`Architect`s Playlist`

124
MARK No 29
MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
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125
The
Architect’s
Playlist
After listening to dEUS, Guru
and others, Katya Tylevich makes
a case for music as frozen
architecture.
Text Katya Tylevich / Illustrations Mainstudio
126
MARK No 29
The Architect
Alas, poor Goethe. Embalmed as a cliché.
His statement – ‘Architecture is frozen music’
– might as well be on a bumper sticker or a
T-shirt bearing Che Guevara’s face. I promised
myself I wouldn’t use the quote to buttress the
argument I’m about to make, but this promise
proves harder to keep than ‘I will not eavesdrop on my neighbours screaming at each
other’. So, like a good hypocrite, here I go: I
allude to Goethe’s words and make the claim
that, actually, music can be frozen architecture.
As tangible evidence, I tender seven songs
written and performed in the past 40 years, in
genres ranging from pop to metal to art-rock
to whatever the hell Simon and Garfunkel
were in 1970.
Architecture is somehow fossilized in
each of these tracks, whether in the lyrics or
their symbolism, in the musicians’ deliveries,
side stories or instrumentations. My attempts
to chisel away at these ‘architecture fossils’
are those of a dilettante with respect to both
music theory and architecture theory (and
Artist: dEUS
Album: Vantage Point (2008)
This single by Antwerp-based rock band
dEUS opens with the question: ‘What is the
architect doing?’ Answer: he’s ‘thinking’ by
‘the riverside’, which is to say that he’s suffering from chemical imbalances, since the
lyrics suggest our architect is looking to end
his unsatisfying architectural practice/existence by way of an eternal dunk in the waters
below. Great. Now we’re depressed.
In our collective effort to self-medicate, we
check out the band’s website, where we
learn that this song was inspired by our man
Buckminster Fuller. As architecture buffs and
Wikipedia scholars already know, Fuller did
at one point suffer from severe depression.
But Fuller’s black cloud eventually dispersed,
and things improve for the fictional architect
in dEUS’s song as well. Quickly, his thoughts
of suicide give way to ‘egocide’. He no longer
contemplates ‘throw[ing] myself from the
pier’, opting instead to ‘go home and shut
up for a year’ to work on ‘a solution’. As he
broods and envisions ‘a perfect design / He
thinks that working on behalf of himself is a
crime’.
Fuller’s alleged ‘epiphany’ was the catalyst
that directed him to use his work for a greater
good. The lyrics of ‘The Architect’ move from
present to past tense as dEUS tries to describe what such an epiphany entails:
And so he drew himself a pentagon . . .
Thinking it through a geodesic dome
Step aside cause the man will take the Nobel prize home
That’s nice.
But if dEUS’s architect has committed ‘egocide’, how could he possibly have an internal
monologue (just before the final refrain) that
goes:
Now if these aspirations bother you
Well you are just you, you don’t have a clue
I’m sticking to the plan I will see it through
Let there be no confusion
Cause I’m the architect
Really, does that sound like an architect
bereft of all ego? Negative. Perhaps unintentionally, this song brings to the fore the
contradictions of committing altruistic acts
by way of creative work, which requires a
certain amount of ego. You know, I think I’m
a little depressed again. At least it cheers me
to know that Bucky Fuller’s voice is sampled
in this song.
MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
long section
This song brings
to the fore the
contradictions of
committing altruistic
acts by way of
creative work
127
ous settings – on an ‘oldies’ radio station,
through the open windows of a car stopped
at a red light, over the speakers at a grocery
store, or through the tricked-out gramophone
of a pedantic nerd-friend who owns amazing
collections of German industrial on vinyl.
