Philip Jeck = saudade for the (small) masses?

Walking through the Zoo de l'Orangerie in Strasbourg, Philip Jeck and I were not alone.

His 'Some pennies' (from "7") resonated in my headphones and in the activities of the Italian pensioners who had just parked their tour bus a few meters outside the back entrance and were now busy taking photos of the tropical birds in the cage to their left. The birds themselves were busy doing what they do best - chirping and hopping tensely from one steel bar to the other. The murmur of transposed electronics and damaged records in my headphones was in some way similar to (but, disappointingly, not exactly like) the errantly geometric way Maltese lawyers walk.

The temporality, too, of both activities was complimentary. Jeck's music is a slideshow, if you want, of old records. It's an analogon of reality and so are the pensioners photos. This is the pointless beauty of Jeck's music. His music isn't just the showing of old photos (records) in a given sequence, but what makes it special is the spectra of temporality itself; of times gone by which probably never existed and of the temporal beauty of old, yellowing photos superseding the image itself. Hmm... or should that be sepiaing rather than yellowing?

Anyway - in my opinion his music isn't just music. It's a strategy; an emotionally manipulative technique to recall past times which all of us think we remember, but none of us ever lived the way he suggests we did.

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lang:en - cat:muse