A Change is As Good As A Rest

This week has been a reinvigorating and refreshing one for me in a creative sense. I predicted some weeks ago that my creativity would inevitably break down and that what I had been doing for 9 months would quite organically collapse. And so it has proved to be. A combination of being constitutionally unable to continue repeating myself and the dreaded month of October, in which my world always seems once more to descend into the depths, with the vanishing light and the increase of night, have made my premonition come true.

And so the Berlin School-influenced music has now vanished. This week, in its place, came experiments with noise and sound. In a strange way I'm still locked into the same German influences that I have been following all year though. Listen to the first album by Tangerine Dream from 1969 (Electronic Meditation) or to the first couple of albums by Cluster (who were then called Kluster) or Popol Vuh's first album (Affenstunde) and what you hear is musical experimentations with sound. Nothing more and nothing less. There is no song structure here. Its merely playing with sound until you decide to stop. Fast forward into the 80s, 90s and 00s and people like Coil, Autechre and Aphex Twin are found doing pretty much the same thing but with different tools.

                Kluster (later Cluster) - Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius

I have this notion in my head, thats been growing for some time now, that a fixation with making a tune is a great deceiver in making music. There is, of course, a mainstream bias towards it. No piece of noise art would get into a popular chart. Even the great names of noise genres were never popular in a mainstream sense. Tangerine Dream only did one album playing with sounds before developing into the makers of evolving electronic music that they came to be with their many TV and film soundtracks to keep them going. Industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire or Test Dept, who similarly wanted to play with sound, are niche bands with artistic or political things to say. They are not mainstream acts. Even the aforementioned Aphex Twin, the hero these days of fanboys everywhere, is not a popular artist in a mainstream sense. Most people would not know who he is. But people do know who any number of artists are who will knock out the lamest of tunes. Its music you can hum. Arcade Fire and Coldplay are popular. IDM artists and old German noise experimenters are not.

Aphex Twin

Autechre

And yet it quickly becomes clear to any musician with any sense of adventure whatsoever that the world is full of sounds both imaginable and unimaginable. And, as I've said over and over again, there are no rules in music. And you cannot "go wrong". "A mistake" only exists if you conceive of the idea that there is something you should have done instead of what you actually did do. But what if you forget the idea of having an antecedent plan for where you want to go and, instead, you just throw things together? What if you made up some arbitrary rules and just followed them? What if pitch and tune became completely irrelevant to the process? What if the only thing that matters in music is not that you can save it and repeat it (my current pet hate) but that you can manipulate it, twist it and mangle it into insensibility right now in this moment which is all that matters? No two performances of music (even when its meant to be the same piece) will ever be the same anyway. So why keep trying to replicate?

None of this is new of course. The musical avantgarde of the 40s, 50s and 60s were already embracing such ideas 60 or even 70 years ago. My favourite of these people is John Cage with his chance operations in which he would arbitrarily follow some rules or ideas he had made up or that the I Ching (an ancient Chinese divination text utilizing cleromancy) had ordained he must follow. This was music at random. Brian Eno is famous for his "oblique strategies" which are his own way of following a random rule or idea and just seeing where it takes you. David Bowie has always utilized random ways of writing lyrics for his songs, either with paper and scissors or in electronic ways. Throbbing Gristle often seemingly had no guide at all other than choosing an instrument and then playing it exactly the way you were not intended to. Cosey Fanni Tutti, the guitar player, would often play the electric guitar sitting down by hitting it with something or bowing it rather than strumming the strings or playing recognizable chords. (She still does this today together with fellow former TG member and her partner, Chris Carter, in their current musical endeavours.) She also had a cornet she couldn't play, not that it mattered. Autechre's increasing uses of software to make music has often resulted in outcomes that were not predictable to the musicians themselves and has given much of their work the flavour of sound abstraction.

