Raz Mesinai kicks off his blog Harmonia Prohibitorum with a nice post on soul & noise — turns out they’re the same thing, kinda…
A conclusion he arrives at via a fascinating take on the analog vs. digital debate – its not about heat metaphors (warm vinyl, cold brittle CD audio), it’s about silence:
Despite my prejudices I’m almost entirely digital for the portability and the wide spectrum of possibilities that comes with it but one thing that keeps me yearning for analogue is the noise of it. My main problem with digital music applications is the silence that is there to start with. If you record nothing at all onto analogue tape and play it back there’s still something there.
Ha, just came across this yesterday in Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace referring to Don Ho’s “From Hawaii with all my love”;
” The hideously compelling Ho starts up again with the total abruptness that makes cds so creepy”.
It’s as if the tape possesses a soul.
yeah…love the analog thing you have here..