Composing the Chimera Suite: Grafting the Conventions of Extreme Metal onto a Jazz Orchestra Setting

<p>The Chimera Suite is a five-movement composition for a modern jazz orchestra augmented with timbres derived from extreme metal. Each movement explores how conventions located in extreme metal can be combined with modern jazz orchestra conventions to create a unique multi-movement suite. While each movement is composed discretely and can stand on its own, the Chimera Suite is intended to be experienced in one continuous sitting, as local and global through-composed forms are used to create thematic unity across the entire suite. Chapter 1 examines the global scenes of jazz and extreme metal, as well as the local Wellington jazz scene through Fabian Holt’s popular genre framework of ‘networks’ and ‘conventions’, and identifies the musical aesthetics that I drew from during the Chimera Suite’s compositional process. In Chapter 2, I analyse extreme metal band Between the Buried and Me’s ‘Silent Flight Parliament’ off their album The Parallax II: Future Sequence, jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan’s ‘The Grid’ and ‘Out of The Grid’, and jazz drummer Dan Weiss’ ‘Annica’. Each of the artists’ works exhibits various musical conventions located in both jazz and extreme metal genres that I observe via the lenses of through-composed form, heaviness, and the dialectic of freedom and control. I analyse my own composition, the Chimera Suite, through the same lenses of through-composed form, heaviness, and the dialectic of freedom and control in Chapter 3, while discussing the ways in which the musical scenes identified in Chapter 1, and the musical inspirations found in Chapter 2, have impact the suite’s conception. Throughout this thesis, I discuss the unique perspectives afforded through this combination of genres that in turn, call into question the defining elements that contribute towards a genre’s identity.</p>

Composing the Chimera Suite: Grafting the Conventions of Extreme Metal onto a Jazz Orchestra Setting

<p>The Chimera Suite is a five-movement composition for a modern jazz orchestra augmented with timbres derived from extreme metal. Each movement explores how conventions located in extreme metal can be combined with modern jazz orchestra conventions to create a unique multi-movement suite. While each movement is composed discretely and can stand on its own, the Chimera Suite is intended to be experienced in one continuous sitting, as local and global through-composed forms are used to create thematic unity across the entire suite. Chapter 1 examines the global scenes of jazz and extreme metal, as well as the local Wellington jazz scene through Fabian Holt’s popular genre framework of ‘networks’ and ‘conventions’, and identifies the musical aesthetics that I drew from during the Chimera Suite’s compositional process. In Chapter 2, I analyse extreme metal band Between the Buried and Me’s ‘Silent Flight Parliament’ off their album The Parallax II: Future Sequence, jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan’s ‘The Grid’ and ‘Out of The Grid’, and jazz drummer Dan Weiss’ ‘Annica’. Each of the artists’ works exhibits various musical conventions located in both jazz and extreme metal genres that I observe via the lenses of through-composed form, heaviness, and the dialectic of freedom and control. I analyse my own composition, the Chimera Suite, through the same lenses of through-composed form, heaviness, and the dialectic of freedom and control in Chapter 3, while discussing the ways in which the musical scenes identified in Chapter 1, and the musical inspirations found in Chapter 2, have impact the suite’s conception. Throughout this thesis, I discuss the unique perspectives afforded through this combination of genres that in turn, call into question the defining elements that contribute towards a genre’s identity.</p>

Performing Analysis, Performing Metal

Light shows at contemporary rock concerts generally create an immersive, multi-sensory experience. In their most sophisticated forms, however, they provide a visual analysis of the music as it unfolds. This paper presents a case study of what I call the analytical light show, by examining how the intricate light shows of extreme metal band Meshuggah contribute an interpretive layer that not only promotes multi-sensory engagement, but also actively guides listeners through songs’ formal structures. Meshuggah’s light shows, created by lighting designer Edvard Hansson, are exhaustively synchronized to the rhythmic patterns of the guitars and drums. Meticulous use of color, brightness, directionality, placement pattern, and beam movement provide additional information about gesture, articulation, and pitch. These analytical light shows provide a three-dimensional visual score that dramatizes rhythms while guiding listeners through each riff. Through this lighting, spatial and bodily metaphors of musical movement—high and low, moving and holding still—are transmuted into visual representation. By presenting analysis and performance simultaneously and as each other, Meshuggah combines technical virtuosity with rock authenticity, and provides another example of what I have called “coercive synesthesia” (Lucas 2014), as the lighting becomes an inextricable part of the musical experience. Beyond the confines of metal culture, I study the analytical light show as an expression of vernacular musical analysis that combines specific analytical and technical expertise with the intuitive, embodied knowledge that experienced music listeners possess.

Allowing ourselves to follow our bodies: Cultivating student curiosity via sensorily-oriented modes of teaching

This article addresses the themes animating the Special Issue from the other side of the coin, namely the notion of aestheticizing political pedagogies. This reflects the direction of travel in some sections of politics and international relations scholarship, where there has been an upsurge of interest in aesthetics and especially popular culture. While there have been valuable contributions on teaching within such work, there has been a lack of sustained reflection on how, for example, a more aesthetically informed pedagogical practice can help us encourage students to think critically in creative ways. There has also been a rather bloodless account of aesthetics, diverting attention away from its visceral essence. Taking inspiration from the writings of Matt Davies on aesthetics, Jennifer Mason on the sensory and Cynthia Enloe on curiosity and surprise, the article explores the potential for aestheticizing political pedagogies to be mobilized in purposeful, strategic ways for enhancing the capacity of students to think critically and creatively. More specifically, I discuss how sensorily-oriented modes of teaching can disrupt entanglements between students’ ways of knowing and experiencing the world and their ‘objective’ understandings of politics, society, culture and so on. Three examples from my own teaching practice are discussed, all rooted in my utilization of extreme metal music with the aim of cultivating curiosity among students about their topics.

