A great article by Robert Barry has
appeared in The Quietus, titled ‘Song to the Siren: Pop Culture & the Warning Klaxon’. It concerns the use of
alarms in popular and classical music, a subject that I’ve long been interested
in, hence Barry references my essay ‘Alarms on Record’, which appeared in the
journal Static back in 2007.
Barry’s
article is at its most interesting when contemplating the appropriation and
re-appropriation of police alarms. Did ravers co-opt and disarm this sonic
symbol of oppression by turning it into a joyous rush in their tracks? Or is it
the case that ‘our physiologies never habituate. No matter how thoroughly our
conscious minds might know that a loud siren is rushing by is not coming for
us, our blood pressure still spikes, our pupils still dilate, and our hair
sells still flatten and twist’, particularly as the alarms of authority are
getting louder and more pin-pointed.
I
once played a whole set of records with alarms in, DJing at the Tate Gallery in
London of all places, and the effect of these sirens was certainly one of
increasing menace. At the start of the evening people were barely noticing the
fact that there were alarms in each track, but by the end there was the ‘creeping ambiance of low-level panic’ that Barry describes. It was
‘Dominator’ by Human Resource that proved to be the turning point. Security
moved in and told me that the pictures were being damaged by its maddening
clangour.
No comments:
Post a Comment