In early 2010, musician David Byrne
(iconic founder of Talking Heads and one-time
Rhode Island School of Design student) gave
an interesting talk titled ‘How Architecture
Helped Music Evolve’ at the TED Conference,
wherein he contemplated whether musicians
consciously write music for the architecture in
which they perform. In 1978, musician Brian
Eno (god of ambient) released an album
titled Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a brainmassage that eventually looped in New York
City’s tense LaGuardia Airport as a sort of
social experiment demonstrating that sound
is as integral to a space as are its windows and
exits. And for decades now, metalheads have
used ‘architecture’ and ‘architect’ as go-to
metaphors for very dark, very very metal
The relationship
between music and
architecture is
unequivocally valid,
enormous and farreaching
palaeontology, if we’re going to list all my
deficiencies). That said, I do have a doctorate
in unfounded over-analysis and a proclivity
for dubious ‘architecture sightings’ in nonarchitectural contexts. I once insisted that
because a single by Young Money (a popular
hip-hop collective in the States) rhymed the
word ‘bestest’ with ‘asbestos’ and made a double entendre of the words ‘bed rock’ (which
I heard only as ‘bedrock’), it was plausible
that the song was about the building process,
the designer’s responsibilities to human and
environmental health, and the relationship
between architect and building inspector.
I know. I need a life. Instead, I have a running ‘Architect’s Playlist’ on my iPod, which
consists of songs that reference or reflect
‘architecture’ in one way or another. Why?
Maybe to prove that architecture indeed
resonates quite literally in a world outside
‘architecture’. To show that beyond sound-art
installations, galleries and design institutes,
architecture can be heard in more spontane-
things, as indicated by Black Sabbath’s ‘Spiral
Architect’ – from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
(1973) – whose lyrics include ‘Spiral city architect / I build, you pay’; as well as Megadeth’s
‘Architecture of Aggression’, from Countdown
To Extinction (1992). There’s also a Norwegian
‘technical metal’ band called Spiral Architect,
which cites ‘Fountainhead’ as one of its early
showcase songs. To say nothing of albums like
Architecture and Morality (1981) by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
Surely all this means something – if only
that the relationship between music and
architecture is unequivocally valid, enormous
and far-reaching. It’s also as elusive as hell, to
the point where David Byrne, Brian Eno and
Ozzy have to sit around discussing the topic at
length. Well, I want in. So please consider the
following playlist a small, subjective attempt
to join the discussion. «
128
MARK No 29
MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
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Haus der Lüge
Thru These Architect’s
Eyes
Artist: Einstürzende Neubauten
Album: Haus der Lüge (1989)
Thirty-year-old Einstürzende Neubauten,
whose name roughly translates as ‘collapsing
new buildings’ (‘new buildings’ being postWWII structures), has a three-album collection titled Strategien Gegen Architekturen
(Strategies Against Architecture). That’s
right. Talk among yourselves. By and large,
this Berlin-based band created its trademark
industrial sound with instruments knocked
together from steel parts, barrels, saws and
hammers stolen from construction-site scrapheaps. And one more dark, architectural factoid: almost immediately after Einstürzende
Neubauten formed in 1980, Berlin’s Congress
Hall roof caved in, killing a journalist. Cause
of death: the building’s lack of structural integrity. Given the circumstances, a group with
a name like Einstürzende Neubauten struck a
nerve – or, at the very least, suggested a rusty
metal bar had failed to do its job. In any case,
the band’s cult status was born.
But independent of band trivia, many
Einstürzende Neubauten’s tracks befit an
architect’s playlist. Among them is ‘Haus der
Lüge’ (‘House of Lies’), which is essentially an
‘architectural tour’ of a house with wood-chip
wallpaper, inhabited by the metaphorically
blind, deaf and lonely. The building’s construction is predictably shoddy (a thread running through EN’s works) – the engineering is
flawed, stored errors abound and one floor is
decidedly incomplete. Even instrumentally, it
sounds as though the musicians are kicking
at exposed pipes and crumbling walls as they
lead us upstairs.
Ah, we’ve reached the fourth floor, where we
find der Architekt, a man immersed in his
plan for this building. A villain and a workaholic, his ideas extend from Fundament to
Firmament: from earth to sky – or should I
say from hell to heaven? On the top floor,
we’re confronted by an old man with a gun in
his mouth, surrounded by dead angels.
Apparently the old man is/was God, as revealed in the closing lines of the song, where
we learn that God has shot himself, leaving
the top floor free to be renovated. Strange
that the death of the Almighty is presented as
the metaphoric equivalent of redoing an attic.
Is EN suggesting that the architect is second
only to God? After all, the former is physically
one storey below the latter, and when the
omnipresent ‘client’ offs himself, the designer
gains instant freedom to redesign the top
floor. Is EN’s architect a victim of the system
or an accomplice to it? My, what universal
questions.
