Books by Mattia Merlini
Quando, alla fine degli anni Settanta, il rock progressivo viene dichiarato morto, rimangono nell... more Quando, alla fine degli anni Settanta, il rock progressivo viene dichiarato morto, rimangono nell'aria delle ceneri che, pur essendo state spesso ignorate da critica e studiosi, hanno mantenuto viva l'eredità di un genere tra i più frequentati e nello stesso tempo fraintesi della popular music. Due tipi di ceneri, in particolare, hanno riproposto il prog in forme molto diverse, complementari nella loro opposizione: il neoprogressive e il post-progressive. Una corrente ossessionata dal conservare il ricordo delle spoglie mortali di una specifica incarnazione del prog classico, e l'altra invece legata direttamente all'attitudine di quello stesso tipo di musica, ma mutevole nelle sue sembianze. Questo libro cerca di analizzare la vita postuma del prog impiegando strumenti metodologicamente eterogenei, in cerca di un fil rouge capace di imbastire i discorsi dei vari agenti in gioco nella definizione del genere in questione, in un viaggio teorico, storiografico, etnografico e analitico volto all’integrazione di fenomeni sociali e musicali riguardanti un'etichetta oggi più che mai tutta da ricostruire.
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Articles by Mattia Merlini
Metal Music Studies, 2023
Among the most frequent features of the Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah’s music, there is an... more Among the most frequent features of the Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah’s music, there is an omni-presence of minor-second intervals and distorted eight-string guitars, a remarkable amount of odd time signatures, aggressive vocals and an endless attempt to thwart the listener’s expectations. In this case study I analyse the many contradictions present in Meshuggah’s album Catch 33 (2005), which I interpret as a concept album about paradox or a long single song (constituted by thirteen individual tracks not separated by breaks) that seeks to balance the variety, complexity, ‘imperfection’ of its starting material – the chaos side of the album’s style – with elements that promote order, intelligibility and ‘perfection’ – its kosmos side. By which musical means does the band represent contradiction and paradox in this album, and their style in general? I argue that there are specific musical (but also conceptual, lyrical, structural and contextual) reasons that make the album representative of the band’s discography and style, to the point of being possibly considered their quintessential work (despite often being labelled as an experimental entry in the band’s output), and one of the most coherent incarnations of (proto-)djent stylistic features. The kosmos/chaos dialectic is the idea I choose to describe the ongoing struggle for stability at work in this music, capable of magnifying the beauty of imperfection and the paradoxical truth behind the sentiment, expressed in the lyrics, that we are ‘sentenced to a lifetime | a second of structured chaos’.
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Sound Stage Screen, 2023
This article analyzes the close relation between synthwave music and cinema, focusing on the role... more This article analyzes the close relation between synthwave music and cinema, focusing on the role played by the former in paradigmatic films and TV series from the 1980s and the 2010s. To the two eras correspond two sets of semantic “associations,” which designate the functions and connotations embodied by synthwave in the cinematic context. The first analysis focuses on the context in which the association between the two protagonists of this affair has taken place for the first time, trying to understand why sci-fi cinema is often privileged when it comes to the association with (proto-)synthwave music—especially soundtracks by Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder and Vangelis, which are often referred to as main sources of inspiration for contemporary synthwave. The result is a first set of two “first-order associations” between synthwave and sci-fi cinema on the one side, and with the 1980s geek culture on the other. The focus then shifts towards the present times, exploring the ways in which synthwave soundtracks remediate 1980s popular culture by employing two “second-order associations” between synthwave and mediated, hyperreal versions of the 1980s and its products. In particular, the protagonists of this second analysis are the functions of synthwave soundtracks as an “age-synecdoche” and as an “aesthetic mediator,” especially in the series Stranger Things, in the movie It Follows, and in the late works by director Nicolas Winding Refn.
