What is a hologram?
martina-mrongovius_hover_2004Rick Siberman, The Meeting, 1979A hologram is a physical structure that diffracts light into an image. The term ‘hologram’ can refer to both the encoded material and the resulting image.
A holographic image can be seen by looking into an illuminated holographic print or by shining a laser through a hologram and projecting the image onto a screen.
& not a hologram…
Other methods of projecting and reflecting images are often described as holographic – or even misleadingly holograms, because they have an optical presence and spatial quality. For example the Pepper’s ghost technique, which uses a partially reflective surface to mix a reflection with the scene beyond. John Henry Pepper demonstrated the technique in the 1860s with it being used to overlay visual elements (often a figure – ‘ghost’) onto a physical set or stage.
Holography is based on the principle of interference. A hologram captures the interference pattern between two or more beams of coherent light (i.e. laser light). One beam is shone directly on the recording medium and acts as a reference to the light scattered from the illuminated scene.
The hologram captures light as it interests the whole area of the film, hence being described as a ‘window with memory’. By contrast a photograph captures a single small area ‘aperture’ of perspective, the photographic image being created by focusing this light onto film or a digital sensor.
The physical medium of holographic film is photo-sensitive with a fine grain structure1. Common materials used are silver-halide emulsions, dichromate gelatins and photopolymers – each having their own characteristics and require different processing. Holograms can also be embossed ‘stamped into a foil’ with applications including in security identification, such as on passports, credit cards, tickets and packaging, as they are difficult to copy without the master hologram.
The hologram is the recorded interference pattern of constructive (intensity peaks) and destructive (elimination) of the superimposed light-wavefronts (the electromagnetic field). By using a coherent laser light-source and a stable geometry (or short ‘pulse’ duration) the interference pattern is stationary and can be recorded into the hologram’s photosensitive emulsion. The hologram is then chemically processed2 so that the emulsion has a modulated density, freezing the interference pattern into ‘fringes’.
When looking at the modulated structure under a microscope it does not look like the image encoded within. The density fringes are a distributed pattern of wavefront interference – a frozen distributed recording of the direction, phase and amplitude of light (the visible spectrum of electron-magnetic radiation).
When the hologram is re-illuminated the light is diffracted through these fringes. If the direction and shape (curvature) of the light is the same as the reference beam then the hologram diffracts the light into the shape of the other wavefront, reconstructing the recorded image.
The relationships that can be set up with the holographic image suggest a particular way of considering optical information. While there are a number of ways of making holograms, each having their own aesthetic qualities they all have the same underlying principle. Holography is a way of encoding recording an interference pattern.
On encountering a hologram, what is most surprising is that a surface seems to hold a space. The difference of scale between the optical shaping by the hologram structure and our material sense of it as a surface produces a perception of a virtual form, as if the light holds its own shape.
Looking at holograms
Viewing a hologram print, the image changes as you move around. As if you were looking through a window onto a scene. This is because holography records the scene through an area of perspective. The viewing window of a hologram can also be broken up to record many different perspectives, this process is know as spatial multiplexing, and can be used to capture animation and/or create a holographic scene from a sequence of 2-d images.
The development of holography
The two basic geometries for holograms are – transmission – where light is shone through the hologram, and – reflection – in which the hologram reflects light. The recording of transmission and reflection holograms were developed from two different fields of enquiry and have distinct optical aesthetics.
The reflection hologram was developed by Yuri Denisyuk3 (1927–2006) who used a single beam to both illuminate the object and be the reference. Denisyuk’s process follows the colour and spatial photographic recording practices of Lippmann photography and Daguerreotypes, which were created on polished metal surfaces. Gabriel Lippmann (1845–1921) claimed to have invented a method of colour photographic recording and provided a scientific explanation of how the emulsion structure recorded and then could reconstruct optical standing waves patterns, the particular wavelengths of which comprise a colour image.
Lippmann’s colour technique
While Lippmann was the first to explain this process, later analysis has shown that his method of recording was similar to the Daguerreotype4. In both a Daguerreotype/Lippmann recording and the reflection hologram, the colour of the image is selective, only being formed by the wavelengths that resonate with the spacing of the fringes.
Hans Bjelkhagen BejeweledFish
Hans Bjelkhagen, BejeweledFish
True colour (panchromatic) reflection hologram
Han Bjelkhagen is a scientist who has worked extensively
to improve the colour reproduction characteristics of holograms.
By using multiple colour lasers a full colour Denisyuk reflection hologram can be recorded and is almost indistinguishable from the original object. The tendency on encountering such an image is to check its authenticity – to look behind the plate for the object.
Gabor’s holographic imaging method
Gabor’s holographic imaging method
a) Original micrograph, 1.4 mm. diameter b) Micrograph, directly photographed c) Interference pattern, from obtained by projecting the micrograph onto a photographic plate with a beam diverging from apoint focus d) Reconstruction from interference pattern
(source Gabor, 1948)
The process of transmission holography developed from a series of scientific experiments and a developing understanding of the wave-nature of electro-magnetic radiation. In 1912 by Max von Laue demonstrated the diffraction of x-rays through a crystal lattice of copper sulphate. Experimental results were then formulated in 1913 by father and son, William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, into Bragg’s law of diffraction (2dsin ? = n?), which equates the fringe spacing (d) to the angle of deflection (?) for any given wavelength (?)5. Using this relationship diffraction gratings can be made to control the angle of deflected light and separate different wavelengths of light.
