Hear the Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune by David Matthews (1977)

Even if you’ve nev­er read Frank Her­bert’s Dune, you may well have encoun­tered its adap­ta­tions to a vari­ety of oth­er media: com­ic books, video games, board games, tele­vi­sion series, and of course films, David Lynch’s 1984 ver­sion and Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s two-parter ear­li­er this decade. But before any of those came Dune, the jazz-funk album by key­boardist and band­leader David Matthews. Released in 1977 on the pop­u­lar jazz label CTI Records, it devotes its entire first side to a 20-minute suite osten­si­bly inspired by Her­bert’s nov­el, con­sist­ing of the pieces “Arrakis,” “Sand­worms,” “Song of the Bene Gesser­it,” and “Muad’dib.”

You’ll notice that the typog­ra­phy on the cov­er of Matthews’ Dune seems awful­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Star Wars, a film that had come out the very same year. It’s not exact­ly false adver­tis­ing, since the album clos­es with ver­sions of both Star Wars’ main theme and Princess Leia’s theme, sup­ple­ment­ed by the theme from Dou­glas Trum­bul­l’s Silent Run­ning and even David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” Accord­ing to jazz his­to­ri­an Doug Payne, the con­cept was the idea of CTI founder Creed Tay­lor.

Tay­lor had orig­i­nal­ly hired Matthews as CTI’s chief arranger, the lat­ter’s years of expe­ri­ence as James Brown’s musi­cal direc­tor hav­ing promised the poten­tial to imbue the label’s releas­es with dis­co appeal. In addi­tion to Matthews on the key­boards, Dune also fea­tures heavy-hit­ting ses­sion play­ers from the late-sev­en­ties jazz world like Randy Breck­er, Steve Gadd, Grover Wash­ing­ton, Jr., Hiram Bul­lock, and David San­born. Fans of obscu­ran­tist hip-hop may also rec­og­nize Matthews’ “Space Odd­i­ty” cov­er as a sam­ple source for MF DOOM’s “Rapp Snitch Knish­es.”

Much like Bob James, his fel­low mas­ter­mind of dis­co-inflect­ed jazz, Matthews has cre­at­ed a body of work that lives on a hip-hop gold­mine: his oth­er sam­plers include Method Man, Red­man, and The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. But it was in Japan that he found his most enthu­si­as­tic lis­ten­er­ship. After leav­ing CTI in 1978, Payne writes, “Matthews went onto record a slew of records for most­ly Japan­ese labels under a vari­ety of guis­es includ­ing Japan’s num­ber one sell­ing jazz group, the Man­hat­tan Jazz Quin­tet.” If you vis­it Japan, you may well hear Matthews’ music play­ing in a local jazz bar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hans Zim­mer Cre­at­ed the Oth­er­world­ly Sound­track for Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, that Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Great Mix­tapes of 1970s Japan­ese Jazz: 4 Hours of Funky, Groovy, Fusion‑y Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell) and Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah.”

If you dig through their Youtube archive, you can also revis­it per­for­mances of two Talk­ing Heads classics–“Psycho Killer” and “Burn­ing Down the House.” (Both below.) Which brings us to the video above. Accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne has long been a big fan of Choir!Choir!Choir!. He writes on his web site:

I’ve sat mes­mer­ized watch­ing online videos of the Cana­di­an group Choir! Choir! Choir! They some­how man­age to get hun­dreds of strangers to sing beau­ti­ful­ly together—in tune and full-voiced—with rich har­monies and detailed arrange­ments. With almost no rehearsal—how do they do it??

They man­age to achieve lift off—that feel­ing of sur­ren­der when groups sing together—when we all become part of some­thing larg­er than our­selves.

And back in 2018, Byrne got to expe­ri­ence some of that lift off first­hand. Hear him sing a mov­ing ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes” with Choir!Choir!Choir! Enjoy.

