dark ambient - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Symphonies of Sadness, Dirges of Disgust, Noxious Noise: Musical Masochism

Any kind of masochism is (to non-masochists/collaborators) peculiar and difficult to understand; no less so when it is related to music; but I’m going to try to understand it anyway.

I have isolated three main areas which can be loosely classified under the ‘masochistic’ heading, but there may well be more:

1. Self-consciously unpleasant music which is “enjoyed” (or just enjoyed; a subtle but perhaps important difference) for its intentionally unpleasant/disturbing/unsettling or harsh sound

2. Music which is humorously/ironically enjoyed for its perceived awfulness*

3. Non-unpleasant music which is listened to specifically for its upsetting/depressing or negative emotional effect

Uniting all of these is the fact that they are not everyday listening (for me anyway), but in are special music which retains its potency by being indulged in only occasionally and when prepared for the physical (tinnitus) or mental (lachrymose) consequences.

*aka ‘guilty pleasures’ of course; but that is a whole other discussion; if guilt is an appropriate emotion for listening to music it would have to be something a bit less innocuous than I have in mind. ‘Embarrassing pleasures’ would be a more accurate and even more dodgy-sounding description

1. UNPLEASANT NOISES
The first category is very distinct from the other two; not only is the unpleasantness aural (and intentionally unpleasant), it is precisely the nastiness that appeals to the listener. Why that should be is mysterious; I have used the word ‘masochism’ in the title here, but only because everyone knows what it means and because I can’t think of a better term; but neither ‘sexual masochism disorder’, BDSM or so-called non-sexual masochism (“self-defeating personality disorder”) really functions in the same way as listening to, say The Rita (noise artist Sam McKinlay) or Gnaw Their Tongues.

Noise as (anti)music goes back at least as far as the Dada and Futurist movements of the early 20th century (on the left is Luigi Russolo with one of his Futurist instruments), but on the whole (I think) it’s true that the noise that was created, though fascinating to hear, was more about the process of composing and rule-breaking than listening for pleasure. The same may be true of a lot of experimental noise since then, with classic albums such as Yoko Ono’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music probably being far more frequently owned than enjoyed. Various musique concréte and other avant garde pieces have the same kind of status, being performed perhaps more for historical/academic (albeit interesting) reasons rather than for the purpose of actual entertainment (which is not of course to say that people aren’t entertained by it).

Noise: So what of semi-musical or non-musical noise like Merzbow or just plain ugly music? It’s hard to say where the appeal lies, but with pure noise it seems to be at least partly visceral. It has an immediate, emotional impact; it has nothing to do with traditional musical qualities such as melody, catchiness or even memorable-ness, since it’s possible to listen to the abstract noise of (for example) Thousands of Dead Gods (2006) by The Rita many times without ever getting used to it. This makes the noise endlessly surprising, alienating or boring, depending on one’s mood. The sense of noise as abstract is reinforced by its context-lessness; typically the artwork for a Merzbow album is as enigmatic and unrevealing as the album within, and occasionally every bit as flatly un-evocative (not a criticism!) as the Merzbow sound itself. Cultural identifiers in pure noise are also minimalist in the extreme; the race, nationality or gender of noise artists tends to be known only insofar as the artist wishes it to be so.

At the same time, a quality that pure noise shares with more traditional music is that it can noticeably affect the mood of the listener, especially when played at a loud volume. Listening to pure noise can be much like watching ‘white noise’ on a TV screen; the endless movement may be random, but the mind will look for patterns and if it doesn’t find them, create them itself; pure noise often feels detailed in a way that very little actual music does. And it is enjoyable (the word covers a wide range of responses here) or unenjoyable (simpler) for as long as it engages the listener.

Ugly Music: What I shall call ugly music is sometimes easier to pin down; it is music, which means it follows certain structural rules which noise ignores, and the listener enjoys it for its ugliness or not at all. It is notable too that artists who aim for ugliness usually attempt the Wagnerian ideal of the gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total work of art’ where everything from the sound to the lyrics to the artwork contributes to the overall effect.