Train and Bird, 1964
Train and Bird, 1964
Laser-viewable transmission hologram
via: Holophile
The key step in the development of holographic imaging was the use of a reference beam to encode one wave by superimposing it with another (to record the interference pattern). This ‘double diffraction’ process was proposed by Denis Gabor in 1948 in an attempt to improve the design of the x-ray (electron) microscope. Gabor’s experiments were limited to optical-waves traveling close to the optical axis (paraxial rays) and hence when used for optical holography the reconstruction beam was co-incident with the image, and thus would shine directly into the viewer’s eyes.
Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks while working with side-reading radar developed the technique of off-axis optical holography in 1962. Their theory proved practically possible when they gained access to a laser in 1964 and produced a number of holograms. The potential of holography was recognised the moment these holograms were published, causing a flurry of research and Gabor’s awarding of the Noble Prize for Physics.
As transmission holograms diffract all of the illumination into the image, ‘mono-chromatic’ light (such as from a laser) is needed to reconstruct a sharp image. Stephen Benton developed transfer geometries that allowed transmission holographic prints to be viewed with a white light source; including the rainbow hologram in 1969 and using an achromatic geometry in 1977 to recombine the spectrum.
rainbow-spectrum-3
Left: Stephen Benton looking at a rainbow hologram (via: http://www.media.mit.edu/)
Center: Polaroid Patent Rainbow Hologram, 1975 | Rainbow hologram on film in card mount, 4.5” x 7” (11.4 x 17.8 cm)
Right: Stephen Benton, Herbert Mingace, Jr. and William Houde-Walter, The Bartlett Head (Aphrodite), 1978 | Achromatic white-light transmission hologram on glass, 13.5 x 12.5” (34.3 x 31.8 cm)
Different types and techniques of holography used by artists
There are a number of distinct types of display holograms that can be defined by their optical-geometry and the recording medium.
Laser viewable transmission holograms
The laser viewable transmission hologram allows for a near perfect reconstruction of the optical field. This means that the recorded scene appears behind the film, and when replayed by a laser this scene can be very deep and sharp. These holograms are also used as a master recording that can then be transferred into a reflection or transmission holographic print.
Artist Paula Dawson who has worked extensively with laser viewable transmission holograms describes these recordings as ‘concrete’ holographic images because they create a sense of physical presence.
dawson_two-perspectives
Left: Paula Dawson To Absent Friends, 1989 | One of the laser transmission holograms, 150 x 95 cm. (via www.pauladawson.com.au)
Right: Two perspectives showing the details of the scene from small holograms 4 x 5” (10.2 x 12.7 cm) (via The Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection)
Working with colour
The holograms hologram diffracts the light into an image. As described in the previous section ‘The development of holography’ transmission and reflection holograms differ because of the fringe structure. The reflection hologram reconstructs only selected wavelengths (colours) while the transmission hologram diffracts all the wavelengths of light that is illuminated with. The hologram does not change the wavelength (colour) of light but controls where different wavelengths are diffracted. Multiple colour of a holographic images are then produced by selecting and combining the diffracted spectral colours.
With a reflection hologram by manipulating the chemical processing, the holographic fringe structure can be expanded or shrunk changing the colour of the reconstructed image. Pseudo-colour reflection holograms can be created through multiple exposures between which the emulsion is swollen or shrunk to shift the recorded fringe spacing and therefore colour, a technique that has been used extensively by John Kaufman and Iñaki Beguiristain.
John Kaufman, Canted Fragment, 1994
John Kaufman, Canted Fragment, 1994
Pseudo-colour Reflection Hologram, 30 x 40 cm
(image courtesy of the artist)
Iñaki Beguiristain, Telephone - Theydon Bois 2286
Iñaki Beguiristain, Telephone – Theydon Bois 2286, 2001
Pseudo-colour reflection hologram, 30 x 40 cm
(via: Inaki Beguiristain)
Transmission holograms however have a different a visual quality and the colour is controlled by geometry rather than chemistry. When illuminated with a white (broad spectrum) light source the transmission hologram will diffract all the wavelengths of light into the image. However as red-wavelengths are longer, they are deflected more than blue-wavelengths and so the image will have some colour smear – the multi-spectrum light spreads into a rainbow image.
A rainbow hologram, recorded from a horizontal master strip and replayed with a light from above, will have horizontal parallax – enabling the spatial qualities when looking with two eyes or moving side-to-side. But moving up-and-down produces no change in spatial perspective and viewer only sees a change of colour. By recording a number of masters on an achromatic angle the spectral colours can be recombine to produce images that are whitish (achromatic) or colour-mixed (ie, RGB red+green+blue).
Martina Mrongovius, Pascua Lama, 2006
Martina Mrongovius, Pascua Lama, 2006, 30 x 40 cm
Left: Three master strips recorded onto a single piece of film
Right: Three-colour (red, green and blue) multiplex holographic print
Pulse laser holography
Recording a hologram requires the interference pattern of the reference beam and scene illumination to be stationary during the exposure. For this reason holograms are traditionally made of static sculptures on vibration isolated tables. A pulse laser produces an ultra short flash of light, thus freezing motion and allowing for holograms of live subjects.
