【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Low 2021年专辑《Hey What》

搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Beans_Beans 

On the follow-up to 2018’s astonishingDouble Negative, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk push deeper into abstraction,finding fresh angles on the themes that have animated them since the beginning.

18年发行了令人震惊的《Double Negative》后，Mimi Parker和Alan Sparhawk在新的作品中深入抽象领域，为从一开始就激励他们的主题寻得新的角度。

Cast away most of what you have, and whatever’sleft will mean that much more. This principle was evident in Low’s music fromthe beginning, when they made records out of mere whispers of guitar andpercussion, and it’s still there 27 years later on HEY WHAT, their 13th album,made in large part of roaring electronic noise. The two human voices at thecenter are a little deeper and rounder at the edges than they used to be, butthey otherwise haven’t changed much. Nor has Low’s attunement to the way thecrackling particularities of any given sound, shorn of excess and beheld withclose attention, can convey feeling beyond words. Once, that meant a crispchord hanging in an empty room. Now, there’s no longer an easy externalreferent for the space their music occupies. HEY WHAT is more like a surge ofinformation through a corroded terminal, or an electrical storm in the cavernbetween two earbuds.

抛弃你所既有的，余下的将愈发有意义。这个原则从一开始就在Low的音乐中有所显现，当时的他们仅仅用吉他和低沉的打击乐来制作唱片，而27年后这一原则依旧主导着他们的创作，他们的第13张专辑《HEY WHAT》则在很大程度上由咆哮的电子噪音构成。处于乐曲轴心位置的二人的声音比以往更深沉，更圆润，但除此之外也并无过多的变化。Low对任何特定声音的爆破性特征的适应性调节，在剔除了赘余的部分后，我们细细观察会发现其所传达的感情是无法用言语表达的。曾经，这可能是一个清脆的和弦在一个空旷的房间中回响。现在，他们音乐所占据的空间已经很难再去搜寻一个简洁形象的比方。《HEY WHAT》更像是一个穿梭在腐蚀终端的信息潮，或是在两个耳塞间的耳道中奔涌的电子风暴。

It’s difficult to address HEY WHAT withoutfirst mentioning Double Negative, its predecessor. That album landed with theforce of revelation in 2018, a clear career highlight for a band that’s nevermade a bad album. Working closely with producer BJ Burton, who returns for HEYWHAT, Low remade themselves in the image of a dying supercomputer, digitallymangling their own performances until the distortion was as central to thealbum’s effect as the songs themselves. It was conversant with the vanguards ofelectronic, pop, and hip-hop production, fields that have long since abandonedany fealty to the way sounds are supposed to behave in real-world acoustic environments. Its jagged slabs of bass reminded me, in a surprisingly directway, of the shredded low end of Kanye’s Yeezus, or XXXTentacion’s “Look at Me!”Those records harnessed the unruliness of digital malfunction, made itpalatable and even satisfying by tethering it to familiar forms; a kick-drumsound, no matter how blown out, still generally performed the expected role ofa kick drum. Without undermining the compositions of co-founders Alan Sparhawkand Mimi Parker, Double Negative aspired toward further abstraction, allowingits ashen pixellations to shape the music on their own terms, as gestures untothemselves. It was the closest a rock album has come in recent memory tosounding completely new.

谈到《HEY WHAT》、我们很难不先提及它的前身《Double Negative》。那张专辑在2018年的发行宛如《启示录》降临人世，对于一个从未制作过辣鸡专辑的乐队来说，这无疑又是一个生涯两点。Low与制作人BJ Burton密切合作，后者选择以《HEY WHAT》回归，将Low重塑成一台濒死的超级人工智能，用数字技术扭曲他们自己的表演，直到失真成为专辑的核心、甚至能与歌曲本身比肩。这张专辑与电子、流行和嘻哈领域的制作先锋对话，抛弃了真实世界中实际声学环境的任何表现形式。它其中参差不齐的厚重低音竟让我想起了Kanye的《Yeezus》或XXXTentacion的《Look at Me》中被解构的低频音轨。这些唱片利用了数字故障的不稳定性，通过将其与熟悉的形式联系起来，使其变得易于接受，甚至令人欣然；而踢鼓的声音，无论是如何将之爆发出来，一般来说仍然扮演着踢鼓的预期角色。在不破坏Alan Sparhawk和Mimi Parker原本作品的情况下，《Double Negative》追求进一步的抽象化，使得《Low》以灰暗的像素化方式塑造音乐成为可能。这是近年来为数不多的一张有着近乎全新听感的摇滚专辑。

If Double Negative was a thrilling anduncertain expedition, bringing an alien landscape into focus for the firsttime, HEY WHAT demonstrates Low’s newfound mastery of the terrain. After awhirling free-tempo introduction, opener “White Horses” settles into a clippedstaccato pulse, providing brittle accompaniment for Sparhawk and Parker’sharmonizing about the inevitable cruelty of love. By the second verse, thepulse has grown into something huge and menacing, pushing the singers moreurgently than before. “Days Like These” makes a series of abrupt transitionsbetween crystalline unaccompanied singing and voices that have been crushednearly beyond recognition, drawing up the tension with each hard cut. “It isn’tsomething you can choose between,” Sparhawk and Parker sing, with the firsthalf of the line clean and the second half distorted, a reminder that darknessand light are inseparable. This sort of precisely controlled dramadistinguishes HEY WHAT from Double Negative, as if Low were creating a languagein the dark on the previous album and are now using it to write a high-wirethriller.