129
Artist: David Bowie
Album: Outside (1995)
Made in collaboration with Brian Eno, David
Bowie’s album Outside is a fin-de-siècle concept work that takes place in the year 1999
and follows the fictional character Nathan
Adler, a detective who investigates art as
crime – or crime as art – or something. A closing track, ‘Thru These Architect’s Eyes’, has
been described as one of the album’s more
‘accessible’ songs, both musically and lyrically. ‘Accessible’ by Bowie standards, maybe,
but the song is still pretty, uh, poetic. Deep
breath. We’ll get through this together.
Although it is part of a comprehensive body
of work, I suggest we look at the song without context and concentrate on one of its
more evocative statements, the refrain:
All the majesty of a city landscape
All the soaring days of our lives
All the concrete dreams in my mind's eye
All the joy I see through these
architect's eyes
God has
shot
himself,
leaving the
top floor
free to be
renovated
The song
delivers a
drunken
toast to
urban
planning
Call me gullible, but words like ‘majesty’,
‘soaring’, ‘dreams’ and ‘joy’ suggest to me a
sort of architectural rapture on the part of the
narrator. As does the music itself – swelling
with Bowiemotion, the sound isn’t necessarily positive, but it is necessarily big, animate
and dramatic. What’s more, I see wordplay in
‘through these architect’s eyes’, as – despite
the position of the apostrophe – it isn’t clear
whether the narrator is referring to his own
eyes (architect’s) or to the eyes of other
architects (plural) who designed the ‘city landscape’. Is architectural ‘joy’ radiating from the
buildings to their beholder (the narrator), or
is the narrator ogling a city through his own
trained peepers?
Without the context of the album as a whole,
we can’t possibly say. But then again, the
context of the album may do us little good.
This song is rather impressionistic, and why
shouldn’t a song about architecture be impressionistic? If I were to attribute a specific
feeling to the emotions this song rouses,
I would go with: the sense of delivering a
drunken toast to urban planning. ‘Here’s to
the majesty of a city landscape.’
130
MARK No 29
Respect The Architect
Artist: Guru
Album: Jazzmatazz Volume II:
The New Reality (1995)
In this track, late rapper Guru uses ‘the
architect’ as an allegory for, well, himself.
Guru is the architect who is ‘Floor to ceiling
/ constantly building’ the verses of this song,
herewith ‘selecting the blueprints / To rid the
game of nuisance’. Guru gains momentum
with each enunciated syllable, stretching the
limits of technical architectural symbolism
to maximum capacity. Guru holds his rhymes
to be ‘solid like cement’; he describes the
process of music-making as ‘Stackin concrete
flows’, adding ‘look out below’. Say, did Guru
run into Einstürzende Neubauten at the construction site where he got that architectural
imagery?
This song
is the war
cry of
architects
engaged
in bitter
brawls
Without losing control of his architectural
parable, Guru lambastes other ‘architects’ –
a.k.a. ‘Lame game plain Jane MCs’ – and says
his ‘design’ is superior:
Your concept’s mediocre, plus you’re way too typical withcha corny delivery and crazy wack voice
Mad corny image, that’s why I give you
the jitters
In so many words, this song is the war cry
of architects engaged in nasty professional
competitions and bitter brawls. Also, every
architecture firm should consider playing the
refrain ‘So respect the architect, the architect
/ So respect the architect, as I begin to build’
over loudspeakers to begin each working
day, possibly while having everybody stand at
attention. Kind of like they do in totalitarian
countries.
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MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
131
Here I Dreamt I Was
an Architect
Artist: The Decemberists
Album: Castaways and Cutouts (2002)
Meh, fine, if I don’t put this popular song on
the architect’s playlist it will be seen either
as an oversight or as an unprovoked slight
against the Decemberists – Portland, Oregonbased indie-gods to so many soft-spoken, ecofriendly disciples (but I totally stereotype).
I have nothing against the Decemberists, or
against this song, but I do admit bias against
emotions, and this track is full of them – sad
ones, no less. So I recommend that the architect enjoy this one in private, at some low point
in his or her life, preferably in the dying days
of autumn, while sitting on the kitchen floor at
twilight, nursing a bad design, a broken heart
and a bottle of whisky or a cup of green tea (to
each his own).
