The Sweet Edge of Dream

...pop, mined for its sparkling relics by the Cocteau Twins and Lush and to some extent Slowdive et al. Perfect kitsch objects that burst open with too much bliss, revealing threatening realms of ego-melting hyperobjectivity.

One of the concepts in Ecology without Nature is the timbral. This is the way in which poetry, music, painting (whatever) exploits timbre—the material medium that transmits the soundwaves (or whatever). As Heidegger says you never hear the wind as such, you hear the wind in the trees, the wind in the doorway. When you hear a violin note you hear wood, cat gut, horsehair, a certain tension, “tone”—not just an abstract note (say C sharp) but a zone of material intensity, like an ecotone or muscle tone. An essay I wrote on Coleridge's poem “The Eolian Harp” talks about this. With its talk of the “soft witchery of sound” emanating from strings vibrating in the breeze blowing through an open window (wind harps were a common household gadget in those days, like iPods now), perhaps “The Eolian Harp” is the first example of dream pop.

Timbre, timber, hyle, matter. (The juicy bit starts on p. 39.)



Liz Fraser's voice and Guthrie's chorusing, distorted guitar open up this realm of materiality, the timbral. A disturbing realm that Kristeva called the semiotic (p. 19ff.). Language overwhelmed by things.