Tracks:
09 Give Me a Reason to Believe
11 The Evolution of Entertainment
And, you can stream it on youtube:
About Modernity
“Television will make up for actual physical presence even more so than
does radio. All the more isolated will be the individual in his retreat, and the
balance of trade will be correspondingly precarious: an enormous influx of
riches, consumption without services in return. The pathetic hermit,
squatting in his room, hundreds of miles away from the scene that he
experiences as his present life, the “viewer” who cannot even laugh or
applaud without feeling ridiculous, is the final product of a century-lung
development, which has led from the campfire, the market place, and the
arena to the lonesome consumer of spectacles today.”
Rudolf Arnheim, A Forecast of Television, 1935.
Modernity was a project that I began way back in 2000. It was in fact a failed
project. I had just finished the gigantic Misery double album, and was
perhaps not ready to jump into another project. In any case, several songs
were completed, including Cash, which was released as a stand-alone
single in 2002, as well as the b-sides on the same single (Profit Machine,
Name Withheld, & Gripping). And several songs also ended up on Hymns of
Disillusion, including: End of the End, and This Very Earth), of which Cash
could have easily been a part of, but for what ever reason we left it off.
Similar themes also popped up on The Me Generation, meaning that
Modernity is, in a way, the completion of an unintentional trilogy of albums
(Hymns of Disillusion, The Me Generation, and Modernity). In a way this is
entirely appropriate. Musically the tree albums are siblings, exploring
related territory, and thematically they all deal with the modern world in
which we live in different, yet related ways. I would encourage the listener to
explore them together. Begin here and work your way back, start at the
beginning and move forward, or the middle… put all three on shuffle and
experience the modern world in its rapid and random confusion. Enjoy…
Zeke Mason
MORE INFO:
After The Me Generation we went in a very different direction with Lumina and Jouissance. But again, that same cluster of themes from 2000 kept reasserting themselves, but again, as the world of information technology continued to change at a rapid pace, these themes came up in new lights, connected to other themes, and brought up further issues: identity, power, media, technology, commodity culture, information culture, creativity, freedom and dependence, money, choice and the illusion thereof, abundance and lack, and finding our place as human beings in this information-technological world. Once again we started working on an album exploring these themes, and, as things had again changed, the resulting album was different.
In a way, though it wasn’t intended at the time, the three albums chart the progress of the massive changes that the internet brought through these years. In each case the goal of the album was to look at the modern human’s place in the modern world. But in each case, that world had changed from the last time we looked in on the situation. 2007, when we finished the last album in this unintended trilogy (the album is called Modernity, after the original idea from 2000), was already different from 2004, to say nothing of 2002, or 2000.
Once again, the instrumentation is similar to the previous two, which gives the trilogy a feeling of musical connectedness that is, of course, rooted in the thematic connections. Harsh electronics combine with noisy guitars again, but this album has neither the frenetic feel of Hymns of Disillusion nor the bleak harshness of The Me Generation. Instead Modernity often feels melancholic, more reflective, more empathetic, exploring a different range of emotions and reactions. It’s also more historically reflective; it looks back across the years of change rather than just being a snapshot of the times like the first two albums of the trilogy.
The Modernity Film (Stream above)
Directed by Zeke Mason,
the Modernity film is a
visual counterpart to the
album experience.
Paying close attention to
the principles of silent film,
the Modernity movie
weaves several narratives
together, drawing on
archival and original
footage, using the album as
a soundtrack that dictates
the pace and flow of the
action. Drawing on the
same theoretical sources
as the Modernity album
itself, the Modernity film
adds depth and colour to
the picture painted, as well
as views from other
vantage points.
