Simile - The Eternal Return (Of 2007)

  • Simile - The Eternal Return (Of 2007)
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    Let’s go back a ways. To when limbs in tight jeans (black) and too-short leather jackets (also black) were woven through one another, knotted in front of a bath of bass and lasers - light and noise pouring from Daft Punk's 2007 Alive pyramid like hyperventilating breath. It was a restless time. When summer stereos were rasping with CSS, when you could tune into Triple J at any point and be guaranteed of hearing 'Icecream' by Muscles. When every one of my friends eased into Friday nights with Futuresexlovesounds and insulated themselves against Monday mornings with Oi Oi Oi by Boyz Noize - (FYI - sounds like oversexed techno being wrung out of a partially dismantled amplifier). And when Justice's Cross became, for me, closer to lifestyle decision than musical taste.

    This week it was announced that a ‘2007: A Year In Dance’ would be moving north for an evening. So at the end of April, Sydney, just like Melbourne before it, can relive 2007 in one night of partying - a sweat-drenched confluence of electroclash, indie-electro, new rave, nu-disco...and other abruptly fused genre names. Zero prizes for anyone that guesses at my (I assure you totally genuine) excitement. 
     

    I Still Remember



    Nostalgia is important for context and reflection, and something to climb into when you’re feeling low. But for the sentimentally disposed (me) it’s also a dangerous drug—a time travel that alters the nature of the memory with each trip. Psychologists seem broadly to view nostalgia as a revisiting of self, a temporary occupation of a previous you. It’s easy to get stuck there. In the 16th century Johannes Hofer coined the term in relation to Swiss mercenaries. Far from the neutrality that has defined them in modern history, the Swiss once used to fight just about anyone so long as the other side paid them. And their proficiency with pointy sticks (Halberds) kept them in the service of foreign armies and away from the Alps they so loved. So they pined for the hills. And pined in such great number and with such an intensity that it was designated a mental disorder and crippled morale. And it can be crippling if where you nostalgize for becomes where you mentally live. But I don’t think that’s what has me trawling through the Ed Banger Records back catalogue…

    Bargain with the Past



    I remember 2007 as a kind of tipping point, a musical and personal baptism. It felt like the start of a lot of things—bands pushing themselves through the internet, electronic music being recorded and performed entirely digitally and with increasingly accessible technology. I fondly recall Radiohead inviting us all in 2007 to buy In Rainbows and pay whatever we liked - a gesture that seems now to foreshadow the music industry’s interactive online future. And now, almost ten years later, it looks like we’re about to witness the first US number one record to possess no physical sales at all if Yeezy’s The Life of Pablo keeps streaming like it has been. I feel like 2016’s reverberations with 2007 are a sort of bargain with the past.

    The Shape of Time



    Time’s been most popularly understood as riverlike: flowing in a single direction from the past, through the present and into the future. But thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche have resisted this teleological urge to regard nature as something ‘designed’ by human doctrine or perception. In his work The Gay Science, Nietzsche frames the concept of endlessly recurring time, the same lives, the same events lived over and over, as a question to the reader. The same question that was moulded into a statement to fit the mouth of character Rustin Cohle in True Detective as he drawls about the secret fate of all life




    But these two ideas are polar extremes. The ongoing recurrence of 2007 isn’t a reliving, but an extension of the original experience—closer to what Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard discusses in his 1843 work Repetition (Gjentagelsen) where a protagonist’s love for a girl is a scaffold for his ideas about how repetition occurs through time, but is constantly moving yet always connected to the future.

    Serpents and Foxes



    This concept, seemingly halfway between time as river and time as tail-devouring snake, seems exactly where 2007 seems to be leaking into the current day. Firstly Fleet Foxes are, according to guitarist Christian Wargo, getting back together. In the summer and autumn of 2007, Robin Pecknold and his band of velvet-throated minstrels were in some bucolic Seattle studio/lodge/retreat (I imagine) recording their feted first self-titled record. And right now, if the rumour mill doth turn true, they’re readying themselves for a rebirth.


