Episode 203
Songs With Limitations
"A composition created in the dark. A vocal piece destined to become a new kind of anthem. And quite possibly the most authentic song in the history of rock..."
In the latest episode of Themes and Variation, our podcast panelists share their takes on the theme "Songs With Limitations."
This time around, I (your humble host, Mahea Lee) am joined by co-host Martin Fowler and special guest, Lora-Faye Åshuvud of the band Arthur Moon to chat about musical constraints and the creativity they sometimes inspire.
This episode features selections from the catalogs of Dawn of Midi, Björk, and The Shaggs. How does a track sound when the instrumentalists are really listening? What makes the human voice so magical and appealing? And what does it truly mean to understand music?
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We'll see you in a couple weeks with a new theme and some new songs to break down. If you have any comments, questions, or theme suggestions, drops us a line at podcast@soundfly.com or find us on Twitter.
Transcript
[00:00:20] Themes and Variation is a podcast about music and perspectives, brought to you by Soundfly. I'm your host, Mahea Lee.
[:[00:00:44] It was kind of a tricky theme for me and my cynical side. In fact, for possibly the first time ever, I somehow picked a song I initially didn't even think I liked. But after a little research, and a lot of soul searching, I really enjoyed making this episode. And I hope you enjoy listening to it.
[:[00:01:29] Welcome back to Themes and Variation, I'm your host Mahea Lee, and today we are talking about "Songs With Limitations." I'm joined as almost always by Martin Fowler. Marty, how are you?
[:[00:01:45] Mahea: That's really great. And we're super excited 'cause today we're talking with Lora-Faye Åshuvud.
[:[00:01:53] Lora-Faye: I'm excited to be here.
[:[00:02:05] Lora-Faye: I was listening to Björk and thinking about the record that I was listening to, which is Medulla, and then I wanted to think about how the song that I liked was made and then I was like, oh, it was a limitation. So I went backwards, I guess. I like picked the song first and then the theme.
[:[00:02:38] Martin: Honestly, no. I mean, full disclosure, this, uh, time wise was a bit of a time crunch, but sometimes that's... A nice limitation, because it, it made me trust my intuition on this one. So, uh, Dawn of Midi, the band just came to mind immediately for their sort of very minimal, clearly, thoroughly thought through set of limitations that they impose on themselves to arrive at the sort of palette that they utilize in their music.
[:[00:03:55] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:04:03] Martin: This is "Io" by Dawn of Midi off of their, I would say only known record, Dysnomia. They're an interesting group. They were sort of a blip in time and space. They're not really a band anymore. They put this record out first in 2013, and then it was re- released in 2015 by Erased Tapes.
[:[00:04:40] Mahea: I hadn't even thought of that. That's a good direction. Sorry. Steve Reich, of course.
[:[00:05:18] Mahea: That ties to the album name too, though, right?
[:[00:05:24] Mahea: So I looked it up because it was not a word I was familiar with either, and I'm sadly unfamiliar with Dawn of Midi as well. It's a moon of the dwarf planet Eris, apparently.
[:[00:05:34] Lora-Faye: I think it's also like a language disorder. Like, if you have trouble remembering words and names of things.
[:[00:05:55] Martin: You know, Wikipedia says: "lawlessness, a child of the mythological Greek goddess Eris."
[:[00:06:02] Martin: And a moon of the dwarf planet Eris. So there you go.
[:[00:06:08] Martin: Yes and no. No, I mean, I feel like the processes that they honed to achieve these recordings feel very structured, very lawful. So I don't know. I feel a little bit torn about that.
[:[00:06:40] They started by playing and improvising pieces in pitch black, like turning off all the lights in a windowless room, so that they're essentially forced to only work with the sort of extreme tactile sensibility of hearing in a much more visceral way than if you can see what someone's doing... if you can see what you yourself are doing.
[:[00:07:17] Lora-Faye: I don't think I have.
[:[00:07:42] And I can imagine if you're in a pitch black room with other instrumentalists, any minute change in a groove or pattern or harmony is going to have a much more heightened, pronounced effect. So I think that's sort of the process it came out of. They essentially, like, locked themselves in a room three times a week for two years and recorded hundreds of hours of rehearsals, of improvisation.
