The Synthetic Shadows of Marvin Huxley

Apropos simulations and simulacra... I am catnip for the blues and, for the past few weeks, have been simmering in a thick stew of female blues singers - because, well, that's what one can do these days... Which leads me to the curious case of Marvin Huxley.

Or should I italicize "Marvin Huxley", a music producer who, like me, is enamored of 1930's Delta style blues and has now, at length (and perhaps controversially augmented with AI), delivered an album-length blues fascinator, Shadows of the South

Branded as an "Independent Lo-fi Blues and Jazz Funk Music producer" from Adelaide, Australia, I see and hear what gets him off, it's an aesthetic I am deeply sympathetic with. It's also an aesthetic just out of an uncanny valley, leaving me deeply conflicted.

My introduction to Marvin Huxley was Suits Stitched in Shadows and Lies, which was somehow recommended by YouTube after I'd exhausted my go-to playlists of Etta James, Big Mama Thornton and Memphis Minnie. And, well, listen for yourself.

(Putting aside the visuals - which were a later discovery and par for the course in this our generative timeline), I didn't know where to start with the music, I was confounded.

Then, one click later, there was A Dollar's Worth of Skin, which was similarly disconcerting to the ear. Synthesis, compression, homage at once, and fruit of a strange alchemy.

Then, there were also the earlier experiments, say Goodbye America Blues, which is more evidently artificial with its vocal sampling of an unknown singer and filtered guitar. Still, I kept listening, eventually casting the effort as a blues fascinator despite the synthetic content.

Sidenote: The Sister-in-law has written at length about the real thing. We should all listen to them. The emotional labor and the craft:
Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage (Refiguring American Music) #CiteBlackWomen

In any case, here is an album that is soaked in this aesthetic, devoted even. A studio creation, perhaps, but it is a creation nevertheless. A high-tech creation of lo-fi blues.

Or more precisely, it is a recreation from someone "who loves trying to recreate those old sounds using vintage style instruments, samples, compressors and effects". Homage and chimera, then.

When I read "The guitar recording was degraded to evoke the brittle warmth of a 1930s field recording", I couldn't help but think of Pete Rock or DJ Shadow crate-digging and similarly jacking for beats.

Or say Q-Tip on the needle drop.

There's a racial angle perhaps (or a cultural appropriation take, some might say), but I won't venture in that direction, only the music matters to me.

Still, who gets to write "a love letter to the lost ghosts of American blues music"? Not for nothing do many bluesmen sing that Blues is a Feeling. (see Lightnin' Hopkins, for example)

And in a year where the movie Sinners has dominated the cultural zeitgeist, it is worth asking whether you can have a Delta blues revival, with full-on lyrics, gritty vocals and all, that is synthetic rather than authentic.

(Sidenote: to that point, Buddy Guy's new album Ain't done with the blues is also out)

Still, the music nerd in me wants to deconstruct the work. Where do the voices in Shadows of the South come from? What studio trickery was used? What equipment? Or, perhaps more tellingly, what prompts were crafted, if some of it is indeed AI-infused?

But then, stepping back, I also want to ask: who made the field recordings that we all venerate? Who was documenting the blues back then? Who was promoting it? And who now basks in the sounds of earthy blues?

But that's me. I can listen to a blues mama merely humming for hours on end. Further, the stakes are low. To add or not to add to the playlist, that is the question.

It seems to me that the visuals highlight the artifice and perhaps even detract from the music they are intended to support. At the same time, they do underscore the mood and point to the story of the clever lyrics. Also: they are great conversation pieces.

(A reminder that my favorite video accompanying a Funkadelic song is a juxtaposition with a Russ Meyer film, You Scared the Lovin' Outta Me by Funkadelic)

But I wonder what Marvin Huxley would come up with, with say a Lizz Wright in the flesh, after hours in the recording booth. Or maybe, to push the racial angle, what would a project with Alice Russell on vocals sound like in comparison?

In the same vein, one wonders if people want to listen to the blues or if blues-adjacent or blues-influenced will suffice. Certainly in these streaming days, there are many for which the simulacra will suffice as background music. Reserving the experience of the real thing for live settings. One wonders...

