Image Bands and their Discontents

Yeah, it seems like a riff on "faceless techno duos" with a side order of Kraftwerk's We Are The Robots. It's a cute image, it's kinda fun - and it's certainly instantly recognisable and perfectly memetic (last year, Thom and Nigel did an AfP DJ set in the robot masks, which was somehow hilarious and groan worthy?) But I don't know that "powerful" in the sense you imply is how I would describe it.

"Wearing masks" is totally an Image Band Meme. And so is "We Are Robots" (though obviously harder to pull off). But I find the intersection kind of a one-trick pony, I guess.

Still, interesting example.

space - magic fly

I guess the thing about Daft Punk that reads as "power" to me is the way that wearing the masks puts them at kind of a remove from their audience. It makes them kind of unreachable, as did that pyramid thing they toured around in back in 2007. So their image seems to place them *over and away* from their audience, which may not be their intent, but I'm sure it does affect how people interpret them.

"Over and away" from their audience? As opposed to artists who play "In The Round" like... erm... Secret Machines? I'm coming up blanks for any others, until you get to a stadium level.

http://www.capsule.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/lbk3.jpg

OK, fair point! "Sweaty VFW halls and coffee houses with no stage" level as well as stadium level.

But I also tend to think of "DJ booth not the focus, people dancing in the round" as something coming out of club culture - so maybe Daft Punk's "over and above" is a rejection of club culture and positioning as rock stars, instead? I have no idea. I know jack shit about Daft Punk in 2014, TBH, so I'll shut up now.

Fucking LOL! This is ridiculous:

OK, having gone through about 8000 pages of Tumblr, I still do not know the name of Paul Banks' solo band's drummer.

But I have, however, discovered that the lyric in question is actually "weightless, semi-erotic" pronounced with a non-rhotic accent, rather than "weightless semiotics".

Fuck it, I like my lyric better.

I dont think masks code as faceless at all - Masks and Costumes are pretty visual!

Well, it depends what it is a mask of!

I think Daft Punk just don't want to be seen!

It's funny how completely The Knife have owned that certain type of mask. Because I no longer think of them as "Black Death Doctor Masks" I now think of them as Knife masks.

Surely a mask of anything is pretty striking - if I walk down the street in a mask people gonna look.. whatever the mask is?

Unless you are a masked ball, in which case everyone will be wearing masks and it would be NBD.

Thinking about masks, I go to Montol every year, and most people are running about Penzance with masks on. And yes, it changes the dynamic, and you start to recognise people by their masks instead of their faces, then suddenly someone comes up to you without their mask later in the evening, and you're like "who are you?" and they're like "the person you were talking to and dancing with for an hour?"

Maybe I'm not understanding you. "Faceless" a la Burial, is an Image.

Wearing Masks, even though it is literally "Faceless" i.e. not showing one's face, is also a distinctive image. But it also means that anyone can put on the mask, and be that artist

But now I am thinking about PENGLAS!!!!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/Penglaz2.JPG/220px-Penglaz2.JPG

I dont really know anything about Burial, Im not sure if Ive ever even heard one of his records. I kind of have a preconception though, which must come from his image or at least what people write about

I'm beginning to wonder what wouldn't count as an image band. Almost every band has an image even if that image is "no image"

Yes, that was the conclusion that I reached and stated in the first post.

If newness is in the ears that hear and not in the sound that is made, then is image in the eyes that see and not in the sight?

Because everything has an image even regardless of whether we have seen that image - not because the image is hidden from us or presented to us as imageless, but because we havent seen it yet?

With Burial I know about the image but not about the music. With something else i know about the music but not about the artist.

But it isnt that Burial has no music, its just that I am unfamiliar with it

Well, the whole idea behind the thread was this:

Sure, all artists have "images", whether they deliberately plan them or not, whether you're aware of what the image is or not.

But yet, there is an idea in lots of people's heads that there are bands who are known or appreciated for their "image", and that this may have been planned and constructed as carefully as the music was constructed. And it's this latter thing that I wanted to get at.

well, all food is fast food if you think about how long food prep used to take.
but a restaurant in the fast food sector is a specific kind of fast food (and is sometimes a lot slower than other places!)

so maybe that is the same with "image band"?

penglaz is an excellent discovery

Insisting on anonymity is a surefire way of cultivating an image in dance music, where people by and large don't care what any of the producers look like or even who they are. Burial and Daft Punk have done that pretty much better than anyone.

andrew wk mentioned being influenced by the anonymity of dance culture but i don't see how that really translated into AWK unless he's actually not a real person.

[cue evil laughter]

I admit I haven't followed Andrew W.K.'s career since I Get Wet, but there was definitely a Happy Hardcore influence to his music, at least at that time. But yeah, the 'anonymity' part makes no sense to me.

