Fright is one of those innate human faculties, like humor or eroticism, that is subjective beyond persuasion; one is either scared by something or not, and it’s usually futile to convince them otherwise. Still, when I stroll past various message boards and lists on the internets that cite everything from Chopin’s “Funeral March” to ’60s novelty tripe like “Monster Mash” as the “scariest music ever!” I can’t help but wonder how long these people been sleeping with the night-light on. Seriously, that’s the scariest music you can think of? I understand that music can bring out a multitude of emotions in the average listener, but folks, The Cure’s “Love Song” is not scary; maybe ‘dreary’ was the word you were looking for? I was going to drop a “Top Ten Scariest Songs” post last year around this time, but lost interest when I reminded myself that Halloween holds a place on one of the lower rungs of the Pointlessly Dumb Holidays ladder. This year, however, finds me a little more willing to participate in the festivities, mostly because I won’t be around when the hordes of neighborhood trick-or-treaters bum-rush my front door with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. The following six pieces of music were the first that came to mind for a Halloween soundtrack, but naturally, I had to adhere to two rules: no death metal, black metal, doom metal, whatever (too cliché); and absolutely no film scores – yeah, the title theme from The Exorcist (1973) creeps me out as much as the next guy, but it’s supposed to, for Christ’s sake. Listen at your own risk, as I certainly would not want to be caught locked in the dark with any of these selections below.

Béla Bartók Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: III. Adagio 1936

There is just something about the music of Béla Bartók that generates an inescapable feeling of unease: the claustrophobic cellos and basses that open his Concerto for Orchestra (1945), the violent unleashing of sound during his third and fourth String Quartets, hell, even his ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1927) contains moments of menacing aggression. Little wonder why Stanley Kubrick chose the third movement of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) to underline key set pieces in The Shining (1980). The six-and-a-half minutes that comprise the Adagio are truly terrifying, a continuous shifting of sound from one state of psychological derangement to another. The timpani glissandi create billows of dizzying fog through which blocks of piano octaves, two restless string sections, and various percussion effects compete for attention, all while the mysterious celesta hovers over the proceedings like a spectre. Close your eyes, turn the lights out, and play at full volume and I guarantee it will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing up.

“Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: III. Adagio” – Béla Bartók 6:27 (Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Finlandia 2002)

Hans Werner Henze Five Night-Pieces for Violin and Piano 1990

Rarely has a duet for violin and piano ever sounded so ghastly. I’m somewhat of a novice when it comes to the work of German composer Hans Werner Henze, but the handful of little nocturnal demons that embody Five Night-Pieces for Violin and Piano (1990) have always managed to seduce me. They are terror distilled down to two simple musical elements: the moaning, ethereal strings of the violin and the delicate plinks of the piano, executed here in such a skeletal manner that one can almost sense the fingertips of a dead man brushing across the back of the neck. Supposedly Henze penned these short exercises in the dark hours of the morning when he couldn’t sleep, but the notes sound as if they’re falling out of silent air, guided to the page by the hand of a zombie. Imagine this as the soundtrack to a night alone in a long-abandoned and decrepit mental hospital and the spine-chilling factor will increase tenfold.

“Five Night-Pieces for Violin and Piano: I. Elegie” – Hans Werner Henze 3:05 (Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 3, Five Night Pieces, Naxos 2006)

Györgi Ligeti Lontano 1967

Ligeti’s Lontano (1967) is, hands down, the most frightening piece of music I’ve ever heard; nothing else comes remotely close to equaling the chilling sensation I get from playing it at full volume. Though it could be loosely classified as a tone poem of sorts, Ligeti seemed to have the subconscious adolescent imagination on his mind while he was composing it, intending the orchestra to portray “a window on long-submerged dream worlds of childhood.” I shudder to think what kind of nocturnal hallucinations Ligeti experienced as a child. Lontano is ten minutes of pure, menacing psychological terror, the kind that leaves a scar so rooted that the memory haunts until death. The orchestra swells and ebbs as long, agonizing drones overlap one another, accelerating and retarding detectable beat frequencies, culminating in a hypnotic effect that is sinister as it is serene. There is no hair-raising climax here, no deafening bolts of percussion to send shock waves throughout the body, no tidy conclusion to walk away from. Lontano places the listener into a cold, alien hell which offers little in the way of sanity or escape. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“Lontano” – Györgi Ligeti 10:09 (The Ligeti Project II, Teldec 2002)

