The second song on my new LP, Grapefruit, is called Pink Fruit. It’s a song about shame, and about jealousy, and about tepid schoolyard masculinity and underwater sea life. But I suppose the most immediate thing about it is its length: it’s a great big 16-minute bastard of a piece (yes, go on then, I’ll be self-aggrandising and shoot for the word “piece”), with about four or five parts and noisy clumps of feedback and a grumpy choir and oboes.
I’m writing this feature because I want you to listen to it (maybe even buy it). But when we’re talking over 15-minute long stretches of time, we’re dealing with a serious life investment, and to listen to Pink Fruit in its entirety is a lot to expect of someone. I’m sorry I’ve even asked. It’s a big commitment, but one I recommend you make. The song is below.
Here is why I am interested in long songs: they have the ability to utilise the potential of both sound and time; in particular, they can test perseverance and a listener’s wavering concentration. By altering the song’s context a musician can coax out different (and hopefully more positive) responses. Motifs can be reused and repeated in later parts of a piece , they are mantra-like and crescendo into an ecstatic blur. A drone can stretch for 20 minutes longer than common sense may have perhaps initially dictated, and take on a dreamy, transcendental quality. A great long song can be like a Stewart Lee routine, where a repeated joke starts off being funny, then gets considerably less funny, and then becomes funny again. It can be life-changing. In a bid to convince you of the long song’s brilliance, here are five lengthy tracks that master the art of making time.
1 L’Amulette et le Petit Rabin – Etron Fou Leloublan (18 minutes)
Etron Fou Leloublan (Translation: Crazy Shit Thewhitewolf) were one of the original Rock In Opposition bands alongside Henry Cow and Univers Zero – both of which churned out their fair share of ginormous songs. They were a theatrical bunch of French musicians and satirists who specialised in a thoroughly peculiar blend of jazz, prog, improvisation and god knows what else. The first track on their debut LP, Batelages, is an entertaining mish-mash of musical fragments – moody reverberated acoustic guitar tangents, cartoonish spoken word, fierce dissonance and some funky saxophone skronk in the middle. An entertaining, restless jambalaya. “ÉCOUTEZ LA FABULEUSE HISTOIRE...”
2 Partiels – Gérard Grisey (22 minutes)
This is possibly cheating because it’s an instrumental composition for orchestra: it is neither technically a song, nor part of a genre where pieces exceeding 15 minutes (or even the hour mark) are uncommon. But I think what is particularly fascinating about Partiels, and a lot of spectralist composition as well, is its use of repetition: those heavy double-bass strikes followed by a rising, very dissonant chord come again and again for the first four minutes of the work, each iteration more intensely punishing than the last. While it is absolutely terrifying, it builds its own universe, enveloping in a manner that three-minute pop cannot aspire to. Like having one slab of stone after another piled on to your torso.
3 Blood Promise – Swans (15 minutes)
A lot has already been said in the past few years about Swans and the 30-minute pieces that take centre stage on their last two records. That is the main reason why I didn’t choose the title track from The Seer – though that piece does perfectly crystallise what I tried to explain in my introduction about long songs pushing a listener’s perseverance to the point where time and context alone can alter a section of music. Just how amazing does it feel to hear the final part of The Seer, in light of that preceding quarter-hour portion of sustained, heavy chords? The version of Blood Promise on Swans Are Dead has for my money the most obliterating, beautiful crescendo ever put to tape. Two chords for 15 minutes, building and building and building ... and when the crescendo finally boils over, and the drums peel away and we’re just left with guitars and a zither, you can hear a voice in the crowd shouting: “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”. Too darn right.
4 El Camino Real – William Basinski (50’)
El Camino Real is about 20 seconds of music looped hundreds of times. I have spent many weekday nights writing essays listening to El Camino Real. It is beautiful because it is non-intrusive and constant. It has the same aural quality as the wind or rain against a window. Its predictable-ness is comforting. But what I find really interesting about it is that, at the same time as it is the same 20 seconds of music looped hundreds of times, each repetition is in a way unique: it’s its own iteration, plus the sum of all the iterations that came before it. The volume doesn’t crescendo but you experience a similar feeling just from the passing of time weighing down on you. Well, either that, or time just floats away altogether. Listening to the same tape loop for nearly an hour does weird things to your head.
5 Unknown Soldier – Fela Kuti (31’)
Like El Camino Real, this is the same damn thing for half an hour. There’s not really a crescendo in volume but a crescendo in the weight of passed time, and on top of that there’s also the forward propulsion and hypnotism of that freakin’ rhythm. Fela doesn’t start singing until the 15-minute mark, and he recounts a horrific real-life incident where the Nigerian government militia invaded his compound in response to one of his recent anti-regime singles, raped and abused a number of his cohabitants, and threw his mother out of a window and killed her: “That my mama wey you kill / she fought for universal adult suffrage...” Horrific as hell, but defiant and amazing.
- Kiran Leonard’s Pink Fruit (16 mins) will be released as a limited edition one-sided and etched 12” on Moshi Moshi on 12 February. The new album, Grapefruit, arrives on 25 March. He tours in January, visit here for more details.
