When was the last time you sat down and really listened to a piece of music? And I mean really listened – no phone, no interruptions, not even any getting up to use the toilet. A proper, dedicated, bum-on-seat listening session with your eyes closed, just you and the music.
As someone with two young children and a phone, the answer for me is: far too long ago. So when I heard that Pitchblack Playback was celebrating its 10th anniversary, I thought it high time I went along.
For the uninitiated, Pitchblack Playback is a listening session held in total darkness. They select an album, and you sit there with the lights off and listen to it in its entirety with no distractions – no phones, no talking and definitely no singing along. They even hand out eye masks for a total blackout experience (they have to keep the fire exit signs illuminated for safety reasons).
As someone who enjoys sitting down, good music and not talking, it sounded like my perfect evening. So I headed to The Castle Cinema in Homerton to hear Thom Yorke’s debut solo album The Eraser, which has just turned 20 years old. And I can honestly say I’ll never hear it the same way again.
Driven to a lack of distraction
The inspiration behind Pitchblack Playback came from playwright Harold Pinter via UK record label Ninja Tune. The event’s founder, Ben Gomori, attended a preview of Amon Tobin’s album ISAM at the Soho Hotel, complete with tour visuals on the screen. “I was really struck by this environment of sitting and listening to an album without any distractions – and not even any talking – on a great sound system,” he tells me before the Thom Yorke session. “And I wanted to take that idea and bring it to the general public.”
ISAM came out in 2011, long before hi-fi listening bars really became a thing. Lockdown was also just a glint in Boris Johnson’s eye, so sitting in the dark with a load of strangers might have seemed a strange proposition. But in other ways, the time was ripe: these were the days when albums were constantly being leaked via dodgy download sites, usually in the form of highly compressed MP3s, so Gomori thought “why not give people a chance to hear it properly rather than a poor quality copy?”
His initial idea was to include visuals, like the ISAM preview he attended. But a chat with a friend set him off in a new direction.
“He asked if I was going to do visuals, or whether I was going to do it in the dark to enhance the music,” Gomori explains. “He’d just seen a production of a Samuel Beckett play called Not I at the Royal Court, which is completely dark apart from a spotlight on a character’s mouth as they deliver a monologue. It was just a flippant comment, but it changed everything.”
Originally the nights focused on new releases (think MGMT, Explosions In The Sky, Christine And The Queens), but it was only once they started doing classic albums from the likes of David Bowie and Miles Davis that word really spread. Some labels were hesitant to commit without an audience already established, but these classic cuts came with loyal followings.
The events are typically held in cinemas, as they have the “holy trifecta”: a great sound system, comfortable seating and a dark environment. But they have also been held in planetariums in Bristol and Glasgow, as well as listening rooms, arts centres and various audio-centred spaces all over the world.
Unless an album is available in Dolby Atmos or 5.1, the stereo version is upmixed to surround sound to make the most of the venue’s sound system. Listening in stereo in such a space would be “pretty underwhelming”, Gomori says, though he does admit that very rarely an album does sound worse upmixed, and so they stick with stereo instead (“Though it’s only happened, like, once”).
Venues are meticulously researched before qualifying, and seating plans checked beforehand – you don’t want seating in a big, long rectangle with people really far away from the front, as that would worsen their listening experience.
Gomori won’t play anything in less than 16-bit, and will always strive for a 24-bit recording if there’s one available. “I always want the highest resolution possible – even though not many people would notice – as I want to give you the best chance of hearing every detail, every nuance, and the best possible sense of space,” he says.
Though how people choose to enjoy it is up to them. “We’ve had a few people fall asleep,” Gomori says. “It’s usually dads. I’ve had to prod them awake at the end. Whereas some people lie down in front of the subwoofer to really absorb the bass.”
Whichever end of the spectrum you fall on, Gomori argues that carving time out for music is more important than ever, especially given how addicted we’re all becoming to our phones. And in a post-pandemic world, where you need no longer leave the house to meet most of your essential needs, the value of shared experience can’t be overstated.
“It’s about taking time out of your week and just sitting down with a piece of art and engaging with it with no distraction,” he says. “We need experiences like this in our lives.”
Given that you’re sitting in the dark, wearing an eye mask, and not talking to anyone, I’m dubious just how ‘shared’ an experience it will be. But Gomori is insistent that people do form bonds here.
“I call it shared introspection,” he says. “Maybe none of your friends like a certain artist, but you can come here and meet other superfans. I’ve seen complete strangers making plans together afterwards, which is really nice to see.”
I’m about to see for myself, as we head into screen one, where the lights will soon go out.
Back in black
Gigs just aren’t for me. I love the music, it’s the people that turn me off. Crowds unnerve me, and while I can appreciate the atmosphere a good gig creates, I would take a listening room any day of the week. The beer’s much cheaper, for one. And given the choice between hearing a mastered studio session that’s the best of dozens of takes, or a live performance whose quality depends on so many variables (how the band feel on the day, the venue’s acoustics, even the behaviour of the people in the crowd around you) I know which I would pick.
The Eraser is a great album to hear at Pitchblack Playback for three reasons. First, I’ve had it since release in 2006, so I’ll know if I can hear a difference versus listening to it at home. Second, Thom Yorke once told an interviewer that the album is designed “to be listened to in an isolated space”, which this very definitely is. And third, it’s just a great album.
It’s a completely different listen through The Castle Cinema’s sound system. Thom Yorke’s trademark wailing and bleeps and bloops are a lot more immersive through the spatial arrangement, of course, but it all just hits with so much more scale and impact, from the opening piano chords of the title track to the warm digital glow of the closing song Cymbal Rush.
Not that I find myself immersed straight away. Wearing an eye mask in a dark room is a strange sensation, akin to sensory deprivation. But you soon get used to it – after my initial paranoia has subsided, and I’ve stopped worrying that everyone else there is making faces at me, I sink further into The Castle’s generous seating for some serious listening.
At least, I try to. I had assumed that cut off from any visual stimuli, I would concentrate solely on the music, but my mind keeps wandering between topics as scattered and glitchy as Yorke’s beat structure. And then I remember that this is what real listening feels like – the music is subconsciously influencing my thoughts, while I drift in and out of what’s playing. It’s how I used to listen to music, back in the pre-smartphone days when I would carve out big chunks of the day to spend doing nothing but. It’s like meditation, but a lot less boring, with cracking beats instead of mystic woo-woo.
I’m certainly getting the introspection part of shared introspection. But is it really a shared experience?
Towards the end of the album, curiosity gets the better of me and I peek out from behind my eye mask. It’s like seeing the passengers on a long-haul overnight flight – masks on, every one of them, bodies firmly in the recline position. I swear I can hear someone snoring, but I can’t pick them out – for all I know, they could all be asleep.
The album comes to its lo-fi conclusion, and after a few seconds of silence the house lights come up just enough to bring us back into the room. Masks off, everyone seems a little dazed, even giddy. We start shuffling out, the first lucky leavers receiving a free poster that Yorke’s label XL have donated (there aren’t enough to go around, sadly).
I don’t see any strangers forming lifelong bonds, but there is a feeling among us, something unspoken, as we emerge, blinking, into the sunny summer evening: that we have heard something familiar but in a completely different way, that we’ve really listened, not only to the music but a lot else besides.
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