By Kevin Laam
At our May 16, 2024 exhibit opening, English professor (Oakland University) and DJ extraordinaire Kevin Laam curated a soundtrack based on his interpretation of the Analog Anthropocene. His vinyl collection anchored the evening’s dance party, which was a space at the intersection of sound, movement (think cinema as kinetics!), community, and joy. We asked if we could share his insightful opening remarks with you here.
In preparing for today’s event, and thinking of songs that would engage with the concept of the Analog Anthropocene, I was reminded of a recent book by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas called This is What It Sounds Like (2022). In this book, Rogers and Ogas separate music into two categories: realism and abstraction.
Realistic records, they argue, try to reproduce the sounds of humans playing instruments––think: guitars, drums, horns, live bands, etc.
Abstract records focus on “computer-controlled, machine-based sounds rather than humans playing acoustic instruments.” According to Rogers and Ogas, abstract records “foster a more personalized engagement [with the song] because they offer the listener more room to fill in the blanks.” They represent an aural frontier where “sound rather than human performance is manipulated to influence our listening experience.”
A related distinction that is perhaps more recognizable to audio enthusiasts is “analog” vs. “digital”. Analog recordings record soundwaves onto a magnetic tape or a soft disc, whereas digital recording devices sample soundwaves electronically, and then codify them into a series of numbers, 0s and 1s, which theoretically reproduces the original sound with perfect, 100% fidelity and eliminates the noise and distortion that come with analog recording.
Up until the advent of digital audio workstations in the late 1970s, virtually all pop music was rooted in realism and recorded in analog. That changed in 1977, with the release of a song that arguably initiated the end of the realist-analog era. It didn’t eliminate music produced in the realist-analog mode, but it profoundly disrupted––and I would say, fundamentally transformed––prior notions of what it means for a song to be authentic, to be organic, to be…human.
The song I have in mind––and the song that will kick off our dance party this evening––is one that is pretty widely regarded as the unofficial blueprint of what we now call “electronic dance music,” with its pulsating beats and insistent, throbbing bassline. It’s nominally a disco song, but one that sounded nothing like the funk-based, strings-drenched, often lushly orchestrated disco music of the time. In 1977, this song sounded like the future. It still does.
The song was co-written by the British-Italian production team of Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder. It was sung by the American vocalist Donna Summer. The name of the song is “I Feel Love.”
