h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been listening to a piece of electronic music internittently for several weeks, a 54-minute piece called "Vostok" by Craig Padilla. (I downloaded it from eMusic). It's named for Lake Vostok in Siberia, an entity which is mostly ice for most of the year.

The piece is hypnotic and repetitive, well-constructed but subtle. The progression is heiratic, reminiscent of light shining through ice, of creatures with antifreeze for blood. It takes a few listenings before you begin to appreciate how it's put together. I thought it might be the kind of piece a meditation center might use, but after my neighbor's reaction I'm not so sure.

She found "Vostok" scary, disturbing. She wanted it off.

This isn't the first time I have witnessed this kind of reaction to electronic or "New Age" music. Where I hear poignance and sounds that take me for a little ride outside the comfort zone of life, other people hear sounds that frighten them, disturb them, make them anxious.

So this gets me to wondering how other researchers feel about the musical genre. I see it as stretching right back at least to Walter/Wendy Carlos's "Timesteps" on the Clockwork Orange album. And I don't claim to be up on everything that is out there for consumption -- I'm open to recommendations.

Hmmm... it sounds almost like your neighbour is reacting to infrasound (which at around 17Hz can produce heightened feelings of awe or fear) but I don't think normal speakers can produce frequencies that low.

This piece does have a very low bass ostinato...

My emusic subscription just rolled over, I'll go give it a listen and tell you what I think.

One piece which had exactly the reaction you mention on my roommate, is Paul Horn's "Inside" and "Inside II".

The first album is a flute recording made under the dome of the Tah Mahal. The second album was th attempt to recreate the resonances obtained at the Taj Mahal. I used it for meditation music, and my roommate insisted I never play it where she could hear it again, as it "creeped her out".

SC

This is fascinating. Someone should do a scientific study of this effect.

I don't know whether it's all physiological; I have seen people react adversely to pieces that weren't heavy on the low notes. Since music plays on our emotions, the music may be suggesting things to some listeners that they don't want to hear.

Let me be clear: I am NOT saying that, if you don't like electronic music there is something wrong with you. Japanese court music bores and repels me, and I am completely indifferent to opera. I don't care for rap any more than I ever liked the dub component of reggae -- shut up and let me just listen to the beat! But it is true that one becomes educated in music, and learns to appreciate composers or styles.

Do you know anybody who sits down in the evening with a cup of tea to listen to some Schoenberg atonal stuff?

I listen to a very large array of electronic music. Everything from ambient (no emphasis on beat, generally flowing sounds) to Hard NRG (lots of heavy bass and shocking beats)to experimental psychedelia.

Seeing as your neighbor is no spring chicken, her ability to hear high frequency tones may change what she is experiencing. If you lose enough of the freqs that make up the melody and theme of the piece, you may be left with tones that are aggrovating. I've seen first hand how people's who moods can change due to a change in music.

I can't say that I am surprised that your neighbor had that reaction. She's been conditioned to consider only certain forms of music as art. Breaking her of that conditioning may be difficult.

The only electronic music I really listen to is Kraftwerk.

I've come across so many different kinds of music, and I've got to say I've never ever experienced feeling scared, intimated or disturbed...

The closest I've ever come is the title music for the TV series 'Twin Peaks' and the first episodes of 'X Files' - but that was after having watched a couple of episodes and therefore expecting to see something odd/creepy/weird/spooky whenever I heard the music.

I get the feeling that the music must trigger something - a memory of some kind, something the person who reacts has been trying to suppress and isn't very keen on allowing to surface again. Because, frankly, I find it hard to believe that the music itself would be the reason for and the source of the discomfort.

Lil's hit on something though. There's definitely something about electronic music that tends to set people on edge. The theme to Clockwork Orange is maybe an extreme example (perfect for the film) being pretty much a funeral dirge, but this is heightened by a hollowness of tone and mechanical perfection of tempo that seems to strip the humanity from the music.

Pink Floyd's 'Welcome to the Machine' makes this psychological link quite blantantly, and it's there to a greater or lesser extent with Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream etc

Can anyone come up with a genuinely 'happy' electronic number?

Having had a listen to part of the work (you can hear samples of this and others on Craig Padilla's website I can see why some might find it a bit spooky. What I've heard sounds ok by me so far. If you want something a bit spooky, I find The Box by Orbital to be quite dark and threatening in feel.

While not an electronic album as such, Brian Eno's Music For Airports is considered to be an archetype for ambient albums (it is subtitled ambient 1). Many of his other works are worth checking out also. Aphex Twin has been making electronic music under a number or names and styles for a while and his "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" does what it says on the tin. The KLF for many are a rave band but their sample based ambient album "Chill Out" complete with pastoral scene of sheep under a tree on the cover is a bit of a departure from that side. If you're after electronic work without human presence then this won't be for you as they sample many US radio stations, kind of like catching snippets as you tune round the dial. You can get samples of most of these at the major online book/music store.

Happy electronic music? I'll have to think about that.

There is a whole subgenre of "Happy Hardcore" that features incredibly heavy and rapid beat along with vocal anthems.

It's often the "Gateway" form of rave culture that high-school aged girls get in to. They often are the ones wearing elaborate costumes and generally party themselves out quickly. Sooner or later people tend to shy away from that scene and get in to Trance.

I just listened to the entire piece, and Lil you're right it will need multiple listens. I can see that it won't be something that everyone will like, but I find it hard to imagine someone actually objecting to it. I found it very pleasant, the first time through.

Then iTunes threw They Might Be Giants on immediately afterwards. Jarring, to say the least.