Because The Only Constant Is Change
The only constant is change. And in the fields of technology, health, education and even the arts, that change is largely for the better. As a general concept, we call it progress. But we take it for granted, right? It’s one of those things that happens whether we’re aware of it or not. It’s like the wind; warmer in summer and, as the leaves begin to turn gold and yellow and brown, the mild bite sets in. We don’t ask for it. We just accept it as the way the world works.
We don’t even have to actively contribute, and still, we wake up one day to find that the new iPhone has a better camera than the last one. It’s also better than an actual compact camera, or entry-level DSLRs from six or seven years earlier. Without knowing how or why, our laptops have more powerful processors, more storage and longer battery life. And the electricity we use to charge our Macbooks is being produced in larger quantities by renewable, sustainable technologies.
The COVID 19 pandemic has skyrocketed online communications tools. Zoom has helped keep friends and families in touch. Connected. Sane. Powered by ever-improving internet speeds, Teams – and various other online task management tools – have helped not only keep traditional businesses functioning, but expanded people’s understanding of the power of digital connectivity and the efficacy of automation. Solopreneurs are thriving and digital nomads are blossoming.
Also, according to some online experts, Bill Gates and the W.H.O. have found a way of inserting a 5G enabled, subdermal microchip, disguised as a vaccine, via a 0.642mm, 23-gauge needle. One of the added benefits of this Overlord-ian development is that I’m typing this article with 15 fingers.
Aircraft fly further on less fuel and, in helping reduce carbon emissions, they burn the fuel more efficiently. The engines are significantly quieter and, inside the plane, the cabin pressurisation and air quality levels are improved. This results in your 12-hour flight no longer feeling like you’ve gone three rounds with an MMA fighter. Airline fleets change over time and newer models are often introduced in stages and without much fanfare. This means we don’t necessarily see or feel these advancements overnight. But they’re happening nonetheless.
Progress is evolution made visible.
In the music industry, a professional recording studio used to require a sizable building. Inside said building, in the control room, you’d find a massive mixing consul, sometimes so big that it would have had to be built on-site, and banks of other electronic equipment for compression and pre-amping and effects and equalisation. Today, broadcast quality music can be made through a laptop with all of the necessary ancillary equipment fitting into a shopping trolley.
But is music itself evolving? After all, there are still only 12 major chords and 12 minors. Elon Musk is rumoured to be working on unearthing the 13th but suggests he’ll only have time to find it once he’s successfully removed our want and need to drive our own cars.
The musical structure we use today can be traced back to what is commonly referred to as Classical Western Harmony. The genesis of this work is dated to the early 1600s and was completed around 1650. The basis of these developments was the harmonic practices of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Classical Western Harmony began including the concepts of key – the root note the piece is written in. It expanded on functional harmony – which notes can be used with the root. And introduced modulation – the changing of the key, to a higher or lower root note, within the piece. Johan Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thrived throughout the late 1600s and late 1700s, respectively, painting beautifully on this new canvas.
Through the 19thCentury, composers like Wagner increased the use of chromatic tones. These can best be described as notes not belonging to the major or minor scale of the given key. The resulting effect is often described as dissonant. Melodically, the piece becomes ambiguous and sometimes jarring to the listener. But it has its place. Those ‘incorrect’ notes can add tension and drama.
But the music written by Bach and Mozart, based on that initial structure, is still regarded as the standard in the classical genre. Those operas and concertos remain firm favourites. Pianos still have 88 keys and violins, violas and cellos still have only four strings.
Pop music? Let’s rather not go there. Pop seems to be devolving rather than getting better.
Jazz has its early roots in blending these western harmonic norms and structures with the feel and freedom of blues and ragtime. Combined with African rhythms, the early 20thcentury jazz landscape offered musicians a license that classical music had little place for. Early on, jazz pioneers experimented with syncopated rhythms. This technique places emphasis, or accent, on the off beats. They also introduced swing – the musical definition, not the genre – into their rhythms. A swung groove can most easily be described by first considering a triplet – three consecutive notes: a simple one, two, three, one two three; counted in time. A swing groove leaves out the second note in the triplet: One, space, three, one, space, three. The genre of Swing Music is, of course, named after this technique.
