Lovebomb • 愛の爆弾 by Terre Thaemlitz

日本語のアルバムテキストはこちら：
https://www.comatonse.com/writings/ainobakudan.html

From the original accompanying essay (included as PDF):

Pop, country, jazz, soul, R&B, classical... all of these musics overflow with "love," a term so abundant that we grant it the authority of meaning without inquiry. That English word appears within songs sung in other languages around the world. Similarly, Hollywood's images of American love's mannerisms, touches and kisses are visible and profitable around the world. Again, we are quick to grant all of this the authority of meaning - a seemingly unrefutable acknowledgement of (Western) love's universality. But as any uninformed American witnessing the "cold" reservation and distance between typical Japanese lovers may notice, cultural differences around love do exist. While many of Japan's youth embrace Hollywood-style love, Western Judeo-Christian models of sexual repression and liberation do little to explain their processes of sexual exchange. Despite the spreading global infection of Western Heterosexual and Homosexual behavioral models, love, intimacy, passion, touch and sex are still not as singular (or triangulated between models of Lesbian, Gay and Straight) as we tend to believe. Even within Western cultures, if love were truly universal why are individuals' expectations around partnership so specialized?

[...]

Events such as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington D.C. and (lest we've already forgotten) Pennsylvania seem to divide the music industry into two groups. Most people claim we need music and entertainment now more than ever to bring people love and joy. But to others, including myself, such events seem to point out how unimportant and irrelevant so much music and entertainment is. Worse yet, in a wake of patriotic pandering, they show how many people fail to see the dangers of nationalist profiteering.

Rather than songs of love and unity, I long for audio of love's irreconcilable differences. Not the lovelorn elegy or torch song, but crossed strategies and layered content. Audio in which promise, expectation and momentum are merely possible byproducts rather than essential elements. Despite attempts to "get over" past loves, today's patterns collide with memories of the lost love still longed for, or the bad relationship never to be repeated. New urgent desires are fed by outdated themes, samples and techniques. At risk of invoking another over-used term, I long for songs of "diversity" - conflicted diversity devoid of unity. Such diversity does not threaten a future collapse of contemporary society. Rather, it is a reflection of the longstanding separatism and divisiveness implied in every "holy union" whereby social units break down into cultural microcosms. Empowerment, like love, is when and where you find it. A perverse mirror of the cut.

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