[:[00:08:10] Martin: So when they were going through this process of developing this sound, the pianist, Amino Belyamani, was playing with essentially like, not prepared piano, but like muting the piano, which you hear all over this record. Essentially, reaching his left hand in, either muting the piano string so that it sounds a little more like a percussion instrument than a harmonic instrument, which, you know... piano is a percussive instrument.
[:[00:08:42] Martin: Very, very. But he's also messing with the overtone series of each individual string or set of strings that he's muting. Sort of like you would play harmonics on a guitar or bass, you know, piano just has these long strings, and if you hold a finger at a particular node, a point on the string that has a mathematical relationship to the string length, then you get a different tone than the one you get if the whole string rings. And so he's really messing with evolving what of those notes are coming out, or how many of the overall overtones of the fundamental are coming out over time, and using that as a textural palette.
[:[00:10:02] And so they kind of landed in this space where they're all toying with these particular elements of vibrations, of string vibrations, of membrane vibrations on the drums. The upright bass obviously is ripe for all of this as well, all this kind of territory. So where they landed is this very sort of percussive, muted palette that, um, just evokes rhythm and heartbeat and just like a real sense of space and propulsion that I just find so, so compelling and beautiful.
[:[00:10:52] No, I'm like, I'm serious. Like, that actually is scary to me. There's so much force behind a piano string that it's kind of a dangerous thing to do, which makes it super interesting, honestly.
[:[00:11:39] Martin: Totally. I had exactly that same thought. I think on the record it sounds like a grand piano, which again, definitely hurts my back to think about.
[:[00:11:56] Lora-Faye: Yeah.
[:[00:12:00] Martin: Yeah.
[:[00:12:02] Martin: Yeah. There's a real richness to those really long strings.
[:[00:12:06] Lora-Faye: Yeah.
[:[00:12:13] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:12:43] And, they all cite this African drummer who was a teacher of theirs at CalArts named Alfred Ladzekpo, who is a Ghanaian drummer, percussionist, and they're just like, "he was a genius, he taught us to play with our ears, not with our eyes," essentially. I think the record itself and the ethos of the record, it's their interpretation of a Ghanian style of putting listening over any other aspect of making the music.
[:[00:13:31] Mahea: Yeah, the responsiveness and layering, it feels very West African, maybe even Middle Eastern, where you have all these individual parts interacting with each other, but also just growing themselves in a way that's interesting and maybe a little repetitive.
[:[00:13:46] Lora-Faye: I often will refer back to that record, Marty, when I'm thinking about hockets. Because it feels like percussion hocket, you know, like they're so rarely interrupting each other. It's rare that everyone is playing a note at the same time, right? It almost feels like they're passing a melody around, like a monophonic melody around, you know?
[:[00:14:20] Lora-Faye: Yes.
[:[00:14:41] Mahea: Yeah, they opened for Radiohead, right, at one point? I'm not that familiar with them. Is that kind of the level they were operating at or was that a unique blip?
[:[00:15:18] Mahea: Yeah, me too.
[:[00:15:21] Mahea: I'm excited to listen to more of them. Is there anything else you wanted to say about "Io" or Dawn of Midi before we move on to song two?
[:[00:15:28] Mahea: Cool. Thanks for bringing it in. Uh, moving on to our next song then.
[:[00:15:52] Mahea: Lora-Faye, what are we listening to?
[:[00:16:00] Mahea: This is a good choice.
[:[00:16:03] Lora-Faye: I love this song so much.
[:[00:16:08] Lora-Faye: Ooh... This maybe is not necessarily... doesn't live in the question about limitations, but I just think it's one of the most beautiful melodies I've ever heard. Like I'm a Björk fan and sometimes her melodies just go right over my head and sometimes I'm like, this is the deepest thing I've ever heard, you know? It just depends on when it hits you. Um, anyway, that's like, that's my favorite thing about it.
[:[00:16:37] Mahea: Oh, I'm such a bad host, I should have said that. Yes, Lora-Faye and Marty are in Arthur Moon together.
[:[00:17:18] Because it sounds like Bjork's doing it by accident or like kinda feeling it out or whatever, but every single little individual choice, every nuanced articulation, every uh, every uh, what's the word I'm looking for? "Ornamentation." It was like extremely planned and precise and she's not messing around.
[:[00:17:51] Lora-Faye: Oh my God. Thanks Björk. I feel the same. I mean, yeah, I had a friend say the same thing to me once and it really changed the way I thought about melody too.