Holograms by Ana Maria Nicholson
Holograms by Ana Maria Nicholson
Left: At the Gate, 60 x 50 cm. Right: Cocoon, 50 x 60 cm
Two-colour (colour mix) reflection holograms from pulse laser masters
(images courtesy of the artist)
Holographic interferometry
As the holographic recording process is dependant on the interference pattern between optical-waves the holographic image is the comparative shape between these waves. Holographic interferometry utilizes this property to detected small variations in form, with applications in industrial non-destructive testing. As part of her ‘Strata Series’ Sally Weber used a holographic interferometry technique – a double laser pulse – to show the movements of breath and blood under the skin.
Sally Weber, ‘Descent’ a six part series of holograms for the ‘Strata Series’, 2006
Sally Weber, ‘Descent’ a six part series of holograms for the ‘Strata Series’, 2006
Open-aperture (laser-viewable), transmission holograms
Left to right: Laccolith, 26 x 27” (66 x 69 cm). Terrain, 18 x 36” (46 x 91 cm). Fossil, 26 x 26” (66 x 66 cm)
The pulse masters were recorded in 2001 at the Center for the Holographic Arts
(via: http://www.sallyweber.com/descent.htm)
Holographic optical elements
Holograms can also be used to direct light, which has commercial application in lighting design as well as being used for video projection screens6. This property has been incorporated into the process of making holograms by artists. Before the stenciling and digital printing techniques became widely practiced, Rudie Berkhout was creating spatially dynamic holograms using multiple holographic optical elements (HOEs) to shape light into dynamic abstract images. Berkhout’s work explores the optical landscape in relation to a cosmic nature of the perceptual field: “I like the work to oscillate between landscape and abstract painting, challenging viewers and jolting their usual perception of the world.”7
Holograms by Rudie Berkhout
Holograms by Rudie Berkhout
Left: Event Horizon, 1980. 8×10” White-light transmission hologram laminated in 30 x 40 cm
Right: Sketching Away 1979. 8×10” White-light transmission hologram laminated in 30 x 40 cm
(courtesy of the Rudie Berkhout holography collection)
Stenciling and Multiplex holography
Multiplexing is a technique of recording multiple holographic exposures across the surface of the master hologram. By transferring a multiplexed master, a final print can be produced where the ‘virtual windows’ onto the scene is fragmented allowing for spatial animation, stereopsis and depth perception by parallax as the viewer moves around.
Lloyd Cross developed a one step process of recording multiplex holograms in 1972, using a sequence of film frames to make a cylindrical hologram where the image appears in the centre. The process combines cinematographic and holographic techniques to display a short animated image loop. By either rotating the cylinder or if the veiwer walks around they see the image animated.
Lloyd Cross and Pam Brazier, The Kiss, 1973
Lloyd Cross and Pam Brazier, The Kiss, 1973
Multiplex hologram, on exhibition at MIT Museum
(image courtesy nsicchia)
Lloyd Cross and Pam Brazier, The Kiss II, 1976
Lloyd Cross and Pam Brazier, The Kiss II, 1976
Multiplex hologram on film 12 x 23 cm
(via Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection)
Taking a photographic approach to multiplexing Patrick Boyd made a number of multiplex holograms in the early 90s using a process of hand animation with image slides and stencils over the hologram. He describes the duration enfolded within his multiplex holograms – “The work is essentially an interactive experience for the viewer, but during which he remains in control, deciding for himself the speed with which the image is revealed and explored, frame by frame.”8
Patrick Boyd, Bartus Takes a Downtown Train, 1990
Patrick Boyd, Bartus Takes a Downtown Train, 1990
Reflection multiplex hologram, 8.5 x 9” (21.6 x 22.9 cm)
Three photographs of the hologram at MIT Museum, 2008
By dividing the holographic window into small exposure regions, multiple 2-d images can be used to synthesize a 3D scene or record an animation.
David Pizzanelli, Arabesque, 1989.
David Pizzanelli, Arabesque, 1989.
From photographs by Eadweard Muybridge
Mirror-backed achromate white-light transmission, multiplex hologram 10 x 8″ (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
“The stereo should be viewed with the images no larger than a post-it note (62 mm between similar image points) as the hyper-parallax, caused by the fusion of temporal and stereoscopic parallax (the extended right foot) is really hard to fuse in this pair”, from email instructions from David Pizzanelli that accompanied the image, 2010.
