AyGeeTee - Soul. (2011) [AMDISCS] // Grade: A+

Apparently the party is going down at AMDISCS. I know they’ve been getting love on the Bloglin for a while, and I’ve definitely peeped and enjoyed a number of the releases that have found their way over here. But, I had no clue as to the giddy magnitude of new music they put up on their blog. It’s incredible and I’m glad I’ve found All Everyone United. It’s like someone who knew exactly how to make the perfect internet music experience did just that. To say I was impressed by the overall quality of the All Everyone blog would be an understatement. The blog is more like stumbling upon that old thrift shop way out of town that happens to have a whole downstairs of records. That no one has ever looked through. It’s just this overwhelming mass that most certainly contains at least a heap of great music. I’d like to share with you my first find: AyGeeTee and his record Soul.

Music has been undergoing some fundamental changes in the last decade. We’ve seen distribution, and production change dramatically. These days, with a minimal investment, you can produce and record professional quality music at home with the help of computers. There used to be an argument that digital was not as warm, but what we’ve come to see on records like Soul. is that digital music can be just as warm, and perhaps even warm in a more human way. The warmth of analog recordings is generated as a byproduct of the electronic components of machines used for the modification and transcription of sounds, while the warmth on a record like AyGeeTee is generated by the careful arrangement and modification of sounds. And the ethereal warmth of this record sets the stage for a soundscape that is incredibly rich both in sound, and in reference.

I corresponded with AyGeeTee, and one of the first things I asked him was “What were the Top 5 records that you listened to while you made this album?” And, his response was:

1. Obvious but true – Teams – Dxys xff (reviewed here)
2. Maria Minerva – Various
3. Yoko Ono – Approximately Infinite Universe
4. Ssaliva – thought has wings
5. Oh boy, I’m giving up on five – TimeWharp, Alice Coltrane, Monster Rally, Mpala Garoo, Mickey Brown, Pears, Teebs, WALSH, Filthy Ingredients, Mane Mane, Blondes, Os Mutantes, Dem Hunger, RUN DMT, Lennon, Fleetwood Mac! (used to hate em but bizarrely got into it), early Holy Ghost!, Martha & The Vandellas, Funkadelic, Flying Lotus, early Massive Attack, Ricky Eat Acid, Giorgio Moroder… I think u get the point (not enough hours in the day), the list goes on & on (sorry if I missed any of my best bros out).

It’s easy to see how this eclectic list of things to listen to are on the input side, and a record like Soul. is on the output side. We’re entering a time when music will be more like tribes than genres. We’re redefining the idea of musical styles and work like this is where everything crystallizes and comes together. In the beginning music was sold in convenience stores, and through catalogs the model used there translated to the general market standards for early music. Convenience stores and catalogs of the 1800s necessitated a system of organization that fit their shelves and pages accordingly. So, of course the idea of genres would come about here. The same way they would organize food into different subsets would be the same way that they organized music into different subsets. And as music outgrew these supply points and became a massive industry all unto itself it retained these systems of classification. As human beings many of us understood our musical proclivities as genre specific. I’m not saying it was stupid, bad, good, or cool, just saying that’s how it was.

But, times are changing drastically and what we’re slowly starting to see is groupings of artists whose sound cannot be defined by the use of particular instruments, scales, phrasings, tempos, time signatures, trills, harmonies, et cetera. The terms that describe the music itself as an object in the world can no longer be used to summarize the musical stylings of humans. You used to be able to define genres by how they did and didn’t play. For example, house music will almost always have a four on the floor bass drum, but it won’t very likely have 13/128 time signature. Conversely Hindustani Classical music will never have a four on the floor bass drum, and is often played in a 13/128 time signature (although you couldn’t really say that it’s played in 13/128 because the note divisions aren’t counted in Hindustani Classical). But, in this new world of music, for people like AyGeeTee, nothing is out of bounds, and nothing is in bounds. There are no genres left, just groups of people whose sounds align because their lives align. Anything can work, and it is the notion that anything could work that drives such music. You can’t say that something fits into a genre when it’s pulling influence from every genre, and weaving all these threads into some ridiculous tapestry flowing in the wind in the sunshine (fuck yes!). You have to step out of the container into the soup. So yeah, meet me in the soup, it’s goin’ down.

