It is a fact, though not a widely discussed one, that we recognise
the patterns in the surface
noise of familiar copies of vinyl records. We may notice no more
than the occasional scratch
at a particularly quiet passage, or in the gaps between the bands,
but we receive the more
subtle characteristics of the individual copy nonetheless. Another
person's worn-in
(sound-scented?) copy of the same recording will be experienced as
somehow different from
our own copy - providing some attention is being paid to the music.
Old second hand records
have their "scents" engraved in the vinyl. They are alive with the
ghostly traces of their
previous owner, although the previous owner may or may not ever
have acknowledged that
they have left their "scent" on their property. This is natural, in
dealing with black
vinyl-plastic.=20
When we listen to music - say, current popular music, whatever our
taste - we hear the sound
that the recording artist, record producer (and by extension, the
industry) which provides it.
The "scent" is all theirs, like the interior of a new car. It is
the music we hear on the radio, in
clubs, in shops, in cars, and hissing from our neighbour's personal
stereo on tube trains
howling around the city. Later, we will hear ghosts of association.
Everybody knows about
those ghosts: about the records you played when this and when that,
and frequently when the
other. They are the ghosts of memory, of conscious and
semi-conscious experience; but these
aren't the ghosts we're considering here.=20
A different set of conditions are prevalent in digital sound. The
quality of the sound relative to
an equivalently sophisticated analog reproduction rests finally de
gustibus, about which non
est disputandum. Personally I find electronic music is well served
by the process of digital
recording, whilst the result with the kind of music "in which you
can hear the piano stool
creaking" 2 isn't so well-served. Whatever.=20
It has been made known that the compact disc is a creature whose
protective shell resists the
"scenting" that attends the more perishable vinyl. The recording,
and the reproduction will be
unsullied by the personal "scent" of use. I will sound just about
the same as it did the day you
bought it. Very fine, we might at first suppose. It'll always be
there, reliable. Well, no, it won't
always be there. The manufacturers' claim that Compact discs will
not wear out is true
enough: there is thought to be undetectable deterioration in sound
quality over measured time
periods of (no doubt) clinically calibrated simulations of everyday
wear-and-tear. Discs that
have done their statistically viable life simply crash, to use the
term extant in computer
jargonese. The damn thing won't play. The only sound will be the
disconsolate grinding back
and forth of the drive head, the tiny laser probe in the black box.
I think you'll find that it
makes the same noise whichever disc it is that won't go.=20
They won't wear out, but then they won't wear in. The extra we pay
for Compact Discs, we
are encouraged to believe we are buying something called "improved
sound quality" and
something else called "durability". In the first place, it is
precisely and uniquely the "improved
sound quality" that has "durability" (and that quality alone,
unless we are invited to consider
the relative bio-undegradability of their materials; and I think we
are not). Furthermore, the
improvement of the sound quality rests largely in its durability,
so these laboratory-proven
qualities can be assigned a single value "relatively constant sound
quality", which is a little
more precise a description that the ones in common currency, and
less flavoured with the
Siamese-Twin languages of advertising and marketing. The subtle
pleasures of aural hygiene
are to be balanced against the subtle pleasures of hearing your
ghosts in the old copies of
records you've had for years, which have mellowed and proven, and
have been impregnated -
now there's an interesting word - with the aural scent of the
owner.=20
None of this would advance beyond an acknowledgement of the
creeping dissociation of our
direct experiences from our experience of consumption, if it were
not for the transitional phase
we are presently occupying, where we consuming our music under a
variety of formats.
These will continue to co-exist into the foreseeable future. There
may well be a logical place
for compact disc as medium for public music, but the ghosts that
inhabit old black vinyl are
too precious to junk, like so much waste technology. We should
beware of giving up our
ghosts in the name of aural hygiene.=20
NOTES=20
1.September 1987. Unpublished.=20
2.David Thomas, formerly of Pere Ubu, The Wooden Birds a.o., in
an interview with the author, 1986.=20
--=20
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