The multiplexing process can also be consider as a means of optically stencilling different images into a scene. Brigitte Burgmer’s hologram ‘Future Perfect’ was created by masking the master recording in some places leaving only a tiny window so that artifacts can only be seen from a very particular position. A negative of the mask was then applied to a flipped master, filling in the voids with a pseudoscopic9 view of the scene. Burgmer describes this diptych as “visually very complex and a challenge for perception”.10
Photographs of Brigitte Burgmer’s Future Perfect I and II, 1988
Photographs of Brigitte Burgmer’s Future Perfect I and II, 1988
Reflection holograms 32 x 43 cm
(image courtesy of Sammlung Lauk (Lauk Collection)
Dot-matrix holograms
Dot-matrix hologram printing is a technique of building up an image of diffractive ‘pixels’. Each area is recorded with a particular geometry that diffracts light by a corresponding angle. The illuminating light is deflected into varying divergent colour-spectrums. The image is a tiling of colours which means the images are very bright but do not have 3-d depth information. Dot-matrix holograms have been used as a means of decorative ‘light architecture’. Michael Bleyenberg defines ‘light architecture’: “This term indicates a vision: to ‘plan and construct’ environments beyond everyday perception and experience, barely tangible, not using solid material, but the ephemeral medium light.”11
Michael Bleyenberg’s ‘light architecture’
Michael Bleyenberg’s ‘light architecture’
Left: EyeFire/AugenFeuer, 2000. German Research Association(DFG) building in Bonn, 13 x 5 m
(via holonet)
Centre: Close up photograph taken of EyeFire/AugenFeuer, 2008
Right: Design for a light façade roof in collaboration with blauhaus Architekten, Nürnberg, Germany 2010
(via holonet)
Computer generated ‘digital’ holography
With computer generated ‘digital’ holograms the fringe pattern of each pixel is calculated and recorded into the hologram. There are a number of ways of making digital holograms in which small regions of the film, termed ‘Voxels’ or ‘Hogels’, are exposed to the pre-calculated fringe pattern, such as by using a spatial light modulator (SLM) or electron beam lithography. In early systems these Hogels were noticeable causing the surface of the hologram to look pixilated.
computer generated digital holography
Left and Centre: Geola Technologies Ltd Motorbike, 2006
Full colour digital computer generated multiplex hologram, 45 x 59 cm
(via The Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection and View Holographics)
Right: Zebra Imaging Downtown Seattle Holographic Print
Computer generated digital hologram.
(via Zebra Imaging)
In conclusion
Holography allows for the recording and reconstruction of spatially-dependent images. The holographic image is based on optical-material interference rather than sensors and programs; the information is enfolded within the surface rather than being applied onto it. We sense the difference by moving around, and returning to find the image again. The holographic image has its own presence, which we move through, playing the image with our own perception and agency.
The relationships that can be set up with the holographic image suggest a particular way of considering optical information. While there are a number of ways of making holograms, each having their own aesthetic qualities they all share the same underlying principles of holographic imaging. Holography uses an interference pattern to encode and record an image. The reconstruction of this image is an optical ‘shaping’ that appears distinct from the material surface. We perceive the light that flows through the hologram as holding space. This perceived space is dependent on the perspective from where it is viewed, allowing for a hologram to render a spatial and dynamic scene.
On their self-titled debut, the Stockholm band offer synth-driven pop songs that nod to post-punk and hardcore. Holograms focus on weighty topics like isolation, industrialization, and being ashamed of their country's history, but their hooks can be outright jovial.
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"ABC City" — HologramsVia Pitchfork
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"Chasing My Mind" — HologramsVia SoundCloud
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"Monolith" — HologramsVia SoundCloud
Holograms first surfaced under a veil of anonymity. As soon as Captured Tracks heard a demo, the label signed them, released their first single, shared a video, and pretty much said "stay tuned." Then, because it's 2012 and that's how things are done now, the band revealed who they were: four twenty-somethings from Stockholm. Interviews with Holograms shared a common theme: "The band's members are all very poor right now." And thus far, their story's revolved around an unfortunate series of incidents: Their van got broken into on a support tour, they were stranded in France for almost two weeks with no money, they can't afford decent gear, and they're not sure if they'll be able to obtain work visas to tour the United States.
It's fitting, then, that in addition to offering synth-driven songs that nod to post-punk and hardcore, the themes and overall tone of Holograms' self-titled debut are ridiculously weighty. The most obvious example is "You Are Ancient (Sweden's Pride)", which lays out their country's history (Vikings, rape, Lutheran fearmongering) as something to be ashamed of. There's "Memories of Sweat", a hellish industrialization song carried by an urgent, ominous riff. The churning basher "ABC City" is centered around the words "isolation" and "desolation." These themes are sung with a strong monolithic confidence, usually with two or three voices in unison. Taking on such onerous subject matter is a bold move for a young band to make on their first full-length.
Thankfully, though, they don't double down on the world-weary stuff for the entire album. "Orpheo" is a substantially quieter, more vulnerable song about longing. It halts the album's big picture focus for a moment and illustrates a love story with small, poignant details like pulling down the blinds "vicariously." "Chasing My Mind" opens with a joyful synth line, a ragged guitar drive, and eventually reveals itself as a love song, while "Fever" sounds almost sunny in its disposition. The lyrics aren't exactly complex ("she stayed in my mind forever"), but it's easy to find respite in those moments.
Even when they're digging into the grit of a country's flaws or society's problems, the synth-driven hooks can be outright jovial. The run in the middle of the album, from "Apostate" to "ABC City" to "Stress", showcases the band's versatility in melody writing: from a stilted funky rhythm to an unstoppable propulsive rock basher to a rolling, echoing, ska-leaning bassline. On paper, it's a delicate balancing act. Love songs? Monolithic vocals? Raw power rock'n'roll? Synthesizers? It's a tenuous mix, but throughout Holograms, the boys manage to string together all of those elements to create a cohesive, solid album.