In which case you need to catch up on Steev Mike and all the rest.

Then there's things like this:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19020-st-vincent-st-vincent/

Where, could someone please explain to me, how the *costumes* that Annie Clark wore during session work in her previous bands are somehow relevant to her current album?

Because I'm struggling with this.

Where, could someone please explain to me, how the *costumes* that Annie Clark wore during session work in her previous bands are somehow relevant to her current album?

It's kinda simplistic, but I think the idea is that it is interesting she was wearing someone else's uniforms yet now presents as fully herself. People are willing her into a sort of Bowie-life, so that to see her dressed in dated Polyphonic Spree robes is like looking at pictures of the Manish Boys: funny how slow the start was. I think the intention is to appreciate the leap, really.

People whose Reference Era is contemporary with your own individual era... it's really tricky. Tends to be either extreme love or hate.

Hmm.

There was a moment in the mid-2000s where lots of indie bands in the UK (Maximo Park and Editors and a bunch of others who merge into one) were supposed to sound like Joy Division and Gang of Four. New Wave and particularly JD had been a key phase for me.

Now here were a bunch of bands made up of ppl roughly my age, referencing records I'd listened to obsessively. Except what they were making was a kind of reverent pastiche, which took the New Wave canon's status as Serious Music for granted, and took pains to smugly position itself as 'anti-pop' whilst in fact providing the plodding soundtrack to countless boring student indie discos and festivals for stupid posh people.

I don't know if 'extreme hate' describes my reaction to that stuff but certainly apathy, boredom, coming close to hatred at points. TLDR ppl who insist on 'reviving' an aesthetic u have loved = dud

"took pains to smugly position itself as 'anti-pop' whilst in fact providing the plodding soundtrack to countless boring student indie discos and festivals" more or less describes Joy Division though doesn't it?

Semi. Less so than the mid-2000s stuff.

I think what you read as smug in jd I might read as weird

Springsteen and lots of image stuff in here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all

What I was thinking of specifically:

A week after closing down rehearsals at Fort Monmouth, Springsteen and the band start rehearsing at the Sun National Bank Center, the home of the Trenton Titans, a minor-league hockey team. The theatre at Fort Monmouth was secluded and cheap, but not nearly large enough for the crew to set up the full travelling stage, with all the proper lights, risers, ramps, and sound system.

Inside the arena, Springsteen is walking around the empty seats, a microphone in his hand, giving stage directions. “We can’t see the singers from this angle,” he says. “One step to the right, Cindy!” The crew moves the riser. Cindy Mizelle, the most soulful voice in the new, seventeen-piece version of the E Street Band, takes one step to the right.

Springsteen lopes to another corner, and, as he sets his gaze on the horn section, a thought occurs to him. “Do we have some chairs for those guys when they aren’t playing?” he says. His voice ricochets around the empty seats. Chairs appear.

The band gets in position and starts to rip through the basic set list in preparation for the Apollo show. Lofgren plays the slippery opening riff of “We Take Care of Our Own”—a recession anthem in the key of G—and the band is off. Springsteen rehearses deliberately, working out all the spontaneous-seeming moves and postures: the solemn lowered head and raised fist, the hoisted talismanic Fender, the between-songs patter, the look of exultation in a single spotlight that he will enact in front of an audience. (“It’s theatre, you know,” he tells me later. “I’m a theatrical performer. I’m whispering in your ear, and you’re dreaming my dreams, and then I’m getting a feeling for yours. I’ve been doing that for forty years.”) Springsteen has to do so much—lead the band, pace the show, sing, play guitar, command the audience, project to every corner of the hall, including the seats behind the stage—that to wing it completely is asking for disaster.

In the midst of the fifth song in the set, he introduces the band. As they run through a vamp of “People Get Ready,” the old Curtis Mayfield tune, Springsteen grabs a mike and strolls across the stage. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he says to the empty arena. “I’m so glad to be here in your beautiful city tonight. The E Street Band has come back to bring the power, hour after hour, to put a whup-ass session on the recession. We got some old friends, and we got some new friends, and we’ve got a story to tell you . . .”

The tune, thick with horns and vocal harmonies, elides into “My City of Ruins,” one of the elegiac, gospel-tinged songs on the 9/11 album, “The Rising.” The voices sing “Rise up! Rise up!” and there comes a string of horn solos: trombone, trumpet, sax. Then back to the voices. Springsteen quickly introduces the E Street horns and the singing collective. Then he says, “Roll call!” And, with the music rising bit by churchly bit, he introduces the core of the band: “Professor Roy Bittan is in the house. . . . Charlie Giordano is in the house. . . .”

