Foregrounding Timbre: Spectralism and Post-Punk

When the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo published his manifesto The Art of Noise in 1913, a major philosophical and aesthetic debate arose surrounding the idea of a new kind of all-encompassing musical experience where any sound could be allowed into the timbral universes of music. This new idea was the starting point for composers like Edgard Varese and John Cage. Varese took this idea of liberated (or “emancipated”) sound and tried to make a type of music where the structure of the timbres and textural layers defined the progression of the piece, rather than melodic and harmonic progression. After the Second World War, this perspective became quite prominent in contemporary music, with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry formulizing musique concrète in France while the likes of Stockhausen and Ligeti were making a new type of pure or synthesized electronic music in Cologne. 

At this point, the possibilities for timbral sources had become freed from the conventional instruments of the past, but it was not until the 1970s when the spectral movement in France made it a specific ethos to foreground the physical properties of sound in a musical work. Tristan Murail, Gérard Grisey, and Hugues Dufourt led this new movement where pieces of music focused on creating a sonic effect as a main goal. Although this early spectral style attempted to imitate electronic effects using acoustic means (usually with the use of instrumental synthesis), spectralism also became a style that embraced more methods and techniques (e.g. Per Norgard’s Symphony No. 2). In fact, Grisey states in the article Did You Say Spectral? (translated by Joshua Fineberg) that spectralism “is not a closed technique, but an attitude.” This attitude is a perspective that takes the sonic effect of a musical atmosphere, gesture, etc. and prioritizes this musical element. Typically, the use of alternative tuning systems and microtonal techniques play a role in this sonic manipulation, but microtonality as a necessity for spectral music has become an outdated (and very French) concept. 

Because of these aforementioned blurred rules and “attitudes” regarding the true definition of spectral music, it could be accurate to assume that the spectral attitude and aesthetic has permeated outside of the contemporary western art music tradition and into the world of vernacular music including rock, punk, and psychedelia. Another more likely chronology would suggest the opposite influence where the characteristics of vernacular music permeated the classical music world, bringing more experimental forms into the work of spectralists like Romitelli. If spectralism claims to foreground timbre and the physical properties of sound, could we not say the same thing about the new types of guitar noise that became central to the rock music of the 1960s? The ideas of feedback and distortion as musical parameters (created using analog methods) completely redefined rock music in the 1960s and 1970s, around the same period of time where spectralism arose as a style of contemporary classical music. Jimi Henrix’s feedback-filled rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock signaled a new type of guitar noise that would prove extremely influential to upcoming generations. 

In his essay The Aesthetics of Noise, Danish cultural scientist Torben Sangild discusses how the post-punk musical scene/genre arose from the punk scene in the late 1970s: “Post-punk is characterized by a certain preoccupation with the sinister, melancholy, pain, fear, death, excess, perversion.” Post-punk was a style that wanted to distance itself from the “normal” or “expected” characteristics of rock and punk music, and they did this by using noise. For many post-punk groups and artists, this “noise” could mean a multitude of things. For Sonic Youth, it meant an aggressive, saturated, polyphonic texture, while for Glenn Branca it meant an almost belligerent layering of detuned guitars over the harmonic series. Swans used noise to create a swelling, dark, gothic sense of dread while My Bloody Valentine used heavy noise and physical effects to create a “poetic, dreamy atmosphere, labeled ‘dreampop’ or ‘shoegazer.’” In Japan, noise became a part of the free-jazz scene with the likes of Keiji Haino and High Rise. Sangild says that the development of guitar noise within the post-punk genre had culminated and halted with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless in 1991. “Guitar noise had gone mainstream with blockbusters like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, and the sound possibilities seemed permanently exhausted.” Sangild goes on to say that at this point, noise exploration shifted from rock and towards electronic music, with artists like Aphex Twin experimenting with noise in a more dance-based setting, and Merzbow, one of the few artists dealing with large electronic noise-scapes of non-melodic pure sound. 

