Obsession is not an unfamiliar word to any serious or avid music fan. I assume many people reading this have dealt with it on one or multiple levels in music. I had always penciled myself in with music obsessives, people who loved to talk for hours on end about new releases, singles, genres, controversy, musical politics, et al. But lately, something has been feeling off about this pairing. Presently, it seems more likely that music is obsessing and dominating over me, instead of the other way around. And perhaps I’m a little uncomfortable with how good it feels.

I’ve enjoyed the recent intelligent and thoughtful musings on Stylus’ Soulseeking articles; I’ve marveled at the amount of ways music critics and bloggers can scholarly expound on musical and extra-musical elements that would have seemed esoteric to me, and I’ve watched heated message-board discussions develop with a sense of weariness and wonder. But when it comes down to it, I’d rather immerse myself headfirst in music than feverishly write about. I was a musician and music lover long before I wrote about it, and I commonly find it hard to distance myself emotionally from it. This is something a standard critic must do, in order to objectively interpret meaning and evaluate quality. Therefore, you can see how it would be to a critic’s advantage to be able to obsess and defiantly rule over the music itself rather than the other way around.

It’s no secret that I’m a zealous fan of dance music, from disco to house to techno to anything that can fall under the broad umbrella of “minimal.” Obsessing over every little detail, from sub-labels and sub-genres, to signature hi-hat sounds and keyboard patches has become a requisite part of the territory; removing this focus is like trying to appreciate and analyze a slide of germs without a microscope. It’s an intensity that I find seeping elsewhere. While listening to the new Superlongevity compilation on the bus recently, I glanced down at my skin and found myself counting the hairs on my arm. And look, there’s a tiny blemish near my elbow. By the time I’m squeezing each of my fingers, measuring the slightly different sentiment each one produces, the music has attained a strong emotional control over me.

Admittedly, there is something a bit wrong about this, being so tied up in one area of life, obsessively hunting down new music, information, and then going to see people play it. Surely, I should focus more on my job, my friends, and my physical well-being more than trying to find out the best Afro-disco singles from the 80’s. Or discovering that Daft Punk’s logo nearly rips of the Strictly Rhythm logo:

Yet music is the most consistent source of joy in my life at the moment, and for the moment I have no problem letting myself be overwhelmed by it, no matter the anti-social ramifications (this being America, not Germany.) Things like the buoyancy of a great DJ set, the nomadic surprises of crate-digging, that spunky drive you feel upon following scents of a sub-genre towards its actual taste; these things excite me more than they should. Perhaps it’s the archivist in me that sees these obscure vinyl releases, new and old, as forgotten fragments of feeling. That these abandoned feelings, dreams, beliefs, and hopes belonging to remote people and communities can trickle down from a piece of vinyl to my hand and into my head. What a joyous panic these thoughts bring me! A whistle and a fever, then I see a wall tethered to spinning circles. A knock on the wrong. A vision finally spread into two. Two skins into a flare. Oh the joy of discovery! Oh the pain of obsession.

[Michael F. Gill]