Ugly music probably began in the 60s with some of The Mothers of Invention’s more indigestible experiments (like Absolutely Free, which is perhaps more difficult than truly ugly), Captain Beefheart or the 17 minute churn of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’, but it came into its own in the artistically serious 1970s (see below) and, in a more populist and relatively lighthearted way with the advent of death metal in the 80s, specifically with albums like Reek of Putrefaction (1988) by Carcass. This classic album is ugly not only in the details of the music and presentation, but in the murky muddiness of its sound; a chance element caused by the cheapness of the recording, which makes some of the album sound like two or three different bands immersed in a swamp, simultaneously playing three different songs, When allied with the rasped vocals of Jeff Walker and the ridiculously deep ones of Bill Steer, this churning noise makes for a disorientating but strangely addictive listening experience, which has something to do with the humour of its extremity (lyrical and musical) as well as the pure heaviness.

Back in the 80s, this kind of music had an outsider/snob appeal even within the metal genre. 80s metal (on the whole) strove for clarity and precision; Carcass (emerging from an anarcho-crust/punk background) pushed the boundaries of musical extremity and taste (using the notorious collages of medical photos for their artwork, rather than relatively cuddly horror mascots like Iron Maiden’s Eddie) beyond what the standard fan of Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P., Metallica or even Slayer might find acceptable. To say that death metal is relatively lighthearted is slightly misleading – Carcass’ early music was informed by a radical vegetarian disgust with all things meat-based in quite a serious way – but as a subgenre of a popular youth-focussed music it lacks the gravitas of the kind of music which made the late 70s a darker place to have ears.

By contrast with death metal, the sheer ugliness of early industrial music exemplified by the work of Throbbing Gristle, seems designed not so much to shock or alienate with its extremity, so much as to shock and alienate with its familiarity, kind of a negative mirror image of the almost subliminal ambient music being pioneered around the same time in Eno’s Music For Airports.

By reflecting the greyness of the decaying industrial (edging into post-industrial) landscape and society that produced it, the corporate packaging and document-like title made TG’s debut album The Second Annual Report (1977) a masterpiece of grinding mundane-ness. In its way their music is every bit as evocative of the 1970s as glam or disco, but the way it embodies its era, its brutalist architecture and grey/brown/beige ambience, combats any possible sense of nostalgia. Although it’s easy to say why it’s interesting, liking Throbbing Gristle (as many have done and continue to do) is much harder to explain. The appeal of TG; in effect the appeal of being made to feel uneasy or disgusted, is an odd way to be entertained. On the surface you could say the same about the horror genre in cinema and literature, but Throbbing Gristle’s effect is utterly different from straightforward horror-as-entertainment, feeling (to me anyway) more analogous to the JG Ballard of The Atrocity Exhibition or Crash than to Stephen King, perhaps because like Ballard, TG’s work had more to do with documenting than it did with entertaining. Although there was undoubtedly an element of confrontation in TGs music (especially in a live setting), as with pure noise, confrontation isn’t the focal point that it becomes in the power electronics of groups like Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jügend who (to some extent) followed on from the early British industrial scene. There is also a more straightforwardly ‘horror noise’ sub-subgenre including bands like Abruptum and the aforementioned Gnaw Their Tongues, whose aim seems to be to engender (with, it must be said, varying degrees of success) extreme anxiety in the listener; significantly different from the almost abstract quality of pure (if harsh) noise artists like Merzbow, easier to understand, but also easier to dismiss as sensationalism.

One of the cumulative effects of abrasive-sounding music has always been to spawn more accessible versions of abrasive-sounding music, in short, to make tunes out of it: noise rock, hardcore punk, death metal, grindcore, grunge, black metal, industrial pop music, techno, trance, drone, shoegaze; all bring a taste of ugliness to the masses in their own way and all are enjoyed, just like traditional pop/rock/soul/country/reggae etc etc etc, by people who like the tunes and like the songs. So they have little part to play in this particular discussion.

