Saturday, April 19, 2003

Oh, and one more thought about the White Stripes. I notice that, like Rage Against the Machine, they have made a point of noting in the CD booklet of Elephant (is that what it's called? The CD booklet? Perhaps they're 'liner notes'...?) that the whole album was made without any recourse to computers. It's all reel-to-reel recording, organic sounds and the like.

"So what?", was my first response. This romanticisation of the acoustic, the 'back-to-basics' and 'stripped-back', seems just so silly.

In fact, statements like these, renouncing technology, always remind me of something that I heard Björk say once, in a documentary about the making of her Homogenic.

The good Ms Gudmundsdottir said, and I am paraphrasing, that people have a tendency to complain that computer-made music has no soul. However, as she goes on to say in her quaint, Icelandic manner, it's no good in these situations to point the finger at the computer for doing wrong. On the contrary: if the music has no soul, it is only because a person hasn't put it there. Computers are, after all, really only a tool like any other musical instrument.

And on that note, I'll say goodnight. Sweet dreams.

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