Inspect Monolithic Undertow: In Search Of Sonic Oblivion Authored By Harry Sword Released As Ebook
is not the book it claims to be, This is not an exploration of the drone in music, It starts out as such, yes, But the author loses his way almost immediately, and what we get instead is a turgid trudge through a select history of various disparate forms of music throughout the latter half of theth century.
And by the end, the only drone is the sound of a Sword grinding his axe in impotent rage at the perceived evils of the modern world,
There's a clear warning sign on the back cover: a gushing endorsement from The Quietus, That badlyoptimised corner of the internet populated by dour high priests who bless 'em honestly seem to think that they're championing adventurous, forwardthinking, "important" music, But what they're actually doing is sucking all the fun and vitalism out of life with their interminable pseudointellectual handwringing,
Not familiar with The Quietus I'm not surprised, They're not as important as they think they are, Don't bother going there. 'tis a silly place. But for an idea of what it's like, stick with this review, By the end, you might find yourself thinking: "Oh, get over yourself, You're writing a onestar review on Goodreads of a book few will care about, Why the anger Why the effort" Why indeed And there you have it the experience of reading The Quietus, A groan and a "why", and a vague sense that all involved would be better off doing literally anything else, yourself included,
In his short author bio Harry proudly boasts of having been published by The Quietus, And yes, his style of writing is a perfect fit for that place, It's all here: the laboured points the use of five adjectives when one will do the meandering runon sentences the overuse of italics for emphasis the tendency to namedrop and tortured metaphors that look good on paper, but which actually make no sense at all.
Harry also has a habit of inserting himself into the narrative, He seems to think he's Hunter S, Thompson our fearless gonzo reporter issuing harrowing dispatches from the frontline of his chemical misadventures, So it's a pity he comes across as more like Alan Partridge out of his depth on a Manchester drug bust,
The biggest tragedy is that most of the music he drones on about is genuinely fascinating, But then, so is most of the music he disparages, Because here
we have another crutch favoured by hacks an inability to talk about the subject at hand without pouring scorn on others, like an outraged octopus squirting ink at a perceived threat.
There's a clue early on that you're in for a bad time: Harry uses the term "rockist" and expects us to nod along, gravely, I don't know if this term was coined by The Quietus, or if they just embraced it, but it's a particularly silly one, As far as I can tell, to be "rockist" is to enjoy rock music, or to believe that rock music is superior to other music forms, At no point has any writer who ever used this term given a satisfying explanation of just why this is such a bad thing, Everyone prefers the music they like, So what
It's strange to see this term in a book that apparently started life as a history of doom metal, but there you go, It's funny though, because I believe one of the sins attributed to "rockist" people is that they're preoccupied with authenticity in music, which is a BAD THING, apparently, Yet Harry is utterly obsessed with authenticity, He frequently champions "real" music, whether that's "real" psychedelia, "real" industrial, "real" doom, and so on, That's a bit rockist of you, Harry,
Indeed, Harry contradicts himself throughout, It's a GOOD THING that Steve Albini skewers factory workers in his music! But it's also a GOOD THING that the sounds of the factory gave birth to Black Sabbath! It's a GOOD THING that musicians attempt to recreate sounds they've heard before! But for some reason it's a BAD THING when Lou Reed does this! And it's a BAD THING that Led Zeppelin sing about fantasy tropes! But it's a GOOD THING that Electric Wizard, Sleep, Cathedral and others sing about fantasy tropes, because escapism is apparently OK when the right people do it!
This is what happens when you draw clear battle lines around ancient and universal languages like music.
You hurt yourself in your confusion!
And then there are all the things Harry proclaims that are simply incorrect, The Velvet Underground made three albums without John Cale, not two, Mellow Candle are not an "occult acoustic duo", Scott Walker did not crack the whip on Soused, And to claim that the Grateful Dead traded in "plodding blues rock" is such a dunderheaded assessment of their music that I doubt Harry listened beyond their two mostplayed tracks on Spotify.
For a while I thought I might use this book as a reference, So Harry and I disagree on a few things, Who cares I can just ignore his wittering and explore the numerous musicians he mentions myself, right But then I realised if he's making such mistakes and such dumbfounding assertions about stuff I am familiar with, then who knows what sort of boneheaded things he's saying about stuff I'm not so familiar with
Briefly just briefly you get a taste of the book Harry originally set out to write before he decided to flail wildly in his confused history.
The chapter on doom made me want to go out and do things, But as this followed overpages that were variously baffling, irritating and boring, it was too little too late,
And what followed was just dismal, The chapter on techno and industrial music "real" industrial music, mind you! was dreary, and the final chapter was just miserable, Rather than concluding his tedious tome with a final hurrah about the transcendent possibilities of music, Harry instead decided to lash out at some of the usual modern boogeymen.
Even though Harry and I likely agree on many points, nobody wants to get trapped in the corner by a pub bore after he's had a few, You might nod along at the points they make, but you're still going to leave the pub covered in their stale spittle, So thanks, Harry, you vampire, You drained your subject of all its joy and power, The Quietus awaits!