Psy­cho Killer

Burn­ing Down the House

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms an Ethe­re­al Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into Folk Music, Writing Songs on Elections, Plane Crashes, Ozempic & More

At first glance, Jesse Welles resem­bles noth­ing so much as a time trav­el­er from the year 1968. That’s how I would open a pro­file about him, but The New York Times’ David Peis­ner takes a dif­fer­ent approach, describ­ing him record­ing a song in his home stu­dio. “Welles, a singer-song­writer with a shag­gy, dirty-blond mane and a sand­pa­pery voice, has risen to recent promi­nence post­ing videos to social media of him­self alone in the woods near his home in north­west Arkansas, per­form­ing wry­ly fun­ny, polit­i­cal­ly engaged folk songs,” Peis­ner con­tin­ues. This prac­tice has pro­duced “viral hits on Tik­Tok and Insta­gram, build­ing an audi­ence of more than 2 mil­lion fol­low­ers on those plat­forms.”

Welles’ sub­jects have includ­ed “the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight-loss drug Ozem­pic, and the rapa­cious­ness of Unit­ed Healthcare’s busi­ness mod­el.” You can hear his musi­cal takes on these news-pegged sub­jects on his YouTube chan­nel, along with such oth­er much-viewed, ripped-from-the-head­lines songs as “Fen­tanyl,” “Wal­mart,” “Whis­tle Boe­ing,” and “We’re All Gonna Die.”

For his younger lis­ten­ers, his sub­ject mat­ter (and his per­spec­tive on it) have a kind of cur­ren­cy much inten­si­fied by life on social media; for his old­er lis­ten­ers, his man­ner and musi­cian­ship recall a gold­en age of the protest singer that many would have assumed a whol­ly closed chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

It will, per­haps, dis­ap­point both rel­e­vant demo­graph­ics that Welles’ forth­com­ing debut album Mid­dle includes none of these viral hits, nor any­thing much like them. “The only fil­ter placed on it was I wasn’t doing top­i­cal songs for this project,” Peis­ner quotes him as say­ing, lat­er writ­ing that the album “surfs between sur­re­al­is­tic fan­ta­sy worlds and Welles’s own inner life.” This coun­ter­in­tu­itive move is under­stand­able: giv­en his obvi­ous chops honed with the inspi­ra­tion of Bob Dylan, Tom Pet­ty, and John Prine, being pigeon­holed as a singer of the news on Tik­Tok has prob­a­bly nev­er been his ulti­mate goal. A cou­ple of decades from now, music crit­ics may declare that Oliv­er Antho­ny walked so that Jesse Welles could run.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

The Acoustic Gui­tar Project Gives Song­writ­ers World­wide a Gui­tar and One Week to Write a Song

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Per­form “I Remem­ber Every­thing”

The Effi­ca­cy of Protest Songs — Four Song­writ­ers Dis­cuss on Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #121

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

In the cred­its of Phil Collins’ No Jack­et Required appears the dis­claimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryp­tic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buy­ers, tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed musi­cians would’ve got it. In the half-decades since its intro­duc­tion, the Fairlight Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment, or CMI, had reshaped the sound of pop music — or at least the pop music cre­at­ed by acts who could afford one. The device may have cost as much as a house, but for those who under­stood the poten­tial of play­ing and manip­u­lat­ing the sounds of real-life instru­ments (or of any­thing else besides) dig­i­tal­ly, mon­ey was no object.

The his­to­ry of the Fairlight CMI is told in the video above from the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald and The Age, incor­po­rat­ing inter­views from its Aus­tralian inven­tors Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie. Accord­ing to Ryrie, No Jack­et Required actu­al­ly did use the Fairlight, in the sense that one of its musi­cians sam­pled a sound from the Fairlight’s library. To musi­cians, using the tech­nol­o­gy not yet wide­ly known as dig­i­tal sam­pling would have felt like mag­ic; to lis­ten­ers, it meant a whole range of sounds they’d nev­er heard before, or at least nev­er used in that way. Take the “orches­tra hit” orig­i­nal­ly sam­pled from a record of Stravin­sky’s The Fire­bird (and whose sto­ry is told in the Vox video just above), which soon became prac­ti­cal­ly inescapable.

