The Waveform #016: Everything Louder Than Nothing

A reader named Ines wrote on Monday to ask why a music magazine keeps writing about silence, and this issue is not going to help her case. The honest answer is that volume is free now. Anybody can have all of it, on any device, for nothing, which means the only genuinely expensive thing left in a mix is restraint. Everything below is somebody spending that money, and spending it in public where you can hear the decision being made.

Kilo Nova's 'Attenuation'

Theo Anand on a club record built out of the sound of a room emptying. The kick keeps dropping away and the reverb is what holds the whole thing upright, which on a big system feels less like a production trick than like being the last person left at the end of a night. His verdict is that it is the most physical record of the year and the least danceable, and that both of those are deliberate.

Also this week

• At the Fjord Festival, the Weather Is the Headliner. Three days, horizontal rain, and a generator failure that turned into the best set of the weekend.
• Liner Notes: Your Favorite Song Is a Room. Dario Fontaine on reverb and memory, and why most of us recall where we first heard something more accurately than we recall the chorus.

One more thing

Recommended viewing for nobody in particular: a channel that films engineers ringing out a PA before doors, one room per video, no music, no commentary and no edit. Fifteen minutes of feedback being hunted down frequency by frequency in an empty hall sounds like a punishment and turns out to be closer to meditation. The episode shot in a converted cinema, where the balcony rings at one note and refuses to stop, is the reason I have been late to everything this week.

Next Friday. Ada