                                             Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter

So why do this? In my own mind its because not doing things "properly", not being able (or wanting) "to play" or just saying "fuck the rules and expectations" is actually a very freeing thing to do. There is no bigger boundary to artistic freedom than being told there is a way that you should  do something or that there is an expectation it needs to have a certain structure, style or expected outcome. I don't think that people who play up to these standards are being particularly artistic nor are they really doing anything other than joining the dots. It is relatively easy to write "a song". Anyone, even if they don't know it, can write a simple repeating pattern of notes. Repeat it for three minutes and you have a song. Easy. But why do it? There are, of course, many who have long and enduring commercial careers based on their ability to bash out the same thing for years. But who said that commerce or getting rich were the goals of musical art? All things must pass, including your incredible wealth and lame, mainstream and very popular music. But what did you stand for?

Let's get to what I've been doing this week. I have this notion that ideas are the currency of artists. It is then for the artist to use whatever skill he or she has to bring the ideas they have to fruition. But the idea is key. My idea this week has been relatively simple: take a number of sounds or pieces of music or noises and just juxtapose them on a sequencer timeline. Do this unconsciously and in no way deliberately (that means often not even knowing what the music or sound or noise is) almost like throwing playing cards on to a table and letting them fall where they may. Then, once you have given each sound a track, play with them. Change their speed, reverse them, chop them up, add effects to some but not others (reverbs, distortion and delays are favourites here). None of this is new. Its all been done before. But its freeing because no one, especially not you, even knows what you will get at the end. Often I didn't even listen to what I had got at the end. I just made sure the sound level was tolerably OK and recorded what was there. Listening back to the album was the first time I heard the whole piece. Its amazing and interesting that often what you get is a strange kind of preternatural beauty as sounds combine and contrast in unexpected ways.

You, of course, may be sitting there thinking this is all noise with no redeeming features and that art is deliberation, a product of an artist using their talents to create something on purpose that conforms to rules. But consider this: no one made the countryside but I bet you find it beautiful to look at. The universe itself is random in the most radical way it could be. And isn't it full of wonder! What I've done this week is the same principle applied to sounds as I juxtaposed things without any real care for what they were or how I did it. And my attitude in making it was to allow the random sounds to reveal their inner beauty in the process of simply placing noises into a relationship with each other. And for that to happen you have to be open to it and not bounded in by notions of the "right" way to do things or what in the end are themselves completely arbitrary notions of right and wrong in any case. So what I did this week was part therapy, a break from the norm, part philosophy, an opening of my mind to possibilities, and part music, a creative playing with sound.

I've made 7 albums of this stuff so far because its relatively quick and easy to do. A couple of hours can easily produce 8 tracks and 30-40 minutes of music. In vinyl days that was a whole album. Of course, there will be a further bias at play here and that is the bias towards the thing that is difficult and takes effort over the thing that that is easy and quick and takes little effort. "It can't be worth much if it was so easy to do" will be the thought of some. And yet many of us humans are the result of a 2 minute fumble in the back of a car. Are we worth nothing either because of the easy circumstances of our creation?

In music and in life it might often be beneficial to think differently - just to see what could be rather than meekly accepting, in the most conservative way possible, what "is".

The Value of Music

ZaNorte is the latest album from a friend of mine who goes by the musical name of Iceman Bob. If you have read a number of articles on this blog you may notice that earlier in the year we were discussing matters of mind and consciousness together. Over the couple of years I have known Bob I have found him to be a friendly, gracious and insightful man who often gives a different point of view than the expected or mainstream one. And I have more often than not welcomed this about him. Bob also makes music though when he is not discussing such things and he goes about it very much in his own way. I go about my music in my own way too and so I feel a certain kinship with him  - even though these ways are not always the same.

