And then there was blogging

So it's been a while since Glasshouse and I have done one of these things, but better late or repeated than never again. I am much to blame. I am shit on keeping up with stuff and turning on my computer.

So he has sent me Jame Blake's "CMYK." Here, I'll but a link for you to listen to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQoQirZwxE4

Yes, I didn't know it either, but USA Tennis player James Blake was also interested in the London underground dubstep scene. Crazy right? We all have multiple interests though, so I give him kudos for trying to pursue his.

No. I'm kidding, this is some kid from England, as all the good ones should be who once studied at University the kind of disciplines that US doesn't put value in anymore. This guy, then takes his music knowledge and affinity for dubstep and churns out this really pop song with inspiration from dubstep.

These kind of songs are just difficult to write about. Is it dance music. No not really. It is more an exploration of where the sounds will take you. DJing without being a DJ that spins for the kids to dance nor for the art itself. They just spin and mix. And it's always kids in the basement.

So to the song. CMYK. Let's start there. What the fuck is that? Silly initials. It seems to have little to do with the refrain, "Look, I found her, red coat." Right? Well not quite. CMYK is a colour printing scheme that is extremely common. It operates on principles that the human eye cannot perceive the small dots that create a picture and how these dots of the cyan, magenta, yellow and key lay on one another. This produces a solid picture in different colours that the eye can perceive.

Okay, so turn to the song. Just like the title, the refrain, Look I found her red coat. Again and again this refrain. It echos like little dots, punctuating the beat itself. What is dictating the movement of the song, where is the message. It is dubstep electronic music. It doesn't have some kind of cohesive story to tell it is just this refrain this message over and over again being driven and driving again and again and again. Red coat, red coat, look, look, i found her, i found her, red coat, red coat.

This is precisely how the song operates. Just like the subtractive method that constitutes the colour scheme mentioned in the title of the song, the words drive the message. The color, red, look, look, as the listener of the song you must look and see the layers that form the musician complexity that the song creates. It is a layer. Not of just red. Red is just the sound you hear. Notice, red is not even in the CMYK color scheme. But it is red you hear. You hear it because it is part of the entire musical structure. It is being created and perceived by the listener by the dots, the layers and pulse of the music. We hear the sound "red" look. You found the red coat, but you did not see the entire structure which created the song. It is the dots that create the song. It is the sound waves of layers and layers that give content to the music and the message. There is not a message without the beats that are dubstep. The form creates the message.

Even when we move to the beat itself it echos the sounds of a printer. Tick tick tick tick tick tick....just likes the printing press.

So James Blake our brilliant brit is using a visual metaphor to create an aural message that reflects on both the aural and the visual. Wow. This kiddie is a smart one.

Or this is complete bullshit. It is perhaps then that he is not giving us a message at all. That he is merely mashing up some beats and tossing in some vocals. It sounds good. It is a great song.

I have to say though, there is definitely something behind this song. Why the title? Why the color reference? Why the reference to the visual? Is it some reference to Marry Poppins in her red coat and blue scarf? Is that who we are to find? Is this a call to Marry Poppins to give James a little more sugar with his medicine? I don't know and James does not need any more sugar given the history of the English dental profession (kidding, I know it is getting better. Slightly. All the MPs have great teeth. Okay, now I am lying).

Who knows? Who uses art for messages anyway. That would be silly.