搬運自：網(wǎng)易云音樂專欄【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Beans_Beans

Grimes是來自加拿大蒙特利爾的 Claire Boucher 的單人女性電子流行音樂項目。《Visions》是她令人著迷的第三張專輯，是通向她獨有的幸福電氣棉花糖天堂的門票。

As a child I feared the day the world would be taken over by robots; these days I am seized by a much more potent fear that I am becoming one. Digital interfaces invade our imagination in strange, tangible ways, and with each day I spend in front of my computer screen, the red Gchat dots representing my friends and co-workers start to look more and more like HAL. Have you ever caught yourself trying to open a new tab in your brain? Was the Wikipedia blackout of 2012 as important a cultural moment as the New York City blackout of '77? Do androids dream of electric sheep, or do you not have an app for that yet?

小時候，我或許還會擔(dān)心有一天世界會被機器人占領(lǐng)；而如今，我被一種更加強烈的恐懼吞噬著——我正逐步變?yōu)闄C器人。數(shù)字化的界面以怪異的、有形的方式逐步侵入我們的想象力；隨著我在電腦屏幕前度過的一天又一天，代表我的朋友和同事訊息的紅色即時提醒開始越來越像 “HAL 9000”* 一般。你有沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)自己試圖在大腦中打開一個新標(biāo)簽頁？2012年的維基百科大停電是否將會成為和1977年紐約大停電一樣的一個重要文化時刻？仿生人會夢見電子羊嗎*，或是你尚未為其備好一個應(yīng)用程序？

"Post-internet" is a term that's stuck all too easily (guilty as charged) to Grimes' airy cyborg-pop, thanks in part to her endless quotability in acknowledging the digital world's influence on her aesthetic ("The music of my childhood was really diverse because I had access to everything.") But Visions, the latest and best album from the one-woman project of Montreal-based Claire Boucher, complicates the all-too-tidy "post-internet" tag by bringing into focus the many contrasts at the heart of her music: tensions between pop structure and diffuse atmosphere, between technology and the human body, between sensory-overloaded hyper-presence and transcendence. More solidly constructed and a lot more fun to listen to than anything she's put her name to so far, the electro cotton-candy of Visions is an inviting entrance into Grimes' peculiar kind of bliss.

“后互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時代”這一標(biāo)簽太容易被貼在 Grimes 的氣化電子流行音樂上了（這顯然是極富罪惡感的），這一定程度上歸功于她自己不斷提及數(shù)字世界對她審美的影響（“我童年時代所聽到的音樂真的很多樣化，我?guī)缀蹩梢越佑|到所有東西?！保?。但是《Visions》是來自加拿大蒙特利爾的 Claire Boucher 單人項目最具創(chuàng)新，最精彩的一張專輯，使所有被整齊排列的“后互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時代”標(biāo)簽愈加復(fù)雜精細，令她音樂核心中屢見不鮮的反差感成為焦點：流行結(jié)構(gòu)與發(fā)散氛圍之間、科技與人體、視聽過載的超現(xiàn)實通感與超脫世俗間的表達張力。與她迄今為止的所有作品相比，《Visions》的結(jié)構(gòu)更為堅實，聽感上也更為有趣，《Visions》是通向她奇特，幸福的電氣棉花糖天堂門票。

On her first albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, Grimes buried pop impulses within textured muck and gloomy tones. But Visions finds Boucher mining not just the clean brightness of Aphex Twin-like atmospherics but also the immediacy of straight-up mall-pop: "Vowels = space and time" recalls nothing so much as Stacey Q's 1986 hit "Two of Hearts", while "Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" sounds like Boucher broke into the apple store after hours and turned on all the display iPads to the same Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam video, ?Some of Grimes' reference points call to mind the experimental pop of Nite Jewel or some of the artists on the 100% Silk roster. But that music seems interested in obscuring pop's immediacy or keeping a distance from the pleasure center, while Visions is an unabashed embrace of its source material, whether it's K-pop, new age, or bubblegum.

在她最初的專輯《Geidi Primes》和《Halfaxa》中，Grimes 將流行音樂的躍動埋藏在極具質(zhì)感的泥土和陰郁的色調(diào)之中。但從《Visions》中可以發(fā)現(xiàn) Boucher 不僅深度探索了類似 Aphex Twin 的大氣層清明度，而且還大刀闊斧地研究了商場流行音樂的直白通俗性：“Vowels = space and time” 讓人想起 Stacey Q 1986年發(fā)行的主打歌 “Two of Hearts”，而 “Infinite Love Without Fulfillment” 聽起來像是 Boucher 在下班后沖進一個蘋果店、打開所有展示的 iPad ，同時播放同一個 Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam 視頻，有節(jié)奏地往復(fù)循環(huán)成某種崇高的造物。Grimes 的一些采樣點讓人想起 Nite Jewel 的實驗性流行音樂或是 100% Silk 名冊中一些藝術(shù)家的作品。但那些音樂似乎都忠于掩蓋流行音樂的直白通俗性或始終與娛樂中心保持一定距離，而《Visions》是對其流行初心毫不掩飾的擁抱——無論是 K-pop、新世紀(jì)音樂還是泡泡糖流行樂。