People listen to music for many differing reasons. Often, of course, it is simply for entertainment and what is required is a sugary hit of something sweet, non-challenging and expected. It would be easy for me to be snobbish about this and decry it and, if that's all there is to your music listening, then I probably would. From the very beginning of my blogging I have spoken about music being something that fulfills many roles and that is multi-faceted in its use. One role I see for music is that of something that challenges our preconceptions and ideas about what music itself is as well as more mundane matters of what good and bad taste are for you. One reason I have always liked Bob's music is that it can, at times, be a challenge to listen to. Bob seems very set on doing things a certain way with the set up that he has (a couple of laptops, some synths and guitars) and it would be very easy to define an "Iceman Bob sound". You can take this two ways of course. You could decry the lack of variety or you could explore the sound that Bob makes and see what you could make of it. Of course, to do either you'd need to interact with his work first. And you should.

Bob's latest album, in a growing list of work available on his Bandcamp page, is called ZaNorte which is short for Zamboanga del Norte, a region of the Philippines from which he has just returned to his native Montana. The music and the titles of the tracks (which are mostly in a native Filipino language with the English in parenthesis beside it) bear witness to this trip and this has had an effect on the sound that Bob makes. Let me make it clear at this point that this is not to be a whitewash review of the album as Bob is my friend. On the contrary, whilst being a fan and supporter of his work for a while now I have not been so uncritically. In the past I have especially taken issue with Bob's guitar sound (which I think would benefit from more variety). In ZaNorte, however, we find that the guitar is often absent and on the one track where it notably takes the lead, Dalugdug ug Kilat (Thunder and Lightning), we find Bob at his most melodious.

So what then is ZaNorte? First of all, its a huge piece of work. Whilst most of the track lengths are down on Bob at his most prolific (tracks in the 15 minute range are not unusual) here the 8-10 minute range is par for the course. But there are 20 tracks to the album which is nigh on 3 hours in length. I have already listened to it through completely 3 times though and it didn't feel like it was dragging in any way at all. The album then, in its entirety, is an absolute pleasure to listen to. This is Iceman Bob at his chilled and relaxed best. There is also a mellowness to some of the tracks. The harshness and unfamiliarity that can sometimes be there in some of his work is here almost completely absent. (There is, though, one track, Maya (white beak sparrow), which I find completely unlistenable. It sounds to me like the rhythm from one track and the tune from another spliced together in a way that doesn't fit.) This album felt to me as I listened like a warm day on a beach in the shade of palm trees and the music was a gentle breeze wafting over me.

One reason for this is that I think due to the circumstances of the recording (I understand this was recorded away from Bob's main studio with a reduced setup) Bob had to tailor his music to his new circumstances. I would say that this has made the music more amenable. This is the most listenable Iceman Bob album I have yet heard. However, that is by Bob's own standards and to those coming to it for the first time it may still sound challenging. But this is always the reason I have been attracted to Bob's work. Bob has the gift of making music that is not beholden to formulaic rules or mainstream ideas. He does what he wants and has a free attitude to what is possible. Often things will not be in time or seemingly at odds with other sections of the same song. Things will sound unfamiliar and challenging in a way that can easily be disturbing. The challenge is to stay onside with the course that is being plotted and see it through to the end. ZaNorte makes it even more possible than usual that you will be able to do this as a listener. I'm particularly in awe of the way that Bob has been able to do this over the course of an album with so many tracks. As most musicians would realize, the more tracks you do, the more chance there is that you dilute the overall quality. Not so here. The quality has been kept up throughout.

So ZaNorte is a chilled and relaxing trip to the Philippines and many of the sounds used evoke an "ethnic" vibe and Bob has done that thing which all musicians should strive to do above all else: keep things interesting. The album is not boring or in any way stale and has the ability to evoke emotions and stimulate thought. (It did both for me.) As I like 19 of the 20 songs unreservedly I would give this album 19/20 as a review score. Its an album you should certainly download. You maybe won't play it on repeat every single day for the rest of your life. But there will be a time when it is the exact thing that you need. Its a great album to have in your collection. And its also a testament to the value of music, something which can soothe, challenge, encourage and entertain all at the same time.

