04.20.2009
THE GLISTENING LISTEN (NOT A PERYODIKO REVIEW)
THE AUTHOR OF “REPEAT WHILE FADING” CHALLENGES HOW YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC, AND TALKS ABOUT THE NEW PERYODIKO RECORD TO ILLUSTRATE.
The guys from Peryodiko look like “now” people: they are clad in “now” wear, speak in “now” tongues, and live in a “now” reality. When they start playing, however, you get a sense that time has went on a mad centrifuge, sort of how a transistor radio would sound when it’s picking up random signals, like the dial has gone amok, like it’s the Last Day on Earth. Time has stood still, wearing clothes that belie having belonged to any point in history: perhaps a white shirt, perhaps a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles; that is to say, it’s there but not there at all. Time, we must remember, is congruent to mortality, and it renders us open to pain. Peryodiko’s music, fortunately, rids us of that. To say that it is timeless would perhaps be a tall thing to say this early, but trust me, Vin Dancel and company—God bless them—exist in a vacuum of creativity all their own. No, they’re not math-rock nerds, and their songs almost always sound vaguely familiar (though you can’t necessarily put your finger on it), but it is precisely this quality, this unverifiable standing-hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of familiarity, that makes music like theirs beautiful. Perhaps that’s what music snobs call “pop”—and if it is, shit, I’d like more of it, please (regardless of what era it’s from; though yes, I claimed in Repeat While Fading that Peryodiko sounds either 1977 or 1994).
The songs that comprise Peryodiko—yes, it’s self-titled—they’re not genre-specific songs. They’re just songs. Look, if you don’t belong to that pack of low-lives that fondly address themselves as “the music press” (hey, count me in), and if you don’t own a record store and aren’t saddled with the sorry chore of labeling your racks and shelves, what is the need for “genres” anyway? I was talking to, of all people, Joe Trohman, the guitar player for Fall Out Boy, and he was complaining about this inexplicable need, too. How awesome would it be, he asked, if we could just point to a buffet and say, “I want some of that…food”? Okay, I concede, as per Trohman, that it is indeed useful to have “chicken teriyaki” in your vocabulary—just as it is useful to have “intelligent dance music (IDM)” and “shoegaze”—but, for all intents and purposes, nomenclature just breaks us down into tiny communities of cliquish musical xenophobes. When you pop in Peryodiko in your player, however, and you hear Dancel’s admonition for you (or your heart) to take a much-deserved “vacay” (“Kailangan ko ng bakasyon./Kailangan nang magpahinga ang puso ko,” from “Bakasyon”), you stop caring whether it’s folk rock in the vein of Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend,” or geek-grunge in the vein of Weezer’s “Holiday.” When Bob Dylan gives you a heart-wrenching recital of “Visions of Johanna,” does it really matter if he does it alone—on acoustic guitar and with a harmonica neck-brace—or if he does it with Robbie Robertson and his electric crew?
Call me old-fashioned, but the Peryodiko songs are songs that, when you strip them of the tangles of arrangement or studio production, will still stand as gems. There is a beautiful paragraph in a blog entry from Professor Robin Rivera (who produced the record), where he states, “The result is an album that for the most part is refined but organic, finished but unfinished, and perfect in its imperfections. It is complete and full in its simplicity, and free from the burdens of excess and overproduction. The beauty of this album is not merely what is immediately apparent, but also what the listener ultimately discovers, both in the work as well as in himself/herself during the experience. There is more than enough space in this album to encourage this kind of discovery.” Bravo, dear maestro, for denseness, fullness, layeredness have been plaguing rock production for a good, well, for a good forever. With the technological possibility of an endless number of virtual tracks to record on—think, hmm, Beck Hansen’s Odelay—horror vacui sets in. The recording artist becomes an eager-beaver newbie interior decorator dying to fill every corner of your cramped bungalow with random bits of exotica and abubot. (And while we’re on the subject, what’s your stand on throw pillows? I’m kidding.) And, in any case, have you ever considered how our own desire as listeners to experience music in a vacuum (i.e., via headsets and such) has taken the fun out? “I’ve just about had it with all these geeky fucks who walk around listening to Walkmans,” the late comic George Carlin quipped once, “What are these jack-offs telling us? They’re too good to participate in daily life? They’re sealing themselves off? Big fuckin’ loss.” I quote Carlin because I remember telling Sir Robin, when he quizzed me about the Peryodiko masters I was lucky enough to hear pre-release, that I was “pining for more guitar.” “Really?” he asked in disbelief. And then he talked about the importance of space (see the block quote above), and I was born again. Hence, amid modern audio gadgetry, we should relearn how to experience music within “lived” space. (Yes, I understand you want to tune out all the worthless manure playing on the bus, but there has got to be another way.)
So far, three things that fine music could (and should) not be bothered with, if it’s really any good: period association, genre concerns, and studio work. But, wait—there’s more.