I'm sorry to take a hatchet to a Sword, but this book just made me angry, It's a bait and switch you think you're going "in search of oblivion", but instead you're entering Harry's world, And Harry's world is dull and grey, If you want to explore the power of the drone in music, listen to Big Church megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, Jump headfirst into the ØØ Void and you'll find that the void is a rabbit hole, From there, you can drift forward, backwards and sideways as you chart your own blissful path through sonic overload,
Be your own guide, Life's too short for books like this, Just really, bloody, interesting. Like many, I've left this with a large stack of homework, My only problem with this book is that I knew a lot of what it talked about already, Being pretty well informed about metal music already and having read Alex Ross' Listen to This and JR Moores Electric Wizards, Monolithic Undertow came in a LITTLE redundant,
But it was great, Redundant, but great.
While it's an humble history book at heart that discusses the discography of the involved artists, it offers insights other books don't, For example, the relationship between La Monte Young and Velvet Underground and the importance of Velvet Underground in turning rock from a party genre to a more introspective style of music has never been any clearer than from reading Harry Sword.
The role of The Melvins either, A band that is often parroted and too little discussed in depth, If anything, Sword is not afraid to discuss bands in depth, His exegesis of Earth, Sunn O, Electric Wizard and Neurosis was also out of this world,
Bottom line, this book made me want to listen to heavy, droning music, It made me understand how it was bound to end up celebrated in the extremes of the sonic spectrum because of its ties to prechristian faith, It was brilliant, I wish it had been a LITTLE more personal, Harry Sword has an awesome voice, but he makes himself disappear too often, sitelinkMonolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivionis not a run of the mill music book, sitelinkHarry Sword explores how the drone, or drone music, has a long and rich history, From early primitive instruments through sacred chants and onward into modern music, he finds evidence everywhere, This exploration embraces The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, Sun, the Stooges, Sonic Youth, the Master Musicians of Joujouka, amongst many more,
It would be easy to view these investigations as the height of pretentiousness, however I must confess I lapped it all up, Monolithic Undertow takes you on a wonderful journey and is very readable and often quite amusing, An unusual but provocative book and one which sent me away with a host of new sounds and artists to investigate,
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Monolithic Undertow alights a crooked path across musical, religious, and subcultural frontiers, exploring a concept that is often described as 'the drone'.
Harry Sword traces the line from neolithic IndoEuropean traditions to the modern underground by way of midth Century New York, navigating a beguiling topography of archeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub bass, avantgarde eccentricity, and fervent spiritualism.
From ancient beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, North Mississippi bluesmen to coneshattering South London dub reggae sound systems, Hawkwind's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust, Ash Ra Temple and sonic architects like La Monte Young, Brian Eno, and John Cale, the opiumfueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the caveman doom of Saint Vitus, the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Swans to the seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow probes the power of the drone: something capable of affording womblike warmth or evoking cavernous dread alike.
This story does not start in the twentieth century underground: the monolithic undertow has bewitched us for millennia, The book takes the drone not as codified genre but as an audio carrier vessel deployed for purposes of ritual, personal catharsis, or sensory obliteration, revealing also a naturally occurring auditory phenomenon spanning continents and manifesting in fascinatingly unexpected places.
Monolithic Undertow will be a book about music and the very human need for transcendence and intoxication through sound, It seeks to reveal the drone as a tool of personal liberation that exists far outside the brittle confines of commodity culture, Not life changing for me because I already know and love so much of the music discussed, But it has changed my perspective by showing the thread that connects droneadjacent music, I understand more and will listen differently, So maybe it is life changing, Also, John Cale rules. A fascinating work in places, but let down by some stylistic or editorial choices for a book whose intro begins firmly in the stoner/doom/drone axis, and whose artwork and sales pitch seems to sit equally in that area, a scant chapter is dedicated to the likes of Earth, Sunn O and The Melvins, while Black Sabbath don't make an appearance until at least two thirds of the way through.
That's not to say that the prior chapters are inessential points of Hawkwind, LaMonte Young, Krautrock, and the influence of Ravi Shankar and Indian ragas on western music are very well made and their significance convincingly argued, and with impressive depth.
What lets the book down is a tendency towards Nick Kentesque glorification of the drugaddled experience of some of this music admittedly, not to be overlooked when discussing rave music or Sleep, but it grates after a while, and some repetition of metaphor and analogy that should have been picked up.
The same comparison being made multiple times in a single chapter is offputting, There also some tangents which, while entertaining, feel like the writer is going offpiste in order to talk about some personal favourite artists far more than ensuring that he's sticking to the topic of drone it's hard to justify how Neu!'s "Hallogallo" or the music of Andrew Weatherall could be considered drone, no matter how brilliant it is, and in places it seems that drone, minimalism and repetition are conflated, while a section on hauntology seems to exist purely because it's trendy, rather than because it's relevant.
If you're fascinated by the drone/doom genre specifically, this book may seem a disappointment, but if you have a more broader interest in the making of music generally, and particularly in the fringes of popular music from Alice Coltrane to Neurosis by way of John Cale I would thoroughly recommend this, and make sure you've got a notebook or a Spotify account handy as many songs and artists are written about in such a way as to make you want to put the book down and stick their record on immediately.
Interesting in its narration of how genres get deconstructed i, e. Black Sabbath to Melvins to Earth to Sunn O and end up sharing common elements in other similarly deconstructed genres usually via droning, physically impactful volume, I was kind of hoping there would be a bit more to it, especially as it starts off very philosophical about drone, but I enjoy a lot of the music in question so its not a huge negative.
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