Lo-Fi, Lo Fa

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Lo-Fi really is a thing: I love it. During the 1980's, the constant push in music was for more and more fidelity, with technical developments mostly happening within the digital domain: crystal-clear audio, high headroom and frequency response ranging from nausea-inducing sub-bass to a top-end to frighten the bejeezus out of bats. This was the future. That was then, this is now. The sterility of the pure, digital approach under its own terms of reference sowed the seeds for it's own stagnation and the return to the noisy, warmly distorted retro world of the Lo-Fi.

In truth, the love of the edgy un-pristine never really left the house; all through the rise of the digital era, artists and producers were using sampled sound; either digital, using nascent technologies like the Fairlight, or artists like Holger Czukay drawing on the traditions of Musique Concrete and Stockhausen, using tape, short-wave radio, etc. to create those dredged-up Lo-Fi textures that hark bark and connect to the hand-made, analogue world. From the Amen Break to Hainbach via Big Beat; the likes of Fatboy Slim and earlier still, Massive Attack, Portishead and so many more made use of that warm, fuzzy lack of precision. 

The kicker is, even though someone like Jack White [more power to his elbow] produces and records entirely in the analogue domain, the bulk of 'analogue' sound out there is actually a digital analogue of analogue sound. How very meta; but as I've said before, I love that collision between the two worlds and the fact that we now have digital nostalgia for the 'old' eight-bit tech of the '80's: it only serves to reinforce the idea that music-making progresses outside of the flow of technical developments: true creatives take whatever is available and add it to their palette of sonic possibilities: the music carries the tech.

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