Word: sonic
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...with the clock of castanets on the fourth beat - tell the audience that the music aims directly at pastiche, for those are the first four notes of "Be My Baby," the Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich song from which producer Phil Spector and arranger Jack Nitzsche created a sonic masterpiece for the Ronettes. (Martin Scorsese recognized the power of this opening: he used it at the start of "Mean Streets.") A few bars later, the first syllables uttered in the show - a cutting "Wuh. Uh. Oh." for the song "Good Morning Baltimore" - cue the audience to the tone and intent. Winokur...
...that sound exotic, clever and conspicuously weird, as if Beck were doing an emotional experiment rather than summoning actual feelings. ("Puritans stare, their souls are fluorescent/The skin of a robot vibrates with pleasure" went one particularly opaque Mutations lyric.) But Sea Change feels distilled from real tears, and the sonic intensity is helped in part by Beck's physical maturation. His singing voice has got significantly deeper. "Before we recorded," says Godrich, "we listened to Mutations, and his voice sounded like Mickey Mouse. His range has dropped. Now when he opens his mouth, a canyonesque vibration comes...
Beck’s last album, Midnite Vultures, an ironic trumpet-blaring parade of sex-funk and Prince send ups, wasn’t just another surprise milestone for America’s greatest sonic scientist—it was a worthy document of late 90s exuberance. Beck’s new album, Sea Change, is also telling of its time, fueled as it is by the kind of regretful, sober sensations that come after the big party has ended. But having reportedly broken up with his long-time girlfriend last year, the man has his personal reasons to sing...
...says, “to create those moments of rupture, when the ground you’re standing or dancing on sort of falls away.” Far removed from the dreary academicism of the likes of DJ Spooky, /rupture builds upon the sonic foundation laid by Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa. Like those hip-hop pioneers, /rupture creates startling new compositions as a strategy to set things...
...string of abrasive breakcore vitriol. When /rupture blends a slowed-down instrumental of Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” into that song, it’s a small revelation as Flack’s vocal exorcisms and Timbaland’s sonic architecture together evoke a soul that is neither old nor new, but lies in the space between records...