If you’re a pretentious foodie geek culinary savoir-faire you’re probably familiar with the concept of umami. It’s a Japanese word for the “fifth basic taste” (after sweet, sour, bitter and salty) that was only isolated and identified in 1985.
The idea of some hidden dimension of flavor is a pretty coddamn interesting one and while listening to music recently it occurred to me that my ears were detecting something similar in many new songs.
I’ve been noticing that a bunch of new songs that have come out over the past few years contain a background synthesizer tone that makes the music seem especially 3d-like. I think maybe the best word to describe it might be a quality of epic-ness that songs from a few years ago simply didn’t have.
Now you’re probably thinking “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s always been epic music.” But what I suspect is happening is that new synth software is allowing producers to integrate sounds into the background of tracks in new ways. Synths have traditionally been a pretty heavy-handed studio tool, but the new software gives them the power to come up with completely new soundscapes. To me it often sounds like the producers are weaving in a layer of white noise or drone to complement the vocals and melodies — which makes the music feel like you could reach out and touch it.
So if umami is often described as “mouth-filling,” I’d describe this as an ear-filling quality. I’m calling it musical umami.
One of the artists who has really perfected the sound is M83. (As well as a lot of other French bands and producers, too, which we’ll get to in a moment.) His song “Echoes of Mine” is a perfect example. In the video below, I hear the musical umami come in right at the :46 mark. That’s when the layers of overlapping synth pads are creating that sense of spacious epicness that people love so much about M83.
Back in December, the music journalist Simon Reynolds wrote an interesting essay for Pitchfork called “Maximal Nation” where he laid out a new theory about electronic music. He described a trend among producers away from stark, cold musical landscapes and toward a new era of software-driven layering.
Compared with the analog hardware that underpinned early house and techno, the digital software used by the vast majority of dance producers today has an inherent tendency towards maximalism. In an article for Loops, Matthew Ingram (who records as Woebot) wrote about how digital audio workstations like Ableton Live and FL Studio encourage “interminable layering” and how the graphic interface insidiously inculcates a view of music as “a giant sandwich of vertically arranged elements stacked upon one another.”
Meanwhile, the software’s scope for tweaking the parameters of any given sonic event opens up a potential “bad infinity” abyss of fiddly fine-tuning. When digital software meshes with the minimalist aesthetic you get what Ingram calls “audio trickle”: a finicky focus on sound-design, intricate fluctuations in rhythm, and other minutiae that will be awfully familiar to anyone who has followed mnml or post-dubstep during the last decade. But now that same digital technology is getting deployed to opposite purposes: rococo-florid riffs, eruptions of digitally-enhanced virtuosity, skyscraping solos, and other “maxutiae,” all daubed from a palette of fluorescent primary colors. Audio trickle has given way to audio torrent– the frothing extravagance of fountain gardens in the Versailles style.
Reynolds is onto something. Audio technology-driven maximalism is not only being deployed for dubstep but also by pop and indie rock artists, who have embraced electro sounds more than ever over the past couple years. Check out the song “Tomorrow” by the Swedish duo Niki & The Dove, from that group’s upcoming album. The musical umami comes in right at 1:09.
I’m not a producer so I can’t tell you exactly how they achieve the musical umami effect but I suspect that the technique was developed in France. I hear bits of musical umami in the French band Air’s music. Both of these songs came out in 1994. Since then, I’ve heard the umami effect used by Daft Punk, Justice and Sebastien Tellier as well.
Putting synths in the service of the greater song (instead of drowning out everything other element of the music) is exactly what Arcade Fire did with “Sprawl II (Beyond the Mountains).” If you listen carefully you can hear an electronic drone in the background during the chorus.
M83’s “Midnight City” is another great example, particularly right at the :22 mark. I think maybe the band’s “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea” is an even better example but it’s damn near impossible to find it streaming anywhere.
“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” by Gorillaz starts off with it right away and uses the umami effect to come up with something that sounds almost Brian Wilson-esque.
The Australian band Midnight Juggernauts, which are sort of famous for their excessively layered music, use the umami effect too (particularly in the intro) for “Into the Galaxy.”
Santigold’s new album has its share of musical umami, too. I hear it when the chorus comes in at :41.
And here at around :40.
Maybe none of these songs have anything in common other than an epic qauality, but my suspicion is that the secret to getting the umami effect is to drench a high-pitched chorus in reverb and then use a shit-ton waveform synths at different octaves underneath it all. (And if you’re knowledgeable on the subject, leave a comment explaining it!)