We might call the orches­tra hit the Fairlight’s “killer app,” though its breathy, faint­ly vocal sam­ple known as “ARR1” also saw a lot of action across gen­res. A desire for those par­tic­u­lar effects brought a lot of musi­cians and pro­duc­ers onto the band­wag­on through­out the eight­ies, but it was the ear­ly adopters who used the Fairlight most cre­ative­ly. The ear­li­est among them was Peter Gabriel, who appears in the clip from the French doc­u­men­tary above gath­er­ing sounds to sam­ple, blow­ing wind through pipes and smash­ing up tele­vi­sions in a junk­yard. Kate Bush embraced the Fairlight with a spe­cial fer­vor, using not just its sam­pling capa­bil­i­ties but also its ground­break­ing sequenc­ing soft­ware (includ­ed from the Series II onward) to cre­ate her 1985 hit “Run­ning Up That Hill,” which made a sur­prise return to pop­u­lar­i­ty just a few years ago.

The Fairlight’s high-pro­file Amer­i­can users includ­ed Ste­vie Won­der, Todd Rund­gren, and Her­bie Han­cock, who demon­strates his own mod­el along­side the late Quin­cy Jones in the doc­u­men­tary clip above. With its green-on-black mon­i­tor, its gigan­tic flop­py disks, and its futur­is­tic-look­ing “light pen” (as nat­ur­al a point­ing device as any in an era when most of human­i­ty had nev­er laid eyes on a mouse), it resem­bles less a musi­cal instru­ment than an ear­ly per­son­al com­put­er with a piano key­board attached. It had its cum­ber­some qual­i­ties, and some leaned rather too heav­i­ly on its packed-in sounds, but as Han­cock points out, a tool is a tool, and it’s all down to the human being in con­trol to get pleas­ing results out of it: “It does­n’t plug itself in. It does­n’t pro­gram itself… yet.” To which the always-pre­scient Jones adds: “It’s on the way, though.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Demo a Fairlight CMI Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

How the Yama­ha DX7 Dig­i­tal Syn­the­siz­er Defined the Sound of 1980s Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

See Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Visualized in Colorfully Animated Scores

Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visu­al as well. But these qual­i­ties, which seem so basic to the nature of the form, have been chal­lenged for at least three cen­turies, not least by com­posers them­selves. Take Anto­nio Vival­di, whose Le quat­tro sta­gioni, or The Four Sea­sons, of 1718–1720 evoke not just broad impres­sions of the epony­mous parts of the year, but a vari­ety of nat­ur­al and human ele­ments char­ac­ter­is­tic to them. In the course of less than an hour, its lis­ten­ers — whether of the ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry or the ear­ly twen­ty-first — “see” spring, sum­mer, autumn, and win­ter unfold vivid­ly before their mind’s eye.

Now, com­pos­er Stephen Mali­nows­ki has visu­al­ized The Four Sea­sons in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. As pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, he uses his Music Ani­ma­tion Machine to cre­ate what we might call graph­i­cal scores, which abstract­ly rep­re­sent the instru­men­tal parts that make up wide­ly loved clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions in time with the music itself.

On this page, you can watch four videos, with each one visu­al­iz­ing one of the piece’s con­cer­ti. Fans of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine will notice that its for­mer­ly sim­ple visu­als have tak­en a big step for­ward, though what can look at first like a psy­che­del­ic light show also has a clear and leg­i­ble order.

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For “Spring” and “Autumn,” Mali­nows­ki ani­mates per­for­mances by vio­lin­ist Shunske Sato and musi­cians of the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety; for “Sum­mer” and “Win­ter,” per­for­mances by Cyn­thia Miller Freivo­gel and ear­ly-music ensem­ble Voic­es of Music (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here for their ren­di­tions of Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos and “Air on the G String,” Pachel­bel’s Canon, and indeed The Four Sea­sons). Gen­er­al­ly under­stand­able at a glance — and in many ways, more illu­mi­nat­ing than actu­al­ly see­ing the musi­cians play their instru­ments — these scores also use a sys­tem called “har­mon­ic col­or­ing,” which Malinkows­ki explains here. This may add up to a com­plete audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence, but if you’d also like a lit­er­ary ele­ment, why not pull up The Four Sea­sonsaccom­pa­ny­ing son­nets while you’re at it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why We Love Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Per­formed on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Brought to Life in Sand Ani­ma­tions by the Hun­gar­i­an Artist Fer­enc Cakó

Yes’ Rick Wake­man Explores Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, and Why It Was the First Con­cept Album

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch the First 2+ Hours of MTV’s Inaugural Broadcast (August 1, 1981)