They also introduced more challenging chord options. In most forms of music, 7ths are commonplace, but 9ths and 11ths and 13ths are a step further into the abyss, and place even greater demands on both the musician and the listener. They also add tension and harmonic complexity. The genre also encouraged players to express themselves through improvised solos. The more challenging the note choice – again, for the player and the listener – the more intense the subtle nods of approval from the ever more educated, smoke-filled rooms. If anyone, over the past 150 years can be attributed to moving music forward, it’s almost certainly the jazz cats. This brings me back to my discussion about progress.
Fusion bands are, as the name suggests, a blend of two different styles. The best fusion groups almost always start out as jazz aficionados who reach out into the worlds of rock and funk. The Pat Metheny Group and The Brecker Brothers challenged norms in the 70s. Chick Corea and Yellowjackets made similar waves in the 80s. With Fusion bands, the players are not satisfied with the heady complexity of regular jazz. They needed to further layer the musical lasagne.
Today, from the snow-swept, jagged islands of Stockholm in Sweden comes a group that is arguably the world’s most progressive fusion outfit. Longtime friends and music school classmates, Jonah Nilsson (vocals/keyboards), Hendrik Linder (bass) and Aron Mellergardh (drums) are grabbing every music theory geek, and performance heavyweight on earth, by the scruff of the neck. Collectively knows as Dirty Loops, these Scandinavia music-super-nerds – term used respectfully – made their name “twisting” pop covers. Their explosive ‘live’, YouTube launched renditions of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance and Adele’s Rolling In The Deep, among others, knocked loudly on the doors of the knowledgeable and had even the most seasoned and talented players pressing pause, head-scratching, rewinding, and re-watching.
To say they broke the internet would be incorrect. Not initially, in any event. Remember, we live in a world where, even to this very day, Ylvis’ idiotic What Does The Fox Say? has had 7.9mil views, while Chris Stapleton’s raw, profound and utterly beautiful What Are You Listening To? languishes with just over 151k. We live in a world that celebrates mediocrity and champions the lowest common denominator. Dirty Loops – complex, demanding, challenging; cross-grain and against-the-current – were (are) firing razor-sharp, musically groundbreaking arrows from the bowels of a cesspit of beard grooming, Twitter tribes, thousand dollar sunglasses and duck-lips. From a world where an already wealthy reality TV star asked her followers to help make her the world’s youngest billionaire by donating to a GoFundMe page. And in that world, astoundingly, they complied.
Indeed, there could have been little doubt in the minds of these young virtuosos that their growth path through the modern musical era would be a difficult one. Attention spans are simply not strong enough. And what little mental energy most folks have to spare, is unlikely to be spent listening to re-harmonised chord structures, syncopated and accented rhythm alterations and re-invented complex melodies. But Dirty Loops are not about easy listening. They’re not interested in producing an album you put on in the background while enjoying dinner. Unless that is, you’re savouring liver and fava beans and a nice Chianti. Dirty Loops are about exploring the edges of what’s possible and of re-engineering foundations and frameworks. They celebrate the existing stratosphere and the musicians that established it, by imagining and building a vehicle that can explode past it. Dirty Loops are about the evolution of music. They are about progress.
Their ethos, their business model, if you will, is also evolving. Original music is flowing and partnerships with internationally recognised artists are helping broaden their appeal. But even in their most recent release – a collaboration with Grammy-nominated, multi-instrument, Cory Wong – the insane musical complexity remains. The melody of the chorus of Follow The Light might be slightly more accessible but what’s happening behind it, and before and after it, is so far above my paygrade, I feel like a volunteer.
About 550kms from Dirty Loops’ home in Stockholm, another envelope-pushing Swedish genius is, quite literally, driving the future of the automobile into equally unimaginable areas. Christian von Koenigsegg (CVK) is a business school graduate, turned self-taught engineering uber-geek. At just 22 years of age, he began work on his first one-off, hand-built sports car. Two years later, test driver Rickard Rydell – an experienced and world-renown racer – was piloting the Koenigsegg CC on the streets and racetracks of Sweden. The feedback was super positive and Christian knew he was on a workable wicket.
What followed, in developing that first car and moving those learnings into successive models, is a list of impressive automotive engineering firsts. CVK, not unlike Jonah, Hendrik and Aron, has never been satisfied with an organic pace of improvement. Allow me, if I can, to list some of the engineering masterstrokes and a few of the unique and inspired innovations Koenigsegg Automotive has brought to market.
