A question was proposed to me recently. “What is the most contemporary music I’ve heard? A sound that borrows from past cultures but collages those sounds into something unique and entirely of the moment.” The example of Kim Gordon’s (Sonic Youth, Body/Head) album No Home Record, in particular, the opener “Sketch Artist” was given:
This song was created with vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine, programming, and synth. The drum machine and electronics are the dominant instrumentation, with the guitar and synths (sounding like strings and horns) acting as accents throughout; Gordon’s vocals interweaving it all. The song and album were a collaboration with the producer Justin Raisen. Using this song as an example seems appropriate as it doesn’t sound like a new song from either Sonic Youth or Body/Head, but something culled together from the totality of Gordon’s sounds and Raisen’s production.
The first song that came to mind when originally asked the question, even though it is over fifty years old, was “Dear Prudence” by The Beatles. The two-note guitar lines that continue throughout the song are repetitive, very modern, and have almost an eastern feel to me. There is more that is going on in “Dear Prudence” (https://youtu.be/wQA59IkCF5I) and it is more of a traditional rock and roll song, so it is not so much relevant to this discussion.
The other night, a friend and I were discussing the show we had just seen, Irreversible Entanglements, and the question of a ‘contemporary song’ came to mind again. Irreversible Entanglements are a jazz band from the International Anthem label. They are normally a five-piece band, but the trumpeter (Aquile Navarro) and drummer (Tcheser Holmes) were stuck out of the country for this leg of the tour. For the set that we saw, there was just a saxophonist (Keir Neuringer), who also did percussion as well as laptop knob turning; an upright bass player (Luke Stewart) who never stopped playing his instrument throughout the set, even if he was actually massaging sounds out of the bass’s strings; and there was the vocalist (Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother) who also manipulated a laptop and was the musical anchor with her lyrics. Maybe it was because they were down to three members that they employed the electronics, but then again, the electronics could be a regular part of their live set. For me, this show was more like an experimental/improvisational music set than what I have heard from an Irreversible Entanglements record. One thing is not better or worse from the other I should point out. I am a big fan of both versions of this band. However, I do not believe their album fully represents the sounds we heard on that night:
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/who-sent-you
During our post-show discussion, I mentioned the question of ‘contemporary music’ and the parameters given and proposed that the music we heard was more in line with this concept. It had traditional jazz instruments combined with electronics; elements of hip-hop and poetry; and improvisations and experimentations but also traditional jazz solos. The combination of live music being played on instruments and sung in tandem with pre-recorded sounds/vocals, loops, and beats that are manipulated in real time made this music seem so vital to me. Thinking more about the topic, another example that could be included in this context is the group Anteloper, also on the International Anthem label. Anteloper is a two-person collaboration with the trumpeter Jaimie Branch playing with the electronic musician Jason Nazary. They mix trumpet and acoustic drums with synths and electronics to create something really beautiful:
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/tour-beats-vol-1
One thread of all of the examples given above, “Dear Prudence” aside, is that they all verge on being without genre. They incorporate vocabulary from a range of musical styles to create something different. The groundbreaking music of our time usually finds a way of taking elements from the past or non-traditional influences, and changing them into something new, expanding on what came before. Even “Dear Prudence” in 1969/1970, The Beatles were borrowing sounds from eastern ragas and possibly minimalist compositions and folding that into a traditional rock and roll song. No Home Record, Irreversible Entanglements, and Anteloper all, in their own way, are creating “something unique and entirely of the moment.” Additionally, me saying that seeing live music again was incredible, is a huge understatement. I will be keeping an eye out for Kim Gordon and Anteloper to pass through my part of the country one day, as well, but Irreversible Entanglements was the perfect way to emerge from the last year and a half that we have experienced. They are a band “of the moment” in so many ways.
