Digital Aesthetics And Transcending Lo-Fi In Alex G’S God Save The Animals

Birkett, Jamie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8022-8678 (2024) Digital Aesthetics And Transcending Lo-Fi In Alex G’S God Save The Animals. In: Innovation in Music: Adjusting Perspectives. Perspectives on Music Production . Routledge, London. ISBN 9781032500249 (paperback); 9781032500256 (hardback); 9781003396550 (ebook) (In Press)

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Abstract

For the recording of his 2022 album, God Save The Animals, Alex G decided to forgo the comforts of his bedroom and USB microphone which had proved so creatively fruitful for the production of his previous records. While these records had been marked by an idiosyncratic blend of lo-fi aesthetics and sonic experimentalism, this time he chose to work with a half-dozen engineers in professional recording studios with the intention to create a record of the highest recording quality. The result is a record “more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette.” (Bandcamp, 2022) Considering contemporary trends of ‘analogue fetishism’ in contemporary guitar-music, this paper presents ‘God Save The Animals’ as a case study of a work which embraces ‘the digital’ as an aesthetic value that transgresses the stylistic conventions of indierock. Using methods of recording analysis, the study aims to articulate ways in which the contemporary recordist may approach concepts such as intertextuality, signification, and digital aesthetics to expand their sound-world into strange and novel places.