如果说《Double Negative》是一次惊心动魄、充满不确定性的探险，首次将一个世外景观带入了人们的视线，那么《HEY WHAT》则展示了Low所掌握的全新地形。在一段快节奏引子结束后，开唱曲“White Horse”进入了一个断断续续的节奏脉冲，为Sparhawk和Parker关于爱、关于其避之不及的残酷宿运的和声提供了在狂暴边缘的伴奏。到了第二诗节，节奏渐渐发展成巨大而汹涌的存在，相比先前更迫切地促使着着人声推进。“Days Like These”在晶莹剔透的纯人声演绎和几乎被挤压得面目全非的声音间反复横跳，每一个强硬切片都拉高了这首歌曲的表现张力。“It isn’t something you can choose between,” Sparhawk和Parker唱道，前半句清晰简洁，后半句压抑扭曲，警醒着世人黑暗和光明总是不可分割的。这种在精确把控下的戏剧效果使《HEY WHAT》区别于《Double Negative》，就好像Low在前一张专辑中创造了一种黑暗中的语言，如今开始用它写下一部史诗级惊悚片。

At times, Low seem to tack back toward thetight songcraft of an album like 2005’s The Great Destroyer, directing HEYWHAT’s strange vocabulary toward the same visceral ends that they once reachedwith power chords and cymbal crashes. But the story isn’t so simple. HEY WHATalso maintains and deepens Double Negative’s exploration of sustained ambience,with long stretches devoted to the repetition of a single word, or the slowdecay of a keyboard line. Even moments like these are not exactly unprecedentedfor Low, who were already including passages of quietly hypnotic instrumentalchurn on their debut. Low’s new idiom may have seemed like an aberration onDouble Negative, but HEY WHAT’s refinements make it clear that they are stillfinding fresh angles on the same themes that have animated them since thebeginning: usi ng minimalism to expressthe entwined pairing of intimacy and loneliness, searching for meaning in therubble after a departure too catastrophic to address by name.

有时会觉得Low似乎回到了像05年《The Great Destroyer》中紧凑的歌曲制作，将《HEY WHAT》中的奇怪词汇导向他们曾通过强有力的和弦和铙钹的猛烈冲击所抵达的相同目标。但这个过程并不那么简单。《HEY WHAT》还延续并加深了《Double Negative》对氛围化的探索，长时间地重复同一个词、或是减弱下行的键盘推进。像这样的时刻对Low来说并非完全没有先例，他们的首张专辑中已经包含了一些平静的催眠器乐段落。Low的新习性在《Double Negative》中可能显得有些反常，但在《HEY WHAT》中的改进清楚地表明，他们仍在为从一开始就激励他们的主题寻找新的角度——用极简主义来表达亲密和孤独的缠结，在一场灾难性的、无以言说的生离死别后，在废墟中寻觅新的意义。

Sparhawk has spoken of his desire to offerlisteners tension without release in Low’s music. One route to that idea mightinvolve continuous motion without a goal in mind, a recognition of deep andcomplicated truth in the old adage that the journey is more important than thedestination. HEY WHAT expresses something similar with its final track, “ThePrice You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off).” After 42 minutes of organized chaos,the duo finally offers the slamming catharsis of a rock backbeat, the album’sfirst. Everything about this moment—the swelling feedback, the heart-tuggingchord changes—suggests a grand release. But as soon as it arrives, it begins torecede. The clouds gather, the harmonies cycle uneasily; the drums cut out,then back in, then out for good. “It must be wearing off,” Parker and Sparhawksing together, and the promise of salvation at the end of the road flickersagain out of view.

Sparhawk曾说过，他希望通过Low的音乐为听众提供不曾释放的紧张感。实现这一想法的一种途径可能涉及到脑海中盲目的胡思乱想，这也是对古老格言“过程比结果更重要”中复杂深奥的真理的认同。在《HEY WHAT》的最后一首歌 " The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)"中表达了类似的东西。在近42分钟的有序混乱之后，这对组合终于猛烈地宣泄出这张专辑首个摇滚背景乐。蕴含在这一刻中的一切——膨胀的代价，牵动心弦的和弦变化——都预示着一个盛大的解脱。但它一旦到来，便随即消散。云层聚拢，和声不安地循环往复；鼓声中断，然后重启，最终再次戛然而止、一蹶不起。Parker和Sparhawk一起唱道：“It must be wearing off.”远在视野之外的路途尽头，救赎的承诺则再次闪烁。