Not every­one on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their dis­pos­al, and not every­body stayed up until mid­night. But for­tu­nate­ly at least one per­son did, in order to tape the first two hours of a new cable chan­nel called MTV: Music Tele­vi­sion. Did they know it would be his­toric? MTV cer­tain­ly hoped it would be: they equat­ed the pre­miere of this 24/7 video ver­sion of radio with the moon land­ing. Peo­ple born long after this time might won­der why a MTV Music Video award stat­uette was hon­or­ing Buzz Aldrin. But at the time, it made sense. “Ladies and Gen­tle­men, Rock and Roll.” It was a state­ment: less than three decades after the first rock and roll sin­gle, this genre of music had won—-it had col­o­nized the plan­et. And beyond the plan­et, the next stop: the uni­verse.

It’s fit­ting the execs chose as their first selec­tion The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Visu­als were not just going to be an adjunct to the music, they were going to become inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Either MTV was pre­scient about the visu­al decade to come or they in fact caused it to hap­pen. Music videos or short films had been around since the inven­tion of sound in the cin­e­ma, but MTV was *all* videos, *all the time*, brought to Amer­i­cans due to the dereg­u­la­tion of the tele­vi­sion indus­try in 1972 and the slow growth of cable chan­nels.

After a Pat Benatar video, the VJs intro­duce themselves—-Mark Good­man, Nina Black­wood, J.J. Jack­son, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn (all soon to be house­hold names and crushes)-—and then straight into a block of com­mer­cials: school binders, Super­man II, and Dol­by Noise Reduc­tion. A strange group of adver­tis­ers, to be sure. Good­man returns to ask, blind­ly, “Aren’t those guys the best?” Good­man has no idea what has pre­ced­ed him.

Yes, the first day of MTV was pret­ty rough. In fact, it’s a bit like a DJ who turns up to a gig to find they’ve left most of their records across town. In the first two hours we get two Rod Stew­art songs, two by the Pre­tenders, two by Split Ends, anoth­er Pat Benatar video, two from Styx, and two from the con­cert film for the Peo­ple of Kam­puchea. We also get com­plete­ly obscure videos: PH.D. “Lit­tle Susie’s on the Up”, Robin Lane and the Chart­busters “When Things Go Wrong”, Michael John­son “Bluer Than Blue”. This is D‑list stuff. No won­der MTV pre­miered at mid­night.

From these hum­ble begin­nings the chan­nel would soon find its groove and two years lat­er it would become ubiq­ui­tous in Amer­i­can house­holds.

Peo­ple pre­dict­ed the end of MTV right from the begin­ning. It would be a fad, or it would run out of videos to play. Forty years lat­er, the chan­nel has rebrand­ed itself into obliv­ion. And while music videos still get made, none have the effect that those first two decades had on gen­er­a­tions of view­ers. To para­phrase the Bug­gles, we have seen the play­back and it seems so long ago.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013) 

The Inter­net Archive Res­cues MTV News’ Web Site, Mak­ing 460,000+ of Its Pages Search­able Again

Revis­it Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Rein­vent­ed Music Videos & Pop Cul­ture

Revis­it Episodes of Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, MTV’s 90s Show­case of Fun­ny, Irrev­er­ent & Bizarre Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Marianne Faithfull (RIP) Singing “As Tears Go By” in 1966

Note: Yes­ter­day, Mar­i­anne Faith­full passed away at age 78. In her mem­o­ry, we’re bring­ing back a favorite from deep in our archive. It orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in June 2012.

When you want to learn a thing or two about Jean-Luc Godard, you turn to New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody. I do, any­way, since the man wrote the book on Godard: name­ly, Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard. He fol­lowed up our post on Godard­’s film of Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s 1968 rooftop con­cert with a tweet link­ing us to a clip from Godard­’s fea­ture Made in U.S.A

That film came out in 1966, two years before the immor­tal Air­plane show but well into Godard­’s first major burst of dar­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, which began with 1959’s Breath­less and last­ed at least until Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il, his 1968 doc­u­men­tary on — or, any­way, includ­ing — the Rolling Stones. Brody point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to the clip above, a brief scene where Mar­i­anne Faith­full sings “As Tears Go By,” a hit, in sep­a­rate record­ings, for both Faith­full and the Stones.

