【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Grimes 2012年专辑《Visions》
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
Grimes是来自加拿大蒙特利尔的 Claire Boucher 的单人女性电子流行音乐项目。《Visions》是她令人着迷的第三张专辑，是通向她独有的幸福电气棉花糖天堂的门票。
As a child I feared the day the world would be taken over by robots; these days I am seized by a much more potent fear that I am becoming one. Digital interfaces invade our imagination in strange, tangible ways, and with each day I spend in front of my computer screen, the red Gchat dots representing my friends and co-workers start to look more and more like HAL. Have you ever caught yourself trying to open a new tab in your brain? Was the Wikipedia blackout of 2012 as important a cultural moment as the New York City blackout of '77? Do androids dream of electric sheep, or do you not have an app for that yet?
小时候，我或许还会担心有一天世界会被机器人占领；而如今，我被一种更加强烈的恐惧吞噬着——我正逐步变为机器人。数字化的界面以怪异的、有形的方式逐步侵入我们的想象力；随着我在电脑屏幕前度过的一天又一天，代表我的朋友和同事讯息的红色即时提醒开始越来越像 “HAL 9000”* 一般。你有没有发现自己试图在大脑中打开一个新标签页？2012年的维基百科大停电是否将会成为和1977年纽约大停电一样的一个重要文化时刻？仿生人会梦见电子羊吗*，或是你尚未为其备好一个应用程序？
"Post-internet" is a term that's stuck all too easily (guilty as charged) to Grimes' airy cyborg-pop, thanks in part to her endless quotability in acknowledging the digital world's influence on her aesthetic ("The music of my childhood was really diverse because I had access to everything.") But Visions, the latest and best album from the one-woman project of Montreal-based Claire Boucher, complicates the all-too-tidy "post-internet" tag by bringing into focus the many contrasts at the heart of her music: tensions between pop structure and diffuse atmosphere, between technology and the human body, between sensory-overloaded hyper-presence and transcendence. More solidly constructed and a lot more fun to listen to than anything she's put her name to so far, the electro cotton-candy of Visions is an inviting entrance into Grimes' peculiar kind of bliss.
“后互联网时代”这一标签太容易被贴在 Grimes 的气化电子流行音乐上了（这显然是极富罪恶感的），这一定程度上归功于她自己不断提及数字世界对她审美的影响（“我童年时代所听到的音乐真的很多样化，我几乎可以接触到所有东西。”）。但是《Visions》是来自加拿大蒙特利尔的 Claire Boucher 单人项目最具创新，最精彩的一张专辑，使所有被整齐排列的“后互联网时代”标签愈加复杂精细，令她音乐核心中屡见不鲜的反差感成为焦点：流行结构与发散氛围之间、科技与人体、视听过载的超现实通感与超脱世俗间的表达张力。与她迄今为止的所有作品相比，《Visions》的结构更为坚实，听感上也更为有趣，《Visions》是通向她奇特，幸福的电气棉花糖天堂门票。
On her first albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, Grimes buried pop impulses within textured muck and gloomy tones. But Visions finds Boucher mining not just the clean brightness of Aphex Twin-like atmospherics but also the immediacy of straight-up mall-pop: "Vowels = space and time" recalls nothing so much as Stacey Q's 1986 hit "Two of Hearts", while "Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" sounds like Boucher broke into the apple store after hours and turned on all the display iPads to the same Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam video, Some of Grimes' reference points call to mind the experimental pop of Nite Jewel or some of the artists on the 100% Silk roster. But that music seems interested in obscuring pop's immediacy or keeping a distance from the pleasure center, while Visions is an unabashed embrace of its source material, whether it's K-pop, new age, or bubblegum.
在她最初的专辑《Geidi Primes》和《Halfaxa》中，Grimes 将流行音乐的跃动埋藏在极具质感的泥土和阴郁的色调之中。但从《Visions》中可以发现 Boucher 不仅深度探索了类似 Aphex Twin 的大气层清明度，而且还大刀阔斧地研究了商场流行音乐的直白通俗性：“Vowels = space and time” 让人想起 Stacey Q 1986年发行的主打歌 “Two of Hearts”，而 “Infinite Love Without Fulfillment” 听起来像是 Boucher 在下班后冲进一个苹果店、打开所有展示的 iPad ，同时播放同一个 Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam 视频，有节奏地往复循环成某种崇高的造物。Grimes 的一些采样点让人想起 Nite Jewel 的实验性流行音乐或是 100% Silk 名册中一些艺术家的作品。但那些音乐似乎都忠于掩盖流行音乐的直白通俗性或始终与娱乐中心保持一定距离，而《Visions》是对其流行初心毫不掩饰的拥抱——无论是 K-pop、新世纪音乐还是泡泡糖流行乐。
Boucher spends most of Visions singing in a vaporous falsetto. She occasionally manipulates her voice (as on the steely, Transformers-jam "Eight") but mostly she just loops it, layers it, and cloaks it in reverb; there are moments when what she's doing doesn't sound too far off from what Julianna Barwick's music might sound like if she were interested in making a synth-pop record. The most common complaint I've heard of Grimes come from people wishing her songs were more structured or hooky, or that her voice was more "present." But-- never mind the fact that even the haziest moments on the record are anchored by melody-- this diffuseness is one of Visions' most refreshing charms. Another oft-cited quote from Boucher the "post-internet" poster girl: "Basically I'm really impressionable and have no sense of consistency in anything I do." This is pop music for ambient fans, but it's also a welcome change for anyone exhausted by post-Gaga pop's tethers to artifice, theatricality, and skronky, turned-up-to-11 beats. To reach out and touch this music would be like putting your hand through a cloud.
