Zeug, says Heidegger, only shows itself when it breaks. Only then does it appear to us. As a screw that is broken or a hammer that we can no longer use. Or as a screwdriver. It works very similarly with sounds. With cars driving by, with the sound of the metro in the suburbs, with the garbage collection when it comes on Monday. These sounds are rarely perceived. Perhaps as a disturbance. As something that needs to be compartmentalised. That does not need to be heard.
But the case is that sounds also belong to the world. They are thus also part of phenomenology, part of what man perceives with senses.
But the problem that Heidegger so aptly describes here is a different one. There are very large parts of the world that do not appear to man. They are always there, but they are not perceived.
And there is another thing. The small. That which Jiro Taniguchi draws in his mangas (rather comics). The world of the small neighbourhood. Maybe a tree, a small park behind a fence. Or a canal that isn’t pretty, yet there. A railroad crossing. An abandoned bridge that is rarely looked at. The paint is already peeling, but it does its job like a tool. Like Zeug.
This world, of hidden Heideggerian stuff and especially of sounds, of small sounds, of passing trains, this world opens a band from Tokyo that I would like to introduce here.
Now it’s not that Tenniscoats only did field recording. This would be too boring and on the other hand it would bring nothing. But they do incorporate field recording into their tracks. But there is more. Because the songs themselves are made up of, I call them now, “little sounds”. When I listen to the music of this band, I suddenly see the stuff, maybe a stone around the corner or an old fence. It appears to me. Just like the different sounds that spring brings. The music of Tenniscoats reveals this world before us. With small, almost non-existent sounds. And that’s what makes it so wonderful. And so useful. Like the Zeug.
Tenniscoats
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2rtqVma_Ww