In many ways, these post-punk artists attempted to revolutionize the rock genre through the use of timbral manipulation that is quite similar to the spectralists. By foregrounding the physical properties of the sound, they created sonic effects that redefined the timbral expectations associated with the rock genre. One of the most interesting and unique achievements in this category belongs to the British rock group My Bloody Valentine, the originators of the “shoegaze” style. Like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine wanted to make their own unique guitar sound and style that would create new, unique sonic effects. Their album Loveless, along with their EPs Glider and Tremolo, layed out a full-bodied sound that communicated a more languid, soft atmosphere, even amongst the multitude of pedals and effects applied to the sound. They also used much more melodic-based material, while still foregrounding timbre as an essential element in their work. Sangild outlines how “diffuse blurred harmonics” along with guitar chords that are “gliding, swimming in a muddy sea of distortion” help achieve the sonic quality of My Bloody Valentine. The music is extremely integrated, with the vocals often hidden amongst the instrumental texture in an almost haunting manner. The group referred to their elusive and dream-like sonic quality as “the-not-quite-really-there-sound” in which a dense layering of materials begins to shape the sound into something very listenable. Referred to by Sangild as a “psychedelia of noise”, My Bloody Valentine’s sound expresses a sort of blurriness, where instrumental attacks are faded in and out, guitar harmonics meld together, and the guitar’s whammy bar is used to create a sort of gliding sound (coined “glide guitar”) that slides into and around the fingered chord. 

Another very important noise-based, timbre-driven example within the post-punk genre can be observed within the oeuvre of the American band The Flaming Lips, especially their intense, electronic driven album The Terror (2013). One critic, when responding to The Terror, claimed that the album was “virtually challenging you to actively dislike it” with its lack of normal song forms and eerily ambient atmosphere. As the title track from The Terror begins, whispery melodic materials linger over a simple rhythmic figure. With simple pad-like synthesizer chords in the background, a rather simple texture is painted. But then, the vocal starts to split apart into 2 slightly differing deliveries with the use of double-tracked vocals (a technique commonly used by The Beatles), and a low, whale-like sound (built with modular synthesizers) begins to come out of the texture, completely morphing the atmosphere into a full, almost oceanic musical environment. From here, there are intense squeaky sounds that inconsistently penetrate into the texture. After this large build-up, at the 2:30 mark in the song, an aggressive synthesizer presents a back and forth texture that consumes all the textures around it before the vocals are added again, but processed heavily, so that the whole environment and timbral space has shifted. Both of these musical atmospheres are explored throughout the 6:30 song until the vocals and higher end overtones are removed slowly, leaving the listener with a morphing drone that seems to slip seamlessly into and out of different timbral spaces. The last minute of the title track in The Terror is absolutely fascinating in the way it explores noise and physical properties of sound. 

There is a quality of build-up that permeates the whole album, where each song may feature one or two chords with only one repetitive melodic line, and then the songs focus on building up a timbral atmosphere, often by adding timbres on top of one another in a similar way to modular synthesis. The song Turning Violent begins with a pulsing, crunchy, low synthesizer that begins to gurgle as higher, brighter long tones are layered above and another whispering, repetitive and haunting vocal melody unfolds above. Then, harsh and flickering pulses begin and the whole atmosphere morphs into a fully saturated texture, and continues to build until maximum saturation of the sound space (using modular synths, extra vocal tracks, and a chant-like figure that is almost completely hidden amongst the other sounds). 

Furthermore, the temporal environments suggested in these songs are quite intriguing, with pulsing present in each musical atmosphere, both on the macro and micro levels of rhythmic motion. The flickering, harsh pulses in Turning Violent are interesting counterparts to the pulsing low synthesizer that begins the song. Rhythmically, The Terror experiments with periodicity on different levels so that a sort of dreadful pulsing sticks with the listener motivically. Overall, the whole album presents an existential dread (i.e. “The Terror”) that is centered on repetition with timbral fluctuation that ultimately sits at the centre of the work as a foregrounded musical element, depending on the way the listener will psychologically perceive the sound world in front of them. It is in these musical moments where Grisey’s statement about spectralism presenting “an attitude” as opposed to a set of rules rings true - an environment where the organization of timbre and the sonic effect achieved by this organization holds musical priority. Although The Flaming Lips incorporate melody into The Terror, I still find the album to be a prime example of spectral attitudes and perspectives within the experimental rock genre.