iPod track #4000-something
I still have an iPod. The last time it was updated was, I’m guessing, 2010 or so, not long before Apple purged my iTunes without any warning. One day I had 29,000+ songs in my files. The next day about 60% of that. Music I had purchased online, songs I had downloaded from my own CDs, gone.
I knew that if I updated the iPod I’d lose that music, so I never did that again. Then, over time people just stopped using their iPods. Mine went into a drawer for several years.
During lockdown in 2020 I found a refurbished speaker dock for about $50. I put it on the kitchen counter and set my iPod to play all 29,804 songs in alphabetical order. Doing it this way meant I’d have constant surprises. Songs that got downloaded because they were, say, on an anthology of American musical theater and I wanted to learn more about a world of music I’d neglected – see above photo – songs that were on promotional CDs sent to me back when one of my freelance jobs was to review music, songs like the dozen or so Bjork “Bachelorette” remixes that play in order because the alphabet says so, songs that I wish were not on this little box forever but simply will be until I am dead, I am taking them one by one in order.
It's in the Ds right now, about 4000+ songs in, the Ipod in use while cleaning the kitchen, washing dishes, and cooking.
Title: “Death Tone” / Artist: Hive Mind
Some songs are not songs at all. They’re tracks, pieces, processes, improvisations, or anything else the creator of the material wants to call it. This one is approximately 44 minutes long, and I think of that length as something balanced by scores of other things on here that clock in at 59 seconds or less. It features no vocals and no traditional instrumentation, just noises used as compositional elements. The history of avant-garde recorded music is as long as recording itself. I like it and, when I was younger, felt the need to defend it to people. Now, I don't care. You can hate it or love it. Alonso tolerates it, but I am considerate of the man I married and his capacity for listening to noise artists, so in cases like the one I'm talking about here, I wait until he's not home.
"Death Tone" – there are quite a few tracks in this device beginning with "death" – begins with several minutes of barely audible rumble that grows in vibrational presence. Stripes of sound that resemble a lost cat emerge, layered with a variation of low-grade electronic static. Then there’s a pulsing throb, followed by several waves of whoosh. It grows more dense but not menacing. At its midpoint, it’s still somewhat less than aggressive, especially when compared with harsh enterprises like Merzbow or Wolf Eyes and others in the Noise Hall of Fame.
Decades of listening to this sort of thing allows a person to grow used to its meditative qualities, and I have. In some ways, I treat it like the soundtrack to a one-person cocktail party where I don't drink anything. I'm aware of it surrounding me, but in an enveloping sense rather than claustrophic panic. It’s relaxing if the volume is low enough. You could sleep to it.
The track hums and grinds along, almost genially, for another fifteen minutes, and then it ends the way it begins, quietly, with its final moments sounding something like a malfunctioning refrigerator or insects buzzing in the dark. By the time my kitchen listening reaches the letters Y and Z and the 29,000th-ish piece of music, I'll have encountered at least a few hundred more like it. I'll send Alonso to the store for ingredients.