Arvo Pärt Fratres for Strings and Percussion 1991

There is a threshold at which terror gains an aura of luminous beauty, which is where Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Fratres for Strings and Percussion (1991) resides. I find most of Pärt’s work to be a tad bit New-Agey for my tastes, but the eerie simplicity of this piece manages to devastate me with each successive listen. There are no cheap shock tactics here or cartoonish effects to get the blood racing, just nine minutes of glorious, mesmerizing drone with a somber figure for strings floating above, peppered by occasional dashes of percussion. The exotic, almost Middle-Eastern flavor of the piece conjures ancient ritual sacrifices, prayers for the dead, hymns to civilizations long decayed. The sonic weight gradually increases with the volume until the listener is eventually smothered into submission, buried into the same catacombs to which the music is perpetually confined. Perhaps not as attention-grabbing as some of the other selections, the black magic of Fratres is a spell that becomes more enchanting with time.

“Fratres for Strings and Percussion” – Arvo Pärt 8:54 (Fratres, Naxos 1997)

Krzysztof Penderecki The Passion According to St. Luke 1966

Without the Biblical context, the listener could hardly be faulted in assuming Krzysztof Penderecki’s musical interpretation of the Passion was some kind of pagan ceremony narrated by the choir of the damned. Though scored for various soloists, three mixed choruses, and large orchestra, it’s the a capella sections like In pulverem mortis (”Into the dust of death”) that send shivers down my spine the most. Clusters of atonality expand and contract like last dying breaths while the basses echo a dissonant, gutteral drone, solo voices rise and fall maniacally, and the sopranos shriek as if suddenly possessed. Evil has many disguises, friends, which is why I’ve always found it especially sadistic how intensely it thrives underneath the sacred text presented here.

“St Luke Passion: In pulverem mortis” – Krzysztof Penderecki 6:35 (St. Luke Passion, Naxos 2004)

Toru Takemitsu A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden 1977

Admittedly the selection that’s arguably more fantastical than frightening, Toru Takemitsu’s A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977) is also the one that sounds the most like Debussy on a crack cocaine binge. Lose yourself in its whimsical allure and you’ll enter an Alice in Wonderland-like world of strange creatures and radiant, almost nauseating colors, all wrapped in a distorted and unpredictable reality. What I enjoy most about this piece are the teasing moments of comfort that become a kind of playful torture on the composer’s part: as soon as you let your guard down and treat the music as aural wallpaper, Takemitsu conjures an event that seems more extravagant than could have ever been anticipated. Think of A Flock Descends as the musical equivalent of, say, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and the danger of its vivid imagination becomes more apparent.

“A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden” – Toru Takemitsu 13:00 (A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden; Spirit Garden; Dreamtime, Naxos 2006)

In other news, I’ll be indulging in a slightly delayed but still long-awaited and internets-free vacation for the next week or two. Stay tuned, as there is still plenty of indie rock hating and other sundries of absurdity planned before the requisite end-of-year lists are due.

Underworld “Crocodile” Oblivion with Bells ATO 2007

London’s Underworld are one of those groups of which the intensity of my fandom has no logical explanation. Like many with similarly-receptive ears back in the mid-’90s, Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994) and Second Toughest in the Infants (1996) were nothing short of revelatory, and by the time of Beaucoup Fish (1999), I hardly gave a second thought to rabidly acquiring anything with the band’s name on it: singles, DVDs, 12″ remixes, t-shirts, whatever. Underworld reached irrelevancy sometime prior to the release of A Hundred Days Off (2002), a few years after Darren Emerson had left the group, leaving Karl Hyde and Rick Smith remaining. Didn’t matter, as I remember devouring that record for months with a fervency unlike anything else at the time. By then, my fingers had long abandoned the pulse of electronic music, but I continued to satiate my thirst for All Things Underworld by purchasing downloadable bundles from their site that the duo would release every few months or so. Oblivion with Bells (2007) dropped last week to a typically mild reception for a mid-’90s electronic act still releasing music, and though my initial response to it has been a curious neutrality, my instinct tells me that I should brace myself for an upcoming bout of obsession with it.