2. SO BAD IT’S POSSIBLE TO PRETEND IT’S GOOD

Across all of the arts there are ‘so bad it’s good’ works that appeal on the ironic level of kitsch. These are completely subjective and therefore a bit of a minefield; at what point does listening to something that you personally think is so awful that it’s funny become just listening to it; and is there any difference anyway? Did my teenage self and friends have a different experience listening to an old Shakin’ Stevens tape ‘for a laugh’ than “Shaky”’s actual fans did or do? Well, yes, presumably; they probably don’t laugh as much. Still; it’s all ‘listening with pleasure’ and not only is it subjective, but it’s all about timing. The awfulness of music is as much about the zeitgeist as the popularity of music is; hard to imagine now, but there was a time in the late 80s when listening to Abba (or The Carpenters for that matter) could be enjoyed as revelling in tacky 70s awfulness; but since the early 90s they have been revered by the once-embarrassed media as a great band after all.

Since the 90s in fact, revelling in irony has become so commonplace and mainstream as not to be ironic anymore; at one time including an artist like Tom Jones in the lineup of a major indie rock festival was kind of a hipster joke that the audience was expected to be in on. Since then the line between alternative and mainstream has become blurred, not because mainstream music has become more adventurous, but because ‘alternative’ music became popular and thus blander and more geared towards commercial success and because the mainstream media discovered people they had actually heard of at these oft-derided hippy festivals. The amusingly mainstream guest act at (for example) Glastonbury or T in the Park has almost imperceptibly become the headlining act; no accident, since these artists are usually household names which therefore guarantee ticket sales in a way that even a medium-big indie rock band isn’t.

Nowadays, to have the same kind of kitsch shock value as including Tom Jones in an indie festival once had, you would have to put someone like Gary Glitter or Rolf Harris (an original ironic festival guest, strange to remember) on the stage, doubling the irony and making the whole experience extremely uncomfortable for all concerned. Despite the weird Ballardian/Coum Transmissions echo this experience this might present, it’s probably best not to.

3. NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MISERABLE MUSIC
This category takes it for granted that unhappiness is a form of unpleasantness that is most often avoided; which may not be strictly true – or obviously isn’t, given the endless popularity of tragedies, murder mysteries etc. Still, it’s a basic human truth (I hope) that most people would rather be happy than sad. Most of the time that is; historically, music was most often written for occasions; sad music was required for a funeral, just as weddings demanded happy music. Tudor and baroque music often had mythological, narrative or literary inspiration which dictated the mood of the works. For a court composer to make a cheerful-sounding funeral dirge or a comic opera from a tragic mythological story would be perverse at best and bad workmanship at worst.

In modern popular music there are many kinds of sad songs, but from a personal point of view (narrowing it down to music I actually like) there are two;
songs which express the unhappiness of the performer
songs (which may or may not be sad in themselves) which make the listener (me) feel unhappy.

Both of these kinds of songs may actually be very pleasant in an aural sense, so only the latter are strictly relevant here. But – outside of the funereal situation mentioned above – why would someone intentionally listen to music that makes them sad?

There are probably as many reasons as there are people, but two big ones: to make you feel better or to make you feel worse.

A lot of interesting research has been carried out on the restorative power of sad music, so I wont say too much about that. The blues (and early country music too) is a classic example – intended not just as an outlet for the woes of the artist her or himself, but as a sharing of universal wretchedness that brings the relief of empathy/recognition – and it does seem to have a regenerative quality (a kind of earthly parallel to the redemptive power of gospel music) that makes it essentially uplifting in all but the most desolate examples.

Music to make you feel worse is more problematic, but wanting to hear sad music that deepens your depression is a fairly common phenomenon, especially among adolescents. The logic of the blues is that something that reflects your mood or encapsulates your own troubles is a kind of comfort, but it’s also true that brooding on one’s unhappiness can deepen that mood; that one can indulge in misery. Why? Because people are strange and self-pity answers some deep-seated psychological need? Perhaps it is a real kind of masochism after all…

A short, personal masochistic playlist

UNPLEASANT (these examples are all undeniably ‘not nice’, but are oddly exhilarating too)
1. Throbbing Gristle – D.o.A.

