Musical Associations

It’s hardly a new idea to suggest that music can become anchored in one’s memory by a certain time or place. Repetition can of course spread that anchor across a variety of times and spaces. But if one had to, one could choose a particular memory that stands out. Certain examples that spring to mind are the hours I spent on buses reading and studying On The Road and listening to Boards of Canada’s Music Has The Right to Children, or writing about Todd Solondz and listening to Panda Bear’s Person Pitch. Outside of academia, Zealots, by The Fugees, can take me back to the drive down from the mountains after a sixth class walk, and Corona’s Rhythm of The Night can transport me to a camp site in the south of France in an instant. Locating these memories is, however, no challenge. What I wonder is, while certain tracks may find themselves associated with particular memories, others just sound better in a particular climate. I spent many hours trying to get into Burial last Winter, and, while these attempts were not entirely successful, I recently discovered that the haunting sounds of Untrue are much more suited to cold November mornings than they are sweltering August nights. By the same token, Spank Rock’s FABRICLIVE mix makes much more sense in the sunshine than it does when played beneath a drab grey sky.

What I really want to know is, if some music is just, by its very nature, summery, what effect will the inevitable climate change have on the shape of music? This past weekend saw some of the heaviest rainfall in this country in two decades, and last summer was one of those Irish summers which people remember by its very un-summeriness. As pointed out below, the very notion of calendars may be as arbitrary as the next, but it’s what we’re stuck with, and so forever summer will be the time of slightly shorter bus journeys, foreign students flooding the streets, and vaguely exciting upbeat music. What album or tune will be remembered from this summer? I might have suggested Santogold’s album, if it hadn’t leaked in April (though this brings up another dilemma, which is that music which could be directly aimed at a summer market will probably be leaked long before its intended release date). Perhaps, in a return to a time before recorded music, we will see a greater emphasis put on performance. It’s already been suggested that artists are making far more money from shows than from CD releases, so it stands to reason that a given performance be as, if not more, important than the sound they create which is most often consumed by way of a compressed audio file through some awful speakers. Call me a traditionalist, but what good is a file on your laptop if you can never here it live? Hell, I’m going old school, I’m not even going to put any links in this post.

As far as live performances are concerned, I don’t know if I’ve yet seen the best performance of the year. Despite seeing artists as temporally and stylistically different as MGMT, Portishead, Public Enemy, and even Blondie over the last few weeks and months, I’ve not yet been blown away. After some fifty-odd gigs last year, and almost as many this year, I think I may have oversaturated myself. When you end up at that many gigs it can become difficult to get excited about yet another festival. That said, I’m heading to Pukkelpop in two days time, and I do look forward to seeing Wilco again at Electric Picnic. Once these are over, however, I’m going on a gig diet. It’ll save me money, energy and, most importantly, it will revitalise my interest in what has become the music industry’s saving grace. Right now? Maybe I’ll go back to France 1994.