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Holograms
MORE ALBUM REVIEWS FOR HOLOGRAMS
Forever artwork
Forever
BY: JEREMY D. LARSONSEPTEMBER 3 2013
After a long tour, Swedish punks Holograms returned home poor and hopeless. Going for broke, their sophomore LP Forever transform their pitch-black palate of sounds into something remarkably bright and emotionally charged.
Glacial
On Jones Beach
On Jones Beach artworkTHREE LOBED • 2012
8.0
by Marc Masters
Contributor
AUGUST 1 2012
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Comprising Lee Ranaldo, David Watson and drummer Tony Buck, Glacial's debut full-length album is a masterpiece in blurring and burning the edges, riding the divide between chaos and melody like a skateboarder gliding on a rail.
Somewhere between notes and noise, between chords and discord, lives Lee Ranaldo's guitar. Even in his most dense, abstract moments, there are melodies and rhythms bubbling below, and no matter how tuneful he gets, his sound burns at the edges and threatens to melt into chaos. At the times when he's doing his best work, he rides that divide like a skateboarder gliding on a rail, effortlessly shifting from side to side as though he's simply flipping a switch.
The single, 42-minute track that constitutes Glacial's first full-length album, On Jones Beach, is one of those times. Teaming with David Watson and drummer Tony Buck-- both of whom also know how to blur boundaries-- Ranaldo extends his guitar attack into one of its most all-encompassing expressions ever. The group doesn't just morph melody and abstraction; at various points they sound like a drone symphony, a free-jazz experiment, an improvised-rock power trio, an ambient ensemble, and a confrontational noise outfit.
Yet thinking of On Jones Beach as an assembly of stylistic parts would miss its core sonic unity. That unity comes from how smoothly the group merges modes and textures, but more so from the energy they inject throughout. I find myself focused less on what any given moment sounds like than how compelling that sound is. Often it's also oddly catchy; even the densest sections have a semblance of hook. The result is like an instrumental rock song blown up so that every build-up, crescendo, and denouement becomes its own universe.
In that sense, On Jones Beach recalls the Dead C, who possess a similar gift for turning massive din into primal rock (Buck is particularly deft at simple, hypnotic beats). It's also tempting to hear parallels to Sonic Youth, since this was recorded in the band's Echo Canyon studios in 2005, the year in between Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped. But I don't detect any direct connections between where that group was at that point and what Glacial are up to here. The trio is distinctly its own beast, especially when Watson trades his guitar for bagpipes. It's stunning how he can make that decidedly non-rock instrument sound like a guitar, and just as stunning how unique it sounds when it takes center position in Glacial's evolving mix.
The digital download that comes with the LP-only On Jones Beach offers a version of the title track that's five minutes longer, as well as three more pieces recorded prior to the Echo Canyon session. Two come from Buck's first live appearance with the group in 2003 (Ranaldo and Watson had previously used a rotating cast of drummers); a third is taken from a 2006 gig at the late NYC avant-garde mecca Tonic. The latter is particularly interesting, offering chiming Ranaldo tones and a closing sax-like burst of Watson's bagpipes. But as good as they are, none of these three additions matches the urgency and drive of "On Jones Beach".
In fact, it's hard to think of much else in any of these three musicians' careers that compares to this epic piece. Perhaps those careers are so rich and accomplished that, in the calm light of reflection, words like "best" don't really apply. But when On Jones Beach is playing, I'm convinced this is one of the best records Ranaldo, Buck, and Watson have ever taken part in.
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Evoken
Atra Mors
Atra Mors artworkPROFOUND LORE • 2012
7.7
by Grayson Currin
Contributor
AUGUST 1 2012
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The N.J. funeral doom legends' first album in five years is an obstacle course that rewards endurance with one of the most oppressive, majestic hours of music since they eked out their last one.
Only a fool would ever call an album by New Jersey doom legends Evoken casual. Each of the band's five full-lengths-- including their first in five years, the enormous and exhausting Atra Mors-- trudges well beyond the hour mark, slowly pushing its respective way toward the limits of a compact disc or a two-LP set. But long albums alone don't make for notable ones; rather, Evoken pair that love of length with a near-militaristic obsession with volume, mass, and deliberate movement. Their records tend to supply a sense of seismic upheaval, whether through the rumble of a rhythm section that plods with the heaviest of them before springing into short, crushing bursts or the choking-world roar of frontman John Paradiso. If funeral doom is among the most oppressive forms of music, Evoken have undoubtedly become one of its most ambitious and aggressive practitioners by creating their own, all-involving worlds from the form's dimly lit sounds. Atra Mors, then, is a proud, punishing return.
Aside from the break in productivity that preceded it, the most noteworthy aspect of Atra Mors that separates it not only from the band's back catalog, but also from many of its sometimes more direct peers, is its motion and misdirection. More than ever, Evoken seem ready to put all the elements of their sound-- the textural thickness and the unmitigated forcefulness, the bludgeoning metal and the symphonic scope-- to work at once. During the opening title track, for instance, creeping expanses of doom lunge into quickened bits of razor-wire vitriol. Keyboards cut beneath and between it all, not only thickening the sound but stringing the pieces together. "The Unechoing Dread" lingers in a strangely liminal space, teetering between ghoulish washes and stentorian barrages, between blackened builds and drone deconstruction. Aside from two instrumental interludes, no track on Atra Mors is easily classified, as the band creates a cycling continuum of the ideas it's long championed rather than separate sprawls of them.