2. Painkiller – Guts of a Virgin

3. Merzbow – Pulse Demon

4. Mastery – Valis

5. Hijōkaidan – Duo

MUSIC IT HURTS ME (TO VARYING DEGREES) TO LIKE
1. Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On

2. Samantha Fox – Touch Me

3. Yngwie J Malmsteen’s Rising Force – Now Is The Time

4. Focus – Hocus Pocus

5. Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Dress for Excess

MISERABLE MUSIC FOR WALLOWING IN
1. The Smiths – I Know It’s Over

2. Cranes – Tomorrow’s Tears

3. Daniel Johnston – I Remember Painfully (plus most of Yip/Jump Music)

4. Adam Cohen – Beautiful

5. Red House Painters – Katy Song

Draining; that’s probably enough misery for now…

NSBM (and possibly NSFW)

It’s not National, to my knowledge it’s rarely socialist, but it mostly is black metal; National Socialist Black Metal (hereafter, NSBM) annoys people by being ‘too evil’, or at least evil in the wrong way. As the snuff movie is to the horror movie, it seems, NSBM is to BM. There are a couple of flaws in this analogy; firstly, it suggests that black metal in general is, like horror movies, some kind of fantasy (which it certainly often is, but isn’t necessarily) and secondly, that NSBM isn’t some kind of fantasy (see previous parentheses). The Nazis of World War 2 represent the ‘ultimate evil’ to people of the post-war generations because whereas even the worst serial killers of the 20th century ‘worked’ on an individual, localised scale, the Nazis made murder into an ideology and ultimately an industry. That is, they functioned in ways that are relevant and relate-able to the daily lives and experiences of most people; but in bringing that mundane quality to extermination; ‘death factories’ they ultimately created something more frightening than a lone maniac. So is Nazi black metal the embodiment of that famously banal evil and therefore the ultimate in musical terrorism? Hmm, possibly not but let’s see…

Defining NSBM

Let me be clear; I am not discussing heathen/pagan/ or folk black metal that may or may not be perceived to have a Nazi angle to it. Interesting though that scene is (Graveland is the classic example of a sometimes great band whose career has been blighted by the media’s – and the band’s own – inability to differentiate between history and ideology) the term ‘Nazi’ is too specific and anachronistic to be very useful when discussing paganism, heritage etc even though the Nazis loved that stuff. So, here I am more concerned with bands whose work fully intends to glorify that specific NS ideology, and whose output can be represented by artwork like this:

The first question is, is NSBM any good? Just like any black metal, the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. On occasion, the marriage of the classic sound of ‘orthodox black metal’ with the particular (let’s not beat around the bush, violently racist and specifically anti-Semitic) kind of extreme bile that a Nazi band projects can be extremely effective. Even a modestly-talented middle-of-the-road orthodox BM band like Poland’s Ohtar were able to make something nightmarishly gripping out of tunes that, had they been devoted to Satan, would have just been that familiar, same old tired BM. In that (but not only that) respect, NSBM is comparable to Christian Black Metal – it may sometimes be okay as sound or music, but that doesn’t make it right.

Given the existence of such subgenres as ambient BM and folk BM, perhaps the only essential ingredient of black metal is Satanism, in one form or another; and the good thing about Satanism is that it can mean many things to many people. Therefore you have the kind of religious goats ‘n’ horns Satanism that is the polar opposite of Christian metal, exemplified I guess by Watain. Related, but not necessarily requiring any actual religious belief, there is the mythical figure of Lucifer – the fallen angel, analogous to humankind, who were also cast out of paradise for rebelling against God’s stricture. Lucifer as the cosmic light-bringer with the key to forbidden knowledge. As the philosophical figure of the adversary, Satan can simply be seen as the ultimate rebel; and therefore the perfect icon for black metal regardless of one’s feelings about Christianity or goats.

