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LIMITED MEANS With this second set of issues we continue to explore the limitless variations inspired by this brief and vague set of limitations. Like the typographic grid systems formalized by the swiss style modernists, these pop-song structures aim at creating a system that allows for the maximum amount of flexibility while retaining specific features that keep each variation recognizable as a member of a common species. Like these systems, it's the rules and rituals in our lives that play the counterpoint to our creative impulses. The Journal of Popular Noise, in its very concept (at least in part), is meant to play counterpoint to the digitalization and subsequent decapit(aliz)ation of the record industry. If anything, current trends in digital music sharing point to the irrelevance of the precedents set for the production of popular music in the 20th century. "Record albums" and their shrinking artwork have no place online, at least not as we once knew them. The conception and creation of recorded sound should be thoughtfully intertwined with the means of production. I am all for digital music and the freedom it gives people to explore, both in creation and consumption. Still, it's vitally important that we occasionally take a step back to look at the rules to which we submit.
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 We have to ask ourselves if these standards are helping to guide us in the direction of a positive contribution, or are they simply moldy traditions now lacking their former potency? What parts are still relevant and how do we re-incorporate them into a new context? Is this magazine just a reactionary, pre-Raphaelite flinch to the new and strange unknown? Are these obsolete means of production a nostalgic gimmick applied to inject some legitimacy into an otherwise hair brained scheme? Perhaps, but all I'll tell you now is that it's our intent to design a different experience for the listener, a new but familiar way to present recorded sounds. The physical restrictions that are placed on the listener are that only 4 minutes of sound are available before that person has to have a personal interaction with the sound making device. I'm hoping that this interaction will create a sense of thoughtfulness and attentiveness in the listener that carries over into the way the sounds are perceived. The rules for listening are just as prescribed as those for making. -Byron Kalet |