AEM042 Order or Ardor

My friend and musi­cal com­pan­ion Jeremy once gave me this advice when I told him I was hav­ing trou­ble writ­ing songs: “Start with a philo­soph­i­cal con­cept and try to make the sound describe that con­cept.” It was an inter­est­ing, if star­tling method that I had never encoun­tered before. Should music pro­ceed from some base of an idea and build from there? Or do what we call “philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts” even have a place in music? Don’t we still put stock in the tran­scen­dence of the musi­cal expe­ri­ence, in its absence of direct ref­er­ence and metaphor? Only in a very restricted sense. As many worth­while con­tem­po­rary artists have proven, idea and form are mutu­ally illu­mi­nat­ing projects. One does not fol­low the other. They con­tain and advance each other.

And then there is the ques­tion of poetry. I men­tion poetry because it is so fine an exam­ple of how music is more com­pli­cated than we give it credit for when we exam­ine it through a philo­soph­i­cal lens. How to delin­eate the spaces of music and lan­guage? How can we think of music as autonomous from “every­day expe­ri­ence” when its very essence is inscribed by Being, the most impor­tant entity in Hei­deg­ger­ian (and other influ­en­tial) phi­los­o­phy. Stu­art Wat­son, who records under Order or Ardor, shows us how these issues must be met head on in music. His songs are the famil­iar imbued with a spir­i­tual inten­sity that emits an inspir­ing radi­ance. Not only does Order or Ardor deal with “pure sound,” it deals with pure feel­ing, pure being and the dynamic play between those forces in care­fully con­structed audi­tory space. Wat­son is a tow­er­ing intel­lect, so it comes as no sur­prise that his music deftly han­dles weighty themes while still remain­ing fun in sound.

Writes the man him­self: “The band’s name is meant to evoke the Apollonian/Dionysian split described by Niet­zsche in ‘The Birth of Tragedy’. In this project I am attempt­ing to har­ness both inten­sity of feel­ing and clar­ity of com­po­si­tion; I want there to be a dynamic, almost dialec­ti­cal ten­sion between the ele­ments in the songs them­selves. In cer­tain instances, gen­er­ally my more exper­i­men­tal pieces, ardor wins out over order, as it were, but in other cases, ecsta­tic ener­gies are reined in and dom­i­nated by the “song­ness” of a piece–passion in the ser­vice of rea­son, order over ardor.

“Musi­cally I draw on Neil Young as a kind of eth­i­cal cen­ter, while Johnny Cash and Ian Cur­tis have had the most direct influ­ence on my singing. I have a back­ground in jazz gui­tar and bass, and that in some mea­sure informs the kinds of songs I write. Among con­tem­po­rary artists I have the high­est respect for Larkin Grimm, Woods, Dirty Pro­jec­tors, and Ani­mal Col­lec­tive; these peo­ple are mak­ing music that inspires me on a daily basis. Phi­los­o­phy and poetry inform my writ­ing on account of my day gig as an adjunct pro­fes­sor and Eng­lish PhD stu­dent, but I try to keep my songs as direct as pos­si­ble lyri­cally. Sim­plic­ity of expres­sion is some­thing I value, as are emo­tional open­ness and hon­esty, and I try to make music that reflects that. I am a believer in the vision­ary and trans­form­ing power of love. I am also an adher­ent to ratio­nal­ity. These two ele­ments come into con­flict, hence the band name. These songs were recorded by me in my stu­dio, Deep Dark Car­los. “Bor­der­lands” is a med­i­ta­tion on change, on trans­for­ma­tion, on trav­el­ing through lim­i­nal spaces. “How I Am Blind” is a com­ing to terms with failed love. Both songs rep­re­sent a ver­sion of the bal­ance of order and ardor in my life.”

On A-side “Bor­der­lands,” the self-ascribed Ian Cur­tis influ­ence rings true, but as with other bands who draw inspi­ra­tion from the Joy Divi­sion front­man (Inter­pol comes to mind), Order or Ardor has some­thing deeper below the sur­face. The synth tex­tures call to mind the grooves of Brian Eno’s oth­er­worldly mas­ter­piece, Another Green World. There are also hints of the rest­less post-punk exper­i­men­tal­ism of Xiu Xiu. The drum machine has that crisp ana­logue sound of New Order and other sim­i­lar 80s New Wave bands (it is in fact the same drum machine used by New Order). One shouldn’t take this as an act of gear­head­ism. Rather, this points to one of the more dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of Order or Ardor’s music—that is, the sound space in itself. Wat­son hap­pens to be an expert pro­ducer (full dis­clo­sure: He’s engi­neer­ing and pro­duc­ing my new album) with an uncanny ear for mix, rich­ness and instru­men­tal clar­ity. It’s a rare thing to have a musi­cian with bat­tling tal­ents in song­writ­ing and pro­duc­tion, although I sup­pose in the age of lap­top stu­dios it’s becom­ing increas­ingly com­mon. But this is more than just some slap­dash home record­ing exper­i­ment. It’s the con­tin­u­a­tion of a method made pos­si­ble by home stu­dio heads like This Heat and Phil Elverum. In other words, hav­ing New Order’s drum machine in your stu­dio, if you’re not a jive fool, means incor­po­rat­ing a tex­ture that has great mean­ing for you after years of lis­ten­ing. By enter­ing that sound into the mix, Wat­son is par­tic­i­pat­ing actively in music his­tory, recy­cling and readapt­ing sounds to cre­ate new com­bi­na­tions. This is how music goes for­ward (I hes­i­tate to use the word “pro­gresses”) and cre­ates a some­what coher­ent nar­ra­tive instead of lit­tle style islands, episodic flashes in a vacuum

But let’s not get bogged down in his­tor­i­cal musi­col­ogy. Though Order or Ardor cer­tainly pro­vides a plat­form for wax­ing philo­sophic (like all good music), it’s also about enjoy­ment. Take B-side “How I am Blind” which places us into pop­pier ter­ri­tory than does “Bor­der­lands.” An Aphex Twin-reminiscent drum­beat and hum­ming syn­the­sizer pro­vide the per­fect back­ground for Watson’s pleas­antly sim­ple gui­tar pro­gres­sion. How­ever, the brighter the pop song, they say, the darker its demons. “I showed how I am blind” intones Wat­son, simul­ta­ne­ously dead­pan and crush­ingly emo­tive. Sad dance!

Ulti­mately, if these songs prove any­thing, it’s the over­whelm­ing and inescapable pres­ence of feel­ing in music. Scoff if you will at the idea of phi­los­o­phy in music, but both derive from two impor­tant sources: Being and Feeling.

Jake Brun­ner

Side A — Borderlands Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — How I am Blind Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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