I can't help but compare the 808 as an instrument to the Indonesian Gamelan. The pure round boom of the 808 sub seems so much like the logical/technological purification of the gong, as if you could take raw wild gong and boil it and strain it and find that pure blue boom that's heard more in the chest cavity than the ears and meanwhile the alien overtones of the cowbell matching the feel of the saron, which when you play it you actually create a sort of analog mute group as one hand chases the other around to kill the linger of the ring. It's such a curious sound, the 808 cowbell, full of harmonics and sounding (and for the most part, functioning) nothing like its real world counterpart. The melodic lines on these Memphis cuts have clear hypnotic intent and I think that's something that emerges on account of that, that the fundamental pitch is to some extent implied, and the overtone power so huge. If you wanted to design an IRL instrument that sounded like a tuned set of 808 cowbells what would that look like? I imagine a xylophone you play from a very high chair and ornately shaped reverberant pipes that dangle below each wooden bar key.
The feeling of these tracks is ceremonial. Dark ceremonies. Murder, weedsmoke. I hate the genre name "Horrorcore", partly because who the fuck really calls it that anyways, but partly because it fails to, as a name, address the psychotropic effects of this music. It suggests that it is more relevant that the music is violent (which is easy to achieve) than it is that it's functionally psychedelic (which is special). A horror film can be thrilling because it actually scares you, but the appeal of violent music is in the atmosphere of detachment. In an early Juicy J track a melodic slice of a horror film's OST is captured, duplicated, reconfigured in suspension, folding and repeating but not resolving, situated instead in a bed of energy (percussion). A tension that is static, floating, not likely to resolve, is an alienation.
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n63/captbass/PsychoSoundscoversmall_zpsdcea4086.jpg
le mix : https://www.dropbox.com/s/4y0cg6eox14cs7j/Psycho%20Sounds_%20Murderbells%20of%20Mempho.zip
Je ne sais pas si cette ligne topique deviendra un réceptacle de rap de Memphis ou une histoire secrète des parallèles musicaux mystérieux...
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