Sonic Symbiosis

Long form recorded ambient sound can provide a multi-level listening experience and something different to the experience of repetitive beat-based loops.

1.
Whilst listening to something like Ricardo Villalobos's epic looping Enfants (Chants) I begin to develop a hypnotic sense of minute change - something so minor that it would become an academic exercise of sound-wave analysis to tell exactly whether there is any change at all (something which I cannot see as being a worthy task even if I were inclined towards interest) - which is to say that the sound bends both my sense of time and my ability to focus upon a sample large enough to positively identify change in the music. The structure of this track is so well defined that after a time I feel that in some way my brain re-imagines the elements of the music and in doing so brushes on a sort of false-positive interpretation of progression - one which is not there and one which feels always to be on the brink of a defined and quantifiable expression. I cannot tell whether this is something intricately woven into the production of certain tracks and therefore a feature of the music, or whether it is a deliberate manipulation of a way the brain functions - or neither and simply an unwanted wavering from the purity of repetition - but it does raise questions of the fundamental interpretation of any music (and probably other things outside of music). As humans I feel that we always sit somewhere between two states of wanting, on the one hand we approve and crave repetition - a healthy way to live is one in which we have expectations that routines exist and we can accurately plan for the immediate future. On the other hand there is an expectation of progression - this is undeniable in as much as our love for capitalism, our need to explore the world, our thirst for knowledge and technology and our need to feel that we have ways to express our individuality &etc. Whilst these two states exist side-by-side, it is probably acceptable to generalise and say that whilst we crave change when we are young, the tendency, as a comfortable state is achieved, that we err towards repetition, predictability, we become somewhat accepting and happy to live with the nuance of perceived variety day-to-day and week-to-week, that is to say we become attuned to subtle variety and perhaps even imagined variety - whilst I am willing to swear tonight is unique, it is actually incredibly similar to any number of other nights I have experienced in the last few months, tomorrow will not be very different to every other friday in 2013. An ability to appreciate something repetitive is possibly an in-built given trait of an organism designed to live for 70 years or more and it is probably the exact reason why a piece of repetitive sound can become a nuanced and progressive trip and an experience rewarding beyond its basic elements. The idea that through the production of club music a sweltering mass of people can dance for hours on end implies the intricate link between person and soundwave and how much the brain adds to sound when it translates it to mental and physical experience.

2.
As I experienced today whilst immersed in Kevin Drumm's Night Side - a barely layered ambient piece clocking in around 61 minutes which appears to drift and swell imperceptibly - whilst the experience on headphones standing on a deserted platform somewhere in South London was one of great inversion, the feeling of glazed perception of the towering brick arches around me - my whole interpretation of the sound was changed whilst navigating the streets through a crowded London Bridge, where found I could zone in and out of noises outside of my bubble, the ambiance created a backwash to the environment which over time morphed and distorted the reality of the sound. After some time the environment and soundscape became so intertwined that it felt as though I could detect changes in the structure of the piece independently of the interference - these changes were at times subtle and at other times less so, but always impossible to define and therefore impossible to regard as truly present in the recording. I wondered whether this same change in interpretation of the sound would present themselves in a silent atmosphere or whether it were the external sounds creating undulations and ripples in the pool. It is hard to imagine that an external 'noise' element could create independent changes in the structure of a piece of music above the superposition of waveforms, though perhaps less tough to understand when you consider the way the brain is drawn to focus this way and that, adding a constantly varying spatial element to what is otherwise an immersible and insular sound experience.