The ‘I’ in this song dreams he’s many things, including a soldier and a Spaniard, but it’s when
he dreams that he’s an architect (as the title
suggests) that things really begin to fall apart –
all puns intended. I’ll quote at length:
And I am nothing of a builder
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world
But the angles and the corners
Even though my work is unparalleled
They never seemed to meet
This structure fell about our feet
And we were free to go
The most objective reportage I could do vis-àvis the architect’s role in this tune is to simply
draw a frowny face here and leave it at that.
After all, the architect in this song, whether
taken as a literal or a figurative character, fails
to realize both his design and his relationship
with the ‘you’ in question. He fails to make a
connection, not least between ‘the angles and
the corners’ in his disaster of a ‘metaphorical
safe haven.’ He admits to being ‘nothing of a
builder’ – and what of that balustrade that fails
to fulfil its function? Ugh! I mean, the thought
of the ensuing literal or figurative lawsuit alone
is worthy of a :-(.
I recommend that the architect
enjoy this one in private, at some
low point in his or her life
132
MARK No 29
So Long, Frank Lloyd
Wright
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Album: Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)
Ah, classic melancholy from Paul Simon and
Art Garfunkel. This song is truffle butter for
the ears: smooth, a little salty, rich in parts. I
mean, what can we call a song about Frank
Lloyd Wright? Irony? A joke? Actually, it’s
more of a dare, according to widely quoted
legend. Supposedly, Garfunkel (rumoured to
have studied architecture) challenged Simon
to write a song about FLW. The song is also
commonly thought to be a ‘goodbye’ duet, as
the two geared up for a split. That’s touching,
but let’s put context aside and concentrate on
the lyrics. Take the refrain:
Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change your point of view
When I run dry
I stop awhile and think of you
On the surface alone, it appears to be a ‘hats
off’ to FLW, an architect definitely capable of
changing another’s point of view – right? In the
lyrics, the architect’s work process also parallels
that of the musician. When the musician ‘runs
dry’, he finds inspiration in an architect who was,
at times, a wellspring of original ideas. Continuing that thought are two verses that the musician sings independently of each another: 1. ‘I'll
remember Frank Lloyd Wright / All of the nights
we'd harmonize till dawn’; and 2. ‘So long, Frank
Lloyd Wright / I can't believe your song is gone
so soon / I barely learned the tune’.
What can
we call a
song about
Frank Lloyd
Wright?
Irony? A
joke?
This song strikes me as the equivalent of staring at a poster of a music great, now defunct,
and nostalgically lamenting that you’ll never
be able to hear him play live. Here we have a
musician looking up at a ‘poster’ of an architect
– the architect – and engaging in the same kind
of longing to interact with a legend.
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MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE
133
Architect
Artist: Samael
Album: Solar Soul (2007)
Swiss heavy-metal band Samael arrived on
the scene in the late ’80s, but it was only
three years ago that ‘Architect’ was added
to Solar Soul as a bonus track. Delivered in
an unmistakably metal rasp, over symphonic
chills and driving guitars, the nearly indecipherable lyrics include the following (I think):
Knowing how to work with volumes and lighting
With force and resistance
Rearranging the foundation
Transforming the construction
Outside the frame another frame
And later:
Calculating the distances
Estimating the length
Predicting difficulties and providing facilities
Yeah
To capture a concept in a few strokes
To outline the project with a few words
Materialization of thought
Pursuit of ideas
Understanding of space
Unity of the whole
Undoubtedly, this song contains some meaningful twist of phrase that comments on, oh, I
don’t know, God or the lack thereof – I’m also
glimpsing images of existential bodies in motion: ‘Meanwhile, they construct their own road
/ A will, a way’. Maybe it has something to do
with that architect from The Matrix (a reference
I tend to miss), but holy moly, the allusions to
‘designing the plan’ are so literal that I want to
interpret them as such. Essentially, these lyrics
read like the poetry of a designer going postal,
or the margin notes of an M.Arch student in a
class called ‘Architecture, Society & Disorder’.
And I mean that as a compliment.
The lyrics
read like
the poetry
of a
designer
going
postal