    Tragedy’s Wake



    Second and similarly, in 2007 the Stone Temple Pilots were having talks amid a six-year hiatus about a promoter’s offer to headline several major festivals in exchange for many American dollars. They reunited. Now 2016, clearly marked by the tragedy of Scott Weiland’s passing late last year, is a different story with a different singer, but apparently they’re in the final stages of choosing a vocalist. And submissions are closed. So soon they’ll once again slide back into denim and leather and ooze onto international festival stages.

    And nothing ripples like tragedy’s wake. Another relived memory of 2007 was watching A Tribe Called Quest celebrated at VH1’s 4th Annual Hip Hop Honors alongside Missy Elliott and Snoop Dogg. And a new wave of well-deserved adulation is currently breaking over ATCQ following the devastating passing of legendary MC Phife Dawg just over two weeks ago.


    Pure Soul



    I want to end with the central pillar of the 2007 electronic music experience. That marble column is a band called Soulwax. The brothers Dewaele had already wrapped themselves around instruments and made an incredible album by 2004, concocted a visionary album of remixes of their own songs by 2005, and then arched themselves over a mixing desk to put together a DJ mix album of other acts called This is Radio Soulwax in 2006. In 2007 came their remix compilation album Most of the Remixes… which showcased their classic reimaginings of artists like KlaxonsThe Gossip and Justice. And they’re at it again. After last year’s remix of Tame Impala’s Let It Happen Soulwax have shown their kaleidoscopic colours once more and composed a four-star continental breakfast of a soundtrack, with more genres than you can possibly stuff into your face at once. And just like their various project and moniker adjustment of the mid to late 00s it’s all done under a collection of pseudonyms. As if their reappearance wasn’t quite mystery enough. Who knows what they might do in another nine years?

     

    -Paul Cumming

     

     

    Simile is a weekly series by Cool Accidents fave/regular Paul Cumming aka Wax Volcanic that unravels current moments in music and follows the threads to some strange and strangely familiar places.

     

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Let’s go back a ways. To when limbs in tight jeans (black) and too-short leather jackets (also black) were woven through one another, knotted in front of a bath of bass and lasers - light and noise pouring from Daft Punk's 2007 Alive pyramid like hyperventilating breath. It was a restless time. When summer stereos were rasping with CSS, when you could tune into Triple J at any point and be guaranteed of hearing 'Icecream' by Muscles. When every one of my friends eased into Friday nights with Futuresexlovesounds and insulated themselves against Monday mornings with Oi Oi Oi by Boyz Noize - (FYI - sounds like oversexed techno being wrung out of a partially dismantled amplifier). And when Justice's Cross became, for me, closer to lifestyle decision than musical taste.

This week it was announced that a ‘2007: A Year In Dance’ would be moving north for an evening. So at the end of April, Sydney, just like Melbourne before it, can relive 2007 in one night of partying - a sweat-drenched confluence of electroclash, indie-electro, new rave, nu-disco...and other abruptly fused genre names. Zero prizes for anyone that guesses at my (I assure you totally genuine) excitement. 
 

I Still Remember



Nostalgia is important for context and reflection, and something to climb into when you’re feeling low. But for the sentimentally disposed (me) it’s also a dangerous drug—a time travel that alters the nature of the memory with each trip. Psychologists seem broadly to view nostalgia as a revisiting of self, a temporary occupation of a previous you. It’s easy to get stuck there. In the 16th century Johannes Hofer coined the term in relation to Swiss mercenaries. Far from the neutrality that has defined them in modern history, the Swiss once used to fight just about anyone so long as the other side paid them. And their proficiency with pointy sticks (Halberds) kept them in the service of foreign armies and away from the Alps they so loved. So they pined for the hills. And pined in such great number and with such an intensity that it was designated a mental disorder and crippled morale. And it can be crippling if where you nostalgize for becomes where you mentally live. But I don’t think that’s what has me trawling through the Ed Banger Records back catalogue…

