This is part 2 of my reflection on a review of a recent “drone” music concert in New York City. Part 1 is here.

Now for further reflection:

In the process of his review, Ratliff explores meanings of sounds that take one into humming ruminations on essentials: musically we call these “drones,” but in theology they are, in a sense, the whole game, because theology is no more and no less than a humming rumination on essentials. We can explore such “droning” by theologically overhearing music reviews, and musically overhearing theological works, which are two ways of relating theology to music.

Consider Ratliff’s opening reflection: “There’s an irreducible element of music that connects metal, industrial music, power electronics and classical minimalism, and no word exists for it.”

Stay with that for a while. And then onto the next sentence:

“It involves deep pulsations; excited provocation through sound and concept more than traditional technique; low-end frequencies rarely encountered in life; long sustained tones enlarged through overdrive; or distortion or just force of hands on instruments.”

The kind of theology I write and teach often falls within the domain of “practical theology,” in which it is emphasized that whatever is worthy of being called “theological” must be “experienceable” by people. I stand by that, so long as what it means is carefully interpreted, but Ratliff’s meditation on (more…)

That was my first thought, or at least my fourth or fifth, when I read the headline over music critic Ben Ratliff’s review of a drone concert in last weekend’s New York Times. The print headline read: “A House of Drone, Ecstatic and Raw, With a Potent Aura of Largess.” I wondered: with this evocative headline, what are we really talking about here?

(I have frequently quoted and celebrated Ratliff’s reviews, such as here and here.)

The theological significance of drone may have to do with Holy Mother of God! Before anything else happens, take a look at this picture that accompanied the story, of Kim Gordon (formerly of Sonic Youth and now of Body/Head), taken by photographer Brian Harkin:

I hate to ask so pedantically whether you consider this as remarkable as I do, but ask I must. This is an ornate, even extreme position in which to posture an electric guitar. I can only surmise that by driving the headstock into the top of the amp, hunching over the upturned instrument from shoulder strength supported by delicately bent knee inside the carefully calibrated leg-stance, working the tremolo with her right hand, and steering the balance from her left hand, she is summoning feedback. For some reason the picture reminds me of the disturbing provocation of an upside-down crucifix, an (more…)

Here is another entry in the rock bestiary. (For more on the bestiary, the rock bestiary, and its theological significance, see here.) For this new entry, I submit an entire review by critic Ben Ratliff of a recent concert in New York City by the Canadian band “Duchess Says.” The review can be found here.

This is the best entry by far in the bestiary. Almost every line of Ratliff’s review is a report of gesture and its sonic significance. It includes lines like this about lead singer Annie-Claude Deschenes: “She sang words direly, squeaked nonsense, hollered and squealed and chanted and, occasionally, for effect, screamed. None of this was expressing the attitude of the song; emotionally they seem neutral. She was expressing their sound content, singing their riffs, as in ‘Narcise,’ or their beats, as in ‘Tenen Non Neu,’ which sounded like her own version of konnakol, the South Indian system of vocalizing rhythm syllables. For a quieter song she made a downward motion with her hands: everyone sat down cross-legged. She enacted her movements at the center of a circle, then softly crashed into a few men, rolling over them.”

This video from their 2010 performance at SXSW shows something of what this looks and sounds like:

Ben Ratliff, this writing, this report of other worlds summoned in and through this rock, is exquisite. Are you writing especially for us at R&T?

tb

 

In 2009, I proposed a rock bestiary here at Rock and Theology. As a further entry (search ‘bestiary’ for earlier entries), I propose this description of Neil Young from a recent show in New York City, as told by critic Ben Ratliff:

Neil Young is “not a wistful old man; he’s tense and obdurate even in the presence of pleasant or affirming words. Singing the first lines of ‘Sign of Love,’ presumably written for his wife — ‘When we go for a little walk / out on the land / When we’re just walkin’ and holdin’ hands / You can take it as a sign of love’ — he bared his teeth and looked ready to bite.”

“The Les Paul’s dark, fat, mattelike sound felt doomed out and righteous, to be admired from afar, but the Gretsch’s was something you’d want to take home and live with: brighter, more expressive, more fluent with its feedback. (He shook the Gretsch, holding it by the headstock and swinging it near the amplifier, toward the end of ‘Walk With Me,’ his encore.)”

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, USA

A year and a half ago, I proposed the idea of a “rock bestiary” that could be filled in over time with the animals — or the animalities — of rock, inducing wonder about the relationships between rock performers’ lived, bodied characteristics, features, wherewithals, and escapades, and their power to communicate some real claim to attention. In this way, I was inspired by the earlier Christian theological bestiary tradition, and still am. So one task of such a bestiary is to catalogue such animalities.

Toward that end, Grinderman’s recent show at Best Buy Theater in Manhattan gave much material. Or rather, Ben Ratliff’s splendid review of it did. Warren Ellis, guitarist and violinist, apparently showed why he deserves his own bestiary entry. Here is Ratliff’s vivid report about Ellis, who is a “brilliant performer, a muse, and a demolition expert”:

“Mr. Ellis, with a beard out of Leviticus, created half the band’s sound on Sunday whether he was touching an instrument or not. He played solos, some on a four-string tenor guitar, of such constant textual warping and concentrated messy power that they lighted up each song. He ran a violin through a wah-wah pedal and made an overwhelming throb, almost unpitched, then laid it down and quickly adjusted the sound while the little instrument screamed on. He held two maracas in one hand and hammered them down at perfect accent points on a clenched high-hat cymbal.

“And he practiced … lurching and hunching, whip-around leg kicks to turn his back at the audience. During ‘Evil!’ he lay flat on the floor, raising his head to shout the song’s key word in a kind of gasping situp. He shook his violin bow at us, raggedy with broken horsehair; this was all part of the music, too.”

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

While reading New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff’s review of a NYC concert featuring the bands Salome and Landmine Marathon, my thoughts went back to the rock bestiary I’ve slowly adumbrated here at R&T. My initial description of a rock bestiary is here, and there have been many entries since then.

Ratliff served up a splendid meditation fit for a bestiary entry. Describing Salome’s lead singer Kat, Ratliff writes: “Early in the band’s second song — “Master Failure” — Kat brought the microphone to her face with both hands, enveloped two small fists around it and began a deep, dreadful growl, altering the tone with the shape of her mouth, something like yawwheeawhhhheee. She might have been singing words; maybe not. Hard to tell. It was more an earth sound than a body sound; the imagined howl of undersea canyons.”

A rock bestiary, should one ever exist, would be focused on the specific and eventful ways that Holy Mother of God! Take a listen!

A rock bestiary, should one ever exist, would be focused on the specific and eventful ways that rock culturers — musicians, fans, roadies, and more — yield up bodily wherewithals that are the potential fruit of, and power for, more life. Or should I say, with reference to Kat’s “earth sound,” that rock musicians generate ever new ways of conducting into, or at least gesturing toward, a way of being that theology should be able to appreciate, a way of being that I would call (following Gilles Deleuze) “faith in this world.”

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