Music conjures spaces: churches, theaters, roadhouses, arenas, pubs, dance halls, living rooms, festival tents, and all sorts of clubs, from tenement basements to cabarets to giant warehouses. Those are social spaces, where musicians perform together and audiences gather to share the sounds — and to flirt, dance, get high, sing along. On live recordings, those spaces may have been real; with studio recordings, they have long been a crafty, inviting illusion. Those are private places, intimate places, often lonely places. In the internet era, they are also places that can be solitary workshops for sounds and images.

Source: International New York Times December 25, 2019 18:33 UTC