Anyway, the album is not all fetishized retro action. The rest features more modern beats, albeit still blues-inflected on the surface, even when veering into trip-hop territory. That growl in the vocals is a constant, and those guitar licks. Sounds of nostalgia.

I can see the twinkle in the eye as the album was released. But who knows how it will be received? I do know that this listener was left chasing shadows tying to decipher this conversation piece. Let me know what you think.

Shadows of the South by Marvin Huxley

The album on YouTube (spotify version) and a few highlights. For the first three, I suggest a blind listen before venturing to the videos.

• Suits Stitched in Shadows and Lies
• A Dollar's Worth of Skin
• Goodbye America Blues
• Sunday Prayes and Monday Chains
• Silver spoons and broken backs
• Shadows of the south
  The title track sounds more modern than the rest of the album.

P.S. Hey Marvin, tell me more about the makings of this album.

P.P.S. Pardon the title of this piece, I'm a sucker for such things.

This note is part of a series, One Track Mind. See previously:

Shock of the Familiar

It's uncanny when you first recognize a kindred spirit
When you find yourself in conversation with a long lost friend
Beholding that ineffable nous that immediately speaks to you
A substance and outlook that, you realize, tints your customary lens

For what is familiar to you, what you've long known as normalcy
Is not the same for others, rare are the cases of deep empathy
You wrote the tale of the lost stories in an attempt to find yourself
For it's not often that you recognize yourself on the book shelves

It's bracing to read them as they take you into their worlds, these writers
With their finely detailed narratives, it's the underlying story that matters
What with the shared love of limpid language and angular storytelling
We are children of Ananse, with words as music, lovers of social living

I have my tribe, masked in words, with whom I'm in episodic conversation
Members of my cohort who give me comfort with their singular discursions
Blood brothers and sisters, most of them badged as modern travelers
I don't need their likes or plaudits, their very presence is enough

Humorous anecdotes and elliptical notions thrown in for good measure
Unafraid to take our time and tell stories and let them take us where they may
There are distinctions for sure, I'm not one for some of their enthusiasms
Even when I disagree, I have a deep and specific connection with their artistic impulses

The long tail of community, kindred souls who risk and dare
We are normally dark matter, but clarifying with the stories we share
Each pushing our way towards the moment when you see your face in the mirror
But even with our undoubted self confidence, it can be the shock of the familiar

In a life of mixed metaphors: the middle passage and the torrid zone
I'd rather not face the challenge of humanity's curriculum alone
At once stranded mid-Atlantic, dislocation is our ultimate subject
A head nod to my fellow travelers engaging in the normalcy project

Evocative, a playlist

The Friends playlist would normally be my first port of call, but this note seems to require something a bit more angular and evocative. Taken mostly from Massive Attack and Portishead who frankly won the 90s and finishing with the incomparable Stevie Wonder taking flight. (spotify version)

• Teardrop by Massive Attack
• Roads by Portishead
• Hymn of the Big Wheel by Massive Attack
• Glory Box by Portishead
• Splitting the Atom by Massive Attack
• Strangers by Portishead
• Superwoman by Stevie Wonder

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: communities, writing, Creative Process, aesthetic, culture, observation, perception, appreciation, Africa, literature, normalcy, poetry, serendipity, Observers are worried, Comfort Suite, diaspora, reading, toli

Writing log: March 25, 2021

Kente, Lace and Champagne

Pondering a photo and poem to (belatedly) complete the London's Got Soul Trilogy...

Photographers talk about seeing The Shot, knowing as they press the button that they have captured a great image. I'm not much of a photographer and have only come close to this once, 45 seconds before I took the above photo. As it turned out, it took me that long to find my camera and I missed the shot I wanted when additional people walked into the scene. The occasion was a friend's wedding. Still I think it turned out fine and the sight compelled me to declaim some spontaneous poetry, or doggerel as my friends labeled it.

The first two lines were obvious

Rolling hills of fair Essex
Stately homes and greener pastures

As was the eventual final line

Kente, Lace and Champagne

In between there was what you would expect: musings on the wonder of the Accra style

and Jamestown posturing melded with East London street smarts.