Oblivion with Bells adheres to the pacing and stylistic pinballing that characterized Underworld’s past two full-lengths: a few floor-shakers for the Ibiza crowd, brief ambient interludes, forays into thick dub, and drum-heavy, mid-tempo experimentation. First single “Crocodile” opens the record with an understated fanfare, layers of gray arpeggiated chords stacked upon one another that decay as the 4/4 kick enters. The rhythm and bass begin to build in complexity and syncopation when Hyde’s voice appears suddenly, doused with the same vocoder effect found on “Cups” eight years ago. Smith weaves echoing, bell-like synth tones into the fabric of the mix, the bass reaches a level of numbing hypnotism, and Hyde picks out a delayed one-note guitar pattern. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same formula that the group have been employing for nearly fifteen years now, a surefire method of moving a mass of bodies in as little time as possible – and if it ain’t broke, right? Underworld seem to have no interest in redefining dance music for the new millennium – hell, Hyde and Smith are both nearing 50 – but years after creating the template for thousands of electronic acts, there’s a warm comfort in hearing them sound as soulful and elegant as they’ve always been.

“Crocodile” – Underworld 6:30 (Oblivion with Bells, ATO 2007)

The unexpected popularity of the Soul Brother Blends mix that I posted back in April clued me in on something that should have been obvious: there are an overwhelming number of heads who enjoy instrumentals as much as I do. Since the “Mixes” section of the site is beginning to look like some kind of ‘Producer Spotlight’ series, it’s only befitting that the next installment features an individual whose influence on hip hop reaches levels of omnipotence that mere words would fail to convey here. I’m speaking of course, of Wu-Tang’s The RZA and specifically, his work behind the boards from roughly ‘93 through ‘97 – from Enter The 36 Chambers (1993) through Wu-Tang Forever (1997), with all of the solo outings from Meth, ODB, Rae, GZA, and Ghost in between. What resulted was my most ambitious mix yet, a 70-minute juggernaut of continuous music from this period, shading the dirtiest and darkest of RZA’s early beats with the brighter, more melodic work that would dominate Ironman (1996) and Wu-Tang Forever. If I was enlightened by anything during its creation it would be this: despite the staggering degree of familiarity, these beats remain absolutely, undeniably timeless.

So I culled every instrumental that I could find from this era and began to plan construction. Of course, I would have liked to include more from Tical (1994) or Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995), but I had to make do with what was on hand. I knew before I cued up the first platter that RZA’s steadfast refusal to quantize his drum tracks could pose a potential issue with synching, and sure enough, tracks like “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Hippa to Da Hoppa” had me ripping my hair out in frustration. In the end, though, I chose to leave these clunky transitions untampered, deciding that they were in full spirit of the producer’s aesthetic of the period. The mix is divided into four tempo-determined sections, with an abrupt sample of kung fu dialogue signaling each transition. As always, all selections originated on wax, and I deliberately left all of the pops and clicks uncleaned in the audio. Enjoy.

“Razor Sharp Blends ’93 - ‘97” – The RZA 69:27 (October 2007)

Tracklist:

4th Chamber
For Heaven’s Sake
C.R.E.A.M.
Duel of the Iron Mic
Box in Hand
Triumph
Brooklyn Zoo II (Tiger Crane)
Cold World
Soul Controller
Ice Cream
Liquid Swords
Don’t U Know
Camay
I Gotcha Back
Can It Be All So Simple
Shimmy Shimmy Ya
Living in the World Today
Hippa to Da Hoppa
Criminology
Baby Come On
Labels
It’s Yourz
Goin’ Down
Glaciers of Ice
Da Mystery of Chessboxin’
Iron Maiden
The Stomp
Bring the Pain
Daytona 500
Damage
Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ ta F’ Wit
Release Yo Delf
260
Protect Ya Neck II The Zoo
Black Jesus
Gold
Dog Shit
Incarcerated Scarfaces
Brooklyn Zoo
Assassination Day
All I Need (Razor Sharp Mix)
Raw Hide
Little Ghetto Boys
Wild Flower
P.L.O. Style
Snakes
Bells of War
Shadowboxin’
The Faster Blade
Heaven and Hell

I don’t normally use this site as a forum for personal essays and internal diatribes, but when the subject involves a category of music that I’ve spent fifteen years cementing a relationship with, I can’t help but get it off my proverbial chest publicly and hear what opinions the reader might have to offer. The subject in question, of course, lies within the fashionable and ill-defined parameters of what we call ‘indie rock.’

