W a l l O f S o u n d

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 34:22] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Noise music, electronic pointillism, minimalist spectra, psychedelic interventions, oriental fragrances ...: all surrounded by
´walls of sound´.

Impacted resonant territorialities, lofty subdivisions of audible spatiality, potency verticalization, the thickness of fermented synchronicity ... so, Ladies and Gentlemen, the focused quintessentialist Melgacian offspring is lifted up!

Wall of sound. ´Barricade´ used as a descriptor for a ´bushy´ or loud stereo, often as part of a piece of music. The technique of Phil Spector is distinct from what's typically characterized as a ´wall of sound´, according to author Matthew Bannister. During the 1980s, ´Jangle and drone plus reverberation create[d] a contemporary equivalent of Spector's massive, ringing, cavernous noise and a device used by many indie groups: Flying Nun, from Sneaky Feelings' Send You to Straitjacket Fits and the JPS Experience´. He cites 1960s psychedelic and garage rock such as the Byrds' ´Eight Miles High´ (1966) as a primary musical influence on the movement. Everything leads me to believe that Mr. Melgaço addresses both possibilities. And a third: beyond the empirical sense, there´s the poetic-imagetic (in my view, would be very well ´portrayed´ by René François Ghislain Magritte. So I emphasize the surrealism of the theme). And a fourth: the metaphorical (in this case, Otacílio was accurate in choosing Eadweard J. Muybridge as the cover of his album).

Cavernous, ringing, massive noise. Valuable predicates that mirror the viscerality of a work that, (this time) in the best sense, makes, one by one of the hearers, another brick in the Wall." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´We were working on the transparency of music; that was the Teddy Bears sound: you had a lot of air moving around, notes being played in the air but not directly into the mics. Then, when we sent it all into the chamber, this air effect is what was heard—all the notes jumbled and fuzzy. This is what we recorded—not the notes. The chamber.´ (Marshall Leib)

The Wall of Sound (also called the Spector Sound) is a music production formula developed by American record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in the 1960s, with assistance from engineers Stan Ross, Larry Levine, and the session musician conglomerate known as ´the Wrecking Crew´. The intention was to create a dense aesthetic that came across well on AM radio and jukeboxes popular in the era.

In order to attain the Wall of Sound, Spector's arrangements called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling and even tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer sound. Spector also included an array of orchestral instruments—strings, woodwind, brass and percussion—not previously associated with youth-oriented pop music, characterizing his methods as ´a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids´.

Dense pulsate platforms filled to capacity, vibrating corporeity tending to be uninterrupted, pellucid monumentality from a totalizing ultraesthetic perspective, multi-layered idiosyncratic structures ... are not playthings for kids. Reflecting on the creation of O.M., maybe (devisable) heterodox contemporary Wagnerian symphonies. Richard Taruskin, American musicologist/music historian/critic, said that ´everybody feels oppressed during a Wagner performance. That is part of the appeal.´ Another Richard, Wagner himself once commented: ´I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.´ Does such triadic noise music bring us, perchance, the appeal of the abyss? A longing of oppression? With what connotation? ´Overlying´, ´submerging´? Could it be the specific gravity of Art that snatches, ravishes, enraptures? This seems to me the starting point for deciphering such stately awe-inspiring ´Wall of Sound´." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - It has been inaccurately suggested in critical shorthand that Spector's "wall of sound" filled every second with a maximum of noise. Biographer David Hinckley wrote that the Wall of Sound was flexible, more complex, and more subtle, elaborating:

Its components included an R&B-derived rhythm section, generous echo and prominent choruses blending percussion, strings, saxophones and human voices. But equally important were its open spaces, some achieved by physical breaks (the pauses between the thunder in "Be My Baby" or "Baby, I Love You") and some by simply letting the music breathe in the studio. He also knew when to clear a path, as he does for the sax interlude and [Darlene] Love's vocal in
"(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry".

The Wall of Sound has been contrasted with "the standard pop mix of foregrounded solo vocal and balanced, blended backing" as well as the airy mixes typical of reggae and funk. Jeff Barry said: "[Spector] buried the lead and he cannot stop himself from doing that … if you listen to his records in sequence, the lead goes further and further in and to me what he is saying is, 'It is not the song... just listen to those strings. I want more musicians, it's me.'" Musicologist Richard Middleton wrote: "This can be contrasted with the open spaces and more equal lines of typical funk and reggae textures [for example], which seem to invite [listeners] to insert [themselves] in those spaces and actively participate." Closer reflection reveals that the Wall of Sound was compatible with, even supportive of, vocal protagonism. Such virtuosity was ultimately serving of Spector's own agenda—The Righteous Brothers' vocal prowess provided him a "secure and prosperous headrest", such as in Bobby Hatfield's rendering of "Unchained Melody".

Wagnerian rock derives its characterization from a merge between Spector's Wall of Sound and the operas of Richard Wagner;

II - The intricacies of the technique were unprecedented in the world of sound production for popular records. Wrecking Crew guitarist Barney Kessel would note: "Musically, it was terribly simple, but the way he recorded and miked it, they’d diffuse it so that you couldn't pick out any one instrument. Techniques like distortion and echo were not new, but Phil came along and took these to make sounds that had not been used in the past. I thought it was ingenious." According to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who used the formula extensively: "In the '40s and '50s, arrangements were considered 'OK here, listen to that French horn' or 'listen to this string section now.' It was all a definite sound. There weren't combinations of sound, and with the advent of Phil Spector, we find sound combinations, which—scientifically speaking—is a brilliant aspect of sound production."

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.