ABSTRACT
The mass-produced record was the most potent symbol of the power of the music industry, and some might argue is becoming so once again. Emile Berliner’s invention of the disc and his introduction of little ‘Nipper’, the dog listening attentively to ‘His Master’s Voice’, introduced the music industry proper. The process of manufacture, and importantly Berliner’s insistence on the use of these new technologies to record music rather than just the speaking voice, took recording from the hands of the amateurs into the realms of professional expertise (Osbourne, 2012). Since then, as Attali states, ‘music has become a strategic consumption, an essential mode of sociality for all those who feel themselves powerless before the monologue of the great institutions’ (Attali, 1985: 100). Music in this sense frees us from the monotony of the work place, from the grind of daily life. Whatever the style, according to Attali, it provides some element of resistance, that still sits comfortably, for the most part, within the system that it is allegedly opposed to. Music opens up a space where signification can be negated, and pleasure can ensue. Even though the record is the symbol of sonic fixity, throughout the history of recording, the unique materiality of the record has given rise to creative misuses and subversive practices that have at once revolutionized and disrupted not only the music industry, but also wider cultural creative practices, and as corollary the record buying public, or cultural consumers themselves. In so doing, the use of the record in different contexts has a truly political overtone. Working in the tradition of artists such as Milan Knizak (1996) and Christian Marclay, my own practice-led research project, ‘You Sound Like a Broken Record’ (YSLABR), has sought to explore the complex relationship between some of the splintered fragments the vinyl records’ heterogeneous ontology, opening a productive dialogue between industry, user, artefact, artist, music, and society. I have done this by creating palimpsests, carving ethnographic interviews onto the surface of discs donated to me by their owners. Drawing from this practice, in this chapter I will explore the theoretical underpinnings of instantiating the record and owner as palimpsest.
