Heavy Rocks (it's a long one)
On Friday last week I went to my first live music concert in a long time. Not just because of COVID, but just in general I don’t go to much live music. Still, this was a special event for me – one of my favourite bands, Boris, was playing an album they released way back in 2002, well before I could have gone to seen them.
I had an absolute blast, but this was largely because there was so much nostalgia, identity and like life philosophy tied up in this band and music for me.
Boris is a doom/stoner art metal band from Japan that have been around since the early 90s. They are kind of impossible to pin down and seem to re-create themselves from scratch each time they release an album, which is about once every 18 months. Some albums sound like garage rock, others like j-pop, others just are drone music. Not every album is good and I don’t like them all. But when I first heard the band I felt so absolutely inspired and, to a large extent, still do that they’ve become a fixture in my life ever since 2006.
I used to listen to heavier albums and imagine myself on stage, the music was a form of daydreaming for me, they were life and soul. I’ve run to them, danced to them, played them in cars, brought myself up, had my breath taken away, made out to them and felt alive while they were playing. One thing that makes me sad sometimes is very few people I know actually listen to this type of music, or have ever really tried.
Most of my friends don’t get heavy music, but what I know now is most don’t WANT to get it. They hear the opening part of a song and think ‘yuck’ and that’s them done. But it’s a bit like the ocean – you leap in and it’s cold, you think ‘fuck I can’t do this’, but you give it 5, 10 or 15 seconds and it’s better, suddenly it’s refreshing, then you love it, it shouldn’t be any other way. How many great foods take a bit of getting used to? How many of us love something that initially we didn’t? There’s whole worlds of creative endeavor out there hidden behind the initial 30 seconds of confusion and discomfort. Like subtitles, I hope people don’t let the most shallow and immediate inconvenience stop them from accessing a side of human expression that’s rich, nuanced and unique.
But let’s go back in time a bit.
When I was 10 I started playing guitar and quickly picked up a few other instruments, playing all through school in lots of bands. I was in orchestras, jazz bands, funk bands, garage bands, cover bands. For a long time, I wanted to be a music teacher but that dream died fairly hard when I failed to get into Uni to study music. In a lot of ways that was a good thing, I wasn’t ready to have the degree of independence and self-starting that I would have needed and, when it comes down to it, I didn’t have the chops. It hurt a little at the time, but not for long because at the time I knew, deep down, I wasn’t going to get in. So music’s been a big part of my life, and heavier music an unusually large part of that enjoyment.
For a lot of people I interact with, heavier music is something a bit challenging or repulsive. When the songs get a bit distorted, the vocals a bit harsher, the noise a bit more present, the songs longer and less poppy many, many people I know and love just cannot get with it. But for me, heavier music has been such a source of energy, philosophy, ideas, pleasure and joy for me. In this concert, listening to Boris, I had the chance to think a bit about why that is the case. After all, it’s a bit bizarre: why is something abrasive and ugly (on the surface) so moving and beautiful?
I think a big factor for me is that heavier music takes a lot of risks. The musicians regularly use textures, sounds and song writing that can be difficult for others to understand or enjoy. Boris, for example, regularly use feedback and incredibly harsh fuzz tones in their music – and I really, really respect that the textures in the songs are so, on their own, unpleasant. Yet in the context of the songs those things just slap. Similarly, some of the songs they write are, on paper, a swing and a miss – there are 20-25 minute songs that sound just like an earthquake tuned to a chord. Who wants that? Who asked for it? Yet it’s sort of brave, isn’t it? To try and have a song that’s JUST sludge.
Heavy music also embodies a sort of energy I find addictive. If you’ve ever gone surfing or body surfing there’s a feeling you might get when you catch a wave – it’s not quite adrenaline, not that strong, but it’s close – a bit of giddiness, visceral, disconnected from ego, unrelated to thought or mood. In my experience it’s like electricity or energy – it’s just a feeling of riding a bike down a hill or jumping into the sea. It’s physical, almost completely divorced from control – in fact I like it because it feels like release and surrender. When I’m listening to something heavy and it's really got me going there’s no thinking or abstraction – I like it because it’s raw and intense and pumps me up. But it’s also not egotistical.
It also taught me so much about pattern, texture, repetition, juxtaposition, tone and mood. I think about these things so often when I’m making photography or writing. Albums just form this huge expanse of interesting metaphor for me. So often when I’m making a book I think about transitions between pages and the structure of what is being built. Just like a song can hit a key change, inject silence, add another component or change tempo so too can visual art – it’s less obvious, but it’s important. I wouldn’t be able to articulate these things or think about them without heavy music in my life. Similarly with writing – I love more vocal writing, more direct and clear. That comes 100% from liking this sort of music – so many people are poised to hate it, and yet the bands just keep making it and working on it. There’s an honesty about the whole thing.
One of my favourite Boris songs – Woman on the Street (which is a whopping 2 minutes long) – has this incredibly drumming. It’s vocal in quality and is more melodic than the guitar, bass or vocals. It forms this incredible counter melody on an instrument that usually implies melody but rarely contributes to it. It’s fast and eventful and complex, but it’s also just this absolute masterclass in how pace and rhythm direct and create melody.
Anyway…
Music is one of the first things I did that my parents understood. I was a really weird kid – I didn’t like things the other kids liked and, frankly, didn’t really have much that I enjoyed. I liked playing with my best friend, we’d invent a world and make up a story and act it out. But if I tried to do AusKick (AFL for kids) or fit in it just went incredibly badly. I think that confused my parents a ton. When I picked up a guitar, even though they don’t play music, at least they could see the appeal, and understand my progress. When I learned to play Pretty Woman they realised ‘oh he’s good enough to play a song we know’ – it was a sort of common experience.
When we catch up now, many years later, they ask if I’m still playing music. I do, still, a little, though not much. But the thing that is true, but very hard to explain, is that what I took from music, what I still take from it, keeps informing so much of how I work and see the world. Every day, the work I do is informed by the music I listen to. So much of how I think about things like love, friendship, acceptance, kindness, space, relationships and politics comes from music I love. At the concert started, the first notes of the first song, I lit up – I was grinning and just anticipating every note. I knew the album as well as I know anything. I don’t play that much anymore, but I hope that the things that music helped me learn and believe in are still seen in my writing, my art, my attitude and my actions.