BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER
It was the year that mostly wasn’t, the year when Zoom entered our lives and vocabulary, and people stayed in or stayed apart.
It was a year when 18-year-old Jawsh685 (Joshua Nanai) from Manurewa High went global with Laxed (Siren Beat), a beat and melody he wrote on his broken laptop, and the 79-year-old Bob Dylan surprised with a double album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, which was provocative, sometimes impenetrable and magisterial in its scope.
We learnt starkly that around musicians is a web of others whose livelihoods depend on them: promoters and venue owners, sound engineers, video makers, lighting crew, caterers, record stores … They did it tough in 2020.
Artists turned to digital outlets to continue to perform. There were high-concept live events such as Nick Cave’s filmed at London’s Alexandra Palace, which was streamed globally. Former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker released his album with a streamed show filmed in a Derbyshire cave. Locally, artists performed in their kitchen, lounge, backyard or on the empty streets.
