33 And A Third Books

The 33 1/3 Author Q&A: Marc Weidenbaum

By Kaitlin Fontana, 33 1/3 editorial assistant

with contributions by Mara Berkoff

Over the next few months, we'll be profiling the authors of the eighteen forthcoming 33 1/3 titles here on the blog so you can get to know them, their writing, and what kind of twisted soul chooses to think about just one album for months at a time.

Up now: Marc Weidenbaum, publisher of the webzine Disquie,t focusing on the sounds of ambient and experimental music. Which album had Marc wired? Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which left Weidenbaum wanting to debunk myth that the album is indeed beatless. In our interview, Marc tells us that "[it's commonly asserted] that it has no rhythmic content. I think this is, simply, false."

33 1/3: What, in particular, drew you to writing about this album?

Marc Weidenbaum: After the almost 20 years now that I've spent with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II since its 1994 release, what drew me in particular was the album's deep, resounding, unrepentant murkiness—which is to say, its absence of what might be considered particular. The record evades the idea of particular, except to the extent that its pronounced murkiness is particular to it. Tracks seem to bleed together, and to fall apart. The framing material abets in this: the general lack of song titles, the hazy graphics, and the limited liner notes. Ambient music is often packaged and promoted as being ephemeral, ethereal, but this album is more so than most; it's tantalizingly difficult to get a grip on.

In many ways it is music that one can get—that one inevitably gets—lost in. That was plainly attractive in 1994. Come 2012, when I wrote the book proposal, the idea of getting lost—at our initial moment of pervasive cell phones, GPS, search indexes, Google Books, and so on—seems like a long lost ideal. I know that I am most comfortable when I am least comfortable, and the fact that Selected Ambient Works Volume II is still strange to me makes me uncomfortable in a good way.

33 1/3: Describe for us the process of coming up with and pitching your 33 1/3. Did anything surprise you?

MW: This was the second time I'd submitted a proposal to the 33 1/3 series. The first time was several cycles ago. I had then proposed the self-titled debut album by the Latin Playboys, an adjunct operation to Los Lobos featuring two members of that band plus the musician/producers Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom. It didn't even make the shortlist cut. This time around, rather than simply select "the album I feel most passionately about at this moment," I intended instead to select an album at a Venn Diagram intersection of various essential things: It needed to be an album that gave me an opportunity to dig into the things I am most focused on (i.e., technologically mediated sound, ambient music, electronic music, generative music, sound art, field recordings), an album that was more myth and mystery than it was a crucible of received collective wisdom.

Two final factors, in discussion with various friends and colleagues, led me to focus on Aphex Twin. The primary one was that of the three final contenders (the other two being the Monolake and the Oval), Aphex Twin was the least conventionally understood. I wanted the book to be of service to its reader, and I felt that an underreported album would have a welcoming audience, especially a record, such as this one, that doesn't expend much effort in telling its own story. I thought both Monolake and Oval would be fine choices, but in the end I couldn't really focus on a specific album—much as I love Hong Kong and 94 Diskont, respectively—by either that I felt stood alone the way Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II does. As for the thing that surprised me the most, it was, simply, how excited I got as I worked on the proposal. When I started the process, I was thinking the 33 1/3 series would be really neat to participate in. By the time I was deep in the final editing of my proposal, I was heart-poundingly, evangelically excited at the prospect of spending serious, purposeful time with this album.