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Journal of Sound and Music in Games, 2023
Japanese video game music often features a degree of eclecticism that is not common in Western so... more Japanese video game music often features a degree of eclecticism that is not common in Western soundtracks. Such compositions blend elements originally belonging to different styles in a peculiar way, capable of giving life to a new musical language in which the diversity of its components does not seem to necessarily symbolize a specific alterity or an idea of otherness. Instead, in this language eclecticism becomes the new norm, a “natural and neutral” way of expressing whatever the soundtrack needs to express, regardless of the national and musical origins of the single stylistic features that are being used. This article compares the foundation of this new eclectic neutrality with the idea of mukokuseki (statelessness) and with other kinds of music (especially anime music), in search for the cultural factors that motivate the widespread persistence of a uniquely eclectic musical language. Four factors are analyzed: the hybridity of Japanese postmodern culture, the eclecticism of popular (and anime) music in Japan, the influence of specific Western artists and genres, and the role of technological affordances. The multifactorial solution to the problem highlights the necessity of searching the reasons behind eclectic Japanese video game music not only (and maybe not primarily) in contingent factors motivated by single games, but also in structural factors motivated by the peculiarities of contemporary Japanese culture.
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Odradek: Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories, 2022
In this paper, we present a critical stance towards what we call 'strong' conceptions of computat... more In this paper, we present a critical stance towards what we call 'strong' conceptions of computational creativity (CC): after discarding theories that uphold the possibility of fully replicating the human mind – creativity included – through computational models, we will employ 'weak' conceptions of CC to investigate how our creativity works and how 'art' is shaped in its meaning and richness. We will then sketch four 'issues' paired to four arguments that bring the human back into the game of CC, focusing on the role played respectively by the individual's place in society, subjective experience, corporeality, and consciousness in the creative process. Focusing mainly on the latter two, we will present extensive arguments rooted in (post-)phenomenology and neuroscience, factoring stances that belong to semiotics and anthropology/archaeology of material culture.
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Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, 2021
As the end of the album format is apparently drawing near due to the radical change in music cons... more As the end of the album format is apparently drawing near due to the radical change in music consumption habits motivated by streaming services, artists and genres interested in creating musical works with meanings broader than those of single songs find themselves in a situation worth analysing. Despite all appearances and expectations, I argue that nowadays artists willing to create narrative, thematic or generally conceptual contexts for their songs are living in a potential second golden age of concept albums. Some attempts at keeping the (concept) album alive are more alike to an act of resistance, others creatively take advantage of the same means of communication used by their digital enemy, in order to create something unique and capable of taking the place of the supposedly doomed CD/LP format. They are often transmedial works, thus requiring an interdisciplinary analysis. In this paper, I offer an overview of the contemporary situation of the album format (and concept album more specifically) and finally propose a classification of four forms of contemporary musical world-building strategies, starting from a selection of emblematic case studies.
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Transposition: Musique et Sciences Sociales, 2022
Progressive rock was among the most successful genres of the 1970s, yet only recently has it part... more Progressive rock was among the most successful genres of the 1970s, yet only recently has it partly regained the respect it once had. Indeed, for almost three decades, the prog genre has often been disparaged and condemned as a bombastic and excessive version of psychedelia, thus obliviating its importance and cultural value. Many rebirths of prog can be traced back to the 1980s and the 1990s, but none were able to restore the genre’s lost respect or success. The ‘traditional’ historiography of rock points to the emergence of punk as the moment at which prog was killed, but a deeper analysis can demonstrate how progressive music did not die at all, if we are willing to leave behind the reductive and stereotypical idea of prog as a merely British and “symphonic” phenomenon. Indeed, if we look outside the UK, it is easy to see that prog was far from over. The attempt to explain why a certain historiographical view has been widely accepted can provide insights into the ongoing struggle to define progressive rock as a genre. Indeed, such an analysis can explain why new post-progressive artists (e.g. Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp) were not recognised inside the prog canon, and why new albums by classic artists have been reinterpreted as flops, thus influencing aesthetic judgement for decades with a peculiar inversion of values. This study will mainly focus on the role of critics and of the Anglo-symphonic stereotype, seeking to give an alternative account of the death (and rebirth) of prog from a contemporary and postmodern perspective (capable of interpreting the two main breeds of contemporary prog in light of Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum), and to give some of the forgotten histories the relevance they deserve.
