So I am listening to a particularly beautiful version of one of a songs by my favorite band, Underworld (Rick’s Down Ambient Mix of Born Slippy.nuxx to be precise) and began the usual Internet-dérive, drifiting about to look at different things on the net.
I ran across this description of how Karl Hyde comes up with his lyrics. Underworld’s lyrics are, in a certain sense meaningless. Trying to find what the words mean will generally result in madness, but in fact they are out to convey affect, in the case of Born Slippy.nuxx, to get across the feeling of being completely plastered, reduced, as Karl says, to a piece of meat and absorbing little snapshots of the city. An excerpt:
Where do you get the inspiration for your lyrics from, Karl?
For me, there is an inherent beauty in the city. I see the city as a very very beautiful place. Even the underside of it. There’s a beauty even in the kind of… the forceful presentation of something. As long as it’s meant with no malice or anger or violence, there’s a beauty in its energy.
What is ‘Born Slippy’ – a dream? A dream come true? Or is it your view of reality?
In the simplest form, it’s me walking through the streets of Soho trying to get back home to Romford in Essex. I was referring to myself reduced to a piece of meat, due to the fact that I’d drunk too much. The bigger story is that I’m fascinated by the kind of snapshots that one retains when you’ve had a couple of drinks. These kind of very precise snapshots one has of a little piece of street, or of a rubbish bin, or of a tape-recorder… I’m talking about being like a hoover, hoovering up all the images and the sounds and the smells of the city. Because after all it’s cities that would inspire me.
But that gets me to why I’m writing this…of all the arts architecture is unique in that it seems largely unable to embrace the world as found. Instead, captivated by luxurious finishes and new materials, this field seems to be stuck in the creation of utopian fantasies best suited for Wallpaper* magazine. Now I don’t want to retread the well-worn ground of everyday urbanism, which set out not to recapture the as found as much as to find the beauty in the everyday, the little miracles. Instead, I want to ask if there is any way to capture the roughness of the street just at the moments in which it seems to be leaving us…
Certainly AUDC is interested in these qualities, but we aren’t out to build are we? What about the New Brutalism? What about some of Venturi’s best work (e. g. the Lieb House)? The Gehry House? Or is polish (real or phenomenological) mandatory for architects today?
So I am listening to a particularly beautiful version of one of a songs by my favorite band, Underworld (Rick’s Down Ambient Mix of Born Slippy.nuxx to be precise) and began the usual Internet-dérive, drifiting about to look at different things on the net.
I ran across this description of how Karl Hyde comes up with his lyrics. Underworld’s lyrics are, in a certain sense meaningless. Trying to find what the words mean will generally result in madness, but in fact they are out to convey affect, in the case of Born Slippy.nuxx, to get across the feeling of being completely plastered, reduced, as Karl says, to a piece of meat and absorbing little snapshots of the city. An excerpt:
Where do you get the inspiration for your lyrics from, Karl?
For me, there is an inherent beauty in the city. I see the city as a very very beautiful place. Even the underside of it. There’s a beauty even in the kind of… the forceful presentation of something. As long as it’s meant with no malice or anger or violence, there’s a beauty in its energy.
What is ‘Born Slippy’ – a dream? A dream come true? Or is it your view of reality?
In the simplest form, it’s me walking through the streets of Soho trying to get back home to Romford in Essex. I was referring to myself reduced to a piece of meat, due to the fact that I’d drunk too much. The bigger story is that I’m fascinated by the kind of snapshots that one retains when you’ve had a couple of drinks. These kind of very precise snapshots one has of a little piece of street, or of a rubbish bin, or of a tape-recorder… I’m talking about being like a hoover, hoovering up all the images and the sounds and the smells of the city. Because after all it’s cities that would inspire me.
But that gets me to why I’m writing this…of all the arts architecture is unique in that it seems largely unable to embrace the world as found. Instead, captivated by luxurious finishes and new materials, this field seems to be stuck in the creation of utopian fantasies best suited for Wallpaper* magazine. Now I don’t want to retread the well-worn ground of everyday urbanism, which set out not to recapture the as found as much as to find the beauty in the everyday, the little miracles. Instead, I want to ask if there is any way to capture the roughness of the street just at the moments in which it seems to be leaving us…
Certainly AUDC is interested in these qualities, but we aren’t out to build are we? What about the New Brutalism? What about some of Venturi’s best work (e. g. the Lieb House)? The Gehry House? Or is polish (real or phenomenological) mandatory for architects today?