PressPausePlay: Stop

Seth Godin living the rock and roll lifestyle, baby

Beards, glasses, Macs, Scandinavian dialects of various flavours: if I were being massively unfair, I could accuse the producers of PressPausePlay of cynically targeting their documentary at a certain demographic commonly referred to by a word which begins with h and (almost) rhymes with ‘shit stir’.

It would be unfair, though.

First of all, the Scandinavian dialects are entirely justifiable given that the production company, House of Radon, is based in Sweden; secondly, I wear glasses, and am writing this on a Mac, so I can’t say anything nasty about hipsters.  That would make me the hipster version of Dr. Malcolm Crowe.  “They don’t see each other.  They only see what they want to see.  They don’t know they’re hipsters.”

PressPausePlay is a documentary about how the age of affordable, high-quality technology and increased connectivity has revolutionised the way we create.  Comprised entirely of talking-head interviews, its focus is mainly on filmmaking and music, with the emphasis slightly on the former; the implications for authors are also touched upon.

The film is structured in five chapters, the first of which – and it is worth noting at this point that the film’s major backer is Ericsson – is entitled ‘Technology is Great’.  Here, record producers Moby, Zach Hancock and Hank Shocklee wheel out all-too predictable tropes about how modern technology has made it easy to make a record on a laptop.

Ironically, these interviewees are situated in conventional recording studios, surrounded by equipment which is, for most bedroom record producers, prohibitively expensive and difficult to use. Bill Drummond (him out of the KLF) argues that musical innovations involving technology are always driven by the technology, rather than the music: if you listen carefully you can just about hear Maurice Martenot, Leon Theremin and Raymond Scott spin in their graves.

The second chapter, entitled ‘The Industry is Dead’, begins with the somewhat celebratory suggestion from Seth Godin and David Weinberger that the age of the old creative industries, overwhelmingly controlled by rich white men, is coming to an end.  The film takes on a much darker – arguably more interesting, and certainly less fashionable – tone through the opinions of writer Andrew Keen, who argues that whilst creativity may have been democratised through the availability of technology, the creation of art requires a degree of exceptionality and therefore cannot be democratised.  He goes further, arguing that the sheer volume of material produced by individuals with the necessary technology will make it so difficult to identify the truly exceptional that we risk entering a cultural dark age.

Moby echoes this sentiment, expressing his concern that people will become accustomed to mediocrity (it could very easily be argued, of course, that that is already the case).  Journalist Christopher Weingarten makes a similarly pessimistic point about the role of the music critic, arguing that music journalism has become caught in a cycle of “hype and backlash” in which critics no longer act as cultural gatekeepers but instead simply clamour to be the first to discover the next big thing.

Entitled ‘Artists have the Power’, the third chapter begins with a portrait of Tokyo-based artists Takafumi Tsuchiya, who fuse music and moving visuals.  Hopefully the film does not showcase their best work; the music (like much of the music in the film) is overly reminiscent of Sigur Rós, whilst the accompanying visuals look at points like Eurovision indents.  It is not clear what purpose including the act serves, other than an obligatory nod to überhip Tokyo.

The fourth chapter, ‘The Craft is Gone’, is perhaps the antithesis of chapter one: here Moby and record producer Nick Sansano bemoan the role of technology in creating an expectation amongst young musicians of immediate and sterile perfection at the expense of human performance.  Chapter five is entitled ‘Time, Place and Occasion’, and identifies some of the most important questions about art in the digital age: how is technology changing our attitudes to art, in terms of how we access it and how much attention we give it?

Although the odd onscreen typo betrays its amateur production, PressPausePlay is visually and sonically luscious, which is perhaps the least you would expect for a documentary about film and music.  However, all it really does is reiterate questions which have been asked for the past decade, without suggesting answers.

Andrew Keen’s statements suggest that, in a world of democratised creativity, it is more necessary than ever for someone to act as cultural gatekeeper, to set the aesthetic agenda; the film tells us that commercial structures and critics are not up to the job, but fails to suggest an alternative.

Similarly, with the exception of a comment from Moby about how artists worry about where their next meal will come from, little attention is paid to the difficulty of resourcing art.  A narrative thread maintained throughout the film is the production of a concert by Icelandic composer and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds.

Arnalds is presented as a success story of the digital age, having achieved popularity and acclaim after putting his music online.  The film follows him as he prepares to perform his album ‘…and they have escaped the weight of darkness’ in Manchester, accompanied by the orchestra of the Royal Northern College of Music.  How Arnalds’ triumphant appearance at Bridgewater Hall was resourced is never explained, in effect demonstrating that the industrial mechanisms necessary to produce such an event remain mysterious and inaccessible.

The film ends with celebratory footage of jubilant musicians playing to ecstatic audiences.  We do not see the backstage reality: the fraught attempt to complete a funding application, the barely-roadworthy splitter van, the classically-trained session musician or actor who struggles to find paid work.

The fascinating questions about our access and attention to art raised in chapter five are barely given a chance to sink in, let alone explored.  Perhaps the filmmakers were simply overambitious – had they focused on one of the above issues, they may have been able to provide some original insight.

PressPausePlay is a parade of good people with good intentions making good points, whilst looking and sounding good.  Sadly, somehow, the resulting film is less than the sum of its parts.