The inimitable Phil Spector passed on the 16th of January in a Northern Californian prison hospital, another victim of COVID-19. Now, I don’t believe in prison, I believe that Spector should have been fed to the hounds long ago specifically for his abuse of then wife, and voice who gave him his fame, Ronnie Spector. It is apt that Phil Spector’s production technique and philosophy was termed the “Wall of Sound,” a technique which involved the incessant reproduction of and layering of sounds and instruments to the point where such as thing as the voice is de-individualized, and the resulting cacophony of sound is total, like a wall. This could never point to a radical collectivity though, only one white man’s attempt at cementing the white sonic universal. The organization of sound and cultural memory into a colony contained by four walls. Spector used a very small room to record many of his famed tracks, cluttered with instruments. He would make the musicians play again and again in a test of attrition hoping that they tire out, lose their individuality and become lost in the wall. Ronnie’s voice however could never be contained by the trappings of this rigidity on such a song like “Be My Baby.” Her voice moves like an erratic marker on the facades of a uniform city reinforced by glass and steel. Not for the sake of some idea of individuality either, but with the black voices who came before and after her. It is fitting that Spector lost his voice completely a few years prior to his death. The silence of his passing finds no echo.
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