Brody notes how these two min­utes of a cap­pel­la per­for­mance from the 19-year-old Faith­full depict the “styles of the day.” For a long time since that day, alas, we Amer­i­can film­go­ers had­n’t had a chance to ful­ly expe­ri­ence Made in U.S.A. Godard based its script on Don­ald E. West­lake’s nov­el The Jug­ger but nev­er both­ered to secure adap­ta­tion rights, and the film drift­ed in legal lim­bo until 2009. But today, with that red tape cut, crisp new prints cir­cu­late freely around the Unit­ed States. Keep an eye on your local revival house­’s list­ings so you won’t miss your chance to wit­ness Faith­ful­l’s café per­for­mance, and oth­er such Godar­d­ian moments, in their the­atri­cal glo­ry. The cinephili­cal­ly intre­pid Brody, of course, found a way to see it, after a fash­ion, near­ly thir­ty years before its legit­i­mate Amer­i­can release: “The Mudd Club (the White Street night spot and music venue) got hold of a 16-mm. print and showed it — with the pro­jec­tor in the room — to a crowd of heavy smok­ers. It was like watch­ing a movie out­doors in Lon­don by night, or as if through the shroud­ing mists of time.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s Three Ver­sions of “As Tears Go By,” Each Record­ed at a Dif­fer­ent Stage of Life (1965, 1987 & 2018)

Watch David Bowie & Mar­i­anne Faith­full Rehearse and Sing Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” (1973)

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: Scenes from Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

Watch Derek Jarman’s Dar­ing 12-Minute Pro­mo Film for Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s 1979 Come­back Album Bro­ken Eng­lish (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Erik Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’ Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambient Music

Imag­ine how many times some­one born in the eigh­teen-six­ties could ever expect to hear music. The num­ber would vary, of course, depend­ing on the indi­vid­u­al’s class and fam­i­ly incli­na­tions. Suf­fice it to say that each chance would have been more pre­cious than those of us in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry can eas­i­ly under­stand. Our abil­i­ty to hear prac­ti­cal­ly any song we could pos­si­bly desire on com­mand has changed our rela­tion­ship to the art itself. Most of us now relate to it not as we would a spe­cial, even momen­tous event, but as we do to the water and elec­tric­i­ty that come out of our walls — or, to put it in mid-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry terms, as we do to our fur­ni­ture.

Despite hav­ing been born in 1866 him­self, Erik Satie under­stood human­i­ty’s need to lis­ten to music with­out real­ly lis­ten­ing to it. The Inside the Score video above tells the sto­ry of how he devel­oped musique d’ameublement, or “fur­ni­ture music.” The artist Fer­nand Léger, a friend of Satie’s, recalled that after the two of them had been sub­ject­ed to “unbear­able vul­gar music” in a restau­rant, Satie spoke of the need for “music which would be part of the ambi­ence, which would take account of it. I imag­ine it being melod­ic in nature: it would soft­en the noise of knives and forks with­out dom­i­nat­ing them, with­out impos­ing itself.” The result was five delib­er­ate­ly ignor­able com­po­si­tions, each tai­lored to an ordi­nary space, which he wrote between 1917 and 1923.

Regard­ed in his life­time less as a respectable com­pos­er than an unse­ri­ous eccen­tric, he only man­aged to get one of those pieces played — and even when he did, every­one ignored his instruc­tions to chat instead of lis­ten­ing. It was well after his death (in 1925) that such also-uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal fig­ures as John Cage and Bri­an Eno became famous for works sim­i­lar­ly premised on a re-imag­i­na­tion of the rela­tion­ship between music and lis­ten­er. Eno, in par­tic­u­lar, is now cred­it­ed with the devel­op­ment of “ambi­ent music” thanks to his albums like Music for Air­ports. Their pop­u­lar­i­ty sure­ly would­n’t have sur­prised Satie; whether he could have fore­seen ten-hour mix­es of “chill lo-fi beats to study to” is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambi­ent Music, Erik Satie’s Fur­ni­ture Music (Cir­ca 1917)

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Erik Satie’s Most Famous Pieces: “Gymno­pe­die No. 1” and “Gnossi­enne No. 1”

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

When Erik Satie Took a Pic­ture of Debussy & Stravin­sky (June 1910)

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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