The chassis is constructed of the same material – pre-impregnated carbon fibre – and to the same tensile strengths as a Formula 1 car. The fuel tank is a multi-celled, aluminium vessel that is integrated into hollow box sections of that ultra-strong frame. The fuel tank is part of the strongest parts of a very strong chassis.
Lamborghini, Bugatti and Audi, as part of the Volkswagen Group, enjoy, to some degree, shared engineering progresses and in certain models, very similar engines. Pagani use Mercedes Benz motors as do certain Aston Martin models. The Koenigsegg V8 engine is built in-house and has topped the charts in terms of power and performance at almost every stage of its development. For a limited-production manufacturer to back its own engine building abilities is, in and of itself, a massive statement. That they build a better engine is astounding.
Modern emissions regulations demand that all vehicles’ exhaust systems are fitted with catalytic converters. But these devices severely restrict power. Koenigsegg has designed what they call a Rocket Cat. In essence, the traditional design has two stages. The first stage is to ‘prep’ the Cat: to get it up to temperature. The second stage, once at the correct temperature, does the harmful-gas cleaning. Koenigsegg’s idea is to bypass the first stage once the engine is at full operating temperature and higher rev ranges. These superheated gases are enough to get the Cat up to temperature without the need for the gasses to pass through that power-sapping first stage. The result? Clean exhaust gases with minimal power loss.
Koenigsegg have literally reinvented the wheel. A full 750 pieces of carbon fibre cloth go into the construction of one of the Regera’s three-spoke, patented Aircore wheels. They are hollow in parts, which saves weight – 20kgs across the four wheels – but are still more than strong enough to handle the ultra-high performance. Those wheels, again, are made in-house.
That same model, the Regera, has no gearbox. While the major component replacing the gearbox is essentially nothing new, it’s dramatically re-designed and refined. We’re talking, of course, about a component that’s been used in automatic transmission for decades – the torque converter.
Where Koenigsegg’s system differs, is they built the various parts of their torque convertor from machined aluminium, making them much lighter. They then refined the internals of the system, improving on angles and pressures of fluid flow. Their system is so efficient that it actually doubles the torque produced by the engine. The dramatic increase in efficacy means that the system can drive the car forward, from standstill, in what is essentially seventh gear. That traditional setup – the engine driving the wheels – is then complemented by two electric motors on each of the rear wheels. A sophisticated electronics system manages these two power plants, known as Direct Drive, allowing the driver to pilot the Regera gently at bumper-to-bumper speeds, or to blow the doors off a Porsche 911 Turbo.
On the subject of the company’s move toward hybrid-drive systems - and the batteries and electric motors that complement the internal combustion engines - the Regera was the world’s first 800 Volt production car. That 800V rating allows for massive amounts of power to be dumped into the electric motors in a very short time frame. It’s also capable of sustaining that power for a significant period. Furthermore, the liquid-cooled, “flooded” battery can be recharged more quickly. That battery pack weighs just 66kgs, including the cooling fluids. To put that in perspective, the Tesla Model S’s battery is reported to tip the scales at around 550kgs.
It goes without saying that the hand-built, limited production, made-to-order hypercars rolling off the Angelholm production line carry eye-watering price tags. Only the obscenely wealthy need apply. There is also the argument of relevance – what’s the point of 330km/h performance in today’s highly legislated motoring landscape?
The point is progress. Koenigsegg’s engineering ideas could have very real benefits for average, everyday cars in the near future. If Koenigsegg has made a battery pack that weighs less than an F1 driver, wouldn’t Ford or Mazda or Toyota’s engineers now be asking how? If the Regera’s gearbox-less Direct Drive system reduces weight, mechanical drag, and therefore improves fuel consumption, you can be sure that Kia and VW are now considering those possibilities. Without the practically limitless scope offered to engineers in building cars like the Koenigsegg, where else would these advancements happen?
Birth is often painful. Evolution is rarely wrapped in a symmetrical cube and presented with a beautifully knotted pink bow. More often than not, those among us who are capable of uncovering new beginnings, and of breaking the moulds of existing conventions, do so at a cost. The price is often alienation and rejection. But by their very nature, these are people who thrive when challenged and who deliver in spite of conventional wisdom.
The least we can do is to recognise the genius, give thanks that it exists, and try, however impossible it may seem, to challenge our own pre-programmed, myopic thinking. Because the only constant is change.