Bargain with the Past



I remember 2007 as a kind of tipping point, a musical and personal baptism. It felt like the start of a lot of things—bands pushing themselves through the internet, electronic music being recorded and performed entirely digitally and with increasingly accessible technology. I fondly recall Radiohead inviting us all in 2007 to buy In Rainbows and pay whatever we liked - a gesture that seems now to foreshadow the music industry’s interactive online future. And now, almost ten years later, it looks like we’re about to witness the first US number one record to possess no physical sales at all if Yeezy’s The Life of Pablo keeps streaming like it has been. I feel like 2016’s reverberations with 2007 are a sort of bargain with the past.

The Shape of Time



Time’s been most popularly understood as riverlike: flowing in a single direction from the past, through the present and into the future. But thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche have resisted this teleological urge to regard nature as something ‘designed’ by human doctrine or perception. In his work The Gay Science, Nietzsche frames the concept of endlessly recurring time, the same lives, the same events lived over and over, as a question to the reader. The same question that was moulded into a statement to fit the mouth of character Rustin Cohle in True Detective as he drawls about the secret fate of all life




But these two ideas are polar extremes. The ongoing recurrence of 2007 isn’t a reliving, but an extension of the original experience—closer to what Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard discusses in his 1843 work Repetition (Gjentagelsen) where a protagonist’s love for a girl is a scaffold for his ideas about how repetition occurs through time, but is constantly moving yet always connected to the future.

Serpents and Foxes



This concept, seemingly halfway between time as river and time as tail-devouring snake, seems exactly where 2007 seems to be leaking into the current day. Firstly Fleet Foxes are, according to guitarist Christian Wargo, getting back together. In the summer and autumn of 2007, Robin Pecknold and his band of velvet-throated minstrels were in some bucolic Seattle studio/lodge/retreat (I imagine) recording their feted first self-titled record. And right now, if the rumour mill doth turn true, they’re readying themselves for a rebirth.


Tragedy’s Wake



Second and similarly, in 2007 the Stone Temple Pilots were having talks amid a six-year hiatus about a promoter’s offer to headline several major festivals in exchange for many American dollars. They reunited. Now 2016, clearly marked by the tragedy of Scott Weiland’s passing late last year, is a different story with a different singer, but apparently they’re in the final stages of choosing a vocalist. And submissions are closed. So soon they’ll once again slide back into denim and leather and ooze onto international festival stages.

And nothing ripples like tragedy’s wake. Another relived memory of 2007 was watching A Tribe Called Quest celebrated at VH1’s 4th Annual Hip Hop Honors alongside Missy Elliott and Snoop Dogg. And a new wave of well-deserved adulation is currently breaking over ATCQ following the devastating passing of legendary MC Phife Dawg just over two weeks ago.


Pure Soul



I want to end with the central pillar of the 2007 electronic music experience. That marble column is a band called Soulwax. The brothers Dewaele had already wrapped themselves around instruments and made an incredible album by 2004, concocted a visionary album of remixes of their own songs by 2005, and then arched themselves over a mixing desk to put together a DJ mix album of other acts called This is Radio Soulwax in 2006. In 2007 came their remix compilation album Most of the Remixes… which showcased their classic reimaginings of artists like KlaxonsThe Gossip and Justice. And they’re at it again. After last year’s remix of Tame Impala’s Let It Happen Soulwax have shown their kaleidoscopic colours once more and composed a four-star continental breakfast of a soundtrack, with more genres than you can possibly stuff into your face at once. And just like their various project and moniker adjustment of the mid to late 00s it’s all done under a collection of pseudonyms. As if their reappearance wasn’t quite mystery enough. Who knows what they might do in another nine years?

 

-Paul Cumming

 

 

Simile is a weekly series by Cool Accidents fave/regular Paul Cumming aka Wax Volcanic that unravels current moments in music and follows the threads to some strange and strangely familiar places.

 

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