The Living Music List #24: On the Subjectivity of Music
How music transcends objective reality
Currently listening to: roads by erebus
Each week, I share my list of new ambient recommendations on r/ambientmusic, a subreddit (a community on the social network, Reddit) dedicated to ambient music. It’s been a wonderful place to find new ambient, chat about classics, and most often, see what other ambient lovers recommend to fulfill a request for music that carries a specific mood or sound profile. “Looking for albums that sound like early Brian Eno,” or “help me find tracks that make you feel like you’re 8 years old and just got out of school on a Friday afternoon.” It’s really fun seeing what the many users of the sub come up with. It’s also been a great space to make connections with other artists and even label owners.
After consistently sharing my lists each weekend, I’ve had many users share their music with me seeking a spot here in the newsletter. One artist, erebus, shared this lovely track with me more than a month ago, but I missed his message. Stumbling back to find it, I was struck by the simple beauty of this track roads. Crystal clear bird calls echo in the background while mellow strings and electric piano oscillate peacefully—it’s a song that feels like sitting on a swing, rocking slowly back and forth, not really swinging, but your feet are planted on the ground keeping you mostly in one place, like when you’re sitting beside a friend who’s on the adjacent swing and it’s the summer time, and you’re 12 years old, and the day feels endless, even as you’re watching the sun dip behind the horizon.
Isn’t it incredible what kind of moments and memories music can conjure?
P.S. Read until the end of today’s letter for a feature on Leafblighter, another artist whom I met through r/ambientmusic.
Reflection
Hello, friend.
It’s raining outside where I am. How does the rain change the way you see the day?
Yesterday, I was at a work event where I heard a colleague say, “Oh, we needed the rain badly, but of course it had to happen today and screw up all the traffic for everyone driving to the office.”
On days like this, when I will work from home all day and don’t have any plans other than that, I enjoy the rain. It makes the inside world feel cozier and makes being stuck inside on my laptop feel not quite as restrictive. The world seems to move more slowly than usual, so I don’t mind doing the same and spending several hours on the couch. Rain is also an ambient lover’s favorite natural soundtrack—the raindrops pattering against the windowpane, and the cars whooshing through the puddles.
You, on the other hand, may feel completely differently about the rain on a Friday morning. You may be like me and go for a run outside on many mornings, and the rain sullies the experience, especially in the colder months where the freezing drops are piercing as they fall diagonally into your face. Maybe the deep gray sky casts a veil over your mood as you miss the stolen sunlight. Are you worried when you drive in the rain because you got into a car accident some years ago due to the slick pavement?
There are so many personal experiences and variable emotions that play into the way we each individually respond to some occurrence in the world. This is our individual context with which we experience our natural reality. This is subjectivity.
When we think of things that are subjective or objective, we may think of something like art versus math. It is objectively true that 1+1=2, because this is verifiable based on the rules of arithmetic. It is objectively 70 degrees Fahrenheit in my living room right now, verifiable through measurement of the temperature in one place. On the other side of the coin, the way a piece of music makes you feel is subjective. We can’t always verify a consistent human emotional reaction to a single piece of music. Human emotion is an ever-changing spectrum, and it is affected by numerous variables such as previous experiences, our relationships, and the kinds of seemingly random associations we often make between certain sounds and artists with moments in our own lives.
There is so much context needed to understand the way music and art makes us feel. Even the day in which we are experiencing the art changes this. If it’s a rainy Friday morning and we are eager for the weekend to arrive after a long slog of a workday, our instant reaction to hearing a song like More Than a Feeling by Boston will feel wildly different from listening to it in the car with the windows down as you’re driving toward the beach at the start of summer vacation. Let’s be honest—that song was made for the latter experience, and it feels, to me, completely out of place in this dreary here and now. Then again, it does make me think of those sunny drives into a dreamy beach vacation, so maybe that’s exactly the kind of vision I want to trigger right now.
The subjectivity of music is another reason that we often struggle with a record upon first listening to it, but later come to love it. We weren’t in the right headspace or even the right physical room in our house for the songs to resonate properly with us as they do later on. It could also be that the record had a new sound we didn’t yet have the capacity to enjoy, simply because we didn’t understand it at first. It’s like we’re hearing gibberish coming from the off-screen mouth of Charlie Brown’s teacher and it’s difficult to react in any way other than thinking, Uh, I don’t know what any of that meant, but I’ll just go on with my day, I suppose.
I don’t think I’m saying anything new here. Art’s subjectivity is well documented. Reflecting on this has made me curious, though: is there any objectivity in art? More specifically, is music objective at all?