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Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, 2020
Genres are among the most discussed topics in popular music studies. The attempt to explain issue... more Genres are among the most discussed topics in popular music studies. The attempt to explain issues as complex and layered as how musical genres are born, how they work and what they ontologically are cannot avoid opening a box full of theoretical problems, questions and tools that need to be understood and used in order to say something significant on genre today. Despite the long story of this theoretical debate (roots of which can be traced back to ancient Greece) and the variety of disciplines involved (e.g. literature, music and film studies, but also philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and semiotics), it is difficult to find survey papers that can give an overview of such a rich research environment. This paper attempts to fill that void by trying to systematize the main (contemporary) perspectives on musical genre, in particular non-essentialist theories coming from the overlapping fields of musicology and sociology. Most importantly, its overview stresses the necessity of an interdisciplinary study of musical genre, which – as an exemplum of extraordinarily layered phenomenon of the human production of culture – intertwines technical, social, discursive, commercial, historical and other elements, thus requiring an approach capable of accounting for as much of its many layers of meaning as possible.
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INSAM: Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, 2020
Could machines ever take our place in the creation of art, and particularly music? The outstandin... more Could machines ever take our place in the creation of art, and particularly music? The outstanding results of some well-known AIs (e.g. EMI, Flow Machines) might make us believe that this is the case. However, despite this evidence it seems that machines present some intrinsic limits both in creative and non-creative contexts (already highlighted by John Searle and the debate around mechanism). The arguments of this paper are centred around this very belief: we are convinced that the utopian claims regarding all-round machine intelligence are not plausible and that our attention should be directed towards more relevant issues in the field of computational creativity. In particular, we focus our attention on what we call the "body issue", i.e. the role of the body in the experience and creation of music, that we consider problematic for the idea of a truly creative machine (even if we take into consideration weaker renditions of artificial intelligence). Our argument is based on contemporary findings in neuroscience (especially on embodied cognition) and on the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Roland Barthes.
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Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music, 2020
In this paper we aim to reflect upon the human-machine relationship in creative contexts and, mor... more In this paper we aim to reflect upon the human-machine relationship in creative contexts and, more precisely, on some of the limits that machines present when we take creativity into consideration. In particular, we want to raise some concerns about the possibility that machines can genuinely instantiate intelligence as we understand it (the thesis of strong artificial intelligence) and are therefore able to take our place as creative agents. However, even considering the more plausible positions regarding the potential abilities of artificial intelligence (e.g. machines’ ability to reproduce behaviours that seem intelligent: the thesis of weak artificial intelligence), we are convinced that there are still some discrepancies in comparing creativity between human beings and digital agents. After having argued against the plausibility of human-like intelligent (and creative) machines, we are going to present some actual cases of weak AIs in action, alongside some questions that – we argue – are surely more imminent and interesting than the science-fictional scenarios depicted by strong AIs supporters: should we underestimate the importance of having a body in the creation of music? And what can be said about our understanding of pleasure and meanings? And also, what role should we grant to all of those social aspects and values that are related to music and that define a large portion of the meaning of the music itself, especially in the field of popular music? To answer these questions, we will address four orders of issues concerning musical creation by referring to sociology of music, musical semiotics and embodied simulation. Thus, it will become evident that music is much more than just a sonic phenomenon, and this is something we should never disregard while trying to assess the role of creative machines.
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Conference Papers by Mattia Merlini
The 6th Biennial International Conference of the Progect Network for Studies of Progressive Rock, 2024
Contemporary progressive music, as a musical phenomenon, is very difficult to map and understand ... more Contemporary progressive music, as a musical phenomenon, is very difficult to map and understand in a coherent and comprehensive way. Its variety makes it hard to grasp what the ultimate essence of what prog might be, but it also stimu-lates theoretical thinking, especially when it comes to the topic of music genres. In this paper I draw on previous research and theorisation to identify two main strains of contemporary progressive music (neo-progressive and post-progressive) and explain their peculiarities using postmodern lenses – which challenge the view of progressive rock as a late form of rock modernism and fur-nish a theoretical framework that describes divergent ways of engaging with the genre’s canon, ideology and tradition (reinterpretation vs revivalism). Such framework, I argue, could be usefully adopted to understand the current state not only of progressive music, but also of other genres that showcase complex rela-tionships with their musical roots. So, in the process of validating my theoretical model, I compare the contemporary incarnations of prog with genres and subgen-res – e.g. synthwave, vaporwave, post-punk, post-black metal – that situate the idea of revamping or resurrecting pre-existing music at the core of their aesthetic purposes. While they might seem very distant from progressive music, I argue they can all be understood as different kinds of music sharing very similar pro-cesses of canonisation, discoursivisation, historicisation and, ultimately, genre construction – the most relevant of which will be explored throughout paper.