Anything could work. It’s a whole different approach to sounds, and it’s a product of many different things in the world of music overlapping. I couldn’t possibly hope to summarize all of the things that have contributed to the shift in musical styles. But I can speak on the ones that I’ve paid particular attention to:

The proliferation of iTunes, Youtube, and blogs as a source for the dissemination of massive amounts of music from throughout the world, and throughout time. This is the beginning of a new golden age for musicians. The average citizen with internet has access to more music now than anyone in the most privileged position has ever had access to in the past. This means that you can sort through the history of sounds that humans have made around the world. It is by listening that musicians learn the most. Simply hearing the ways that sounds are crafted and arranged provides brilliant seeds that grow into an incredible range of fruits.

The dissemination of Ableton. John Cage had this very inspired, and completely overlooked quote. It was from some time in the 40s or 50s, and I don’t have my copy of Conversing with Cage, so you’ll have to forgive me as I paraphrase. But, he was speaking with someone regarding the varied objects, instruments, and modifications therein he used to produce music. And he replied that he regretted not being born in the future when there would simply be a box with buttons that could produce any sound you want. Ableton has provided that box. Ableton takes any sound and makes it completely malleable, it also allows you to incorporate synthesizers and create any imagined sound that can’t be fabricated otherwise.

Sampling changed music, but Ableton changed it again. For a whole generation of solitary musicians music was made with samples. But in all the time spent using them, there was always a longing for more intimate control of sounds. However it was a lesson in means, for it taught this generation of musicians how to listen in a very specific way. Sampling is composition through listening, it is knowing how to hear latent sounds, and extract them. And when Ableton came along it fulfilled that longing for more infinite control of sound, and it meshed perfectly with the extrapolative style of playing that grew out of listening for samples. Ableton is the fulfillment of John Cage’s request. It puts all sounds at the musician’s disposal, and it allows the musician to handle those sounds in incredibly musical ways.

If you listen to Soul. you can hear how AyGeeTee has created a vast expanse of loops, and then coaxed those loops into revealing their phantom sounds. You can’t put this kind of musical husbandry into a category and say, “Oh yeah, well if he just played it in a different time signature, and switched the scale it would be a different genre.” Nah, if you change the musical utility here, the music remains largely the same. I mean you can hear how AyGeeTee changes the utility of the music over the course of the record, but in the end it’s all one album. The sound is united by something incredibly ethereal. The common threads flow like the silk of young spiders alight on a breeze against a backdrop of resplendent Everglades sunset.

You can’t really place music like this in a genre. If you did, I would say world music. It’s much more the product of an obscure tribe of people scattered throughout the earth than it is the latest offering of a musician on the cutting edge of a new genre. Marshall McLuhan is famous for his line “The Medium is the message.” He’s also well-known for predicting the internet, and globalization. He referred to Earth as a global village in the time of the electronic era. As he saw it radios, televisions, and telephones had created a globalized village affect, wherein we were all united on some massive scale as a single tribe (apparently beneath the thatched-hut roof of telephones and the like).

However, McLuhan wasn’t around to see the fruition of the internet, and the way that it re-fractured, and re-babyloned the globe. Now, from amidst the digital era (internet, smart phones, Youtube, filesharing) new tribes emerge, and the landscape begins to take shape. Soul. is the perfect emblem of the re-tribalization of the world. AyGeeTee grew up with a particular sonic experience, which lead to the creation of a specific sonic practice, which has created this record that doesn’t quite fit into any category for our classification of music. Surely there are other people who can be placed alongside AyGeeTee, but their concomitance will never be on account of the way they play their instruments, but moreso because of how they handle sounds and the way their music reflects their lives. Welcome to the future.

Keep an eye out for a Soul. remix album and an AyGeeTee remix on Lord Boyd’s Byson EP both out soon AMDISCS. AyGeeTee also has another album prepared for release with German label Skeehn Lab. You’re gonna want to keep up with this dude. I promise. Soul. is available as a free download via AMDISCS or as a pay what you wish via his Bandcamp player below. And, you can also check out his Soundcloud for even more tunes.

- Zachg