You can download ZaNorte at https://icemanbob.bandcamp.com/album/zanorte and Iceman Bob is on Twitter at @iceman_bob

Evaluating Music

It comes to the last quarter of the year. So it goes the Earth, round and round. Its easy to feel that we are going in circles. We are. But its ever spiraling ones. Maybe those of us who make music are doing that too. Ever on and on we go, pushed by some urge we cannot offset. We must make more. We get frustrated because its just more of the same. We want to create but we don't know what. We make something and then hate it. Then we love it. Then we hate it again. Circles, circles, spirals.

I suffer from various maladies many of which come into their full effect as the days draw in, as they do at this time of year for us Northern Hemisphere folk round about now. So its never a time I look forward to. I've probably had at least 2 major breakdowns in the month of October. (Why am I telling you this? Not sure. Its not really relevant.) For this reason I thought I would scale back the music (which, on past history, is always the worst I produce from October to December) anticipating some sort of personal crisis and concentrate on what I had done in the first nine months of the year. (Its not working out that way. I keep feeling a Dionysian ecstasy come over me and I head into... The Void to make more!)

And so I looked back at the over 20 volumes of stuff I had done in those nine months. I officially started making music this year on January the 12th. At the time I was reading about Nazi concentration camps and wanting to watch sci fi films. One such film I watched was Under The Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, a tale of an alien who disguises herself as a tasty temptress to lure unsuspecting Scotsmen to their untimely deaths. Now the soundtrack to that film was already outstanding (and must by now be surely award winning) but as I started to make music I conceived of what I was doing as an alternate soundtrack for that film - all mixed in with a soundtrack to concentration camps too. Harsh and serious stuff. What came out was soundtrack, music for film, something dramatic.

So that was the beginning. But I wanted to do more than just re-trace my steps over. I wanted to rank or grade or judge the music I had made. What was better and what was worse? I don't really have any quality control on the music I make. What happens at the time is what you get. I don't start off with any idea and try to realize it. The idea forms in the Dionysian ecstasy and that is what remains when the switches are flicked to the off position. I'm relieved to find that that approach works, more often than not. Actually, MUCH more often than not. So the idea of then judging it (implicitly by some kind of standard that I don't actually have when I make it) is a very strange one. Its been made more strange by my reading of John Cage (about which much more at the start of my blog if you go searching). Cage thinks music should not be about subjective judgments at all. And that is not how 99% of the world thinks. Most people value subjective judgment and deliberation. But Cage does not. He thinks it is a problem to be got over and not a solution to anything. And like a good contrarian I'm happy to go along with the guy who takes the lesser trod path.

But how do you judge music? You might be staring at this now and thinking I am mad. It's easy, after all. We just all do it instinctively. Judging, that is. This is good. This is bad. This sounds great. That is terrible. I have a problem with all this. Its true of course and it can't be avoided. But its not at all..... rational! Of course, its not even true that we are consistent in our judgments. And this is because we don't use hard and fast rules to do it. We may hate all Country music. I would say that I do. But I like Johnny Cash singing about the Tennessee Stud! I don't like Thrash Metal but if I listen to enough of it there'd be one I got into. Our judgments are there to make fools of us it seems.

It doesn't change when you judge your own work. Now some music people are very fastidious (read: slow) in going about their work. Fine, its their business. But this lends them a certain quality control that I don't have the luxury of. I work on instinct and inspiration so there is not months of time in which I tell myself to stop and not do something and go in a different direction like those other people. For me its all about NOW. And now is only ever a moment grasped... that slips away. And what you are left with is the memory. And hopefully a recording of what happened during it. This means that so much decision time and thinking time is just not there. And so I have to look back on a retrospective collection of moments I had throughout my year when I listen back to my music.

In judging I was very conscious of what I was doing. Its totally subjective and arbitrary, of course. All matters of taste are these things. There is no rational way of saying A is better than B. You are only ever giving a subjective, gut view on things. Often you might not even know why. You just know you FEEL this way. And feelings can't always be explained.

