Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
An Aesthetic of Restriction for the Poetics of Contemporary Electronic Music Production
Dr Mark Slater: University of Hull; m.slater@hull.ac.uk
Dr Adam Martin: Leeds College of Music; adam.martin@lcm.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
In March 2018, the album Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne will be released on The Leaf Label. This music is a collaboration between co-producers Mark Slater and Adam Martin (working under the Nightports title) and pianist Matthew Bourne. Nightports is bound by a fundamental aesthetic of restriction: only sounds produced by the featured musician can be used – nothing else – though these can be transformed, distorted, translated, reworked, stretched, cut, ordered and reordered without limitation. The resulting music is a hybrid of the specific characteristics of the musician’s playing plus the interventions of the producers. Such an aesthetic is nothing new (Stravinsky talked about it in his Poetics of Music; Oval did it by assembling a library of thousands of tiny sonic fragments; Matthew Herbert encodes it in his ‘Personal Contract for the Composition of Music’), but the appropriation of a stringent set of rulesis poignant in the context of an information- and technology-rich society where choice paralysis and/or homogeneity can easily undermine the creative potential of these tools. The digitisation of technology has brought changes to music production practices that have delivered a new compositional palette, a new sense of space and place, and a re-examination of the relationship between humans and machines (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen 2016). The Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne case study will be used to explore the contemporary landscape of technologically-mediated production practices including both an appraisal of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the project and practical examples to show how these are made manifest.
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
An Aesthetic of Restriction for the Poetics of Contemporary Electronic Music Production
Dr Mark Slater: University of Hull; m.slater@hull.ac.uk
Dr Adam Martin: Leeds College of Music; adam.martin@lcm.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
In March 2018, the album Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne will be released on The Leaf Label. This music is a collaboration between co-producers Mark Slater and Adam Martin (working under the Nightports title) and pianist Matthew Bourne. Nightports is bound by a fundamental aesthetic of restriction: only sounds produced by the featured musician can be used – nothing else – though these can be transformed, distorted, translated, reworked, stretched, cut, ordered and reordered without limitation. The resulting music is a hybrid of the specific characteristics of the musician’s playing plus the interventions of the producers. Such an aesthetic is nothing new (Stravinsky talked about it in his Poetics of Music; Oval did it by assembling a library of thousands of tiny sonic fragments; Matthew Herbert encodes it in his ‘Personal Contract for the Composition of Music’), but the appropriation of a stringent set of rulesis poignant in the context of an information- and technology-rich society where choice paralysis and/or homogeneity can easily undermine the creative potential of these tools. The digitisation of technology has brought changes to music production practices that have delivered a new compositional palette, a new sense of space and place, and a re-examination of the relationship between humans and machines (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen 2016). The Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne case study will be used to explore the contemporary landscape of technologically-mediated production practices including both an appraisal of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the project and practical examples to show how these are made manifest.