Combined with Atra Mors' run time, that quality renders the album as an in-or-out event, a vacuum that tends to seal its listener off from surroundings; in short, it's loud, twisted, and daunting enough to necessitate complete attention. As if by way of acknowledgement, "An Extrinsic Divide"-- a song about being trapped in halls of futility, where "hope is only a mockery of its own illusion"-- bends time both forward and backward. After fading from a four-on-the-floor stomp and before heaving toward a Meshuggah-mechanical passage, Paradiso and guitarist Chris Molinari push and pull the riff, stretching it like wire across the beat. It's disorienting and thrilling, the sort of out-of-body experience that bands create when they suspend the listener in a world of their own curation. It's not unlike the effect of the Grateful Dead or even drone music, where subtle changes within a much bigger system provide thrills beyond the surface.
That said, Atra Mors isn't an easy or amicable listen. In the time since 2007's A Caress of the Void, acts within several spheres of extreme metal have added more accessible flourishes, whether that's the gray and sometimes kaleidoscopic layers within the folds of recent blackness or the strings finally cutting through the weight of Sunn O))). Pieces of Atra Mors are indeed beautiful, like the sweeping strings and broadly brushed acoustic guitar of interlude "Requies Aeterna" or the relative calm that begins and occasionally bisects the destructive "Descent Into Chaotic Dream". For some listeners, that track and several brief impasses during a few others might even suggest the steely-eyed post-rock start of Slint. But those are details within a marathon of unrepentant, unrelenting torment, an obstacle course that rewards endurance with one of the most malevolent, majestic hours of music since Evoken eked out their last one. After all, though closer "Into Aphotic Devastation" begins with a triumphant guitar riff and hints at some sort of cleansing coda, Evoken soon toughen up. Layers of noise and echoes of Paradiso's menace wrap beneath unsteady builds toward a series of full-volume blasts. Surprisingly, Evoken spend the last few minutes relaxing the meter and the volume, a synthesizer's distant, pretty peal slowly merging with the collapsing roar. The torment goes on forever, the quintet seems to imply, even when they step away for a while.
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Blur
Blur 21
Blur 21 artworkPARLOPHONE • 2012
8.5
BEST NEW REISSUE
1 / 8 Albums
Blur 21 artworkLeisure artworkModern Life is Rubbish artworkParklife artworkThe Great Escape artworkBlur artwork13 artworkThink Tank artwork
by Lindsay Zoladz
Contributor
ROCK
JULY 31 2012
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This sprawling set comprises all seven Blur albums, three DVDs, and five-and-a-half hours' worth of rarities. For its breadth and complexity, the box tells a simple story: Blur are a band that did an astonishing amount of different things really, really well.
Choose Damon. Choose Graham. Choose Damien Hirst's cheekily agit-pop country house or Sophie Muller's teen-spirit-stinking squat. Go pop, then spend a decade slowly deflating; study the songbook so you can tear it up with precision. Choose irony, choose sincerity. Choose your own worst NME: a Gallagher, any Gallagher, or maybe just yourself ("Do you feel like a chain store? Practically floored?"). Choose fame, or flee from it fast as you can in a milkman's suit. Choose Ray Davies, choose Stephen Malkmus; choose la-la-la or wooo-hoo. (And before you answer this next one know that the Queen is watching.) Choose Britain. Choose America.
Or, you know, don't choose. Blur have been a band for 21 years, and their story is long enough to speak a bunch of contradictions. That's what happens to bands that house four egos and a pair of dueling geniuses. They rarely move in straight lines. One example of many: Blur arrived in New York for the first time on the day Nevermind was released. When asked on radio what they thought of the new Seattle sound, Graham Coxon said, "I fucking hate it." Later he'd be the one to lead the band toward a post-grunge, indie-tinged sound, a nugget of which will be blared alongside "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at sports arenas until the end of time. Another? In 1994, Damon Albarn wrote a snide little number about the cultural allure of the West (sneeringly: "La-la-la-la-la/ He'd like to live in Magic America/ With all the magic people"). Three years on, he was a bit more forgiving (one more time, with earnestness: "Look inside America/ She's alright/ She's alright"). It's not despite but because of these pivots and complexities that it feels appropriate to call Blur a defining band of the past two decades.
Up until now, listeners have been urged to take one of two positions: 1) "Great pop band, until they went to America and sold out!"; or 2) "The early stuff is too British, but I love all that weird shit they did later on." There was a sense that you couldn't love it all-- the witty, theatrical, Kinks-inspired character sketches perfected on 1994's Parklife and the impressionistic elegies of their 1999 sad-bastard masterstroke, 13. And the choice was loaded. Think I'm exaggerating? Just read some of the reviews of their last two greatest-hits collections, 2000's Best of Blur and 2009's Midlife, both of which favored their later stuff. "Let Blur bash their way on towards the margins," Steve Sutherland wrote defensively in a 2000 issue of NME. "Just because these [early] songs embarrassed them once they started listening to broadsheet critics and retreated wounded from the big-sales battle with Oasis doesn't mean that we're morons to love them." Nine years later, Scott Plagenhoef observed on this site, "Few bands from the 90s increased their stature this decade among America's self-identifying indie set as much as Blur." Midlife, he said, "can be seen as a more Americentric look at Blur's career, which makes some sense as they still have a lot of fanbase growth potential in the States."
