One thing I often look for in the music I listen to is a sense of cohesion. By that, I mean that a relatively unified energy, atmosphere, headspace, or sound palette that is maintained throughout a listening experience. This goes for albums, dj mixes, playlists, or radio shows that I listen to.
One thing that I’ve been acutely aware of, is that my own radio show does not follow this. I try to ensure that the transitions between consecutive songs aren’t jarring, but the show often features a lot of different genres and varying levels of energy, accessibility, and scale of confrontational/inviting nature put forward by the music. The only thing that ties things together is that I admire the work of all the artists, and want to share them with anyone who may listen to the show.
The usual HotK Radio episode may make for a jarring listening experience, and that may be unappealing for one way in which a lot of people, including myself, listen to music – in a functional setting where they are performing an activity and want to listen to something that soundtracks the activity appropriately. In these cases, the music is relegated to the background in some way; it is not the first priority. If I am writing, I don’t want the music to distract me. If I am reading, I want something that fits the setting or story that I am following. If I am going on a walk or bike ride, I want something that matches the weather and time of day. If I am exercising, I want something with energy that matches my exertion.
With more monotonous or less mindful tasks, such as doing chores or cooking, I exercise more flexibility with what I listen to. But aside from this, and when I am “discovery listening” to new music (eg. listening to my Soundcloud feed or checking out tracks highlighted by blogs or newsletters I am subscribed to), I am often listening to music that suits an activity either by enhancing what I hope to gain from the activity or doesn’t distract me by conveying something that could be incongruent with the task or mood. I am prescribing my music curational skills with the task of finding something that cultivates/fits a certain feeling or “vibe.” I hate to use that word because it’s so vaguely open-ended and overused, but it is an inescapably omnipresent term in this day and age.
I wrote previously about vibes in a piece discussing the jarring dissonance of hearing music that looks to conjure good vibes during times at which you feel unable to switch off and let that good vibe overtake you. One of my takeaways has been that good vibes are more accessible for those with a higher class standing, which is to be expected since financial security plays a huge role in determining one’s quality of life. But here, I want to talk about vibes in a broader sense, beyond just those that are good.
Robin James is one writer/scholar who has been diving deep into vibe analysis as of late, and her “What is a vibe?” article works as a solid jumping off point for unpacking the vibe and its use value in contemporary society.
Expanding beyond the commonly-held definition of a vibe as an expression of “an intention, a situation/one’s geographic and sociological position, an ambience, a state of mind, one’s material surroundings, and other sorts of contexts that orient present and future possibilities,” James also situates vibe as a phenomenological horizon – with horizon being a philosophical concept that refers to the intersection between a subject and their material/social conditions. As James cites from the works of Sara Ahmed and Linda Alcoff, these horizons are built from interactions with others and the larger world around us, impacting our capabilities for action, how others perceive us, and so on. In our experience of the world, we see that things are arranged so that some actions are easier for us to do than others. Certain social, economic, and cultural factors limit our horizons and influence us to act in ways that reproduce the hegemonic structure of society.
Put another way, our vibes are produced by society’s vibes, and the hegemonic powers exerting control over us need our vibes to be “oriented” in a way that is harmonious with the sustained reproduction of power structures. As is noted by Ahmed:
“we are orientated when we are in line. We are ‘in line’ when we face the direction that is already faced by others. Being ‘in line’ allows bodies to extend into spaces that, as it were, have already taken their shape. Such extensions could be redescribed as an extension of the body’s reach.” (from Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Ahmed, p. 101)
Capitalism requires workers to remain in line in order to sustain production through the exploitation of their labour. Workers are coerced to go into work and accept the conditions of labour and wages they are subjected to in order to maintain harmony in the workplace. The status quo has its own set of vibes that the bourgeoisie wants to maintain. If the workers were to demand higher wages, benefits, or improved safety conditions in the workplace, and took action in order to pursue these demands, the vibes are off. And in a post-industrial service-based economy where many workplaces are no longer based on producing commodities, a disruption in vibe sustenance may be just as impactful as a disruption in production on the factory assembly line is. With such a vibe shift, the class conflict inherent in capitalism, that is suppressed by the manufactured vibes conjured by a bourgeoisie needing to maintain a productive harmonious workplace, is brought out in full display to rear its ugly head and horrify the managerial class that utilizes all sorts of smoke and mirrors to obscure it.
To put a spin on Ahmed’s argument on orientation, it may not always be sufficient to merely say that we are in line when we face the direction faced by others. In many cases, we are in line when we face the direction that allows capitalism to operate without obstruction. And when a larger group of people turn away from this direction, making the transition from being members of a class in itself to becoming members of a class for itself, this new disruptive orientation has the potential for transformative change.