It appeared to me that all were trying to create high society. One can imagine everyone settling for high tea at Fortnum-and-Mason's what with the costumes and the hats on display. And yet these are all normally unprepossessing Londoners who hustle and bustle on crowded buses and the packed cars of the underground. But give them a happy occasion and a fine setting, and they'll be all Ascot top hats and (relatively) stiff upper lips.

When you mix lace style and kente chic with a London sensibility all that's missing is champagne.

[Update July 7 2020]

I recently recovered my notes on the poem I had written - a kind of covidious dividend, and thought I should share instead of fussing and rewriting them as is my normal wont. Still, I suspect the title is too good and a different piece of toli may emerge later under its banner...

Kente, Lace and Champagne

Rolling hills of fair Essex
Stately homes and greener pastures

They may only see us as their care home cleaners
Invisible workers, some call us your infrastructure

For on weekdays and nights our game faces are firmly fixed
But on such an occasion the ceremonial mask slips

The light shines amidst the grey blandness of exiled time
We escape the torrid zone of the daily bread line

We are royalty back home, our traditions meet modernity
Agona Swedru expatriates dressed here in Jamestown finery

Your fashions were invented in our hometown cradles and pots
You might say cool was a word derived from our plush cloths

In your pursuit of black and all the other forms of gold
Our country chic of shimmering lace hints at our riches untold

Dresses hand sewn by seamtresess with craft and delicacy
We dance in the grand estate and enjoin all in the revelry

These African ceremonies are our relief from immigrant pain
We toast our brethren and sistren with kente, lace and champagne

Miscellany

And while on the topic of champagne and London, I came across this tidbit about the improbable ascendency of British wine in recent international competitions.

Champagne houses eye up English vineyards

From Kent's Isle of Thanel to the Sussex Downs, what began as a rumour, or a bruit as the French might say, may soon become a brut reality.

French champagne houses, impressed by the strong performances of English wines in international competitions, are looking to buy English vineyards.

The French, who have always looked askance at the culinary prowess of their now Channel Tunnel linked neighbours, of course were rather skeptical about this development. But they are nothing if not pragmatic when it comes to money hence they will scope out the competition.

The English reaction to this scrutiny is an interesting blend of stoicism and prickliness.

"Why should we help the French when we are already producing better champagne on our own?" he said. "We have exactly the same soil conditions and thanks to global warming the climate is actually better. The only difference is I'm not allowed to call our wines champagne."

"It's got to be better than growing cauliflower."

"At every English sporting event from Wimbledon to Ascot, we toast the victors with French champagne", he said. "We'll probably be toasting the anniversary of our victory at Trafalgar this summer with French brands too, it really gets my goat."

British wine?

Soundtrack for this note

A short playlist is in order

• Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
  
  A pop synthesizer tune by the boys of irony for the ultimate city of synthesis and soul, London.
• Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack

Kente, Lace and Champagne, a photo album

File under: London, kente, lace, fashion, style, photo, chic, aesthetic, Ghana, immigration, textiles, poetry, toli

That B-Movie meme again

I've written before on how the political discourse in the West is all about nostalgia and reducible to the B-movie aesthetic of politics as theatre. I was struck by this again when watching one of the sunday morning political talk shows this weekend, hosted by Howard Kurtz on CNN, that what seemed to be important was not what the news was, but how it was discussed by the press and the talking heads.

The talk was all very meta, ironic and all about the imagery and spin. The realities of another bloody weekend in Iraq didn't even impinge on the discussion in any way, nor was there any policy analysis of the issue du jour, the presidential debate. The implication was that we are all too sophisticated to discuss substance, what mattered was how these politicians came across, how they looked, whether they picked their nose. They might as well have been baying sheep for all these commentators cared.

In much the same vein, here is Tom Engelhardt commenting on the first Bush-Kerry debate:

Presidential fiction on the morning after

"One irony did strike me as I watched a rare only half-controlled Bush performance where he did not look like his usual relaxed, folksy self: The Republicans love to denounce Hollywood, but they have proved the most fabulous purveyors of fiction and seductive imagery in our recent political history. Reagan may have been our official actor-president, but George has been much underestimated for his ability to act out both the roles of 'George Bush' and of the President. Even the debate agreement document itself, all 32 pages of it, had the detail of a Hollywood agent's contract with a big studio -- and Bush family consigliere James Baker was that agent.