Three years after Midlife-- and with the whole world turned to their second reunion at the London Olympics closing ceremony-- it's time for a truce. So here it is, Blur 21, the inevitable box set comprising all seven albums, three DVDs, and five-and-a-half hours' worth of rarities. And even if you can't afford the thing on vinyl, its very existence presents us with the perfect opportunity to rethink the band's history. Because for its breadth and complexity, the box actually tells a simple story: Blur are a band that did an astonishing amount of different things really, really well.
Be patient, though, because we're going to start at the beginning, and their 1991 debut, Leisure, is not very good. It shows a melodic gift and hints at the Syd Barrett obsession that would plant seeds for future experimentation ("Sing"). But mostly, it's the work of a band still searching for its identity. Prior to signing with the London label Food Ltd., Blur were known as Seymour, a madcap art-punk four-piece that generated a mild buzz in late-80s London with their boozy, chaotic live shows. That anarchic energy is all but absent from Leisure, though it's captured on the box's first disc of rarities, including early Seymour demos and a 7" containing the endearingly awkward baby picture "Superman".
When Leisure came out, baggy was all the rage in the UK. The label's intention was to turn Blur into the next Stone Roses-- or better yet, the even better-selling Food signees Jesus Jones. They wanted Blur's first single to be the baggy-by-numbers "I Know" but, in the first of many well documented band-vs.-label throw-downs, the band fought for the shoegazey "She's So High". Blur won, and 21 years later, this art-over-commerce victory feels prophetic, even if the song doesn't. "High" is still a better track than "I Know", but it has a kind of time-stamped anonymity that pervades even the best moments of Leisure: pretty, vacant, and vague.
1992 would light a fire under Blur, kindled by a few factors: a bad management contract that left them in significant debt; critical and commercial disappointment; intra-band conflict (a flame that never stopped burning); and, above all, grunge. Blur toured North America for the second time that year. And just a year into the post-Nevermind world, flannel, disaffectedly mumbled lyrics, and buzzsaw guitars were the new normal. "Nothing in England counted and that really pissed us off," Albarn recalled in 1999. "So we decided to make a record as English as possible; a record full of English references and English cultural icons." Therein lies the irony of their breakthrough 1993 album, Modern Life Is Rubbish. Though it wouldn't hit big in America, it was conceived with the same spirit of roguish overthrow as Nevermind itself. Albarn's newfound articulateness was, actually, an act of punk rebellion, a sneering rejection of the status quo.
The artistic leap between Leisure and Modern Life Is Rubbish is roughly the same size as the one between Pablo Honey and The Bends: unpredictably huge. It's a statement record in title, sound, and content. What else can be said of an album that begins with a once-upon-a-time as dramatic as, "He's a 20th-century boy..." and draws upon an lineage of English guitar pop ranging from the Kinks to the Who to T. Rex? Blur would improve on these ideas on their next few records, but Modern Life remains a finely observed, tartly disillusioned snapshot of post-Thatcher Britain, buoyed by exquisite pop hooks. "Colin Zeal" and "Chemical World" also mark Albarn's first forays into the character study songs he'd later become known for. Into theater since his teens, Albarn would occasionally let drop in interviews that his greatest influences were Brecht, Weill, and Artaud's "theater of cruelty." Modern Life began to fulfill that promise: Blur were suddenly a band of ideas, though none so pompous that it weighed down the immediacy of their music.
Parklife is the masterpiece of this era. Pop-art bright, stingingly funny, and at times suddenly poignant, it remains the defining artifact of Britpop. It's a nationalistic record in the same way Born in the USA is a nationalistic record: It might look like sloganeering patriotism if viewed from outer space, but up close it's a finely detailed, intricately cracked document of a very particular national malaise. The disco smirk "Girls & Boys" (propelled by one of Alex James' best basslines) finds its hedonistic vacationers "avoiding all work, 'cause there's none available," while the tragicomic "Tracy Jacks" sketches a lonely civil servant who goes quietly mad. With humor, pathos, and nostalgia, Parklife tells of a modern world where dreams have been boxed in by materialism, conformity and routine, and even the once-space-age future has lost its sparkle. "End of the century," Albarn shrugs over Coxon's minor chords. "It's nothing special."
The millions-selling, Brit-Award-sweeping Parklife was also the record that made Blur into bona fide pop stars, a role that some members embraced more readily than others. "I made a point of drinking two bottles of champagne a day for 18 months," is how bassist Alex James remembers 1994. "England only imports something like 100,000 bottles a year, so I reckon I drank 1% of England's total champagne import." At that point Coxon was, arguably, drinking even more, but without the joie de vivre; instead, he was increasingly uncomfortable with the band's success. The Great Escape, the improbably strong 1995 effort they churned out amidst the squeals of Parklife mania, is fittingly a record of baroque excess (lots of brass) and tension. It's Blur's poppiest album, but it's puffed within an inch of bursting: "Stereotypes", "Charmless Man", and "Entertain Me" are all deceptively dark, stretched like a smile pulled eerily tight. Escape's crown jewel is the brilliant, Pulp-like single "The Universal", an exploration of anhedonia, a state of mind the band knew intimately at this point. Coxon retreated further, and for a moment it looked like he'd leave the band. What happened, though, was just the opposite. He steered them toward their biggest re-invention yet.