But to bring our discussion back to music, let us consider how music is a tool for orientation. Some kinds of music are more commerce-friendly. Think of the bland mayonnaise pop you hear at the grocery store, 2010s indietronica getting played at a “cool” restaurant, or swanky whitewashed takes on deep house that you’d hear softly pumping out from the speakers at countless clothing stores in the mall. This music, even if it is catering to a certain target demographic, is still very much palatable to the masses, and most importantly it can fade into the background of the marketplace. It is not played loud enough to be the primary focus of attention – that would distract the workers and consumers – but it would also be strange if no music was heard in those spaces. The music here works to soften the coldness of the transactions taken place. The realization that class society has reduced relations between people to nothing other “than naked self- interest, than callous “cash payment””, is blunted ever so slightly while The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” sways at a hushed tone through the supermarket speakers while the exhausted cashier asks the obligatory “Do you collect PC Optimum points?” while you try to pack your groceries in a way so that the tomatoes won’t get squished at the bottom of the bag.
I contrast these oriented music experiences with a couple incidents I witnessed at a former place of employment. I used to work at a rock climbing facility, and one of the perks of working at this place was that the staff got to control the music. Unlike other customer service positions I had worked in, where the facility music was an unchanging playlist in which the continual re-hearing of the same glitzy yet blunted lowest-common-denominator pop music reinforced the mundanity of the workday, here we at least at the freedom to incorporate some variety into day by giving it a different soundtrack from the day before.
One coworker of mine shared similar music tastes with myself, and had a particular affinity for harder/more aggressive shades of punk, metal, and hip-hop. While working together and discussing what to cue up next, one of us would often suggest something that we felt was toeing the line of what was palatable to play over the loudspeakers. We felt we had the judgment to know music that blurs the edge between accessibility and that which is a little too aggressive, esoteric, or out of line for the workplace. But sometimes we’d push the envelope, and although it was uncommon, there were a few instances in which the music was enough to generate a disapproving reaction from someone.
My coworker was once playing Bootlicker’s How To Love Life E.P., and as the blown out d-beat frenzy of “False Power” shot out from the speakers, at a sufficiently audible but not overwhelming volume, one patron came up to the desk and asked if we could listen to “something calmer.” Similarly, another climber once remarked their disapproval for Touche Amore’s Is Survived By and requested that we listen to something that “doesn’t have screaming in it.”
Now, one could make the argument that in the above cases, we were just attempting to be edgy by forcing our alternative music tastes on everyone. And maybe there is a kernel of truth to that, but regardless of what music is playing over the speakers, you’re not going to have something that satisfies everyone’s tastes. Yet in both cases, the argument remains that the music these two patrons heard over the speakers defied their expectations of what should be played in a public setting in which music isn’t the primary locus of attention. With the first individual, it’s hard to discern exactly what they wanted with the request for something calmer, but it’s likely that they didn’t have anything particular in mind. It is probable that anything that more easily fit into the background would have sufficed, and that the problem with the sound of that Bootlicker track was that it was not easily ignorable.
Many writers have commented on the recent transfiguration of music in the streaming era, where it is often reduced into categories of use-value for soundtracking certain activities. Open up Spotify and you’re bound to see an abundance of algorithm, corporate, and user-generated playlists containing music deemed appropriate for a certain task, event, or mood. Baldur Eldursson notes that:
“the emphasis on music’s use-value tricks the consumer into feeling they’re taking command of their consumption habits, where these are in reality constantly arbitrated by the vicissitudes of Spotify’s own licensing policies, contractual obligations, & financial interests. Not to mention the persuasive force of algorithmic recommendations in constructing the illusion of personal taste. A large part of Spotify’s success hinges on making consumers feel themselves to be active agents, despite remaining generally passive recipients of content.”
In their book Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Music Streaming, co-authors Maria Eriksson, Rasmus Fleischer, Anna Johansson, Pelle Snickars, and Patrick Vonderau remark that when streaming services “suggest that music streaming and listening should be used for utilitarian purposes, they also privilege specific ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. In particular, they insist on self-governance through mood control.” Music and listeners, like workers, are oriented to stay in line and be a cog in the machine that keeps the wheels of the status quo turning.
Liz Pelly has noted that streaming services reward music for having a flat affectlessness ideal for maximum use-oriented playlist dissemination. Music that is unobtrusive and wallpaper-like is more widely applicable to a variety of settings and tasks. But when music is stripped to its least attention-grabbing elements, it becomes less of a substantial entity with unique features, and resembles merely the malleable and nondescript formlessness of a vibe. For passive consumption, be it music or any other commodity, if platforms can inspire a “no thoughts, just vibes” mindset, then consumers are likely most open to receiving and paying for the greatest amount of homogeneously standardized commodities and experiences.
I want to make clear that there is a lot of music I enjoy that can and does find itself pigeonholed into background-based vibe listening. However, music perhaps has its most radical potential when it exists in settings where it doesn’t pass the vibe check, or puts forth an experience that is a departure from the mundane alienation of existence within class society.
