“The record is both bewitching and not quite like anything else out there, then or now, and while the context is fascinating in its own right this is also the kind of work that rewards being encountered on its own singular terms.”
Context can both strengthen and alter, sometimes radically so, our experience of a work of art. It can be so powerful that artists often edit themselves with which actual bits get included in our conversation around a work (for a particularly vivid example, think of how careful David Bowie was to have ★ be perceived, for as long as he could manage, not as the last David Bowie album but just a new David Bowie album). But sometimes an absence of context can have the same effect if the work is potent enough. These days that lack of context is rarer, or at least more easily removed, thanks to the reach of the internet, and while that’s often a good thing, it does have the small, sad side effect of removing mystery from places where it has its own kind of power.
Originally published by PopMatters.Read it on PopMatters