Two friends of the show, Will and Anton, discuss their upcoming project on PC Music, hyperpop, accelerationism, and xenofeminism. They explore the unique digital use of space, facial framing, and audible intensity in generating concert experiences. They delve into topics like deconstruction of identity, hauntology, trans studies, and the relation of Queerness to future possibilities. Other chapters cover methodological challenges in studying music online, breaking through limits, and the production skills of PC Music.
PC Music challenges traditional labels and categories, subverting existing identities in mainstream music.
An experimental ethnographic project explores the social and musical spaces created by PC Music within the online realm, focusing on digital anthropology and queer alien critique.
PC Music, particularly Sophie's music, disrupts traditional classifications, challenging gender roles and encouraging a reevaluation of sound and its relationship to the self and the world.
Deep dives
PC Music: Exploring the Genre and Its Cultural Concepts
PC Music is a genre or collective that assembles various micro-genres like hyper-pop, bubblegum pop, and more. It was started by A.G. Cook in 2013 in London and has since gained popularity online. PC Music is known for its conscious distancing from mainstream pop and its subversion of existing identities in mainstream music. It navigates the artists affiliated with it, positioning itself as a signifier of subversion and a distinct genre. The boundary between PC Music and mainstream pop is unsettled, and its sound and aesthetic challenge traditional labels and categories.
Ethnography of PC Music and Online Music Spaces
The podcast episode discusses an experimental ethnographic project aiming to explore the social and musical spaces created by PC Music, particularly within the online realm. Traditional ethnography, which focuses on physical spaces of music, poses methodological challenges when examining virtual experiences. This digital anthropology project seeks to understand how music and sociality interact online and how sounds aggregate musical and sonic publics differently than in physical spaces. The project also touches on queer alien critique and the decolonization of thought, exploring the ways PC Music can engage with diverse bodies and challenge dominant social norms.
Xenofeminism and Questioning Singular Futures
The episode delves into xenofeminism and its relationship to PC Music, focusing on the ideas of ontology, queer theory, and the construction of identity. Xenofeminism challenges the idea of a singular future and instead emphasizes multiple outsides and a construction of an outside. Sophie's music is described as a knowing construction of a fiction that brings forth plurals of insides, highlighting the presence of queer collectivities and genres that transgress traditional boundaries. PC Music, through its sonic and aesthetic experimentation, creates a consciousness-raising effect, challenging existing norms and ideologies.
The Intensity and Plasticity of PC Music
PC Music is characterized by its intensity and plasticity, even in slower tracks. Micro speeds and micro intensities are embedded within songs, creating an unconventional sonic experience. Sophie's approach to vocals, including the exploration of multiple femininities, challenges traditional gender roles in pop music. The sounds in PC Music disrupt traditional classifications and engage listeners beyond concrete semantic meanings, encouraging a reevaluation of sound and its relationship to the self and the world.
The Power of PC Music to Create Alternative Futures
PC Music, represented by Sophie's music, offers an alternative future and challenges traditional narratives. Rather than relying on negation, PC Music creates an outside by subverting and appropriating existing mainstream elements. Its ability to dissolve barriers and merge signifiers helps to raise consciousness and create a sense of plasticity. However, there is a cautionary reminder that the re-territorialization of PC Music into mainstream culture could dilute its radical potential. The episode calls for an understanding of PC Music beyond formal genres, while acknowledging the risks of re-appropriation and the need for continuous pluralistic exploration.
In this episode, we invited friends of the show, Will and Anton, to discuss their upcoming project: an ethnographic, musicological, and philosophical investigation into the aesthetic phenomenon of 'PC Music' and its unique digital use of space, facial framing, and audible intensity in generating concert experiences. Taking artists such as A.G. Cook and SOPHIE as paradigm cases, we discuss how PC Music, otherwise known more generally as 'hyperpop', integrates accelerationist methods to lay bare the practices of subjectification that arise in societies of cybernetic control. We use this to go on and talk about the deconstruction of identity, hauntology, trans studies, and the relation of Queerness to the promise of new futures across a plurality of post-capitalist frontiers.