Z cyklu "wyrwane z kontekstu"

Ed Droste - gitarzysta i wokalista Grizzly Bear - jest właściwie moim rówieśnikiem (rocznik 78, ja - 79). W jednym z zeszłorocznych wywiadów, przy okazji promocji "Veckatimest", mówi jak na jego (naszych) oczach zmieniła się percepcja muzyki, kultura słuchania płyt i towarzysząca jej "otoczka". Sieć zmienia wszystko, żyjemy w "download culture", a sentymenty w kierunku nośnika, to raczej destrukcja niż postęp - wiem o tym, a jednak trudno się nie rozczulać, gdy zmiany zachodzą tu i teraz. W końcu to dla nas jakieś tam wspólne pokoleniowe doświadczenie.

"Pitchfork: The record leaked online before its release. Was that a disappointment?

ED: Well, it happened, literally, maybe five days after we mastered it. That was a really huge shock because it came from a really sort of shady-- no one ever confessed to it, but something sketchy happened. It was a really huge bummer that it happened so soon. We knew it was gonna leak and we were prepared for that, but really, the biggest bummer for us was that we spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort into making sure that it's a really rich recording-- recording it to tape and doing all these nice sonic details-- and then it leaked and I remember listening to it and it sounded like an underwater YouTube stream or something. It was really, really bad. And so it's just a bummer to think of everyone's first impressions of this album being this horribly compressed, terrible-quality version of the album.

But that said, the excitement behind it and everyone's reaction was really encouraging and exciting for us to see. I think people find their own way of showing support, whether it be through an album sale or coming to a concert or even just telling some friends about it. Obviously, the leak didn't hurt us because we debuted in the Top 10. You've gotta be sort of Zen about it. I would never be angry at someone for downloading the album. Sometimes people just wanna listen to it first to see if they like it and that's totally fair. I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. The only thing I find a little strange about the download culture now is that people have so much music at their fingertips that it's really easy to dismiss an album quickly. I'm speaking from my own experience, where I've caught myself downloading a bunch of albums and then I sort of listen to one and I'm like, "Eh." And I wasn't really giving it my all or listening to it in the right order. I caught myself one day where I was like, "What am I doing? This is so not how this artist intended it to be."

Pitchfork: It's definitely not the way I listened to music when I was a teenager-- I memorized every album I bought, whether I liked it or not.

ED: Remember that feeling of buying an album? And you didn't have a lot of money so you bought one album and you had that album for like, two months or something until you bought another album? This really cool thing that would happen where you would be forced to only have that album because you couldn't just download a million more, and you may not have liked every song on it, but then as you started listening to it more and more you'd be like, "Oh wait, I do like track nine." You lived with an album, and that doesn't happen as much anymore. I'm sure some people do have that experience still, but it's a little bit harder to get to that place because you can easily just switch gears and go off to something else if it's not tickling your fancy at that moment.

I haven't had that kind of experience with an album for awhile, either. And I sort of miss it-- that feeling of not necessarily settling for an album but just of having an album and having your initial favorites, then listening to it and listening to it and discovering new things and being like, "Whoa, I really like this part now." Just the feeling of "This is what I have for the next six weeks or so until I can buy another album."