Not A Love Song

Abstract

CONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece is a song commissioned in 2016 for B-Line Recordings’ collection, ‘The B-Line EP Vol. 4’, released in 2017.
The research question the song explores is twofold, and connected to the position of hip-hop as a driver for thirdspace-dromology (taking Soja’s thirdspace [1996] and Virilio’s dromology [1977] as points of departure) – a hybrid concept developed by the author and proposed in his article ‘The Futurism of Hip-Hop’ (2018: 132, 134).
Firstly, and sonically, it challenges the space-time conventions of popular and hip-hop songs, immediately through the title (nodding to PiL’s similarly named song), but mainly through its structure and production. Structurally, it presents the lyrics as a single 48 bar verse containing 4-bar and 8-bar stanzas, grouped as 2 verses. These groups of lyrics are sonically melded throughout via exponential use of echo and reverb, resulting in a 3-minute listener experience concluding with 31 seconds of echoed reverb of the single-lyric: “organize” fused with white noise and glimmering Afrofuturist aesthetics. By altering the song’s structure and sonics makes visible spatial atmospherics for the listener, which slow down and speed up the perceived pace of sonic travel and experience throughout the song. Its 31-second outro suspends this notion of movement and invites listeners to question their own spatio-sonic engagement with the song.
Secondly, and vocally, the lyrics identify several points of connection between thirdspace-dromology, represented through the narrative of the arcade game, and which also aided the development of the thirdspace-dromology concept. Through the lines: “Are you in range? What is your location? / Nearest station application sent to stick while I'm slick over analogue / I toggle, my monologue will spy your eyes boggler / Losing lives on the street like you're playing Frogger”, the song captures a reflective analogue in tension with futurist and spatial context.
[298 words]