And then there is my most recent work which I know as The Dark Series. This is also 31 tracks long and 4 hours 36 minutes in total. Dark did not start out as a multi-volume work. Neither did Elektronische Existenz. In both cases there was an original album which took on a life of its own and led to a whole project. Perhaps, as befits a project about the dark and darkness, it is rather amorphous what The Dark Series is actually about. I hope to try and flesh that out a bit as we go along. There are, however, many very real concerns unwrapped within the making of this project. These things would maybe stay secret and hidden were I not to make them overt. And that is reason enough to write about them here.
Let's address themes first. Dark is about the things we don't want to think about, things that lurk, feelings that are disturbing to have, ideas from which we shy away. This was overt in Dark Mythologies, the first of the four volumes in the series. There my songs were related to mythical beings that live in belief or legend from crazy vampire creatures to wild dogs that roam dark moors. People are scared of the dark and so, in some ways, The Dark Series is about musically addressing fears. Through Dark Rhythms, Dark Moods and Dark Visions the themes of fear are still present but perhaps more subtly so. Some titles are suggestive but the darkness, overt in Dark Mythologies, clothes itself in the night and wanders unseen throughout most of the collection.
Perhaps here is an apt moment to mention the sound of The Dark Series. Naturally enough, if you have followed my work at all, it is an electronic series. There is a modular feel to much of it due to the heavy use of sequencers and I have deliberately tried to create that sort of sound. That's not necessarily in an overt way. Its just what comes naturally to me. I shall have more to say about this when I get to the procedures I used in making the series. Rhythm is hugely important to the sound of my music and it is always heavily emphasised. Some people define their sound by their use of melody or harmony. My signatures are more based in rhythm and fascination with sound. Here I have used drums and percussion which mix electronic sounds with real drum sounds. I have also tried to utilise larger sounds rhythmically. The most notable example here is Ragnarök, the very first track from the series, which chugs and churns its path through destruction and rebirth. Particularly in the second half of the series, in Dark Moods and Dark Visions, I have used some waves from signature synthesizers to create bass sounds. If you are familiar with them you should hear sounds from the Arp Odyssey and Korg MS-20 in there. Reflecting, I think maybe the fact that I always try to use interesting sounds means that I concentrate less (or not at all) on melody. The sounds themselves (and how they complement or contrast with each other) are the most fascinating and interesting things of all!
And so we come to HOW The Dark Series was made. To background this you need to understand that mid-series I came across the writings of that great American musical experimentalist of the 20th century, John Cage. Cage was a Zen Buddhist and tried to put the principles of that faith into practice in his music. This meant "emptying" the music of influence much as, within that faith, one seeks to empty oneself. At the start of the 1950s he began to overtly use chance and randomness to write music. He used the I Ching, something used for divination as a sort of key for making decisions. And he wrote music this way for decades thereafter because it removed much of his influence from the music he was making. Cage, of course, is primarily known in the popular consciousness for his "silent" work 4' 33", a work in which the pianist sits at the piano, as in its first performance, and plays no notes. The point Cage appears to be making here is that the piece is any and every sound that happens during the 4' 33" of the performance, a radical redefining and blurring of the lines between an authorial performance and an audience passively listening.
I had myself, during the making of The Dark Series, been thinking theoretically about the process of making music, as I often do. This is often salted and stimulated by the thoughts of fellow musicians on Twitter. When I came across Cage's work this thinking really went into overdrive. I have always been suspicious of authors. They cannot be trusted. Authors are unreliable. They lie and they are biased. What's more, they have blind spots. You will always make music like you and, in former times, that was a good thing. I hate artists and bands who set out to try and sound like their heroes and sounding like yourself, I think, is the first duty of any musical artist. But hold on. That itself is a binding limitation. If I always sound like me then I am always subject to all the flaws, bad choices and blind spots that I have. I will, in short, sound the same, forever contained within a narrow band of habits or things I like to do. And I don't like that idea. I don't like it at all. I'm a living thing. I'm capable of change. I want to grow. I want to reach out my neck, like a tree growing towards the sun.
My methods have always been open to, and embraced, both randomness and arbitrariness. Partly this was determined by my anti-authoritarian leanings. Basically, if you tell me something should be done a certain way I will do the opposite. It was also based in laziness. Doing things "right" takes time and effort. But I just want to have fucking fun! So I have always ordered my various setups over the years to promote the making of instant fun. I'm all about the instant gratification baby! But what I found, over the years, was that this could also be deeply honest, authentic and satisfying long term. I feel now that this method is like recording your actual living soul. There is, I think, no pretension, no artifice, no deliberation in this method. Or, at least, there is less. And, to me, that means its less false, less manufactured. I have issues with manufacturing things. I find them fake and unreal. To touch the living, moving, genuine, stream of consciousness is what I seek to do. And that brooks no falsity or artifice in the process. So I naturally came to the position of recording what happened in a performance and leaving it at that with no touching up, mousing or cosmetics later to make it perfect. Life isn't perfect, reality isn't perfect. And music should not be perfect. Much better that it be real. Honest.
But now in making The Dark Series I wanted to incorporate ideas which would remove my influence from the creation process. This happens most overtly in Dark Moods and especially Dark Visions. I found the process to be revelatory and I cannot recommend it enough. To hear myself making music I could never have made deliberately myself was staggering. It was like a window to a whole new layer of reality had been opened. Possibilities were now there that had never existed before. Basically, I introduced overt chance through the use of a number key. The numbers were given to me by five kind souls on Twitter. I used the numbers they gave me to give me answers to questions necessary to make the music. For example, if I came to record a piece and asked "How many beats should be in this measure?" I went to the numbers provided and saw that the first number there was 19. And so I wrote music that utilised a 19 beat (or four bars and three beats) pattern. This was not easy and many of the numbers provided were either odd numbers or, worse, prime numbers! (For those light on musical theory I should explain that the problem here is that prime numbers can't be divided by either 3 or 4, the number of beats most often used in making "standard" Western music. This would lend any music made using such a pattern a disturbing "otherness". ) But, and this is very important, that was good. It forced me to do things differently, to embrace things I never would have done by myself. It has stretched and changed my musical possibilities. It has also created music you never could have heard from me before. So what we have here is new musical territory.
And so in making The Dark Series I find myself changed as a musical being at the end. I have had, for want of a better description, a revelation. I am naturally experimental and prefer to find my own path (and, perhaps, repeat all the old mistakes) rather than do "what you are supposed to". In this I find that I have inadvertently wandered into the path that giants like Cage have trodden before me. My music, as my life, is, and should be, an adventure. The Dark Series started out as an album about some mythical creatures, just more of the same music on a new subject. It ended up being so much more.
You can hear all four albums from The Dark Series at herrabsurd.bandcamp.com
No comments:
Post a Comment