Good and Bad #1: Hatakeyama, O'Rourke, Spider-Man
How should we approach colossal bodies of work?
Welcome, new subscribers, to Wrong Life Review! Today we’re kicking off Good and Bad with Adam Rothbarth, in which Adam tells you about things that are good and things that are bad. Enjoy. — AHW
I’m sitting on my couch watching the snow come down outside, listening to Chihei Hatakeyama’s gorgeous ambient album Void XXIV, which came out last year. Since Hatakeyama has dozens and dozens of albums, I will occasionally select one at random to play; I don’t know of a better way to choose. Yesterday, I listened to multiple Jim O’Rourke Steamroom albums on Bandcamp while writing at my office.
These two figures—both of whom have massive discographies—make me think about how we gauge the quality of ambient music today. I saw a meme last week where one character said he’d made a three hour ambient record, to which his friend replied, “Oh yeah? So did my dishwasher.” In a world where most popular music could be categorized as ambient (I actually do believe this), what distinguishes a legitimately great ambient record? Is it the ingenuity through which the album is conceived, the seriousness with which it takes itself? William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops is a hugely creative work that draws on both digital and analogue technologies and asks us to consider them in new ways; Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and its sequel were groundbreaking in their exploration of temporality and space in electronic music and techno. With regards to the meme, there’s a truth in the impulse to question the difference between a man-made ambient work and one fully contingent on technology; but the deeper questions, I think, would concern whether 1) both are compositions, and 2) either is actually worth hearing. Hegel might say that only the former could be art, because it was made by man and is meant to be heard by man. On the other hand, he didn’t know about Max/MSP.
O’Rourke’s ambient albums often don’t bear the feeling that there’s an idea behind them, or that they’re trying to accomplish anything. They usually have the sense of being recorded in a few hours or a day. For example, Steamroom 57 was both recorded and released on December 3, 2021; the sole track, “between 2 and 6 a.m.,” might even point towards the timeframe in which it was composed. But Steamroom 54, on the other hand, was recorded between 2009 and 2011, and released on July 3, 2021. Since the release of Steamroom 1 in 2013, there have been 56 more Steamroom albums. Hatakeyama has released probably over six dozen albums since 2006’s Minima Moralia. As I sit here in my rocking chair, writing and looking out at the falling snow, it’s Hatakeyama’s discography I find myself blindly choosing from. But why?
It’s as if these catalogues themselves are ambient; they exist in a landscape that appears non-teleological and random, where it’s hard to find landmarks, specific points of entry, even reviews or written proof that anyone’s listening at all. To my ears and my emotions, before I think about this music, the Hatakeyama albums usually strike me as good and the O’Rourke albums are sometimes benign, but occasionally great. (I remember Steamroom 30 being especially beautiful.) Based on experience, there’s a high likelihood I won’t enjoy a Steamroom record selected at random; yet, I still try regularly. I wonder if this means that on an unconscious level, I’m connecting (or not connecting) with the ideas that were (or weren’t) behind them. I can’t say that Hatakeyama’s music is necessarily more complex or interesting, but it does sound better, richer, more conceived, more emotional to me, not like an after-hours project or a file dump, but something deliberate, something more composed. O’Rourke’s Steamroom albums often sound like experiments, not even necessarily music that’s meant to be listened to, but rather a diary of things he’s thought about and executed. The Hatakeyama catalogue seems meant to be listened to—they appear on some level to regard me as a listener, so I like them more.
During evenings over the past week, my partner and I have rewatched all of the Spider-Man films. When I was younger, I loved these movies, especially the first Tobey Maguire film, which felt really novel at that time. Rewatching them, there’s a sort of humanity to these films that wasn’t as evident back then, probably because they exist now in opposition to the prescribed, mechanical-feeling Marvel universe. The third Maguire film was hated, but I quite enjoyed it. The second is the best. I enjoy the first one less now than I did when it came out.
I was surprised by the Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland films, for different reasons. Outside of the unforgivably bad and corny CGI of the villain Lizard (yes, amazingly, he is just called “Lizard”), the Garfield films are great, full of pathos, darkness, and humor. I thought the second was especially good, with Jamie Foxx playing a complex and creepy bad guy. I don’t really understand the 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, because the movie is awesome. I also don’t understand the hype for Tom Holland, because I thought Spider-Man: Homecoming was mostly boring and unsubstantial (though Michael Keaton was very good in it, and I like the plot point about disgruntled, working class guys repurposing and selling the Avengers’ discarded weapons and technology), and Spider-Man: Far From Home, while slightly better and more focused, was also pretty mundane. My partner, who hasn’t seen any of the Marvel franchise films, found Homecoming nearly impossible to follow. Her confusion made me realize that it barely works on its own as a film—it requires a great deal of information and context from the other Marvel films. As a result, there was a lot of pausing and explaining, and I’m barely in a position to explain the Marvel universe to anybody. Soon, we’ll watch the new one, Spider-Man: No Way Home, which uses all three Spider-Man actors and multiple past villains, thus placing the film at a potentially deeper level of contingency, where one needs not only to have seen all the Avengers films, but all the earlier Spider-Man films as well. To fully appreciate the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, one would theoretically need to have seen around 30 other movies. This doesn’t mean Spider-Man: No Way Home can’t be judged on its own as an individual work—of course it can; but I have to wonder why somebody who hasn’t seen its predecessors would be inclined to take it up.
Many of these films feel incomplete on their own, and thus offer a unique aesthetic experience where only viewers committed to the whole can fully understand their content. In that sense, they are the opposite of the Hatakeyama and O’Rourke ambient catalogues, where oceans of work comprise infinite disconnected entries.
A really enjoyable read. coincidentally I've been gravitating to ambient music after finding myself listening to some of Brett Schneider's recent releases. Looking forward to treating myself to some O'Rourke and Hatakeyama :)