I determined to pick out the best track of each project I had done, in my very subjective view, and then collect these together. From these I would make a top 20 tracks of the year. Then I would whittle it down to 10, 5, 3 and, finally, my best song of the year. I want to count down the top 10 below and say why. It explains my process and my views on music - which is what this blog is about!



10. Eschatology (from Human/Being X) This is from the last album of my Human/Being project which lasted ten albums and a number of blog articles in the first half of the year. The style of much of the music in these albums, and in this track, was mostly Berlin School style evolving synth patterns with some synth pad wash on the side. Eschatology is a perfect example of this style of music which I have been studying closely for about a year now. Its thoughtful, progressive and analog sounding.

9. String Theory (from The Existenz Equation) Another Berlin School style track. I've only moved away from the style in the last couple of months as it inevitably broke down under its own creative weight and turned into something else (another consequence of a high turnover of music). Here the sequences overlap and repeat and there's a kick drum setting tempo which gets some percussive help later on. This track is showing how I progress using the Berlin School style.

8. Infinity (from Zeitlos) More Berlin School but this time slower and atmospheric, a song of textures. I'm so very glad when songs like this come out because I like to think they are in there somewhere.

7. Dionysos (from Trickster) A Berlin School tour de force. Slow, evolving, a repeating bass squelch all over it. But with great chord pads and spacey sound FX to go with it. Its not a matter of progress though (this track is much more recent). It just happens in the moment.

6. Eight (from The Void is an Oszillator!) A song from only the last couple of weeks. The Berlin School model has been taken and played with. What we have here is still a long, evolving track but the sounds are much more dynamic and generally more has been done with it. Note also the rhythms. And those sounds! Very lush. Luxury music in my eyes.

5. Weak Nuclear Force (from Forces of Nature) This one is more electronic instrumental than recognizably Berlin School. Of course, the first is a development of the latter which basically wrote the book on long, evolving electronic music. Incidentally, only one of these top 10 tracks is under 10 minutes long. The longest is almost 18 minutes.  Music this year has been about building a mood or riding a wave. The challenge is not to fall off. This track is one where I play a bit more than just arranging sequences to play off each other.

4. Refugee (from Intoxication) Another recent track and I have no idea how to describe it. The main "riff", if that's what it is, was just there in some synthesizer when I played it a certain way and I started to build around that using the techniques I'd employed for 8 months before. It sounds kind of glorious and hopeful to me. Its not a sad song about refugees. Its about their struggle for life!

3. Zeit (from Existenz²) This is peak Berlin School for me - but my adapted version of it. I love this song primarily for the sounds which seem raw and real. Its 17 minutes long but I never want it to stop. The metallic base and the way it churns and grinds leaves me always wanting more. Its kind of appropriate its called "Zeit" (German for "time") because I see both the idea and the song as all-encompassing things. If songs are there to express and communicate moods or ideas then this does to me.

2. Crisis Moment (from Doktor Existenz) The stand out track from my super hero spoof album. This is the shortest track here at 8 minutes. Its like a mini, condensed popular version of the longer songs. Again, its about the sounds - which stand out. And how all the elements just work together. Again, there is keyboard playing here - such as I am capable of. It feels good to know I can make a song like this and it is within my capabilities. I especially love the beat which has been hip-hopped up (including my characteristic deliberate mis-timings and missteps). It makes this song more modern.

1. Fünf (from Within The Void) And so this is the track I judge my best of the year. And it only happened a few days ago. But I'm sure it will stand the test of time. It marries that Berlin School sensibility I had all year with more great sound choices and an electro beat. I'd claim credit for it but, you know, shit just happened!


But then that's music. Its not rational. Its just moments. Enjoy the ones you can.

PLEASE NOTE THAT SINCE THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN MY BANDCAMP ACCOUNT HAS BEEN REORDERED. THE WHOLE LIST OF TOP 20 TRACKS IS NOW AVAILABLE IN ONE COLLECTION AT BERLIN GESCHICHTE TEIL I.