Musical titles

I’m enchanted by brilliant titles. They can function as deeply condensed fragments of poetry, the best of which resonate far beyond their own boundaries. Whether or not the music is named before or after the event is irrelevant. What matters is the extent to which a title creates a space for contemplation or shines a particular light on the music it refers to. Long before there was sleeve art, there were titles. They’re perhaps the primary element of musical metadata, figurative or abstract, deep or disposable, non-existent even, they can act as toeholds or outcrops by which to gain access to unexpected vistas. Great titles are perhaps all the more important in this – hopefully interim – period when music’s connection to the visual is being severed by the virtualisation of the medium. The following are, in my experience, the most striking exponents of the titular as artform. Turn your music off for a moment and read ‘em out loud, give each one a little space before continuing to the next. Other suggestions would be more than welcome…

Ornette Coleman‘s titles are singularly striking for their radical reference points and their sometimes tangential relationship to the traditional jazz group format, however radical the musical structure. Examples include:

• Latin Genetics
• Space Church (Continuous Service)
• Moon Inhabitants
• Cloning
• Sex Spy
• European Echoes
• Spelling The Alphabet
• Endangered Species

Kip Hanrahan‘s titles are often like directions from a film script. They sometimes allude to places and people, but also to events that are about to take place or have just occurred. Some examples:

• Exterior New York – Night
• Her Boyfriend Assesses his Value and Pleads his Case
• You Can Tell Someone Who’ll Never Fulfill Their Potential by the Way They Measure the Evening
• You Can Tell A Moment of Clarity by the Digital Traces it Leaves

Anthony Braxton has for the majority of his career used symbols instead of titles; compositions are however numbered and often appended with the makeup of the group (octet, quartet, etc). Here are a few examples snatched from the web:

It’s difficult not to suspect that Richard James borrowed this idea for Selected Ambient Works II, wherein tracks are referred to solely by semi-abstracted Polaroids:

I’ve spoken previously of my appreciation of the titles of former Chain Reaction artist Fluxion, here are my favourites:

• Field I
• Surface
• Coast
• Plain
• Lark
• Atlas
• Cyclops Machine

Mark E. Smith aka The Fall has penned some brilliant dada-infected tabloid screamers including:

• Rebellious Jukebox
• Hip Priest
• Hexen Definitive – Strife Knot
• Faust Banana
• Idiot Joy Showland

And bringing up the rear, but by no stretch of the imagination representing the least of artists in this area (arguably the best) is Brian Eno. It’s a tough call between The Pearl and Music For Films for the most beautiful list of titles – both are personal favourites. The first six originate from ‘Films, the remaining from The Pearl:

• Aragon
• From the same Hill
• Inland Sea
• Slow Water
• ‘There is Nobody’
• Strange Light
• Late October
• Stream With Bright Fish
• Against The Sky
• Dark-eyed Sister
• Their Memories
• Foreshadowed