Forgery League

My favorite music this past month or so has been post-punk/new wave stuff, from about 1975-85: The Fall, XTC, Wire, Talking Heads, Devo, that sorta thing.

For a long time I’ve wanted to be in a dancey art-band, and lately I’ve wanted to draw on that musical heritage to make something infectious, chaotic, beautiful, angry and weird. I’ve tried my hand writing some material along those lines, even, and it sure is cathartic. :D

And today I realized there’s another strain coming to the surface - listening to too much of that Franz Ferdinand album, perhaps, or just the pendulum swinging in a new direction. This next week or month may be Chord Month.

Currently I’m very fond of “Dreams” by TV On The Radio - there’s something winning about the cool, understated background and Tunde Adebimpe’s resonant baritone. It’s like Seal and Prince singing on a track by Nash The Slash. And I am ever a sucker for the counterpoint of two interweaving vocal lines.

I realize I’ve shied away from writing music that drones on one chord after another, in favor of a handful of melodies that mesh together. But I do love it - there’s a handful of older Stereolab tracks that do it beautifully. Probably why I was so big on Philip Glass in high school, too. You could compare that sort of writing to the mid-20th century abstract painters - the Colour Field and Op Art folks in particular. The best, I think, have chord progressions that force a surprising and dramatic shift in key somewhere along the line (like the I-VIb in “Dreams”)... which is the wonderful thing. A change in key is a change in context, a change in perspective. Suddenly a different set of notes is ‘permitted’.

A list of my favorite key changes would have to include that weird free-fall moment in Sting’s “Fortress Around Your Heart” when the chorus kicks in. Gives me chills, that one does.

Project: make maps of musical attractors. Vocal styles come in waves, like the neurotic, high-strung New Wavers (David Byrne of Talking Heads, Andy Partridge of XTC, all of Devo); the current vogue for hyper-melismatic vocals that emerged from ‘90s R&B style - and, by contrast, the uninflected, soaring tenor harmonies that seem to appear on every damn alt-rock tune these days. What other stylistic turns can be traced?

And along the same lines: what elements seem to hold a particular fascination for me? And what is it about them that is so beautiful? I’ve mentioned chord-chord-chord music and dramatic key shifts, and the zany springwound energy of XTC et al… but there’s plenty more to look at.