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Ludo2024: 13th European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound, 2024
After several chapters set in hi-tech worlds, Final Fantasy XVI (2023) has brought the players of... more After several chapters set in hi-tech worlds, Final Fantasy XVI (2023) has brought the players of the well-known JRPG franchise back to a classic (dark) fantasy setting, explicitly inspired by the European Middle Ages. Just like the developers were suggested to take inspiration from Game of Thrones, the main composer Masayoshi Soken was asked to adapt his usual style to the Hollywoodian conventions of music for fantasy cinema. But Final Fantasy XVI cannot be defined as a plain “pseudo-European” fantasy story, as it features a gradual shift towards narrative topics that are more typical of JRPGs and shōnen manga and anime – and I argue this passage from the West to the East is subtly reflected by the music as well. In this paper, I offer a thematic and topical analysis of some relevant compositions from the soundtrack of Final Fantasy XVI, to show how Soken and his fellow composers and arrangers have injected “foreign” (mainly electronic) musical elements in a generally symphonic context, thus evoking an idea of “otherness” that points in two directions: the (quite literally) alien spaces and characters that gradually become central in the story – which are musically accompanied by unexpected genre synecdoches; and the related “alien” narrative topics that are typical of JRPGs and anime and end up largely replacing the classic fantasy setting in the second half of the game – thus allowing into the music elements that betray the authenticity of the “Western(ised)” soundtrack, in favour of eclectic choices more typical of other Japanese media.
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Music, Media, and Narrative in the Streaming Age, 2024
Speaking of streaming, there is another important revolution that is related to an entirely diffe... more Speaking of streaming, there is another important revolution that is related to an entirely different – but, from a ludomusicological perspective, even more important – event. During the 1990s, video game consoles started to become capable of not only synthesizing music on board or play it via compressed samples combined in real time, but also streaming music directly from the game’s physical support. This meant that video game music could be recorded like any other kind of music and then reproduced directly during the playing experience without substantial differences. But what happens to music when the compositional affordances change so radically? In this paper I focus on that important shift in the history of video game composition and particularly on how the relationship with polystylism has apparently changed in Japanese and Western games during and after the shift. In doing so, I focus on case studies that cover the timespan of my interest, be these single games that were reissued (with “remastered” music) multiple times, single franchises and single composers. Thus, I will be able to emphasize some of the main differences between the Japanese and Western approaches, and how these could be related to the ways in which the two industrial contexts reacted to the important technological change of streamed video game music.
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The Blasphemous in Music and Sound, 2023
Ghost is a Swedish heavy metal band founded in 2016 and characterised by a mixture of extreme met... more Ghost is a Swedish heavy metal band founded in 2016 and characterised by a mixture of extreme metal visual aesthetics, Catholic symbology and Satanic lyrics full of irony, puns and innuendos. Vocalist Tobias Forge – whose identity has been discovered only in 2017 – performs disguised as an Antipope called “Papa Emeritus”, and every album-tour cycle corresponds to a new papa-persona (Papa Emeritus II, III, IV…), which is introduced to the fans during the live dismissal of the old pontiff. Ghost carry on a narration told across all albums, not only via the songs’ lyrics, but also employing several kinds of paratextual audio-visual material. One of these is emblematic of Ghost’s performative language blending together irony, blasphemy and italianness (as quintessential Catholic and as a synecdoche of the Holy See): the Papaganda mockumentary, directed by Greg Olliver and published by VICE’s Noisey in 2014. In this presentation I give an overview of Ghost’s rhetoric focusing on the way in which italianness is depicted both as a symbol of sacrality and as a means of blasphemy and distortion of the primordial clerical image, using Papaganda as a starting point but without forgetting other relevant examples including other paratexts, lyrics, performative elements/attitudes and statements made by the band during interviews, thus giving an account of Italy’s role in Ghost’s blasphemous language.
