latin-American piano riff, and contains an orchestral break, while essentially, it is stylistically hip-hop. Even songs of more conventional structure, such as “Lord Only Knows”, “Jack-ass” and “Ramshackle”, are introduced or interrupted by obtrusive samples.
Aside from genre mixing, the postmodern sensibility may also be identified through the tendencies of irony, humour, and self-parody; the return to tonality; and the exploration of “surface” (Alper). Along with the often nonsensical lyrics and juxtaposition of disparate styles in
Odelay, the discordance and absurdity of the samples uncommon to any particular genre of music could be described as tacky or crude. This deliberate inclusion may be perceived as a reaction to the “extreme seriousness of purpose” of modernists’ self-importance and arrogance (Alper). Irony is also presented by the use of hip-hop elements of rapping, scratching and sampling, as the origins of hip-hop come from black African roots, while Beck is a white American artist. This shows that Beck “embraces contradictions” (Kramer) and challenges ideas of race. The songs on
Odelay are based upon repetitive looped samples and simple chord progressions, exhibiting the postmodern tendency of tonality, which suggests a “desire to attract an audience” (Alper). However, these basic elements are often interrupted by atonal distortion and dissonance, showing Beck’s resistance to totalising forms (Kramer). Sampling and effects explore the surface features of music.
Odelay demonstrates ways in which sound can be manipulated to change its context, aura, meaning or function, raising “new sonic possibilities” (Alper). Scratching also displays sonic possibilities, as the use of the turntable as an instrument relegates its role as simply a piece of hardware that transmits music.
Matt Fink, in a review in Paste Magazine, proposes that “
Odelay made computers and turntables safe for dudes with guitars”. This raises the issue of rock musicianship and anonymity discussed in “From Craft to Corporate Interfacing: Rock Musicianship in the Age of Music Television and Computer-Programmed Music” in
Popular Music and Society. Den Tandt argues that the transformation of “musical gestures into raw material that can be processed by graphics software, computerized instruments, and information networks” relegates “performance practices (real-time playing and singing) traditionally central to rock personas to a secondary status”. It has been said that “digitalization neutralizes the romantic culture of selfhood”, resulting in “a postmodernist aesthetic of endless reproduction, pastiche, and impersonality” (Wollen, cited in Den Tandt). This is seen in
Odelay, in the way samples are manipulated to disguise or shadow their original source or context. However, while is it focused on technology and production, Beck compromises this with his use of vocals and guitars. Despite the electronic manipulation imposed on these elements, they nevertheless create a personalised image that is not only identifiable to listeners, but also expressible through live performance. Den Tandt suggests that this compromise between anonymity and personalisation may be perceived as a “comment on the cultural context that brings about the erasure of self in the first place – the corporate economy”.
The practice of digital sampling suffers much criticism and controversy. Aside from the issues of artistry previously addressed, sampling raises a debate about the law. In preventing duplication of recorded music without authorisation, copyright laws exist against audio piracy. While sampling is not mere duplication, but appropriation and transformation of existing recordings into new compositions, it is nevertheless subject to the same copyright laws. According to these laws, original composers of samples may be entitled to ownership and royalties of the new compositions that incorporate the samples. In a thesis that addresses “Music Sampling and Copyright Law”, John Lindenbaum states, “Laws and court decisions have not established what balance between the protection of an original artist and the protection of new appropriative artists would best foster overall musical creativity in the United States”. With legal issues escalating more recently, this presents restrictions and limitations to postmodern artists, as Beck compares the production of
Odelay to his later album
Guero, released in 2005.
"The only difference is that it’s pretty much impossible to clear samples now. We had to stay away from samples as much as possible. The ones that we did use were just absolutely integral to the feeling or rhythm of the song… Now it’s prohibitively difficult and expensive to justify your one weird little horn blare that happens for half of a second one time in a song and makes you give away 70 percent of the song and $50,000. That’s where sampling has gone, and that’s why hip-hop sounds the way it does now" (Fink).
Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding the practice of sampling shows that it “challenges our notions of originality, of borrowing, of craft, and even of composition itself” (Katz), both extending and reacting against the modern aesthetic. This is seen in
Odelay, a collage that takes different samples from genres of cultural and temporal disparity, as well as non-musical sources, juxtaposing and displacing their meanings and contexts, and reconstructs them into new compositions, to create original and unexpected moods and auras throughout.
Odelay is resplendent with contradictions, as Beck subtly balances familiarity with strangeness, the artificial with the organic, simplicity with complexity, seriousness with triviality, the real with the virtual, and anonymity with personalisation. The use of technology in
Odelay shows the possibilities of the practice of sampling as an art, corresponding with the present zeitgeist of postmodernism.
Works CitedAlper, G. “Making sense out of postmodern music?”
Popular Music and Society 24.4 (2000): 1-14.
Fink, M., “Beck: Breaking The Narrative”,
Paste Magazine 16.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=1816 (30 Oct. 2006).
Den Tandt, C., “From Craft to Corporate Interfacing: Rock Musicianship in the Age of Music Television and Computer-Programmed Music.”
Popular Music and Society 27.2 (2004): 139-160.
Erlewine, S. T., “Odelay: Review”,
Allmusic.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:0pdgyl4oxpmb~T1 (30 Oct. 2006).
Hicks, M., “Energeia and ‘The Work Itself.’”
Journal of Aesthetic Education 21.3 (1987): 69-75.
Huey, S., “Beck: Biography”,
Allmusic.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:4g57gjtrj6ia~T1 (30 Oct. 2006).
Katz, Mark, “Music in 1s and 0s: the art and politics of digital sampling.”
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 137-157.
Kramer, J. D. “The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism.”
Current Musicology 66 (1999): 7-21.
Lindeman, S., “Fix It in the Mix.”
Popular Music and Society 22.4 (1998): 91-100.
Lindenbaum, John. “Music Sampling and Copyright Law.” Princeton University, 1999.
Schrodt, P., “Beck: Odelay”,
Slant Magazine 2004.
http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=440 (30 Oct. 2006).
Wollen, P., “Ways of Thinking About Music Video (and Postmodernism).”
Critical Quarterly 28 (1986): 167-170.
DiscographyBeck.
Odelay. Compact disc. Geffen Records, GEFD-24908, 1996.
‘FabricLive.30’