"Death of a Party" (which now sounds like the first proto-Gorillaz Blur song) is the most apt song title on 1997's Blur. Recorded partially in self-imposed exile in Iceland, it is a post-success record, what happens when the odd burdens of mega-fame don't destroy a band but instead sends it diving into uncharted waters. It is 1995's hangover. Exquisitely bleary-eyed ("I'm Just a Killer for Your Love", the oddball sprawl of "Essex Dogs") and often jolting ("M.O.R.", "Chinese Bombs"), Blur sounds like staying up for six days and then accidentally catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. And somehow, amidst the claims of career suicide, it was a huge international hit, the one that finally broke them in the States. (Which is to say that yes, this is the "Song 2" album.)
Blur found Pavement in the mid 90s the way Dylan found Jesus in the late 70s: The transfiguration was that complete, that apparent, that difficult for longtime fans to swallow. Coxon had long been evangelizing American indie rock to his bandmates, and, wearied of fame and looking for a new direction, they finally started to listen. To call Blur Coxon's record is a huge simplification (it also marks the height of Albarn's Bowie phase), but it does contain the first song that Coxon wrote and sang on a Blur record, the sweetly wooly "You're So Great". Much has been made of the Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. influence on his virtuosic playing, but Coxon has said that the record he was listening to most while making Blur was Big Star's elegiac Third/Sister Lovers. Alex Chilton was an artistic kindred spirit for Coxon. Both had experienced intense, Tiger Beat-cover-style adoration (Chilton had a No. 1 song with the Box Tops before he was 18) and had figured out early on that commercial success wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Chilton, of course, lost his foil too early when Chris Bell left Big Star and died in a car crash not long after. The tension that kept Blur going, in a creatively fertile, decade-long state of about-to-combust, was the push and pull between Coxon and Albarn.
"Graham used to say that he wanted to make an album that nobody would want to listen to," says drummer Dave Rowntree in the box's liner notes, "But you can't do that in a band with Damon." 13, their second masterpiece, finds Albarn and Coxon's opposing sensibilities bleeding into each other like a muddy watercolor. Both were hurting. Coxon was depressed and still at odds with the rest of the band, and Albarn's long relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann had just ended. A coping method he'd picked up from blues and DIY alike, Coxon knew how to translate personal pathos into Blur's music. Both the Blur songs on which he sings lead, "You're So Great" and 13's "Coffee and TV", are candidly about his drinking, and on 13, he guided Albarn toward confessional songwriting, too. Albarn had always used character songs to express emotion, but his songs on 13 strip away the protective covering of wit. "I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep," he croaks on the gorgeous closing lament "No Distance Left to Run", while the wounded pop-spiritual "Tender" is an obvious career highlight. William Orbit's brilliant, painstaking production pushes Albarn's ever-present pop sensibility to the brink of dissolve. The Third/Sister Lovers comparison feels more apt here: 13 is a record in a sustained state of elegant unravel, full of the unexpectedly beautiful sounds that pop songs (and people) make while they're falling apart.
As time goes on, 13 sounds more like a definitive statement, and 2003's Think Tank sounds more like a post-script. Recorded in Morocco after the first Gorillaz record and Coxon's departure (he plays on just one track, the gloomy "Battery in Your Leg"), it may be the only Blur record that suffers in retrospect. There are some great tracks ("Out of Time" and "Sweet Song") but it doesn't quite pack the punch it did a decade ago. On the other hand, the newest track in the box, the archly grand "Under the Westway", feels like a return to form, which is to say it finds the band sounding like it hasn't quite sounded before. In the liner notes, James points to something true, recalling the Think Tank tour: "It took at least four people to replace what [Coxon] does. Two backing singers, another guitarist, and a lead guitarist. And a percussionist." Now that the band is-- tentatively, feebly, and contemptuously as ever-- back together, it's even more clear that Blur is the alchemy between these four people.
Like any box set worthy of attention, the sprawl of rarities offers some illuminating gems (an early demo of "Beetlebum"; the underrated oddball 1992 single "Popscene"), plenty of cheeky throwaways (a Seymour-era cover of "Maggie May"; an orchestral pop snippet called "Sir Elton John's Cock"), and, of course, omissions for never-satisfied diehards to whine about (mine include the original, Leisure-era recording of "1992" and the mid-tempo demo of "Song 2"). The box also contains DVDs of two complete live performances, which tell two very different tales. The first is a show at Alexandra Palace in North London from October 1994. Blur are at the height of their first wave of fame, and the young audience is whipped into such a frenzy that they even sing along with the melody of the instrumental filler "Lot 105", as if they just need something to scream; the band gets off on it. Five years later, they are at Wembley Arena playing all 20 of their singles in chronological order. They look as weary as second-term presidents as they slog through the motions for the first three-quarters of the setlist, but at "Tender" everything shifts. Suddenly, they embody the material, coming achingly alive again, reborn on the stage.
If you need a through-line, try the story that those selected bookends tell: Blur are a triumph of feeling. They spent the first half of their career creating modern characters who'd become fashionably distanced from their own emotions and the next half actually, unfashionably, emoting. But that's just one straight line you could draw; why should you have to choose? Modern life is full of champagne and hangovers. So is Blur.
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