[:[00:18:06] Mahea: Whoa.
[:[00:18:11] Mahea: That's an impressive memory.
[:[00:18:15] Mahea: Ah, okay. That makes sense.
[:[00:18:20] Martin: I've heard her quoted as saying that the melodies that she keeps are the ones that she remembers the next day.
[:[00:18:26] Lora-Faye: So many people I respect have a philosophy like that and I just don't trust myself enough.
[:[00:18:36] Lora-Faye: Exactly. I still like mourn a song that I wrote when I was like 19 that I didn't record. Like I think about it once a day.
[:[00:18:53] Martin: Oh, plenty. Plenty, plenty, plenty. Yes. Um, I'm just thinking about what you said about writing melodies walking around. Now that you say that, I'm thinking about this particular tune and it feels like a very strong, confident walking pace.
[:[00:19:17] Mahea: Yeah, 2004, right?
[:[00:19:39] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:20:24] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:20:44] Mahea: Sorry, can you go back and just explain risers to me? To us, me and the audience, it's not just me.
[:[00:20:53] Martin: I do. Just real quick. So these like rises and falls are like... the first time I heard this record, I was like, "why is this happening? I don't want to hear that."
[:[00:21:30] Martin: Yeah, like I'm coming at it from like a strictly Western, like pop rock, jazz, R& B, like school of thought. And I'm like, it doesn't seem to have a discernible rhythm... there's no discernible notes. It's not a melody. It's not a harmony. What's happening here? And now I listen to the song and I find myself singing along with those. Like, I can't hear the song without them. There's no way that this song makes sense without them anymore.
[:[00:22:13] Martin: Yep.
[:[00:22:18] Lora-Faye: Exactly it's just that literally, yeah.
[:[00:22:39] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:23:01] But I think the thing that's kind of interesting about that is like the limitation is coming back to the limitations of youth... or like a time when... at least the way I hear that is like, you don't know all of the things that you can do. So you're sort of limited in your tools for making a song happen, right? In the same way that like when you're 17, you're limited in your tools for like what you know about the world and how you understand it. And so everything actually feels like more exciting and like more magical somehow.
[:[00:23:47] Lora-Faye: I would be delighted to be compared to Björk. And when I have been, I feel like I'm getting away with something. Um, but like, I come from a songwriting practice that's like folk music.
[:[00:24:11] And that feels like sort of the opposite of Björk. And I think actually, similarly to Marty, when I first heard Björk, I was like, "what is this noise? Turn this off." You know? Because was, you know, 16 or whatever, and I was really not accustomed to hearing music like this.
[:[00:24:54] Mahea: Do you feel that you're like, what role does your voice play when you're coming up with new material?
[:[00:25:04] The record we're about to make, or that we're like sort of in the middle of writing for, I was like, "it's going to be percussion. It's going to be a percussion record." And now I'm thinking maybe I'll scrap it and make a vocal record. Sorry, what was your question?
[:[00:25:17] Lora-Faye: Oh, yeah. Um, I don't start with melody. I start with like a world and then I like do vocal improvisations over the world until a melody and some, um, like syllables emerge. And then I write from there.
[:[00:25:36] Lora-Faye: Almost all the time. I feel like that's normally how we end up writing our songs when we're collaborating.
[:[00:25:52] Lora-Faye: Sorry.
[:[00:26:11] Martin: That's funny because I am still a rudimentary pianist, so I actually turn to the piano for that purpose sometimes, being more of a string instrument, grid tied individual.
[:[00:26:52] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:27:22] Obviously I'm not a piano player. If I were a piano player, I probably wouldn't feel this way, but to me like that feels extremely exciting. You can just have the idea and get it out as quickly as possible and then like continue to have ideas and move on and not be sort of mediated by instrument. And I feel like I can really hear that on this record, like the excitement of like fast and loose discovery and just like the building blocks of an idea, all just sort of like gushing out is how it sounds to me.
[:[00:28:09] I shouldn't say "only," but like one very compelling way to create drama and interest, especially in art, is to put people sort of at a demonstrated limitation of their ability, whether it's speed, whether it's range, whatever it might be, such that it's articulating the yearning, the emotion of a moment in a particular way.
[:[00:29:06] Lora-Faye: And that's why we love folk music. Boom, boom.
[:[00:29:28] There's something about her whispery voice too that just draws you in.