Brandon recently pointed me in the direction of a provoking New Yorker article by Sasha Frere-Jones entitled “A Paler Shade of White,” wherein the author discusses the apparent lack of ’soul’ in modern indie rock and a negative shift in the incorporation of predominantly ‘black’ musical traits within the music, thus contributing to its ever-increasing “whiteness.” These traits are defined as “a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies” (presumably among others), and while I have some issues with Frere-Jones’ vague digressions and musical conjunctions – specifically The Chronic (1992) and Led Zeppelin tie-ins – it’s tough to argue with the gist of the piece: for the past decade or so, indie rock, and the umbrella of styles that it encompasses, has grown square and stiff.

Frere-Jones’ piece triggered a response within me that pretty much sums up something I’ve been musing over recently. After much deliberation, I can safely say that I’m officially ‘done’ with all things indie rock – maybe not all things, but a 95% majority of it. The article pinpointed precisely what it is about indie rock that I’ve struggled to identify for the past few years, or perhaps have admittedly been in denial about, that which has been the sole cause of my bored indifference toward it: yes, the “whiteness” thing. This feeling has resonated so strongly within me that I can state with confidence – and at the risk of sounding like a reductive, condescending, and racist asshole – that if you’re a young white male with a guitar, a band, and a handful of songs, it’s a safe bet that I’m probably not going to like what your musical contributions to the world are. This is merely a byproduct of experience, like a child touching a hot stove for the first time; after hundreds of hours listening to hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘indie’ bands and being left only with an empty feeling of exhaustion, I’m going to personally ban all things ‘indie’ from my aging ears.

Most visitors to Floodwatchmusic are aware of the fact that I cover a fairly wide spectrum of music here, and I assume that just as many find it frustrating as (hopefully) refreshing. My intentions have mutated slightly over the past year, but the concept is basically still the same: to promote artists’ music by offering my own perspective on what makes it so important, whether it’s via my tech-geek babbling or microscopic dissections of the trivial. I occasionally make time to slag off an artist or band whose popularity I find inexplicable, but my chief purpose with the site and my encouragement of a healthy variety of music appreciation should be somewhat obvious. Understandably, with this sort of ethos, I receive a moderate amount of “You should cover more indie music!” emails and pleas from “We play indie rock!” bands for me to review their latest opus. I suppose this post should serve as my official announcement that indie rock is hereby dead to me and I’m not going to bother with it anymore, at least for the time being.

Why would I turn my back on a genre that has inspired and excited me for fifteen years now? And what does any of this have to do with the suspicious “whiteness” thing?

Let’s jump back to the spring of 1994, when the notion of ‘indie rock’ first registered with me. For weeks I had been glued to my copy of Yo La Tengo’s Painful (1993) and had recently read somewhere that YLT was “the quintessential indie band.” To my porous, impressionistic mind this made perfect sense: they were basically a rock band that didn’t conform to major-label expectations, possessors of a “do anything you want” kind of mentality that I found liberating. Of course, I was obviously aware of the existence of independent labels, judging by the sheer number of SST and Sub Pop discs that occupied space on my CD shelf. But like many, I was wholly attracted by this new aesthetic concept, and I slowly began to explore the catalogues of Matador, Merge, and Thrill Jockey, among others. By the time the word ‘indie’ began to imply a standard of musical ideals rather than label status, my appetite and consumption of good music had little regard for who happened to issue an artist’s record. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was the detectable sense of stagnation that I was getting from my indie rock, an irrepressible feeling that what I was hearing was simply a variation of bands whose discographies I was already intimately familiar with: Sonic Youth. Cocteau Twins. Fugazi. Pavement. And so on.