Normally surrounded by blanketing 'security,' the President's campaign road events -- with their carefully reserved tickets, their choreographed chants and softball questions, their air of private theatrical performances only open to invited (or paying) guests -- have all the easy, repetitive smoothness of a Little Mermaid-like stage show at Disneyland. Far more than in any other campaign of our lifetime, the Bush campaign, until tonight, has really been a fabulously successful cartoon version of politics, buffered from any reality whatsoever. Unscripted realities have generally been kept well out of sight in blocked off protest zones and when anyone has crashed the campaign's space -- anyone, that is, wearing the wrong t-shirt or protesting in any way -- that person has almost instantly been airbrushed away. Who else has ever created such a self-enclosed political universe, so -- as everyone likes to say -- 'on message'? (And imagine that, at any given moment, there are not one but two performances taking place -- the second being a carefully coded set of signs and signals for the President's fundamentalist Christian audience.)

And what about the President himself with that wonderful walk of his -- not on display at the debate this evening -- slightly bow-legged as if he had just dismounted from a horse before striding on stage, the shoulders curved forward, the head held just in front of the body, the hands hanging at (but off) his sides as if he were indeed a mythic cowboy, a gunslinger ready to draw. (Never mind that, just out of sight, the outlaws have taken over the sheriff's office and are performing their own version of A Fistful of Dollars.)

Of course, this country's greatest and most seductive export has always been imagery (and the fictions that went with it): whether films from the Hollywood production line, TV shows that have sometimes turned much of the world into the equivalent of couch potatoes, or ad mini-dramas that travel the planet as our ambassadors, outdoing every other form of alluring fiction.

As it happens, the Bush administration's skills have been dazzling and attractive only domestically. As a Hollywood extravaganza, their campaign would be an instant failure because there would be no foreign box office. But if your goal is power at home and the world be damned, then the George machine has been a remarkably effective image producer, given the minimalist materials at hand. (Think Iraq, the price of a barrel of oil, jobs in America, or the economy generally.) Whether or not that was changed by the first debate I don't know, but it's enough to drive you bonkers. His 'ranch' in Crawford isn't actually a ranch; his 'Texas' youth happened mostly in the East; his 'military service' wasn't really military service; his 'success' in business was a sham; little that he said in his last debates against Al Gore bore any relation to the policies he's since pursued (remember his humility about 'nation-building efforts' back then); his Iraq, of course, isn't Iraq; his version of war, learned in the movie theaters of his childhood, bears no relation to war; and so on into some clean, well-lighted nightmare of the soul.

The flamboyant enemies he's preferred -- Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and now Abu Musad al-Zarqawi -- have themselves been fascinated by our image-making skills and have been into making their own images and fictions in imitation of the Hollywood that turned out Predator, Alien, and any number of catastrophe films."

These days, I'm more concerned with the campaign my mum is waging in Ghana for the Ho West constituency. Politics in Ghana, and espcially the region she is campaigning in, is still very primitive. People are so poor, living barely above subsistence that all incumbents had to do to in the past to get their votes was drop a few bags of rice and a couple of chickens, if that. Slogans or policies mattered for naught. And yet there was no tangible reward for these people for their 95% votes. No infrastructure, no roads, no running water or electrictity. And still there would be those who would vote 6 times in row if there was any difficulty with the polling - much to my uncle's disgust in the last election. At least in the US, your senator would throw some pork your way, some highway contracts or bridge, some pet scheme of some sort.

There's a heady challenge in trying to reverse 18 years of absolutism and incumbency let alone if you're trying to elevate the political discourse. So you need the printed t-shirts, the bicycles, the megaphones. You need to look good, you need to be almost a charicature, your message almost doesn't matter.

The West has shown that endpoint of politics is this sad Kerry-Bush road show. I almost wish that this weren't the future of Ghanaian politics say in 20 years time. But it is. It's that B-Movie theory again, I'm sad to say.

File under: culture, journalism, media, politics, USA, america, aesthetic, war, observation, toli