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Frank Sinatra: A Twentieth Century Icon, 2023
Already in his early years with Capitol, Frank Sinatra made albums that are often referred to as ... more Already in his early years with Capitol, Frank Sinatra made albums that are often referred to as the forerunners of a new way of conceiving the record: the concept album. Only a few years after the introduction of the microgroove, Sinatra showed a keen interest in an early exploration of the affordances offered by the LP, in line with what rock artists such as Frank Zappa and the Beatles would do not sooner than a decade later, thus making the concept album one of the most typical musical forms exploited by progressive rock. Looking at some of the milestones in the development of the concept album format, the relevance of Frank Sinatra's legacy to popular music (and in particular to rock, a genre he despised) will be highlighted, as well as the elements of continuity and discontinuity between Sinatra's archetypal proposals and the subsequent developments of the format, which repeatedly had to face obstacles that put in danger its existence and led to its redefinition – from the supposed 'death' of prog to the return of the dominance of the music single over the album, in the context of streaming platforms.
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The Aesthetics of Absence in Music of the Twenty-First Century, 2023
Voidgaze is a “phantom genre”: people often listen to this kind of music without even knowing wha... more Voidgaze is a “phantom genre”: people often listen to this kind of music without even knowing what it is. If you google it, you will find more pages asking for a definition than providing one. Being located at the crossroads between blackgaze, post-black metal, atmospheric black metal, doom metal and neofolk, this genre seems to lack an actual community and is most likely the product of genre classifications operated by streaming services to guide the algorithm’s recommendation work. In this paper I investigate the origins and family tree of this genre by crossing the results of research done using several online tools for the analysis of Spotify playlists metadata – Organize Your Music, All Noise at Once and SpotiGeM. Thus, I use voidgaze as a case study to describe new ways in which genres are born in the age of streaming, highlighting analogies and differences with “old style” genres and their respective functions. The real absence described in this paper, then, is not that implied in the name of voidgaze; it is that of a hypothetical loss of centrality of the concept of “genre” on streaming platforms. But are genres really bound to become just tags and labels in an all-fluid listening experience, or should we broad the old definition of “music genre” to accommodate new “phantom” forms of classification?
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Giovani_fuori_classe (IASPM-IT), 2023
L’argomento videoludico ha sempre creato un certo imbarazzo nel dibattito pubblico italiano – per... more L’argomento videoludico ha sempre creato un certo imbarazzo nel dibattito pubblico italiano – per non parlare di quello accademico. Con echi non trascurabili nella vicenda cinematografica d’inizio secolo scorso, il videogioco è stato a lungo guardato con sospetto, trascurando in modo pressoché assoluto la sua plurima componente artistica e le conseguenze estetiche della sua natura interattiva. All’indomani dell’approvazione del “First Playable Fund”, voluto dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico – e non a caso seguito da copiose uscite videoludiche a opera di sviluppatori nostrani – occorre che la musicologia popular italiana si dimostri abbastanza radicalmente “popolare” da interessarsi alla dimensione musicale della forma di intrattenimento mediatico spesso trattata come, appunto, la più “popolare” di tutte, instaurando finalmente un dialogo con quella disciplina che ormai da anni costituisce una delle più vibranti comunità di giovani studiosi sul suolo internazionale: la ludomusicologia.
In questo intervento presenterò brevemente alcuni dei principali progressi della disciplina, per poi soffermarmi su un argomento specifico a partire da un recentissimo esempio italiano: Soulstice (2022). Sviluppato dagli italiani di Forge Reply, il gioco è un esplicito tributo a franchise giapponesi come Nier, Devil May Cry e Bayonetta. Mostrerò come i rimandi non si fermino certo al livello del gameplay, ma si spingano fin sul piano della musica, mettendo in evidenza la presenza di uno dei tratti della musica videoludica giapponese che sto mettendo al centro di una delle mie attuali linee di ricerca, ovvero il suo singolare tipo di eclettismo che unisce la tradizione orchestrale di musica per film con le più disparate sonorità popular. Spero che questo tema possa illustrare ai presenti quanto gravido di spunti di ricerca possa essere un ambito di studi finora trascurato nel nostro Paese – nonché suscitare considerazioni e suggerimenti sulle direzioni che la mia ricerca in corso potrà prendere.