There is also the issue of musical appropriation. We may not all notice it but, really, we associate certain musical attacks (or “gestures”) with specific musical movements. Wah-wah guitar, for instance, is to porn-like funk, as is slap bass; soft-loud power-chord guitar, on the other hand, is to the Pixies and Nirvana. You get the idea. When you listen to Peryodiko’s “Kumapit Ka Tuwing Lunes,” there is a moment somewhere in the interlude where you hear axeman Kakoy Legaspi playing staccato mandolin, which is perhaps the farthest thing from being “2009.” However, though one would think of the mandolin as being more archaic fare, the appropriation overpowers and succeeds, i.e., like said instrument truly belongs to this age and this type of music and nowhere else. (On a similar note, I think R.E.M.’s Peter Buck plays the mandolin like how he would play his Rickenbacker—as with “Losing My Religion” or “Hairshirt”—which isn’t the same but is another success in appropriation nonetheless.) When you hear the delayed drum-and-bass accents on the opening bars of “Bakasyon,” which Dancel admitted to this author was inspired by The Dismemberment Plan, the appropriation doesn’t render the song a “modern” edge; it functions, rather, as metaphorical counterpoint, like the sound of a sputtering engine, as though the vacation is in danger of getting botched. This also goes for the funky faux-rapping of “Piraso,” where the persona is hardly funky, though he is in a bit of a “funk,” as the slang goes, in his disjointed everyday existence: “Sana sa paggising ko,/buong-buo na,/buong-buo na ako.” So, while Peryodiko is hardly novel in arrangement, their use of musical pastiche, if I may, is a smart kind of use. If this were recycling workshop, therefore, Peryodiko is doing more than simply turning Coke cans into makeshift ashtrays.
And what of clarity? Despite Dancel’s undying devotion to the church of Joey Ayala—who see-saws between narrative and versification with enviable ease—his claims of the Peryodiko songs being “stories” (“Gusto kong makipag-k’wentuhan,” he claimed in an earlier interview) are, in a way, untrue, if one were to follow the traditional, plot-oriented definition of a “story.” His songs, in short, are not stories in the manner of, say, Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” or, more obviously, The Beatles’ “The Ballad of John and Yoko” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.” He beats around the bush. He preludes and annotates and sidesteps in his narrative. He uses simile, hyperbole, and illustration. In “Paglaya,” in lieu of describing a person who’s all cried out because of his cyclically desperate existence, he goes, “Unan mo’y basang-basa./‘Di na makita ang mukha.//‘Di kailangang pakulong/sa ikot ng iyong gulong.” If you knew Dancel personally, you’d probably vouch for his penchant for creative illustration (at best and at his most lucid) or ceaseless digression (at worst and at his most inebriated).
There is, moreover, the consideration of reputation. Familiarity with an artist’s previous work, after all, will naturally set expectations. For instance, I was recently talking to a colleague whose frustration over what he deemed as the under-utility of the jaw-dropping talent of bassist Simon Tan was palpable. Tan, if you’ve seen and heard him in any of his other, more technically virtuous bands, is really a bassist’s bassist (and that’s putting it lightly). In Peryodiko, while he’s not playing to merely provide counts in the band’s step, his virtuosity takes a subtle back-step to accommodate the songs. Hence, Tan’s musical character in Peryodiko is not one of flash but of sincere accompaniment. (In the same manner, Kakoy Legaspi could not always be expected to play epic solos just about anywhere.) When people first spun Neil Young’s Trans and decided that the popular folkster playing synth-heavy music is a load of cowdung, were they really being listeners? Or were they being “familiar,” as in “Neil, you really shouldn’t” kind of familiar? I would rather be the guy who claims that Young’s “Transformer Man” is pathetic because of its cartoonish approach to synthesizer music, rather than be the guy who says “It’s really nothing like ‘I Believe in You’.” Dancel’s band’s merits (or demerits), therefore, should be accounted for based on their own material and nothing more. I mean, “Pikit” is obviously nothing like Twisted Halo’s “Breakable.”
Conventions of pop listening have taught us—nay, programmed us—to expect certain things. (The HURIER listening model supports this, with its emphasis on the listening experience taking on six steps: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding. “Response” in this model is deemed as “an integral part of the listening process.” Hence, sounds really come with ideas, and a listener’s judgment of the sound-message is key. The “conversation” that takes place between band and rock fan, therefore, partly lies in the hands of how the music is received.) Peryodiko delivers on some of these expectations, and fails (or startles) on others, but, more importantly, it is in the creative choices they make where they surprise. Their debut is a great chance to relearn listening as a skill, if only because it is not a brutal battery to the senses. The openness is there for you to fill in. Make these songs yours, because you can and they’re letting you. Try. Just.
Sources:
Rivera, Robin (2009). “The Imperfect Album.” Peryodiko Album Recording Finally! Retrieved April 16, 2009 from http://peryodikoalbumrecordingfinally.blogspot.com/
Carlin, George. “Excerpt from Brain Droppings.” Keenzo. Retrieved April 20, 2009 from http://www.keenzo.com/showproduct.asp?ID=1946211
“Components of the HURIER Model.” Listening For Main Idea. Retrieved April 20, 2009 from http://it40106.tripod.com/page2.htm
Peryodiko album cover and promotional band photography courtesy of Anton Dans of Thirdline. Live band photography taken by Dr. Dennis Dancel.
TAGS: Peryodiko Vin Dancel
