horizontal and depth/distance, with which his analyses account for spatiality in the recorded text. I use the term sound-mass to indicate the overall sonic identity of a piece made up primarily of timbre, dynamics, density and register, parameters which writers such as Middleton (2000) and Moore have identified as often downplayed in musicology's historical bias towards harmony, rhythm and form. As constructs, both the sound-box and sound-mass attempt to deal with the sound of rock music as presented through recordings, rather than (or in Moore's case as well as) progressions of rhythms and harmonies—variations on formulae which tell us only so much. Moore's sound-box is based on 'a model which suggests that the instruments and voices of rock are stratified into relatively discrete layers' (2001: 33), which accord to the functions of rhythm, melody, bass lime and harmonic accompaniment. This may be useful for many, even the majority of, rock recordings, but tends not to apply to what I term 'immersive' forms later in this paper. In addition, I argue that some of the recordings discussed here deal with music as a process rather than a mapping of received formal constructs. For this I draw upon Judy Lochhead's concept of forming and formbuilding (1992)
Quest narrative and song form
In Conventional Wisdom (2000), McClary, in defining tonality, and nineteenth-century Western art music practice as structurally distinct from the blues, writes
The background of a tonal composition... proceeds through a series of arrivals, beginning in the tonic key, moving through a few other keys, and returning finally home to the tonic. This background thereby traces a trajectory something like a quest narrative, with return to and affirmation of original identity guaranteed in advance. Whereas in the blues, even narrative lyrics are rendered in strophes that minimize narrativity within the musical process, the linear unfolding of tonality almost always pursues a narrative-like series of dramatic events, regardless of the matter at hand. As anthropologists have pointed out, this kind of orientation with respect to time is so fundamental to those of us shaped by such forms that we tend to dismiss as primitive any cultural practices (whether blues or Philip Glass) based on other assumptions. (McClary 2000: 6667)
To take this further, the fundamental principle of quest narrative—that of the establishment of a stable home territory, the process of an adventure or series of episodes away from that territory, and a conclusion which returns 'home'—is common in music, as it is in literature and film. In music, it is certainly not restricted to the Classical and Romantic periods of Western art music that McClary focuses on. Just as sonata form is made up of exposition—development-recapitulation, the standard jazz form of head-solos-head is easily received as a quest narrative. I disagree with McClary's reading of blues structure; I would say that the standard 12-bar form is a
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 1, January