Does music help regulate depressive symptoms for fans of violently themed music?

Fans of extreme metal and rap music with violent themes, hereafter termed “violently themed music,” predominantly experience positive emotional and psychosocial outcomes in response to this music. However, negative emotional responses to preferred music are reported to a greater extent by such fans than by fans of non-violently themed music. We investigated negative emotional responses to violently themed music among fans by assessing their experience of depressive symptoms, and whether violently themed music functions to regulate negative moods through two common mood regulation strategies: discharge and diversion. Fans of violent rap ( n = 49), violent extreme metal ( n = 46), and non-violent classical music ( n = 50) reported depressive symptoms and use of music to regulate moods. Participants listened to four one-minute excerpts of music in their preferred genres and rated negative emotional responses to each excerpt (sadness, tension, anger, fear). There were no significant differences between ratings of depression between groups, but depressive symptoms predicted negative emotional responses to music across all groups. Furthermore, depression ratings predicted the use of the mood regulation strategy of discharge in all groups. The discharge strategy did not reduce (or exacerbate) fans’ negative emotional responses, but may nevertheless confer other benefits. We discuss implications for the psychosocial well-being of fans of violently themed music.

Why Florida?

Around 1990, Florida was rapidly put on the international musical map by an obscure phenomenon. Bands like Death, Deicide, Obituary or Morbid Angel established a regional music scene starting in the suburbs of Tampa Bay and Orlando that around 1992 was finally labelled “Florida death metal.” Although this upcoming scene has been much discussed due to its musical and praxeological characteristics or its occasionally strong use of satanic imagery, and to this day includes some of the best-selling extreme metal bands, its history nevertheless has been less of an issue in popular music studies or metal music studies. On these grounds, this article addresses itself to the historization of the “Florida death metal” scene from its beginnings around 1984 to the peak of its fame around 1993/94. With the aid of different concepts of scene and using fanzine/magazine interviews and newspaper articles, it suggests a modified approach of categories to contextualize the scene’s development as a mixture of structural, social, cultural and experience-based evolutions. Beyond that, the article shortly investigates another neglected issue by arguing that the scene was not as exclusive and obscure as widely believed. Instead, the death metal scene obtained a disregarded media coverage in regional newspapers that—together with other progressions—launched a slow rethinking, which epitomizes some important links concerning the shift to postmodernism.

Musik bukan Pekerjaan: Distingsi dan Transgresi dalam Karier Bermusik Musisi Metal Ekstrem Yogyakarta

This article focuses on the separation between music and work that has been done by Yogyakarta’ extreme metal musician. Along with a deeper explanation of youth cultural practices in Yogyakarta, this article also provides a gap bridge between youth culture and youth transition perspective. In order to obtain those purposes, this article utilizes youth culture perspective and youth transition perspective approach, together with field and doxa. Regarding the research method, this article uses qualitative ethnographic approach and has been done through six months data collecting. This research approach was chosen in order to capture the concrete reality that has been experienced by research informants. Based on the findings analysis, which has been done both textually and interpretively, the separation between music and work among informants, on the one hand could be understood as a strategy to maintain informants' pride within the extreme metal scene. On the other hand, this separation also could be defined as a strategy to maintain informants' social position, especially as Indonesian middle class.

Staged formation of the supergiant Olympic Dam uranium deposit, Australia

The origins of many supergiant ore deposits remain unresolved because the factors responsible for such extreme metal enrichments are not understood. One factor of critical importance is the timing of mineralization. However, timing information is commonly confounded by the difficulty of dating ore minerals. The world’s largest uranium resource at Olympic Dam, South Australia, is exceptional because the high abundance of U allows U-Pb dating of ore minerals. The Olympic Dam U(-Cu-Au-Ag) ore deposit is hosted in ca. 1.59 Ga rocks, and the consensus has been that the supergiant deposit formed at the same time. We argue that, in fact, two stages of mineralization were involved. Paired in situ U-Pb and trace element analyses of texturally distinct uraninite populations show that the supergiant size and highest-U-grade zones are the result of U addition at 0.7–0.5 Ga, at least one billion years after initial formation. This conclusion is supported by a remarkable clustering of thousands of radiogenic 207Pb/206Pb model ages of Cu sulfide grains at this time. Upgrading of the original ca. 1.59 Ga U deposit to its present size at 0.7–0.5 Ga may have resulted from perturbation of regional fluid flow triggered by global climatic (deglaciation) and tectonic (breakup of Rodinia) events.

Appropriating the extreme: Interculturality and the decolonization of the image in extreme metal in México and Colombia

In this short article, I engage in a musical iconographic analysis of album covers from extreme metal bands, specifically those belonging to the subgenres of death metal and grindcore, in both México and Colombia. Both countries have gone through socio-historical processes marked by violence, which, by extension, have resulted in the popularization of consumer media products based on said violence (e.g. war against drug traffickers). My analysis rests on a transhistorical outline of the constant forms of domination that both countries have suffered since the conquest of the American continent and the ways in which Latin American extreme metal represents these experiences through the artwork of their albums, thus engaging in a process of decolonization of the imaginary through the reappropriation of imagery traditionally used in extreme metal.