Paul Morley Deconstructs the New iPhone Ringtones

The arrival of a new portable telephone is rarely a cause for remark in the Morley household. I have my trusted Wild & Wolf Black 1950s diner phone and I have the use of my two legs, on which I can walk out into the world to converse with people face-to-face, usually on the following pre-approved subjects: the forlorn poetry of the Manchester suburbs; the post-punk movement; the whereabouts of Trevor Horn; the location of my Wild & Wolf Black 1950s diner phone.

I am, however, furiously pre-occupied with the way sound is disseminated in our post-modern world. We live, after all, in an era in which a man in possession of a “smart phone” (how ironic, that name) can walk up to a herd of cows and blast the latest cut from the Slew Dem crew in their docile, uncomprehending faces. Sound, in the form of music, has taken on many forms and none intrigues me more than the “ring tone”, the noise a portable phone makes when a call is patched through to it. So when Apple brought out their iOS7 software, I made my way from my chamber of secrets (my office) to my chamber of water (my bathtub), lit some chambers of fire (large candles) and opened my ears (Morley never simply “listens”) to receive the sounds of Apple’s latest ringtones. It felt as though, for those 6 minutes and 17 seconds, I could finally be free of the demons that haunt me, the braying jackals that stalk my dreams, jackals that always have, to my ceaseless horror, the face of a grinning Mark Kermode. Herein, my thoughts on a selection of tracks:

Videos by VICE

Opening (Default)

Despite Godard’s advisory that “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”, when it comes to reviewing the music made by portable phones, one must begin at the beginning or – in the case of Apple – open with Opening (Default). Though I was somewhat pre-occupied, in my chamber of water, with the arrangement of my collection of New Order bath toys – my rubber Hooky kept jettisoning his bass; my floating Bernie Sumner kept on sinking- I instantly saw the debt this ringtone owed to the work of composer Hans Zimmer, particularly the sonic pictures he painted for Tarantino’s breakout film, “True Romance”. Just as thousands of bands have trampled on the legacy of Joy Division by offering us up half-baked re-hashes of the great Macclesfield group, so one computer company has trampled on the legacy of Zimmer, the German master… Oh music industry, wilt thou ever change?

Silk

Just as Apple have murdered Zimmer on Opening, so they murder the entire Chinese culture on Silk. The naming of the ringtone, so redolent of the ancient silk route that passed through the length of China, a fabric first developed in that mystical, now-terrifying country, only makes their theft more apparent. This is orientalism at its worst. They may as well have employed Jackie Chan to shout “Me likey Peking Duck” and have had done with it. Disgusting.

Playtime

I confess that the insipid, insidious bass tones present on this track sent me into such a state of panic that, for a while, I considered drowning myself simply in order to escape their torment. There is, in this 22-second piece of music something so traumatic going on that I found myself completely possessed by the ghosts of the past, by the leering Kermode-Jackals and the cackling visage of a demonic Lauren Laverne. At the climax – around the 19-second mark- I felt as though I was witnessing the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima such was the ferocious intensity of the mushroom cloud that seemed to hover before me, somewhere around the head of my bath tub Hooky. I thought of the darkness of the enlightenment project, of the monstrous dreams of reasonable men and I lay at the bottom of my chamber of water, crying.

By the Seaside

I felt as though nothing would release me from the terror inspired by Playtime but By the Seaside lifted me from the bottom of the chamber of water and cast me back into human life. It seemed to me redolent of Blackpool, of seaside trips, of the north that I imagine exists and of which I talk about in books and documentaries, of my whippets Eee, Bah and Gum. In short, I was a child again, skipping along the shore at Whitby, a piece of Rock in one hand, the first limited release Stooges 7” in the other.

Uplift/ Waves

I like to play these two ringtones together, running back-to-back at an inspirational 35 seconds. They are pure pop. They are spectral delights. On their magical arpeggios I feel myself lifted, rising above the bathwater and into a world in which music critics are finally given the respect that is their due. I see myself twirling through the clouds to a Durutti Column soundtrack, my trusted Wild & Wolf Black 1950s diner phone at my side. I am flying on unicorns. I am finally free.