I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: Deconstructing Beck (1998).

  Back in 1998, Illegal Art made (small) headlines by releasing this collection of songs that were comprised exclusively of Beck samples, none of which were cleared by Beck.  The whole thing was, well, illegal.  Naturally, there was a lawsuit, but Illegal Art is still around, and so is Beck, so who knows where this went.

I’ve always appreciated Illegal Art and the whole pastiche style best represented by Negativland and Plunderphonics.  And I believe the point of this CD was quite valid–you shouldn’t be allowed to sample artists simply because you have lots of money.  Since Beck’s label could afford to pay people, he was allowed to sample them.  Whereas small time and unknown artists could never afford to sample someone.  So, how is that fair or even a good way to create art?

So Deconstructing Beck seems like an awesome idea.  Beck in 1998 (just after the huge success of Odelay!) was known for his sampling.  So why not sample him?

But here’s where the theory is better than the practice.  Most of the artists on the disc aren’t making music, they’re making art or a point.  So they cut and paste Beck’s sounds into what is mostly 3-4 minutes of unrecognizable chunks.  Unrecognizable as Beck, unrecognizable as music.  Some of them reduce the sounds to essentially a drum beat.  Others have taking snips and sounds and have pasted them together in a very jarring way–which is kind of the point of a lot of this style of music.

Occasionally Beck songs are actually recognizable in the noise.  You can hear “Where It’s At,” a bit of Devil’s Haircut,” the obligatory “Loser” cut, “Jack-Ass” which in track two is played basically in its entirety but has the sound randomly dropped out, and for some reason, “Readymade” is in two songs. Some of the samplers go all the way back to Soulmanure and One Foot, but mostly they grab the spoken tracks–Beck as a young boy and the old man Ken–and they just sample them in chunks, not really manipulating them at all.

Aside from the general unlistenableness of the disc (and clearly it’s not really meant to be easy listening), it’s really disappointing that they were given the task of deconstructing Beck and in at least 5 of the songs you would never even know that it was Beck that was sampled in the first place.  What’s the point?  I realize that in 1998, technology wasn’t as easy to use as it is now, but I understand that these were made on a Mac, not with tape.  Not to mention at least two or three make songs that are actually interesting to listen to.  So, worthy cause or not, Deconstructing Beck is disappointing and isn’t likely to convince anyone.

[READ: March 15, 2014] Naming

Like Deconstructing Beck, I really wanted to like this book.  It is a collection of art by director David Lynch.  Lynch has been making static art for years.  I have another book of his called Images which is mostly photographs.

The premise behind this collection is Lynch’s use of words in his art.  So for instance the cover drawing is of a very simple house with the words “modern house” at the bottom.

Every picture in this collection has words in it, either written by Lynch or included in the photograph.  And they date back as old as 1979 .

He has a series of “industrial” images around New York and New Jersey which are interesting–but nothing special.  I enjoyed them more than anything else  in the book.  There are also a series of watercolors.  These are either done entirely with black or these are black and white reproductions of color prints (which seems unlikely).  I’ve never seen such uncolorful watercolors before.  Largely they are sort of smudgy pieces, often with words etched into them.

The introduction, by Brett Littman is kind of interesting, as he talks about the use of words in these images, but honestly the art has no power.  It strikes me more like doodles and snapshots–especially coming from someone as masterful with a camera as Lynch is. Here’s an example of one of the pictures.  It’s not exactly a “my kid could do that” drawing, but aside from a small smile, what does this do for you?