TREATISE ON META-POP 

Ian Macartney

music by the non-musician………...2 be another way of writing; storytelling without language + the sensibilities of language…………not the dismissal of technique & music theory, but a different placement; to come to this construction as writer-making-music versus musician, + the knowledge music-making will inevitably collapse in2 musicianship, so having fun with the whole futile errand…………what happens in that distance+difference?............in the berlin-based fashion/arts journal 032c jack self & editorial make the case for the big flat now, in which “the information we make and share travels through media that lack hierarchy or centrality [...] if all information is treated as equal, it attains a flatness. anyone can become a publisher, generate revenue and attain relative fame. value is created through a closed circuit of meritocracy. content providers are rewarded by the platforms relative to the mimetic and seductive qualities of their content”............all writers must be multidisciplinary in this century. so the development of soundscapes is involved in this work, lmao………….if developed civilisation continues (i.e. while the purview & envelope of ~digital culture~ is around) a universal literacy of platforms can be cultivated, from the visual (premiere pro &c.) to daws;  the production of music, the painting of it, the quilt&tapestry, the visual(textual?) dimension of music added in the advent of technology………...in an interview i can’t b bothered re-finding deep in the depths of the internet (lmao) the filmmaker hal hartley talks about how he learned from his cinematographer, michael spilling, that “all art is mediated by technology”............meta-pop is highly tied 2 this............in literature this tech-mediation is negotiable, ambivalent, because literature (“analogue literature”, for lack of a better term, “offline literature”, page-stuff, yknow, what-is-thought-of-as &c.)  is the only popular artform that does not require digital technology  for it to be received (production, however, printing, very much so, obvs, at least in the way we know books in the 21st century) but meta-pop is not an exception, it is the field………...a whole new multiverse of relations………...“i capture accidents”, as it were; 1 comes 2 the synthesizer/software/both and from the conversation, captured then augmented &c., comes the song…………quoting agnès gayraud from her book dialectic of pop, historically the synth was a separate category from ‘instrument’; it has vast wild ambitious qualities, a distinct category………...“left to express itself, the machine escapes all traditional instrumental mastery [...] sat before an electronic machine, a series of integrated circuits or a panel of potentiometers hooked up with interlinked cables connecting various modules, the player is no longer a master instrumentalist, but witness to a process”.............it’s dialogic, bby!!! & this is what grounds meta-pop............ also involved, as u can expect, is self-awareness............from conceptual interrogations (i.e. lyrics, theme blah blah) to actual musical self-awareness (the recording of a synth being played, not the output; the empty fall of the keys &c.)............ self-consciousness but not, like, in a nerd way lol………...meta-pop as  v v v fun pop, pop that’s popped & floating on up up up………...is meta-pop distinct from hyperpop and other such variations? eh, probably not, i dunno………...it’s meta as in, beyond, but also as in metaxis, inbetweeness………... outwith-pop, the pop of between…………O 2 be pop obscured!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Glasgow, May 2021