Boucher spends most of Visions singing in a vaporous falsetto. She occasionally manipulates her voice (as on the steely, Transformers-jam "Eight") but mostly she just loops it, layers it, and cloaks it in reverb; there are moments when what she's doing doesn't sound too far off from what Julianna Barwick's music might sound like if she were interested in making a synth-pop record. The most common complaint I've heard of Grimes come from people wishing her songs were more structured or hooky, or that her voice was more "present." But-- never mind the fact that even the haziest moments on the record are anchored by melody-- this diffuseness is one of Visions' most refreshing charms. Another oft-cited quote from Boucher the "post-internet" poster girl: "Basically I'm really impressionable and have no sense of consistency in anything I do." This is pop music for ambient fans, but it's also a welcome change for anyone exhausted by post-Gaga pop's tethers to artifice, theatricality, and skronky, turned-up-to-11 beats. To reach out and touch this music would be like putting your hand through a cloud.

Boucher 在《Visions》中絕大部分都是用虛無縹緲的假聲歌唱。她偶爾還會刻意操縱她的聲音（如在堅實的、變形金剛一般的 “Eight” 中），但大多數(shù)情況下她也僅是將其循環(huán)、剝離分層，再將其籠罩在混響之中；有些時候，她所做出的東西聽起來甚至與Julianna Barwick 所做的音樂相差無幾，假若她有興趣制作一張合成器流行專輯的話。我最常所聽到的對 Grimes 抱怨通常出于人們希望她的歌曲更有結(jié)構(gòu)性或更具吸引力，亦或使她的聲音更有“存在感”。但是——別忘了，即使是唱片中最朦朧混沌的時刻也有著旋律的支撐，這種分散性是《Visions》最令人耳目一新的魅力所在。另一個經(jīng)常被引用的“后互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時代”海報女郎 Boucher 的話：“通常情況下上，我真的很容易受影響，（因而十分多變，）在我做的任何事情中都不負有一致性。”這是為氛圍樂迷準(zhǔn)備的流行樂曲，但對于任何已被“后 Gaga 流行音樂”的矯揉造作、戲劇性和天馬行空的節(jié)奏搞的疲憊不堪的人來說，這也算是一場值得歡迎的革命。伸手觸摸這種音樂吧，就像將雙手伸進云霧之中。

But there's still that tension: Song titles such as "Be a Body", "Visiting Statue", and "Skin" are all testaments to Visions' interest in the corporeal. When she sings the titular lyric on "Be a Body", it sounds like a nagging request to come back down to earth, while "Skin" (which has a sputtering sensuality, like a robot programmed to write a slow jam) feels even more revealing: "Soft skin/ You touch me with it and so I know I can be human once again." Still, don't confuse these moments with any kind of new-agey, back-to-nature longing. One spin of "Genesis" is enough prove it: Post-humanism sounds like a blast.

但仍存在有那種張力：歌曲名稱如 “Be a Body”，“Visiting Statue” 和 “Skin”都證明《Visions》涉足了肉體領(lǐng)域。當(dāng)她在 “Be a Body”中唱道含標(biāo)題的抒情詩時，聽起來像是叨擾的懇求——懇求她重新腳踏實地；而 “Skin”（它充斥著一種噴濺式迸發(fā)的性感，像是一個被編程為寫慢歌的機器人）愈加露骨“Soft skin/ You touch me with it and so I know I can be human once again”。盡管如此，不要把這些時刻與任何一種對新興、回歸自然的渴望混為一談。再回到 “Genesis” 就足以證明：“后人文主義”聽起來就像是一場核爆災(zāi)難。

Late last year, Simon Reynolds described electronic music's response to our digitized world as a new kind of maximalism: "a hell of a lot of inputs... in terms of influences and sources, and a hell of a lot of outputs." That's an apt description for the music that Grimes was making before, but Visions showcases a streamlined aesthetic, resulting in a statement that feels focused, cohesive, and assured. It's simple enough to leave room for Grimes to grow, but this thing is so compulsively listenable it's hard to come away from it wanting much more. Anchored to the digital imagination but unbridled from its skittish anxiety and concerns, Visions gestures skyward and beyond.

去年(2011)年末，Simon Reynolds 將電子音樂對我們數(shù)字化世界的應(yīng)答描述為一種新的極繁主義——“恐怖如斯的輸入……在影響和來源方面，以及恐怖如斯的輸出”。這是對 Grimes 過去所做音樂的恰當(dāng)描述，但《Visions》展示了一種極簡美學(xué)，致使一種體感集中、極具凝聚力和權(quán)威性的聲明應(yīng)運而生。它足夠簡潔明了，為 Grimes 留下了充足的成長空間，但同時這又如此令人著迷，很難再從其身上索取更多。錨定于數(shù)字想象力上，但并不受制于膽怯、焦慮的影響，《Visions》向著天空及更遙遠的遠方進軍。

*譯者注釋：HAL 即 HAL 9000 出自電影《2001太空漫游》及同名小說，是一臺超級人工智能電腦；《Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?（仿生人會夢見電子羊嗎？）》是美國科幻小說作家 Philip Kindred De(i)ck 最重要的作品之一，于1968年首次出版，并改編成1982年電影《銀翼殺手》，該書中眾多元素和主題亦被用于2017年續(xù)集電影《銀翼殺手2049》。