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Musical Retrofuturism Symposium, 2022
Synthwave music is inextricably tied with cinema, and in this presentation I am going to investig... more Synthwave music is inextricably tied with cinema, and in this presentation I am going to investigate the archetypical forms of that connection, focusing on their functions and connotations. My main point is that we can find both first-order and second-order associations between cinema and synthwave music, for a total of at least four of them (association with sci-fi cinema, association with B-movies, age-synecdoche and aesthetic mediator). These associations are partly to be found in contemporary cinema and partly to seek in films from the 1980s, in a dialectical process in which cinema and music are constantly implied one in the other (even when it comes to synthwave music not used for cinematic purposes). After a brief overview of first-order associations – which are important for understanding the whole idea, but are not so directly linked with the contemporary synthwave music genre – I will mainly focus on a selection of contemporary films defined by online communities as ‘synthwave movies’, and thus on second-order associations, showing how these contribute in rendering synthwave a simulacrum representing not only cyberpunk worlds and cheap productions, but an entire era and its (retro-)futuristic dreams and aesthetic idiosyncrasies.
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Progect 2021: The 4th Biennial International Conference of the Progect Network for the Study of Progressive Rock – Progressive Rock & Metal: Towards a Contemporary Understanding, 2021
Several scholars have agreed that ‘progressive’ may define a particular attitude towards musical ... more Several scholars have agreed that ‘progressive’ may define a particular attitude towards musical creation, rather than an actual musical genre (Sheinbaum 2008, Saluena 2009, Anderton & Atton 2011, Hegarty & Halliwell 2011). However, so wide is the spectrum of musical phenomena included in contemporary progressive that the question ‘is this prog?’ – very common among users commenting songs and albums in online prog forums and communities (Atton 2001, Ahlkvist 2011) – remains difficult to answer. Is there a way to understand and define present-day progressive music, without neglecting the meaningful differentiation between post-progressive (e.g. Steven Wilson, Dream Theater, Opeth, Tool, Anathema, etc.) and neo-progressive (e.g. The Flower Kings, Spock’s Beard, Big Big Train, etc.), and taking especially into account those features that prog communities consider to be valuable for the genre they love (Frith 1996, Gracyk 2007)? How can we differentiate the ‘progressive attitude’ mentioned above from a broadly ‘experimental’ approach (Martin 1998), and make sense as to why some ‘limbo-artists’ who share plenty of musical features with progressive music are generally not included in the ‘canon’? Moreover, can theories of musical genre (especially Fabbri 1981, Quintero 1998, Holt 2007, Lena 2012) be of some use when further delving into this constellation of sub-genres?
In my paper I cross the findings of an empirical survey I posted in strategic locations of the internet with a selection of songs I analysed, aiming to understand which entries of the resulting set of musical features and values – nurtured by the perspectives of scholars, magazines, festivals and listeners – play a defining role for the ‘progressive attitude’. To further nuance our understanding of ‘what prog may be’, I use postmodern lenses to investigate the post-progressive/neo-progressive dualism, and argue that they could be seen as two opposite declinations of an attitude that might be postmodern at its core.
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Ludo2021 - Tenth European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound, 2021
Among all new media, Japan especially excels in producing video games. If we take a listen to the... more Among all new media, Japan especially excels in producing video games. If we take a listen to the musical aspects of those products, we can easily notice some consistencies, for instance when it comes to their frequent eclecticism – horizontal (different styles in different moments of the soundtrack) and vertical (different style flags acting at the same moment of the soundtrack). Basing my argumentation on case studies taken from different video games series, I will try to give an interpretation to the persistence of such a phenomenon, that is not that frequent in Western counterparts. Why Japan, and why video games? Is it something that we can find in Japanese anime and live action movies, too? What role could Western instances of eclecticism have had on such an approach? And what about Japanese-based genres such as Visual Kei or J-pop, which were apparently often interested in eclecticism? What is the role of Japan’s postmodern culture in all of this, and what about the technologies involved in the creation of those soundtracks? Different paths can be taken to understand this phenomenon, situated as it is at the crossroads between local and global, but I especially aim at understanding why and how new technologies and media have in this case worked as agents of postmodernity, by fostering hybridization and eclecticism, and by spreading them to a very wide and popular audience, that was previously most likely not very much into similar kinds of music – and, possibly, making such an approach even more popular.
