Perhaps, though, the record did seem more beatless at the time of its
initial conception. Perhaps the world is quieter now in some respects. Electric
cars motor by with no engine sound. Solid state drives in computers and
portable tablets have virtually eliminated the hard-drive whir that for many
years served as digital music's equivalent to the surface noise of vinyl and
cassettes. There is ever more abundant use of headphones, isolating listeners
from the world around them. Sound design is increasingly
a considered—that is restrained—component of product design, so the
sounds we do experience in consumer goods—from alarm clocks to
microwaves—are more tasteful. Movies and TV shows now feature the
so-termed “underscoring” techniques pioneered by the likes of Lisa
Gerrard (Whale Rider, Gladiator), Clint Mansell (Requiem for
a Dream, Black Swan), and Cliff Martinez (sex, lies, and
videotape; Solaris), rather than the foregrounded, melodramatic
orchestral techniques of an earlier generation, or the synthesized renditions
of those orchestral techniques that served as a bridge from orchestra to our
present era of ambient movie scoring. Perhaps we only can hear the beats
inherent in Selected Ambient Works Volume II two decades after the fact
because those elements are, in cultural terms, louder now. Or perhaps it all
depends on what the meaning of “beat” is.
