blockhead – music by cavelight
this album has been sitting in my amazon shopping cart for like, 6 years now. just one of those things. you scrape together enough quarters to buy a shiny new music-disk, and you see that $16.99 price tag and it’s like, ohh man, 16.99 huh…maybe next time buddy.
from what i understand, blockhead takes a sort of Endtroducing approach to beat-making: that is, each beat is made entirely with a record player and a sampler, with minimal alteration of the samples themselves. the samples are layered one over the other, more or less untouched. sounds removed from their original context are thrust together to become something new. when he succeeds it is profound, like finding something you thought you had lost.
unfortunately some samples were just not meant to be stacked on top of one another. the reluctance toward any sort of adjustments inevitably result in some awkward rhythmic or harmonic clashes. the beats sound like the way they were made: you can see the seams. blockhead’s tendency to use saxaphone and harmonica licks for melody can be a double-edged sword at times: they are grating if they are too specific, but forgettable if they are not specific enough.
in the interview i linked, blockhead says that he isn’t interested in learning to use new equipment. while i think there is something to the idea of becoming proficient with a single instrument, there seems to be something in his process that limits any sort of development. a blockhead beat from 10 years ago sounds an awful lot like a blockhead beat from a week ago. when i talk to people about blockhead, the conversation always seems to lean towards once-you’ve-heard-one-you’ve-heard-them-all. i’m not sure if this means anything. there is certainly a different mood between music by cavelight and, say, uncle tony’s coloring book. but somehow it isn’t enough.
i guess it sounds like i’m beating up on blockhead pretty hard. i’m not saying this album is bad, it’s actually one of my favourite of his solo albums. maybe i’m thinking too much as a producer rather than a listener. but if the problems with a piece of music draw me out of the listening experience, i think it is alright to address technical issues.
all that said, listen to this song. you won’t give a shit about anything i just said.
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