Misanthropy: a group activity?

Some of the best black metal, even made by those with Nazi links (Burzum being the best and most obvious example) is metaphysical and above all personal. Like any music that people put their souls into, black metal isn’t ‘just music’ – and no-one could deny that in the early 90s, people like Dead or Mayhem or Burzum’s Varg Vikernes lived the music they made. Whatever his political views were or are, Vikernes has the sense to realise that, while his views may be shared by many, his thoughts and feelings are his alone and at its best, Burzum’s music is an expression of those feelings rather than an ideology. Filosofem, probably his finest work, expresses a kind of solitary desolation through lyrics that are almost abstract in their elemental bareness, making it endlessly appealing to those metal fans (and not just metal fans) who feel alienated from modern urban society and mainstream music.

As an alternative (or even an accompaniment) to this kind of individualistic ‘Satanic’ philosophy, National Socialism is highly inadequate. It’s too specific, too political, too ephemeral, too small. Anyone reading Mein Kampf can have no doubt that, to Adolf Hitler, National Socialism was the expression of a deeply felt personal philosophy. But anyone following it now should be aware that that’s exactly what they are doing – following someone else’s ideology, living someone else’s dream. Not to be too dictatorial about it, but surely even though black metal isn’t all that some of its proponents make it out to be, following a failed idea from the recent past is fundamentally not what the genre is supposed to be about.

Another key band that helped to ignite the idea of NSBM while definitely not belonging to it were Darkthrone, but as is obvious from looking at their work, their brief flirtation with the language of NS, even evaluated from a politically neutral point of view, undermined the impact of their music. The album which caused the controversy is also the one which cemented the band’s reputation as scene leaders, despite the fact that it is significantly weaker than the two which preceded it; 1993’s Transilvanian Hunger. The title track is one of the band’s – and the genre’s – best ever songs, but it also helps to illustrate where Darkthrone went wrong. The (not surprisingly) vampiric lyrics are classic black metal, an almost romantic view of misanthropy, forever making cold one of the keywords of the genre. The narrator is utterly divorced not only from society but from humanity. And yet, at the same time as putting forward this image of inhumanity/antihumanity, the band chose, famously, to include the statement Norsk Arisk Black Metal (‘Norwegian Aryan Black Metal’) on the album’s sleeve. What the Aryan (Iranian, or Indo-European or however you choose to interpret the word ‘Aryan’) people have to do with Norway is anyone’s guess. And if we are to presume that the vampire of Transilvanian Hunger believes in some kind of racialist ideology it can surely only undermine the song with baggage it definitely doesn’t need. Which raises another problem with National Socialist ideology in relation to BM; it’s too nice.

Nazism is too nice

This statement clearly needs elaboration. Misanthropy, whether or not it is a viable design for life, is all-encompassing. Nazism is by definition unpleasant, but – examining even the term ‘National Socialism’ – it most cannot be said to be anti-social (there’s no nationalism without nations, no socialism without society), let alone misanthropic. Therefore NSBM, although at first it may seem to our edgelord brethren like the ne plus ultra of darkness, actually has a reductive effect compared to the stance of the classic ‘second wave’ of BM. As a misanthrope, you can’t ‘belong’, but to be a member of some kind of elite society, you must ‘belong’. Sweet, really.

The Inclusiveness of true evil?

Black metal’s classic stance is that it supports ‘all the darkness of humanity.’ Variations of that dedication have appeared on album sleeves since the dawn of the 90s and are still going strong; a recent one in my own experience being Malaysian band Nefkarata’s (very good) Morts, which is dedicated to “All Evil In Man.” “All evil” by necessity includes Hitler & co, alongside Jewish serial killer David Berkowitz, Roman emperor Caligula, Idi Amin, the Moors murderers, Margaret Thatcher etc; a position of strength, if you’re into that kind of thing. But the most strident NS bands are so dedicated to that vague, misunderstood thing, ‘Aryanism’ that basically their ideology all about one short, albeit turbulent, period of the 20th century. And for all the true NSBM bands’ xenophobic, elitist rhetoric, it should be remembered that historically, Nazis were not only mainly Germanic – NSBM bands are as or more likely to spring from North or South America or Finland or Poland as anywhere else – but they were also – and for a totalitarian ‘might-is-right’ philosophy this is extremely important – the losers.