[:[00:29:37] Lora-Faye: Oh my god, I don't know.
[:[00:29:41] Mahea: Oh, right. Why don't you explain that a little bit, Marty, for listeners?
[:[00:30:17] And so Björk, with this very sort of both intimate and extremely loud present way of singing, it just works for her to emote and explore the entire range of her vocals in terms of dynamics using this mic handheld in the studio. So famously, she's made, uh, several records using the 58, which is normally not a studio microphone.
[:[00:30:51] Lora-Faye: I think her voice has like so much breath and overtone that like some kind of like really sensitive condenser might feel like too bright. Like there's just too much overtone coming through.
[:[00:31:11] Lora-Faye: Okay. The other cute detail I learned is that Beyoncé was like scheduled to come in and sing on the record. And then there was like... she got sick or something and couldn't come in. And people were like, Why Beyoncé? And she was like, "it's an album about voices and she has the most amazing voice." I would have loved to hear that.
[:[00:31:34] Lora-Faye: Yeah.
[:[00:31:39] Lora-Faye: Yeah.
[:[00:31:51] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:32:03] Martin: Had you not heard that yet, Lora-Faye?
[:[00:32:06] Mahea: It's intense. Yeah. So this is called "Philosophy of the World," by a band called The Shaggs, who I did not know by name before this theme got brought up. Since this is your first reaction, throw some thoughts out there, Lora-Faye.
[:[00:32:34] Martin: They clap on one and three.
[:[00:32:44] Mahea: So they have been called the best band and the worst band alive in pretty much equal measure... well, probably worst band... they probably get that more often than best.
[:[00:33:19] Marty, were you familiar with The Shaggs?
[:[00:33:33] Mahea: You want me to let you in on it?
[:[00:33:35] Mahea: Okay, so The Shaggs are quite possibly the most authentic band in Western music. They were initially a trio of sisters, eventually a quartet from Fremont, New Hampshire.
[:[00:34:05] And he decided he was going to make that happen, whether his daughters liked it or not. He did, in fact, marry a strawberry blonde woman, have two sons, and then his daughters.
[:[00:34:26] Martin: Oh no.
[:[00:34:30] They're just this weird little blip in music history that's tragic but also inspiring. They're pure authenticity, right? They had very little musical training at all.
[:[00:34:47] Mahea: It's interesting you say that.
[:[00:34:55] Mahea: Okay, I can shed a little light on that, I think. Dorothy "Dot Wiggin" is the lead vocalist and lead guitarist. She's the one who went on to have her own band, the Dot Wiggin Band. And I watched some interviews with some of those band members and one of the producers who had a lot of really interesting things to say about how she sees music.
[:[00:35:29] And so he felt that they knew what they were doing to an extent. He said Helen, the drummer, knew what she was doing rhythmically, it's just not what Dot and Betty were doing.
[:[00:35:56] [tracks]: [music]
[:[00:36:07] That said, the engineer who recorded their unreleased second album also said their performances were really weak during that recording session, which is why the second album didn't come out, but that the members of the band didn't seem to register that the performances were weak, which is kind of an existential thing to think about.
[:[00:36:31] I think the reason that they are celebrated by a lot of people, even in the mainstream musical community, is this spirit of authenticity. What they put forward is what they meant to put forward. It's not hidden behind, like, strategy or anything like that. It's just pure music, whether you like it or not.
[:[00:36:53] Martin: Kind of.
[:[00:37:02] They recorded this album, Philosophy of the World, same name as the song, in 1969. A thousand copies were made, but somehow only a hundred of them survived. Nobody knows exactly what happened to the other 900, but the speculation around that is either that the owner of the studio stole them, which seems like a weird move, or that their father Austin Wiggin refused to distribute more than a hundred because he was afraid someone would steal their sound.
[:[00:37:39] Martin: So what do you qualify as the specific limitation that you're thinking about here?
[:[00:38:04] Um, I did some research for a Soundfly video about air guitar recently, and someone made the point that air guitar might be the purest niche of music because it is just unadulterated enthusiasm and communication without all the like gatekeeping that goes around actually making music or the self doubt, you know?
[:[00:38:34] Mahea: Totally. 'Cause you know, like, I think we've all experienced this in music, where the more you know, the more you expect of yourself. LIke I've been playing piano since I was four years old. I don't think I'm a great pianist and I hate that, but my brain won't let me get there, you know? When logically it's like, well, of course I am. It's been 30 years or whatever.