Boucher 在《Visions》中绝大部分都是用虚无缥缈的假声歌唱。她偶尔还会刻意操纵她的声音（如在坚实的、变形金刚一般的 “Eight” 中），但大多数情况下她也仅是将其循环、剥离分层，再将其笼罩在混响之中；有些时候，她所做出的东西听起来甚至与Julianna Barwick 所做的音乐相差无几，假若她有兴趣制作一张合成器流行专辑的话。我最常所听到的对 Grimes 抱怨通常出于人们希望她的歌曲更有结构性或更具吸引力，亦或使她的声音更有“存在感”。但是——别忘了，即使是唱片中最朦胧混沌的时刻也有着旋律的支撑，这种分散性是《Visions》最令人耳目一新的魅力所在。另一个经常被引用的“后互联网时代”海报女郎 Boucher 的话：“通常情况下上，我真的很容易受影响，（因而十分多变，）在我做的任何事情中都不负有一致性。”这是为氛围乐迷准备的流行乐曲，但对于任何已被“后 Gaga 流行音乐”的矫揉造作、戏剧性和天马行空的节奏搞的疲惫不堪的人来说，这也算是一场值得欢迎的革命。伸手触摸这种音乐吧，就像将双手伸进云雾之中。
But there's still that tension: Song titles such as "Be a Body", "Visiting Statue", and "Skin" are all testaments to Visions' interest in the corporeal. When she sings the titular lyric on "Be a Body", it sounds like a nagging request to come back down to earth, while "Skin" (which has a sputtering sensuality, like a robot programmed to write a slow jam) feels even more revealing: "Soft skin/ You touch me with it and so I know I can be human once again." Still, don't confuse these moments with any kind of new-agey, back-to-nature longing. One spin of "Genesis" is enough prove it: Post-humanism sounds like a blast.
但仍存在有那种张力：歌曲名称如 “Be a Body”，“Visiting Statue” 和 “Skin”都证明《Visions》涉足了肉体领域。当她在 “Be a Body”中唱道含标题的抒情诗时，听起来像是叨扰的恳求——恳求她重新脚踏实地；而 “Skin”（它充斥着一种喷溅式迸发的性感，像是一个被编程为写慢歌的机器人）愈加露骨“Soft skin/ You touch me with it and so I know I can be human once again”。尽管如此，不要把这些时刻与任何一种对新兴、回归自然的渴望混为一谈。再回到 “Genesis” 就足以证明：“后人文主义”听起来就像是一场核爆灾难。
Late last year, Simon Reynolds described electronic music's response to our digitized world as a new kind of maximalism: "a hell of a lot of inputs... in terms of influences and sources, and a hell of a lot of outputs." That's an apt description for the music that Grimes was making before, but Visions showcases a streamlined aesthetic, resulting in a statement that feels focused, cohesive, and assured. It's simple enough to leave room for Grimes to grow, but this thing is so compulsively listenable it's hard to come away from it wanting much more. Anchored to the digital imagination but unbridled from its skittish anxiety and concerns, Visions gestures skyward and beyond.
去年(2011)年末，Simon Reynolds 将电子音乐对我们数字化世界的应答描述为一种新的极繁主义——“恐怖如斯的输入……在影响和来源方面，以及恐怖如斯的输出”。这是对 Grimes 过去所做音乐的恰当描述，但《Visions》展示了一种极简美学，致使一种体感集中、极具凝聚力和权威性的声明应运而生。它足够简洁明了，为 Grimes 留下了充足的成长空间，但同时这又如此令人着迷，很难再从其身上索取更多。锚定于数字想象力上，但并不受制于胆怯、焦虑的影响，《Visions》向着天空及更遥远的远方进军。
*译者注释：HAL 即 HAL 9000 出自电影《2001太空漫游》及同名小说，是一台超级人工智能电脑；《Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?（仿生人会梦见电子羊吗？）》是美国科幻小说作家 Philip Kindred De(i)ck 最重要的作品之一，于1968年首次出版，并改编成1982年电影《银翼杀手》，该书中众多元素和主题亦被用于2017年续集电影《银翼杀手2049》。