But what really began to bother me is what Frere-Jones identified in his article, a sort of passively metronomic, blockly, mid-tempo – and because there really is no better word for it – whiteness that has become the most prominent characteristic of indie rock now. Essentially, it’s a rhythmic thing, or “groove,” if you will, which Frere-Jones attributed to the incestual musical appropriation between like-minded white indie artists, as opposed to the synthesis of African-American musical components that comprised the basis of rock ‘n roll back in the 1950s, resulting in ’soulful’ bands like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Clash: groups who weren’t afraid to hide the influences of the blues, reggae, and gospel in their music. I listen to a lot of new indie rock on a daily basis at work. Some of it I enjoy (that new Shins record was decent, Midlake, Spoon) and some of it I find absolutely revolting (Arcade Fire, anything featuring Ben Gibbard’s voice, which reminds me: whoever Jolie Holland is, she must be destroyed). None of it would strike my ears as particularly ’soulful,’ which could be attributed to everything from the rhythmic syncopation to the overall mood of the music.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve been retreating back to my time-honored standbys. Dusty ’70s Soul. Golden-Age hip hop. Early shoegaze, ’70s kraut, and noise-rock. ’60s Blue Notes and avant-garde jazz. And metal, which is where the dissident exclaims in defense, “What could possibly be ‘whiter’ than metal?” For starters – and some may find this incomprehensible – metal actually grooves, laid on as thick as some of the finest Motown platters; it’s just a different kind of groove. Metal is raw, edgy, unbridled; it has balls. New and exciting sub-variations and genre off-spins surface on a daily basis in the great ocean of metal, which is tough to claim among the confines of indie rock. Personally, I’ve discovered that indie rock just doesn’t ever mirror my temperament anymore. Why mope around to The National (who, admittedly, are a stellar band) when I could lift my spirits and quicken my heartbeat by air-shredding and wailing along to, say, the ass-kickingly ridiculous and awesomely-named 3 Inches of Blood?

“Goat Riders Horde” – 3 Inches of Blood 4:02 (Fire Up the Blades, Roadrunner 2007)

I’m not exactly sure where this is going, so I’ll sum up. There are a lot of great audioblogs out there that specialize in the sort of placid, antiseptic, and repetitive gulf that indie rock has sunken into. This isn’t one of them, and likely won’t be, so please don’t ask me to cover more “angular guitar pop” or review your “heavily indebted to My Bloody Valentine” band. Consider this site indie-free, and any tired jibes about ’selling out’ to the majors should be directed to the comments section below.

Adam F “Circles” Colours Astralwerks 1998

Of the myriad of genres and styles of music I’ve been into over the years – through sludge metal, free jazz, trip hop, alt.whatever – few are revisited less than my drum & bass/jungle platters. It was ten years ago to this day that found me at the height of my jungle obsession, as I was devouring, piece by piece, every last bit of Roni Size & Reprazent’s New Forms (1997) (still the quintessential drum & bass statement as far as I’m concerned), and obnoxiously enlightening anyone within earshot on the boundary-pushing brilliance of ‘abstract’ artists like Photek, Squarepusher, and Spring Heel Jack. Those halcyon days lasted for about a year until I realized that the music was doomed forever to a state of perpetual stunted development: because of jungle’s own strict defining parameters, anything that ventured even slightly outside of the established framework became something else entirely, thus hindering any real creative advancement on the part of the artists. I dabbled briefly in heavier stuff like drill ‘n bass afterward, but for the most part, my time frolicking in the jungle had passed. Even now, depending on my mood, hearing the “Amen” break chopped up at 160 bpm for the hundred-millionth time can trigger a wave of nausea, and if I hear skittering drums over an uninspiring held maj9 chord I feel like I should be shopping for a $400 shirt.

Yet I still find myself returning to Adam F’s debut full-length Colours (1998) on occasion, certainly more than, say, Logical Progression, Level One (1996) or anything by Goldie, for that matter. Adam’s blend of ’70s fusion, touches of neo-Soul, and modern drum & bass failed horribly just as often as it succeeded (it is the very definition of a “hit-or-miss” album), but you had to admire the guy’s stolid audaciousness, and dude was nothing if not a hell of a producer (and still is). If someone were to ask me back then what I liked about jungle so much, without a word of response my reflex would have been to put on “Circles,” as it’s the essence of drum ‘n bass, elevated to a level that I’ve yet to hear anyone match. All of the core ingredients are contained within its seven minutes and Adam blends them together beautifully: the atmospheric pads, that dry upright bass, an accelerated breakbeat, the faceless diva repeating the title, a sizzling synth lead. Not a single bar is wasted or feels labored, and just when it seems like the track is losing steam, Adam constructs a jaw-dropping 808 bass kick pattern at 3:56 that is the highlight of the whole production. Sure, it’s dated as all hell, but I guarantee you that “Circles” would still slay if worked into a jungle DJ’s club set somewhere.

“Circles” – Adam F 7:15 (Colours, Astralwerks 1998)