One of the things that I’ve found most fascinating about attending concerts is that they offer the possibility for groups of people to act in ways that defy social conventions. When the experience of music is put forward as the primary focus of attention, rather than relegated as secondary or tertiary to productive or “leisurely” activity, social norms are often transgressed by both the audience and performer. With the audience, such acts like crowd surfing, stage diving, and moshing are bound to be observed at certain gigs. For many who attend these shows, this risky behaviour is part of the appeal, and even for those who hang in the back to observe the chaos rather than directly participate, it is understood and often expected beforehand that such acts will occur during a performance. To those who are outside of this subculture, such behaviour may seem bizarre and off-putting, perhaps due to genuine safety concerns or unfamiliarity with the etiquette and rationale for such practices. For some who are frustrated by the constraints acting upon their everyday lives, moshing may serve as a social outlet for uninhibited expression that would otherwise be suppressed within the current status quo. Now it is true, as others have astutely observed, that if this militant group action occurs only within the setting of a punk show, the hegemonic expectations of orientation within punk subculture and society at large are maintained if such communal expressions of confrontation are directed only at members within one’s own class and not at the bourgeoisie and its state-apparatus. However, if the show is wild enough that the cops show up, such an opportunity for revolt may occur.
But outside the realm of live performance, music has the potential to disrupt the processes of production and exchange if where it is brought to the forefront. I’m not just talking about when the volume is high, but also when music does something that is impossible to ignore. That could be done by presenting an energy that doesn’t match with that of the work being done, putting forward powerful emotions and messages in a time or place that is supposed to be devoid of them, or presenting a vision that is a drastic departure from one’s present reality.
A piece of music presenting lots of different ideas or sounds may lack a certain kind of cohesion through which great pieces of music are often measured. By this I mean sonic cohesion, in the sense that the songs of the record have a similar sound palate, flow smoothly between another, or their essence can be concisely depicted in an evocative cryptic single sentence album review on RateYourMusic. Such an experience can be very powerful to listen to, and this is something that many albums aim for, but such a singularity can allow for things to be appropriated into vibe territory.
In contrast, a lack of sonic cohesion signifies an unwillingness to vibe, or switches things up too often for one vibe to be established. It’s perhaps incredibly fitting for a powerful album to lack sonic cohesion, given how jarring and tumultuous radical change would be in uplifting society from its conventions. Through this disruption, the eclectic and radical are embraced and allow for the opening of new possibilities. One album that immediately comes to mind is SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, which is incredibly inventive, abrasive, and disorientating, and especially moving when it ends with the imagining of a “Whole New World.” SOPHIE’s uncompromised vision of the future figured prominently in the artist’s music, which transformed and pushed both pop and experimental music into uncharted territory throughout the 2010s. The ethos and impact of the artist’s work can perhaps be best outlined by SOPHIE’s vision of music’s potential:
“I think it would be extremely exciting if music could take you on the same sort of high-thrill 3-minute ride as a theme park roller coaster. Where it spins you upside down, dips you in water, flashes strobe lights at you, takes you on a slow incline to the peak, and then drops you vertically down a smokey tunnel, then stops with a jerk, and your hair is all messed up, and some people feel sick, and others are laughing” Bomb Magazine
When I think about the most powerful experiences I’ve had with the music I love, it’s when music gives me that thrill ride feeling. It’s dancing until exhaustion at basement club DJ sets with friends. It’s seeing an artist whose work you’ve long admired perform one of your all-time favourite songs of theirs after waiting for years for them to finally come through your town and play a gig. It’s the overwhelming rush of danger experienced by the live show being so loud that you come out of it in a state of sensory overload, relieved that you remembered to bring your ear protection this time.
For me, it’s cranking up the volume and hollering out all the words of George Clanton’s “Warmspot” with a close friend as you drive to the gig at the Lodge Room. It’s being overwhelmed by emotion and moved to tears when M83’s “Soon, My Friend” or Frank Ocean’s “White Ferrari” hits you at a vulnerable moment in your life. It’s having your mind blown the first time you heard that chopped up sample of Rick James screaming “GIMME SOME GANJA” as Kendrick Lamar launches into an insane flow over pulverizing 808s on the backend of “DNA.”
So vibing to music is cool I guess, but when music has the power to stop you in your tracks, pull hard on your heartstrings, give you an intense rush of energy, or radically change or validate your perspective on your life and the world, how can one not prefer that over something that will play idly as you enter data into spreadsheets, bag groceries, or cram for that biomechanics final you wrote four years ago and now have no recollection of the material you spent hours agonizing over? When music is at the front, so is living truly and freely, and I’ve seen enough of my existence to know a life dictated by the coercive forces of wage labour for mere sustenance feels much more like a slow death. And even if these intense and immersive musical experiences are made so in part due to their contrast with the mundane, underwhelming, and painful moments many of us go through, I feel through them a desire for the reconstruction of society to allow for more equitable access to such experiences so that we all can live them more often. Through a transition to a classless society, in which a minority no longer oppresses the majority, our lives would dictated by production only for meeting the needs of our community, thus freeing up more time for leisure, art, and quality time with others. I have no illusions that boredom, conflict, or suffering will be completely eradicated after the revolution, but so much of it that is unnecessary could be eliminated and replaced with something more communal, life-affirming, and fulfilling than what a million chill-productive-vibe playlists could give us.