About a million years ago (well, 2009), I wrote a little post about Thurston Moore’s arguably surprising affinity for Black Metal which -– in the grand scheme of things -– shouldn’t really have been too surprising, given both the experimental and noisy elements of that sub-genre,... two epithets that could also be applied to Moore’s own band, Sonic Youth.
Anyway, years and years later, in the wake of his marital tumult and subsequent break-up of his band, Thurston is still enthused with all things Black Metal, which he expounds at great length about in a new interview with Noisey. Once again, that outlet -– despite regularly featuring inanely written articles on hopeless crap like Die Antwoord, Drake and Lil Yachty -– pull the odd rabbit out of their hat with great pieces like this one with Thurston.
In any case, beyond discussing the merits of Mayhem and Gorgoroth, Thurston takes a moment to ruminate on the physical formats of books, tapes and records. When Noisey asks him why he prefers these arguable anachronisms here in the digital age, here’s what he had to say.
Because they’re vibratory; you can touch them. To me, it’s all about the smell. I always say listening to the records at this point of my life is probably the least interesting thing, because I kind of know what that is to such a degree, and I’m certainly interested in it, but what actually thrills me about it is the actual physicality of it—looking at it, touching it, seeing it, smelling everything about that, and then I might even play it [laughs].
The idea of what you’re going to hear is the most common element; that’s what digital offers you. We all share that, we can hear it, so it’s just that content—the audio content is what is available, the visual content is available too, but the whole factory content? No. And the touch content as well; you can download words, but you can’t download a book, per se.
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