When he finishes the roll call, there is a long ellipsis. The band keeps vamping.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Two spotlights are now trained on the organ, where Federici once sat, and at the mike where Clemons once stood.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Then again: “Are we missing anybody? . . . That’s right. That’s right. We’re missing some. But the only thing I can guarantee tonight is that if you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here!” He repeats this over and over, the volume of the piano and the bass rising, the drums hastening, the voices rising, until finally the song overwhelms him, and, if Springsteen has calculated correctly, there will not be an unmoved soul in the house.

For the next hour and a half, the band plays through a set that alternates tales of economic pain with party-time escape. While the band plays the jolly opening riff of “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” Springsteen practices striding around the stage, beckoning the imaginary hordes everywhere in the arena to sing along. There is a swagger in his stride. He is the rare man of sixty-two who is not shy about showing his ass—an ass finely sausaged into a pair of alarmingly tight black jeans—to twenty thousand paying customers. “Go, Jakie!” he cries, and brings Jake Clemons downstage to solo. He practically has to kick him into the spotlight.

A bunch of songs later, after a run-through of the set-ending “Thunder Road,” Springsteen hops off the stage, drapes a towel around his neck, and sits down in the folding chair next to me.

who will be the first truly normcore image band? or do they exist already?

Normcore? As in, band who dress normally? Boringly? Modest Mouse. The Shins. Death Cab. Etc etcetera.

Thinking how there are bands with a look and then bands where their look becomes a one- or two-word way to describe them. I know Iron & Wine and Bonnie "Prince" Billie aren't bands per se, but both became "beard" if you wanted to sum them up in a word (vs. their counterparts playing similar music). "Mop-tops" -- there's your Beatles.

Normcore?

http://www.jenniferheller.com/v3/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/NORM.jpg

noamcore

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01672/noam-1_1672796c.jpg

Both of whom look like they could have been in Modest Mouse.

Thanks for the Springsteen link! Talking on this thread seems to have turned into writing a 180000 word LOLnovel about image bands and non-image-bands and their discontents so I'm hungrily sucking all of this up as "research".

I guess I know what that P4k link on Clark was *trying* to say, using her former bands' costumes as "look at the leap from session player wearing other people's costumes to fully informed auteur" but it just fed into my irritation with the way that men are usually described doing stuff and women are usually described wearing clothes and I've tried to spend the entire thread flipping that around, noting both that "men wear clothes too" and also, "wearing clothes" is not just a portable meme but means something, depending on what the clothes are.

Tim De Laughter's alumni have turned up in all sorts of other bands I rate, and I never saw anyone describe what Benjamin Curtis or Phil Karnats were doing as "wearing robes" as opposed to "playing drums/guitar/etc" so it does irk a bit. There are times when discussing an artist's aesthetics feels interesting and worthy, and times when it feels like a lazy shortcut. I don't know what the difference is, though, because Clark talking about her stage set and her album cover choices and her choreography in the Village Voice interview over on the other thread was actually extremely interesting and provided a view into her working methods that really went beyond "wearing clothes".

Mumble, grumble, typical Branwell complaints, I know.

OH MY GOD THIS HAS BEEN STARING ME IN THE FUCKING FACE HOW COULD I NOT HAVE SEEN THIS

That the theatrical band are looking at the meaning and the narrative (and if they are dressed as Renaissance princes it is because they are doing a concept album about Machiavelli) which are weighted semiotics, and the "art" band are weightless semiotics, signifiers pointing at nothing, just for the sake of playing with image, pointing only at a reference to a reference, like Carlos D's empty gun holsters.

...

I was complaining upthread about Carlos D and his empty gun holsters and how he said that his look was *referencing* Blixa from Neubauten, and getting frothingly angry because the imagery that Neubauten played with *meant* something, in the context of post-War Germany, while D was using empty signifiers. However, I could also argue that in the construction and then destruction of D's image, and the whole narrative that became attached to that, to go onstage now wearing that get-up would be "Signifying Carlos D" with its own complex raft of associations and meanings and god it's too tempting to call that meme the perfect viral here heehee. Weighted semiotics become weightless semiotics become weighted again, in this recursive loop of imagery.

And then in this comic book I'm reading about postmodernism, in the section on feminism, I find this:

Male theories of sexuality - Freud's or Lacan's - literally cannot think of a woman except as negatively imaginary, incomplete, an empty signifier (the vacant womb).

Empty holsters. The empty signifier. FFS, the latin word "vagina" literally means scabbard - in the modern sense of weaponry, a holster is a literal linguistic vagina. THIS BAND ARE WALKING AROUND WITH LITERAL AND SIGNIFIED VAGINAS HANGING ALL OVER THEM.

I think I just broke mine own head. *dies*

I'm not sure what the appropriate thread for this is important cultural artefact is, but I'm just going to leave this here:

https://24.media.tumblr.com/0345403877347715f85e36d741933a2d/tumblr_n4p8ebQoD71txg5hvo1_400.jpg