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The sound of a vocal or anything on tape, it just seems
to give it it puts it in another world. Anyone you
actually play a vocal to [a vocal] which has gone
through a Space Echo just seems to instantly love
it. I still don t understand what it is to this day. I can
understand the scientific side of it the compression,
the tape s compressing & but there s a little magic
" 113 "
DUMMY
in there somewhere and I don t know what it is. So the
vocal had a lot of Space Echo on. Even if it s not delay
it s still gone through the tape to give it that flow and the
sort of juddering of tape. It just gives it an organicness,
you know?
At all points in the album s production and recording
process recording, processing, mixing, mastering
the focus remained on getting and keeping the vocal to
the front. Songs. Miles Showell, who mastered the album,
recalls that the band were after an early 60s in your
face vocal style :
the vocal was mixed very high in the track on the masters
& In the late 60s and into the 70s and 80s vocal levels
in relation to the track generally got lower. This had the
effect of making the singer one of the instruments as
opposed to singing over the band. The whole Portishead
approach was to have Beth s voice way out front.
If you can t hear the vocal, says Dave McDonald,
what s the point?
* * *
The conspiracy between technology and voice. The
effect of tape delay; the simulation of public address
systems. Technology, as Steven Connor points out,
allows us to discover sounds previously inaudible to
us, the sounds of the stars, and of the foetal heatbeat .170
170
Connor 1997a.
" 114 "
R. J . WHEATON
Without technology it would be impossible to capture
the elements the breaths, the sighs, the exaggerated
plosives and sibilance which make the vocals of
Dummy seem so naturalistic, so intimate. But the
technology itself mediates and transforms these sounds.
Connor suggests that we overhear the microphone
listening, breeding with the noises of the body & When
we speak into a microphone, with a telephone or tape-
recorder, some part of us surrenders to, is spoken by the
equipment. 171
This implication of technology into the organic is
what allows us to hear sounds that we are otherwise
trained culturally conditioned to ignore. These
sounds all the minute muscular movements of the
larynx and the breath, in the words of psychoanalyst
Guy Rosolato recall infancy, recall the vocal exper-
iments conducted before we discard such marginal
sounds in favor of retaining only those which allow for
optimal communication. 172
Perhaps this is why Gibbons voice commands such
attention: there is something transgressive about its
proximity, its pure exposure. Something liberating in this
anatomy of the qualities of the human voice: a magnifi-
cation of the everyday, an expansion of the real. As Walter
Benjamin suggested of film: With the close-up, space
expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. 173
* * *
171
Connor 1997a.
172
Rosolato 1974, pp. 76 77.
173
Benjamin 1973.
" 115 "
DUMMY
It s a Fire widens gradually. Only when Gibbons
delivery dips slightly, an edge of anger at the end of
for time and again, a tiny coagulation of force, is
the Hammond organ driven hard, coarse against the
channels of the melody. The moment is seamless, almost
inaudible, but subtly increases the body temperature of
the song. Anticipation.
There are moments of such deception and deceit in
this song. Images of disguise, masks; salvation compro-
mised by desire; life as a farce. The Hammond organ,
sympathetic companion to Gibbons vulnerable voice,
shining and shimmering and humming throughout the
song, is remorselessly punched away by the sub-bass kick
drum at 1:39.
There are moments of such ambient anaesthetic
grace in this song. The pervading warmth. Gibbons
multiple-note articulation of fail, which draws all
the wound from the word. The inclusive lyric what
we believe in offers the reassurance of company, of
communal solace. The chorus breathe on, sister,
breathe on gliding through in a bloodstream of
organ and bass. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl wyciskamy.pev.pl
The sound of a vocal or anything on tape, it just seems
to give it it puts it in another world. Anyone you
actually play a vocal to [a vocal] which has gone
through a Space Echo just seems to instantly love
it. I still don t understand what it is to this day. I can
understand the scientific side of it the compression,
the tape s compressing & but there s a little magic
" 113 "
DUMMY
in there somewhere and I don t know what it is. So the
vocal had a lot of Space Echo on. Even if it s not delay
it s still gone through the tape to give it that flow and the
sort of juddering of tape. It just gives it an organicness,
you know?
At all points in the album s production and recording
process recording, processing, mixing, mastering
the focus remained on getting and keeping the vocal to
the front. Songs. Miles Showell, who mastered the album,
recalls that the band were after an early 60s in your
face vocal style :
the vocal was mixed very high in the track on the masters
& In the late 60s and into the 70s and 80s vocal levels
in relation to the track generally got lower. This had the
effect of making the singer one of the instruments as
opposed to singing over the band. The whole Portishead
approach was to have Beth s voice way out front.
If you can t hear the vocal, says Dave McDonald,
what s the point?
* * *
The conspiracy between technology and voice. The
effect of tape delay; the simulation of public address
systems. Technology, as Steven Connor points out,
allows us to discover sounds previously inaudible to
us, the sounds of the stars, and of the foetal heatbeat .170
170
Connor 1997a.
" 114 "
R. J . WHEATON
Without technology it would be impossible to capture
the elements the breaths, the sighs, the exaggerated
plosives and sibilance which make the vocals of
Dummy seem so naturalistic, so intimate. But the
technology itself mediates and transforms these sounds.
Connor suggests that we overhear the microphone
listening, breeding with the noises of the body & When
we speak into a microphone, with a telephone or tape-
recorder, some part of us surrenders to, is spoken by the
equipment. 171
This implication of technology into the organic is
what allows us to hear sounds that we are otherwise
trained culturally conditioned to ignore. These
sounds all the minute muscular movements of the
larynx and the breath, in the words of psychoanalyst
Guy Rosolato recall infancy, recall the vocal exper-
iments conducted before we discard such marginal
sounds in favor of retaining only those which allow for
optimal communication. 172
Perhaps this is why Gibbons voice commands such
attention: there is something transgressive about its
proximity, its pure exposure. Something liberating in this
anatomy of the qualities of the human voice: a magnifi-
cation of the everyday, an expansion of the real. As Walter
Benjamin suggested of film: With the close-up, space
expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. 173
* * *
171
Connor 1997a.
172
Rosolato 1974, pp. 76 77.
173
Benjamin 1973.
" 115 "
DUMMY
It s a Fire widens gradually. Only when Gibbons
delivery dips slightly, an edge of anger at the end of
for time and again, a tiny coagulation of force, is
the Hammond organ driven hard, coarse against the
channels of the melody. The moment is seamless, almost
inaudible, but subtly increases the body temperature of
the song. Anticipation.
There are moments of such deception and deceit in
this song. Images of disguise, masks; salvation compro-
mised by desire; life as a farce. The Hammond organ,
sympathetic companion to Gibbons vulnerable voice,
shining and shimmering and humming throughout the
song, is remorselessly punched away by the sub-bass kick
drum at 1:39.
There are moments of such ambient anaesthetic
grace in this song. The pervading warmth. Gibbons
multiple-note articulation of fail, which draws all
the wound from the word. The inclusive lyric what
we believe in offers the reassurance of company, of
communal solace. The chorus breathe on, sister,
breathe on gliding through in a bloodstream of
organ and bass. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]