A quick scan online shows me plenty of essays where folks are arguing, “yes, of course” music is partially objective, “because I have taste and music theory exists so of course there is an objective nature to this thing!” I’m not so sure. Music itself has objective elements, in that there are notes and chords and scales and BPM and all of the other measures that help us make and understand music.
I think the issue is that we conflate music itself with our response to music. The same goes for any art. Creation is based on both subjective and objective criteria. We can recognize dissonance in music and the way certain chords go together, the way they progress through a song (or don’t progress, as in some drone music), and we can hear a piece of music and know that it is well crafted or not. But two listeners might hear a piece of gritty noise music lacking form and structure and have entirely different reactions to it. One may say, “This doesn’t even sound like music—it’s just awful.” The other might say nothing because they are too busy nodding their head in enjoyment of the chaos.
This is where I struggle to believe that objectivity even matters in something as bound to personal, emotional experiences as music. Someone’s evolving and fluctuating taste in music may at times embrace music that is objectively “worse” (again, this is very debatable) but it makes them feel something they want and need to feel—so who the fuck cares? It’s like when artists embrace the imperfections of lo-fi recording equipment that introduces sound elements that would be considered objectively bad if you were always aiming to create the cleanest, most perfect piece of music. I think that it’s easy to forget that, for all our advanced technology and quantizing and autotuning, our music will never be perfect. In fact, some of those imperfections contribute to a closer-to-perfect sound for a song when a specific aesthetic is being aimed for.
Artist’s intentions are too wide-ranging. The possibilities of sound combinations and feelings they deliver are essentially infinite. Hell, even people’s natural hearing capabilities differ and result in frequencies being lost, affecting the final outcome of sound.
To me, these are the reasons why I will never see the acts of making and listening to music as anything other than subjective experiences. And this is what makes music truly special—specialized, maybe. Because we put our own stamp on every piece of music we create or hear. And every piece has the capability of sounding different in different moments, different physical locations, different frames of mind.
In this way, music transcends time and space. It transcends cultures, gender, sex, religion—music ignores every social construct and objective element of reality. It is entirely universal and utterly singular all at once.
How did a song make you feel today? How did it make you feel yesterday? Think on it.
How will that song make you feel a year from now? Go on, live for a while longer, and find out.
Music Recommendations
Hello again, friend.
Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—let me know in the comments what songs or albums you’ve changed your opinion on over time. What feelings and memories do they trigger now that they might not have in the past?
Now, we can find some new music that are sure to give you an entirely new and unique emotional experience.
Happy listening.
The Living Music List—Ambient
Note: All of the below ambient projects are available on Bandcamp (note: #4 is available for physical purchase on Bandcamp but can only be streamed digitally on major streaming services). Bold and * denote reader-submitted work.
Healing Fatigue by Leafblighter (album / dark ambient, compositional ambient) [Independent / Bandcamp]*
PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LP II) by Bibio (album / minimalist, drone) [Warp Records / Bandcamp]
ghostly variations by sea + i (album / drone, ambient guitar) [Home Normal / Bandcamp]
Nosferatu (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Robin Carolan (album / film score, classical) [Sacred Bones Records / Bandcamp]
Phantasy & Reality by Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice (album / experimental, jazz) [Moon Glyph / Bandcamp]
Chiffons d’azur by Lamasz & Thme (album / drone) [Seil Records / Bandcamp]
A Winter Shore by Futuregrapher & Gallery Six (album / drone) [Neotantra / Bandcamp]
Flint by From Overseas, James Bernard, zakè (album / drone) [Past Inside the Present / Bandcamp]
Driftwood by Driftwood (album / electroacoustic, experimental) [Room40 / Bandcamp]
No Sound In Space by Blake Lee (album / drone) [OFNOT / Bandcamp]
Spring at Home by Saapato (album / field recordings, drone) [Aural Canyon / Bandcamp]
Hardanger by Mariska Baars / Niki Jansen / Rutger Zuydervelt (album / experimental, vocal ambient) [laaps / Bandcamp]
Crone of Winter III by Merkury (EP / drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Beloved Algorithms by Mosaic Tapes (album / drone, dark ambient) [Lᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴏ Series / Bandcamp]
The Living Music List—All Genres
Note: All of the below projects are available on major streaming services.
