Plazm Magazine: 17 Years of Documenting Creative Culture
Founded in 1991 by artists as a creative resource, Plazm publishes an
eclectic design and culture magazine with worldwide distribution. The
entire catalog is now part of the permanent collection at SFMoMA. Order Plazm 29 Now.
Stephin Merritt...
is the guy from various bands, including the Magnetic Fields and the Sixths.
He is one of the preeminent songwriters of our generation, an author
whose musical fictions portray a symphonic array of experience and
affliction. Once more easily categorized as a sort of quirky hybrid of
new wave and indie-rock, his music has evolved to reflect such a
remarkable diversity of influence that it might only be characterized,
meagerly, as Caucaso-American (although, in light of tracks like"Wi'
Nae Wee Bairn Y'll Beget" and "World Love," even that
description may prove too restrictive). He has been compared by the
various press to the most consummate of twentieth-century musicians and
producers: Phil Spector, Kraftwerk, Prince, Irving Berlin, Johnny Cash,
Lee Hazelwood, Abba, Brian Wilson.
Merritt's most recent
project is the majestic, three-CD box set 69 SONGS ABOUT LOVE.
Encyclopedic in its coverage of musical genres, the project aspires to,
and achieves, a gorgeous cohesion of tone and lyrical sweep. Merritt
writes from the multifarious space where heartstrings, piano notes, and
distortion traverse: One listens to the record with the feeling that
Merritt has written nothing less than a catalog of old standards that is
somehow totally new.
I invited Merritt to listen and respond
to the classic ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK album
"ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY," guessing those
were two subjects for which he would have at least some passing regard
(three if you count OMD itself). Follows a track listing of that record
and the rejoinders it elicited. Merritt's conversational speech is almost
pathologically concise and, despite his sad-sack reputation, he is very
funny.
Text by Dan Frazier.
Photo by Sumaya
Agha.
