Birkett, J., 2025.
Digital Aesthetics And Transcending Lo-Fi In Alex G'S God Save The Animals
| Output Type: | Chapter in a book |
| Publication: | Innovation in Music: Adjusting Perspectives |
| Brief Description/Editor(s): | Gullö, J.O., Hepworth-Sawyer, R., Hook, D., Marrington, M., Paterson, J., Toulson, R. |
| Publisher: | Routledge, London |
| URL: | doi.org/10.4324/9781003396550-9 |
| Pagination: | pp. 93-102 |
For the recording of his 2022 album, God Save The Animals, Alex G decided to forgo the
comforts of his bedroom and USB microphone which had proved so creatively fruitful for the
production of his previous records. While these records had been marked by an idiosyncratic
blend of lo-fi aesthetics and sonic experimentalism, this time he chose to work with a half-dozen
engineers in professional recording studios with the intention to create a record of the highest
recording quality. The result is a record "more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette."
(Bandcamp, 2022) Considering contemporary trends of 'analogue fetishism' in contemporary
guitar-music, this paper presents 'God Save The Animals' as a case study of a work which
embraces 'the digital' as an aesthetic value that transgresses the stylistic conventions of indierock. Using methods of recording analysis, the study aims to articulate ways in which the
contemporary recordist may approach concepts such as intertextuality, signification, and digital
aesthetics to expand their sound-world into strange and novel places.