A couple of weeks ago, Pitchfork Editor-in-Chief Mark Richardson wrote a column on what he called "the Tumblr-ization of indie." One of his ideas was that an artist like Lana Del Rey is basically a collage-- or in his metaphor, a Tumblr-- of images and sounds she thinks are cool. In a cultural moment when the past is instantly accessible-- not to mention one in which we're used to constant reference and appropriation-- it makes sense that we start conflating "who we are" with "what we're into." Instead of creating, the artist collects. As viewers-- or listeners, or whatever-- we learn to read between the lines and explore juxtapositions. Is it possible, for example, for me to express something about myself that can't be best expressed by saying, "I'm pretty into Hawaiian slack-key guitar music and body horror movies?" Liking things-- something we all do by reflex-- becomes a creative gesture if you do it thoughtfully.
Listening to Daydream Repeater, Ecstatic Sunshine member Matthew Papich's first full-length album as Co La, I revisited an experience I haven't had since college: Walking down the street, seeing someone wearing the t-shirt of a band I like, and thinking, cool. It's comforting to know other people like the same things we do-- in this case, skinhead reggae from the mid-1960s, field recordings from the Cameroonian rainforest, cricket noises, music in major keys. It's an incredibly lightweight album-- thin-sounding, super-repetitive, bright to the point of translucence. (Though Daydream Repeater doesn't sound stylistically like Ecstatic Sunshine, people familiar with them might recognize the directive: feel good all the time, over and over again). Papich is no archeologist, nor do I think he's trying to show off his knowledge of obscure sounds-- most of the time, he doesn't even bother disguising his samples.
Whether you attribute this to laziness or naive grace probably depends on frame of mind. By techno or hip-hop standards, Daydream Repeater would be artless, but my sense is that the music on it is closer to something like Girl Talk for audiences who don't like getting the shit beaten out of them-- music that wants you to say, "Hey, I recognize that," music that makes you feel included rather than excluded.
When interviewed for a "Rising" column a few weeks ago, Papich namechecked Erik Satie, a turn-of-the-century French composer who coined the term musique d'ameublement, or "furniture music"-- basically, the foundation for what we now call "ambient." Clearly Papich wants to be part of that conversation, or he wouldn't have made the reference. Whether he adds much to it or not, I don't know. The irony of Satie's music is that, at the time, it was considered radical and antagonistic. Papich has 100 years of art to validate music as brainless and determinedly relaxing as his own.
I've listened to Daydream Repeater a lot lately, but at moments when I otherwise don't want to be listening to music. To my mind, it sounds less like ambience and more like exotica. Its imaginary world is the yacht deck without seasickness or boredom, jungles without the fist-sized bugs. It's music for imagining you're in a perfect somewhere else. Five songs are named after places: "Egyptian Peaches", "Belgian Pillow", "My Jamaican", "Siamese in Greece", "Burning One in Stockholm."
That's where the Tumblr thing comes in. Daydream Repeater plays more like a mixtape than an album-- a document of where someone's been and what they've liked. Aside from one surprising flip of "Be My Baby", Papich doesn't seem as interested in transforming his source material as much as just presenting it. Here's a reggae song I like, he says, and then plays it with some echo. A couple of minutes later, something else. In the cracks between, some aesthetic takes shape. Some of my colleagues here seem outright frustrated by how little Papich seems to interact with his material. For a record so airy and noncommittal, I feel semi-conflicted about it. He doesn't really seem bent on invention. But I like listening to Daydream Repeater. I'd repost it.