[:[00:39:12] Martin: Lora-Faye, are you still with us?
[:[00:39:30] Martin: To be clear, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[:[00:39:53] And a big part of that is because I feel like... Like what you're saying, it's like the more you are able to define and codify, the less magical it feels and the more you're just sort of like aware of trope. And actually, like the more aware you are of the limitation of music or like the perceived limitation, right?
[:[00:40:30] Mahea: Mm hmm.
[:[00:40:33] Mahea: Totally.
[:[00:40:51] And that being said, Lora-Faye you're one of the most well informed, well educated, and eloquent people I know, so, like, you have to make a really tough choice to, like, not know conventional nomenclature for things so that you make this process available to yourself.
[:[00:41:23] And it's like, you're still refining your taste. You're still understanding your intuitive sense... your, uh, non linguistic sense of what is happening inside of your ears and your body that is like a very, very valid process. And just a different one from being like, "Oh, well, I know if I tune my 808 kick drum to the fundamental frequency of the bass so that it's in line with the baseline I have in this production, then I know that it's going to work correctly."
[:[00:42:05] Lora-Faye: Cale made us mix that out.
[:[00:42:09] Lora-Faye: I still regret it.
[:[00:42:25] Mahea: Yeah.
[:[00:42:28] Lora-Faye: It's listening.
[:[00:42:52] And like Marty's saying, a lot of this ultimately comes down to like the nomenclature, like you know terms or you don't know terms. But having a desire to learn and grow, that's something that I think any good musician has, whether they want to learn theory specifically and call it that or not.
[:[00:43:32] Martin: That's the thing that fascinates me, and like, now that I'm seeing this full picture, like, I really... I really get that.
[:[00:43:52] Or, we can say, "I don't prescribe to that, I'm listening to something else." And so the thing that I'm listening for is not the thing that you're listening for, which is like, a steady beat and an in tune harmony, like, who gets to say that that's all that music gets to be?
[:[00:44:17] Martin: It's challenging.
[:[00:44:32] And it took me a while to get rid of that and once I did and allowed myself to kind of listen to the song in a different way than I typically would listen to a song with lyrics and a guitar and a bass and drums... when I got away from that and like listened to each component individually or really focused on the spirit of the lyrics and the vocal delivery, I started to like all the pieces. I just didn't fully understand how they fit together. And that makes me want to listen to it more instead of less, you know?
[:[00:45:14] But it does. And then it like comes in and out of like being locked in and not.
[:[00:45:25] Lora-Faye: Yeah, it's like the brain tries to make sense of it.
[:[00:45:41] Mahea: And those freaking doors didn't meet the floor.
[:[00:45:56] Mahea: Yeah. And then the little lines would jump out to you every now and then, and you'd be like, oh, I recognize what that person's working on.
[:[00:46:11] Um, he brought up that music teachers tend to understand what's good about The Shaggs on like a fundamental level, because their music is what it sounds like when your student has a breakthrough. Like all the emotion you feel as a teacher tied up in that. It feels like that.
[:[00:46:39] Mahea: There's a cover on YouTube by, I think his name's Andrew Thoreen. I gotta start being better at reading people's names, but it is beautiful and it really makes all these little interesting details in the music that a more conventionally trained musician would have never thought of just kind of pop.
[:[00:47:13] Mahea: Interesting selections. They're all going to be sitting with me for a while. Lora-Faye thank you so much for joining us today.
[:[00:47:21] Mahea: Of course. Um, so you guys are working on an album right now?
[:[00:47:37] Mahea: That's exciting.
[:[00:47:41] Lora-Faye: Um, on the World Wide Web, there is a band called Arthur Moon that lives inside of the Spotify algorithm, um, and also the Apple conglomerate.
[:[00:48:23] And then, um, we're playing, Marty unfortunately will not be there because we're stripping back to like a little vocal trio to open for Dessa, um, in October on a couple shows.
[:[00:48:38] Mahea: So there you have it. Thanks for listening to the episode "Songs with Limitations." I have been and will continue to be your humble host, Mahea Lee.
[:[00:48:51] Until then, you can find us on X, formerly Twitter, @ThemesVariation, or you can check out older episodes of the show on the podcast platform of your choice.
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