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Books by Mattia Merlini
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In questo intervento presenterò brevemente alcuni dei principali progressi della disciplina, per poi soffermarmi su un argomento specifico a partire da un recentissimo esempio italiano: Soulstice (2022). Sviluppato dagli italiani di Forge Reply, il gioco è un esplicito tributo a franchise giapponesi come Nier, Devil May Cry e Bayonetta. Mostrerò come i rimandi non si fermino certo al livello del gameplay, ma si spingano fin sul piano della musica, mettendo in evidenza la presenza di uno dei tratti della musica videoludica giapponese che sto mettendo al centro di una delle mie attuali linee di ricerca, ovvero il suo singolare tipo di eclettismo che unisce la tradizione orchestrale di musica per film con le più disparate sonorità popular. Spero che questo tema possa illustrare ai presenti quanto gravido di spunti di ricerca possa essere un ambito di studi finora trascurato nel nostro Paese – nonché suscitare considerazioni e suggerimenti sulle direzioni che la mia ricerca in corso potrà prendere.
In my paper I cross the findings of an empirical survey I posted in strategic locations of the internet with a selection of songs I analysed, aiming to understand which entries of the resulting set of musical features and values – nurtured by the perspectives of scholars, magazines, festivals and listeners – play a defining role for the ‘progressive attitude’. To further nuance our understanding of ‘what prog may be’, I use postmodern lenses to investigate the post-progressive/neo-progressive dualism, and argue that they could be seen as two opposite declinations of an attitude that might be postmodern at its core.
In questo intervento presenterò brevemente alcuni dei principali progressi della disciplina, per poi soffermarmi su un argomento specifico a partire da un recentissimo esempio italiano: Soulstice (2022). Sviluppato dagli italiani di Forge Reply, il gioco è un esplicito tributo a franchise giapponesi come Nier, Devil May Cry e Bayonetta. Mostrerò come i rimandi non si fermino certo al livello del gameplay, ma si spingano fin sul piano della musica, mettendo in evidenza la presenza di uno dei tratti della musica videoludica giapponese che sto mettendo al centro di una delle mie attuali linee di ricerca, ovvero il suo singolare tipo di eclettismo che unisce la tradizione orchestrale di musica per film con le più disparate sonorità popular. Spero che questo tema possa illustrare ai presenti quanto gravido di spunti di ricerca possa essere un ambito di studi finora trascurato nel nostro Paese – nonché suscitare considerazioni e suggerimenti sulle direzioni che la mia ricerca in corso potrà prendere.
In my paper I cross the findings of an empirical survey I posted in strategic locations of the internet with a selection of songs I analysed, aiming to understand which entries of the resulting set of musical features and values – nurtured by the perspectives of scholars, magazines, festivals and listeners – play a defining role for the ‘progressive attitude’. To further nuance our understanding of ‘what prog may be’, I use postmodern lenses to investigate the post-progressive/neo-progressive dualism, and argue that they could be seen as two opposite declinations of an attitude that might be postmodern at its core.
Das performative und konzeptuelle Potenzial des menschlichen Körpers rückt seit der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts zunehmend in den Fokus künstlerischer Auseinandersetzung. Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes widmen sich kompositorischen und performativen Konzepten, in welchen der menschliche Körper nicht nur als Mittel zum Zweck der Klangerzeugung eingesetzt und als nebensächlich verstanden wird, sondern in welchen die Ausdrucks- und Bewegungsmöglichkeiten des Körpers im Zentrum künstlerischer Überlegungen stehen. Mithilfe interdisziplinärer Ansätze aus unterschiedlichen (künstlerisch-)wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen wird die Thematik »Körper«/»Körperlichkeit« anhand verschiedener Musikkulturen und -genres des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts erörtert.