In Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises it is stated that, “… we get infinitely more pleasure imagining combinations of the sounds of trolleys, autos, and other vehicles, and loud crowds, than listening once more, for instance, to the heroic or pastoral symphonies.” This means that people of today are much more capable to listening to clutter and have no problem listening to it. “The ear of an eighteenth century man never could have withstood the discordant intensity of some of the chords produced by our orchestras… on the other hand our ears rejoice in it, for they are attuned to modern life, rich in all sorts of noises.” After listening to “Raiding the 20th Century” by DJ Food I completely agree with this statement from Luigi Russolo. Only we of the present day can take the clutter of sounds from DJ Food’s track and make sense of them. The sounds produced by music today give us sensations where if a man from the eighteenth century would never be able to distinguish the sounds that they were hearing. They would not have the capability to the drastic switches between the music and the sounds of sirens and people speaking in DJ Food’s track. DJ Food used various sounds and songs of different genres and fused it all together into his work. Russolo says, “The art of noises will extract its main emotive power from the special acoustic pleasure that the inspired artist will obtain in combining noises.” So it is not just the music that we listen to and may be familiar with that makes us pleased with the sounds but it is the changes to them as well. The crashes and roars of other things mixed into the songs is what gives DJ Food his unique style to this mix and what makes it pleasing to the people of today.
You can click here to listen to DJ Food’s track.
