Ketamine Tempo: Aesthetics of Stasis in the Production of Low's 'Double Negative'

Connections between popular music production aesthetics and the sensory effects of drug use are well-documented in histories of 20th century music, including widely-known examples relating the ‘psychedelic’ pop of the 1960s, tape manipulation strategies and LSD experiences. Through this presentation, I explore continuities of these connections in early 21st century music production, through consideration of relations between contemporary pop and rock production methods and aesthetics and the perceptual effects of the drug Ketamine. As an anaesthetic first developed in the 1960s and more recently popularised as treatment for specific mental health conditions, Ketamine has been described as having 'dissociative' effects on the sensory capacities of users, instigating significant changes in users' perceptions of embodiment, time and space, including intense experiences of temporal slowing or stasis, and ‘out-of-body’ sensations. Meanwhile, analogous perceptual effects can be traced through recently emerging sound design methods and sonic tropes in 21st century pop production practices. Such methods, including intense granular processing of recorded performances, and the deployment of sudden, engulfing ambiences achieved through spectral synthesis and virtual spatialisation of musical elements, appear in numerous recent examples of mainstream rock and pop production, and are exemplified on 'Double Negative', the 2019 album by the American rock duo Low, produced by BJ Burton (Bon Iver, Charli xcx, Lizzo, Eminem). Through aural analysis of case-study examples drawn from Double Negative, informed by existing theories of music production and practitioner interviews with Low and Burton (a self-confessed Ketamine user), I consider contemporary music production aesthetics and drug experiences as interconnected strategies for creatively distorting embodied experiences of time. In doing so, I propose the importance of both music production innovations and managed drug treatments as ways of pursuing diverse experiences of time in an era dominated by the complex temporalities of the internet.