The glamour of atrocity

Like it or not, it’s undeniable that Nazism and especially the holocaust, have a certain frisson; hence the existence of cheesy Nazi exploitation movies like Salon Kitty, Ilsa, She-wolf of the SS and slightly more ambitious/artistic ones like The Night Porter.

Awareness of this frisson is at the heart of one of Stephen King’s better pieces of writing; the opening chapters of Apt Pupil, and a disapproving awareness of it drove the predictable moral panic which greeted Martin Amis’ deeply non-exploitative Time’s Arrow. That frisson, that special atmosphere is definitely part of the allure of certain kinds of NSBM. Especially the sillier kind that’s made by bands with ‘Aryan’ in their name. An album cover that features a photograph of Nazi atrocities with a typically spiky black metal logo has a kind of spurious impressiveness that makes it stand out amidst the hordes of unreadable scrawls, inverted crosses, enthroned goats etc. It’s pointless to deny that appeal because, much are there are plenty of NSBM fans who are convinced Nazis, there are probably more that just think it’s transgressive and edgy and therefore cool.

“Nazi Moods”

Perhaps the most artistically successful Nazi-themed or related black metal is the ambient kind. Partly that’s because – however unappetising it may sound from a pop-music perspective – the mixture of sombre, wintry and minimalist electronica with martial themes and archive recordings of WWII-era radio broadcasts, speeches and music is incredibly evocative and paradoxically, strangely emotionally involving just because of its atmosphere.

Similarly, the kind of artwork that accompanies these releases tends to be evocative rather than visceral. Black and white photographs of landmarks like the Berghof, Zakupy Chateau, Schlöss Wewelsburg, the Wolf’s Lair; crumbling monuments, statues or ruins. This kind of aesthetic has a deep appeal which matches the music – boring if you don’t like it, but strangely moving if you do, even for those who completely reject the ideology behind it. Compared to standard NSBM, this is a very grey area; whereas a record with a cover image of a mountain of emaciated corpses and a name like ‘Aryan Sturm’ can be reasonably presumed to be an NSBM album, a masterpiece like Kampf by the Italian ‘electro-apocalyptic’ group Tronus Abyss – which has many of the hallmarks of an NS ambient project as listed above, cannot (and shouldn’t) be easily labelled NSBM. The band does explore avenues of mysticism associated with the Third Reich, they do use martial themes and evoke the ruins of postwar Europe, but it would be difficult (and futile) to try to demonstrate that therefore Kampf is a ‘Nazi album’, any more than Oliver Hirschbiegel’s superb and similarly evocative Der Untergang is a ‘Nazi film’.

Banning Nazism; the ultimate irony

In recent times, the escalating paranoia about right-wing extremism (alongside, ironically or maybe obviously, a tolerance among people for actual right-wing extremism) has led to some high-profile cases of black metal bands being prevented from playing live, especially in Germany. Most of these bands have of course not been Nazis at all – and it is intolerable that these bands have had their art suppressed and livelihood threatened over what is basically the same kind of metal-phobic ignorance that led to US burnings of Number of the Beast in the early 80s. On the other hand, being provocative provokes, and there’s something a little bit embarrassing about people whose whole schtick is being scary and offensive getting annoyed because their work had its intended effect.

Still, banning any kind of art that doesn’t actually involve harm to third parties is a ridiculous, futile gesture which has (to my knowledge) never had any positive results except to energise those opposing the regime in charge. On the other hand, the last people who should be complaining are actual NS bands. In fact, they should be quite pleased; banning is a classic Nazi trait after all, and it should give them hope for the future of the reich.