1. So yes, we were consciously trying to ask questions about the world, ourselves, music, the future of music. One of the songs is called ‘The Future Will Be Silent’. We looked at how we had constructed some of our more unusual songs, and a lot of them were made from concrete music, found sounds, and we looked at what we had explored in the past and we were trying not to repeat ourselves, and, well, we’ve done trains; we’ve done machinery. And then I actually said to myself “I realise now that everything that we’ve sampled from the real world – trains, machines, computers, guns, typewriters – they were actually accidental”. The audio that we had sampled was a waste product from the specific design function of whatever it was that we had recorded.

    Let me clarify that: a typewriter is designed to type things onto a page, not make a clicking noise when you hit the key. A steam engine is not designed to go ‘chuff chuff’. That’s an audio waste product of the inefficiency of its engine. And as the world has modernised, the accidental audio by-products, waste products, of the things that have become concrete music are going to be less and less because the designers have designed out the waste so that the machinery of the modern world has actually become more silent. So ‘The Future Will Be Silent’ is actually a reference to that concept. That’s the sort of thing that OMD should be writing songs about. (LAUGHS)

    — OMD’s Andy McCluskey, The Quietus interview

Notes

  1. katherinestasaph reblogged this from imathers and added:
    My first thought: iPhone and similar noises (c.f. Channel Orange).
  2. imathers reblogged this from minimoonstar and added:
    McClusky’s point is fascinating, and expressed excellently, and not just because a good 80% of my sincere love for...
  3. concinnities reblogged this from ladyofthelog
  4. koganbot reblogged this from tomewing and added:
    Me, in the Village Voice (excerpt from Hums And Hisses, review of platEAU’s spacEcakE, Tues. Oct 5, 1999):
  5. whosafraidofmusic reblogged this from occupiedterritories
  6. heidi8 reblogged this from ladyofthelog and added:
    This is interesting (but they’ve never heard my keyboard and desktop computer at four o’clock in the morning).
  7. videogameheart reblogged this from ladyofthelog
  8. ladyofthelog reblogged this from clio-jlh
  9. clio-jlh reblogged this from musichistory
  10. zombiecuddle reblogged this from barthel and added:
    Counterpoint: Chief Keef does some...sketch-like degree. Granted, it’s all videos
  11. cureforbedbugs reblogged this from barthel and added:
    Does that make Kutiman...00s? ThruYou seemed...zeitgeisty...
  12. the-bionic-fanatic reblogged this from fuckyeahomd