Le 1er juillet 2017
de 9h30 à 10h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3206
Séance - Sounds of Popular Music (II)
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Samantha Bennett
Drawing on research for a forthcoming 33 1/3 series book on Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ninth studio album Peepshow (Bloomsbury Academic), this paper will analyze the technological (presence of sound and recording technologies) and processual (sonically discernible textural and gestural matters applied by the recordist) or ‘tech-processual’ construction of a panoramic peep show ‘stage’ in Peepshow’s lead single ‘Peek-A-Boo’. The analysis aims to illustrate: firstly, the underlying musique concrète tape composition; secondly, the single’s multi-intertextual form, featuring sampling, quotation and allusion; and, thirdly, the unusual orchestration and resultant stylistic bricolage. A further aim is to explicitly address the tech-processual construction of a sonically discernible ‘stage’ on which lead singer Siouxsie Sioux’s stripper persona ‘performs’, thus befitting the lyrical narrative of the peep show environment. This paper posits the recording of a complex popular music composition as its analytical object and, in applying an innovative set of analytical tools to it, seeks to expand the breadth of musical parameters beyond matters of musical syntax. In applying this mode of analysis the relationship between musical, lyrical and tech-processual matters is elucidated to reveal a more comprehensive understanding of the recording and its component parts; the construction of a sonic environment befitting of musical and lyrical constituents is clearly evident.
