‘Dictaphonics’: Acoustics and Primitive Recording in the Music of The Fall

In the many words written about The Fall and Mark E. Smith, there is little which considers why his voice has undergone so many transformations. Aside from the lyrical content of The Fall’s work, there has been a restless variation in the tonal quality of the treatments applied to Mark E. Smith’s voice. Whether singing through a guitar amp, a megaphone or jamming a microphone inside a bass drum, the voice has rarely been allowed to rest in the default sound of the vocal booth favoured by most recording artists.