Neptunes by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Joe Goddard (EP / electronic)
Do What Makes You Happy by Alice Ivy (album / electronic)
Maghreb by Bergsonist (album / electronic)
10 Years of Rhythm Section International by Various Artists (compilation / electronic)
Man Down by Ice Cube (album / west coast rap)
.mp3s by Aminé (EP / hip-hop/rap)
Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs For Sinners And Saints by Killer Mike (album / hip-hop/rap)
Dead Slow by Heavy Moss (album / alt psych)
headbanger by untitled (halo) (EP / alternative)
Nobody Loves You More by Kim Deal (album / alternative)
I Looked Out by Greg Freeman (album / alternative)
Mahashmashana by Father John Misty (album / alternative)
fainter by Moaning Lisa (album / indie rock)
See You at the Solipsist Convention by Yesness (album / indie rock)
every song is about you by Emyrson Flora (EP / singer/songwriter)
Small Changes by Michael Kiwanuka (album / soul)
Wicked: The Soundtrack by Wicked Movie Cast, Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande (album / soundtrack)
The Press Box
Healing Fatigue by Leafblighter
There’s no disgusing what independent ambient artist Leafblighter’s newest record is about—the titles of every track spell it out.
Fear. Guilt. Shame. Relapse. Fragile. Healing Fatigue. Hope.
This is the original score of one person’s journey marred by struggle and darkness, but survived through perserverance and release. To my ears, Healing Fatigue sounds like yet another example of an artist unleashing their most vulnerable self to the world—an act of defiance. A catharsis sought through music that stands and acknowledges: I am still here, and I am moving forward despite the burden I bear.
“This is my sophomore album, and it was inspired by my struggles with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and this very challenging year,” the artist says. “I tried to sit with these themes and incorporate those emotions into the compositions.”
Every song on Healing Fatigue contains a sonic throughline drawn by one instrument: the Tempera granular synth. There’s a sort of off-balance, heavy sensation inherent in the digital textures provided by the Tempera that represent the difficult themes presented in the record. The trauma on display is an unnatural force, a synthetic, parasitic infection, and Leafblighter paints himself as a flesh-and-bone hard drive of memory corrupted by malicious software.
If it isn’t clear by now, this record isn’t the lightest listen. That doesn’t make it any less worth your time, though. It is an ambient album that can still fulfill the requirements of being included in the genre (“as ignorable as it is listenable”) thanks to its often long, winding tracks that are neither overly aggressive nor traditionally structured. And yet, it feels more akin to some other label that represents that subcategory where artists like Tim Hecker and Fennesz sit—it contains a complex pallete of color and texture that frequently make it near impossible (or perhaps insulting) to ignore.
As you sit within the fatiguing fervor of Healing Fatigue, you may not be surprised that the artist behind Leafblighter has explored more upbeat, chaotic genres in his 20 years as a producer.
“Over the years, my production interests have varied from techno to jungle, and from juke to ambient,” the artist explains. “The Preposterist is my juke alias. I used to produce jungle as Signor Strisce. Electronic music has been a love of mine since the ‘80s, but it really flourished in the ‘90s along with attending various raves in the midwest US. This led to me spending some time DJing as a hobby prior to production.”
If The Preposterist and Signor Strisce are personas dedicated to thrashing electronic beats perhaps as a means of raving away the pain, then Leafblighter is the ambient author who puts a pause on the fun to directly address the elephant in the room. Leafblighter’s ability to craft atmospheres swollen with emotion—whether troubled and off-kilter as in the opening Fear or more relieved and optimistic in the closer Hope—creates a truly enveloping experience across the nearly hour-long record.
You can purchase and listen to Healing Fatigue on Bandcamp and major streaming services.
One Final Note
Heads up: for the first time in 25 weeks, there will be no issue of The Living Music List released next Friday. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving here in America, and it’s a special holiday for my family. At the beginning of the week, I’ll be traveling for work and then as the holiday arrives, I’ll be traveling to see family. I won’t have enough time to collect new releases or write a full letter, so there will be a supersized issue #25 coming in 2 weeks on Friday, December 6. Man, it’s hard to believe that day will also mark 6 months of writing Hum, Buzz, & Hiss.
Thank you, my dear reader, for joining me on this wonderful ride of music discovery and cathartic reflection. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate, and a wonderful couple of weeks. As always, let me know what you’re making or listening to in the comments or my inbox, which is always open: meltedform@gmail.com.
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental. If you are a label owner/contributor in this space, I would love to have you join my new, private community Discord server for HB&H too! Email me for more details and see a preview of the server here.
Also, you can keep up with me and hear more of the music I’m listening to by following me on Substack Notes. I’m less active on Notes these days, but it’s still a great platform I recommend if you’re tired of traditional social media. Join our community of music-loving writers and readers discussing the latest releases, old gems, and everything in between.
