Faux Pas

Faux pas, aka Tim Shiel, has written a wildly complimentary post about Cleptoclectics on his blog. From Melbourne, he makes delightfully energetic and thoughtful music, and we’ve been toing and froing for well over a year now, exchanging beats, elements, gossip, remixes, and the occasional touch of existential dread. I’ve done two remixes for him, which with any luck might just see the light of day. He is a DIY, internet juice mongering dynamo, who I reckon we might be hearing more from in the future. He’s got two releases already under his belt, and a couple more in the pipeline.

Tim’s blog makes good reading because he shares some of the obscure musical gems he digs up. That might not seem so interesting – but some of what he shares is (by his own admission) the very same material that is remediated straight back to people in his releases, though of course in a twisted, edited, Faux Pas kind of way. I appreciate this kind of musical openness, particularly in a genre which is generally more given to caginess, and reluctance to give up the incriminating details of musical debt.

Tim is a collector in the positive sense, he collects music because he loves it, and enjoys sharing that pleasure with other people. Whereas collecting in the negative sense involves weirdos who derive a sense of power from the possession of rare or coveted objects, and enjoy lording their shit over other people. Despite the obvious contradiction, crate digging culture has always maintained a paradoxical attachment to the aura of the original – in the form of records so rare or obscure as to be practically one offs; little chunks of reality turned into exclusive property. Perhaps on-line digging, and way beyond that, digital audio in general as an infinitely reproducible form of auditory putty, is finally releasing aura (in its Benjaminian sense) from the tyranny of objects, and placing it where it belongs – in the minds of listeners. This idea has led me to dismiss some academic discussions I’ve witnessed recently; (serious po-faced ones about deconstructing the discourse of originality) – as kind of, well, tired.