Walking and War

Yesterday I went for a walk as I often do. Normally I have in my head the route I will take, this being chosen as I put on my shoes and go through the various several routes I have taken over the previous few years. This was also the case yesterday and as I set out I had pre-selected one of the shorter routes. But about 15 minutes into the walk, as I was walking through my local park, a thought suddenly occurred to me. This thought was that my next hour had been planned out in my head ahead of time by my decision. By pre-selecting the route I knew where I would be going, probably what I'd see, etc. I thought about this as I kept walking and compared it to what would be case if I'd not pre-selected my route and just set off at random, not deciding ahead of time which direction I would take at junctions and, therefore, not knowing where I'd be going. The second option seemed suddenly more attractive, especially the not knowing and the consequent unfolding surprise such a walk would be. 

I was coming to the path at the bottom of the park where I would be forced to turn either left (as I'd preselected) or right and suddenly in my head there was a jeopardy for, suddenly, I imagined not knowing which way I would go. I thought to myself that I would go left anyway, as I wasn't feeling particularly energetic and this way was the shortest. I settled into this idea for a minute. But then the possibility of turning right and going the longer, unprepared for, way began to reassert itself as a possibility. I vacillated back and forth, not knowing what option I would take. Then, annoyed with myself, I determined to stop this nonsense, enjoy the moment of my walk and let a momentary decision decide when I actually got to the point a few hundred meters ahead of me when I would have to make a choice. I did notice, however, that the rest of the walk then became better as a result of this choice, this not knowing what would happen, this living in the moment rather than having my immediate future pre-planned and decided.

The last book of the Christian bible and so, logically, the culmination of the bible's story, is a vision of a cosmic war. One of the things this book describes itself as is a prophecy by which, in common parlance, we take it to mean a foretelling of the future. It is a fact you may become aware of in the unlikely scenario that you ever take a course in biblical studies that "prophecy" is not usually regarded as "foretelling"; its more a case of "forth telling" but I digress. In any case, should you be one of those who thinks of prophecy as foretelling the future then Revelation presents itself as the story of the end of the world, the way God wraps up the whole story of this creation he has, according to the script of the bible, made. It is not a pleasant scene. Here God sends his champion, that Jesus fella who was formerly in the bible saying "Blessed are the poor," healing sick people and telling people to turn the other cheek, on a big white horse to slaughter all the unrepentant people who don't believe in God. Basically, what we have is the notion that, at the end of all this "God is love" business you might have heard of, God is actually just going to kill all the people who haven't done what he wanted. Its divinely sanctioned violence. That is the story of the world, that is our future foretold.

Now as with my walk, I'm not too happy about this when I realise that someone has written a story in which "the end" is apparently foretold. (Put aside the question of if its true or not. Its not, but that doesn't matter.) In my new, post-realisation mind set, not knowing things gives a better opportunity for a fresh look at and appreciation of life than one that is planned out. And then there is all this violence business. Its bad enough that actual people will be violent to each other without the gods joining in. But do I have this the right way round? I wonder how many Christians over two millennia have read Revelation, seen that the way the story ends is by God killing all the bad guys, and then thought, "Well if that's what's going to happen in the end anyway then what's the problem with dusting off a few unbelievers right now?" 

Since Revelation was written we have had Crusades and an Inquisition and I sense a latent desire from some good old white Christian boys across the water (and not just across the water) to kill the unbelieving Muslims because they are on the wrong side of this pre-decided history. Preachers of hate such as Britain First, a ragtag band of self-aggrandizing troublemakers made more famous when Trump retweeted their error-strewn material, have expressly used "Christian" imagery in their ideological war against immigrants as, apparently, it is their lack of "Christian values" that marks them out as not like us the most. Which "Christian values" are these, I wonder, the ones from Revelation where all the ones not on our Christian side will be slaughtered for making the wrong choice?

So there is a problem with divine violence in Revelation and its not a Muslim problem or a problem of any other religion (although I won't deny their problems with a similar thing either): its a Christian problem. Revelation, so at least two New Testament scholars I respect have said, is "the most violent book in religious history." The problem is that by telling us the violent end of the story this book has apparently mandated violence in the name of its God and religious violence is probably the most insidious form of violence for how do you stop someone convinced that a divine being has authorised their activities? As I intimated before, its only bumping up the schedule if we good Christians dust off a few bad guys now, its not fundamentally changing the script. And what's worse, God is actually shown to be approving of violence in Revelation. Revelation acts as a divine endorsement of divine violence. Jesus, that nice fella from the gospels who was, in the time-worn phrase, "meek and mild" is not very meek and mild in Revelation. He is a Terminator or a Predator hunting down all the people who don't follow a certain religious path. And chopping their heads off. No more "King of Kings," he is now "Warlord of Warlords". In fact, as someone who has worked on "the historical Jesus" at university for PhD studies and written a couple of books about it, I don't recognise this guy. Whoever wrote Revelation has a massive hard-on for killing and death for Revelation is a major revenge fantasy. They've taken Mr Meek and Mild and turned him into a violent killer and called it "good news"!

I mentioned earlier that, of course, Revelation is not true. I also said it didn't matter because, as with any literature, what matters is what it disseminates and motivates and not whether its true or not. Things don't need to be true, they just need to be believed. Have we not learned this lesson by now? Does it matter if Revelation is true if Christians across the centuries see in it a warrant to kill the enemies of God? I imagine the writer of Revelation never figured as he wrote his revenge fantasy of the Christians beating their persecutors that before too long the Christians would actually be running the show and could begin the timetable of Revelation a bit early. Oops. But there we are, what's done is done. I do wish, however, that the writer had not decided to tell us the end before we got there because, in a way, he has ruined everything and there's blood on his hands. In retrospect, isn't it just better not knowing and trying to enjoy each moment we get without worrying about ultimate destinations? Do we need to exist in our own version of the Final Destination films where we know there will be a grisly death and its shadow blights everything we do? Ends can always cast mighty long shadows and not really for any good. At least, that's how it seems to me. 

So, there are some stories we human beings probably shouldn't tell for, in the end, we cannot blame gods for them. Revelation, on the face of it a tale about how God subdues and takes over everything, making it wholly divine, is actually a story about how God just becomes a man, a man like us, a man who, when things haven't gone his way, resorts to killing to resolve his problems. Revelation is a book which shows God as very manly, aggressive and violent. Go on son (of God), knock him out! We here on planet Earth still have our own violence problems, of course, and many still envisage themselves or their countries as in a violent struggle for resources as, apparently, that people from one country prosper and survive is more important than that people from another one do. I wonder where such people see their story ending and what destination they have pre-selected? Is it in Orwell's perpetual war of 1984? On the other hand, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

PS I turned right.

Modular Synth Monoculture?

I was sitting reading yet another thread on a modular synth forum and suddenly, quite out of the blue, a thought popped into my mind: where are all the black modular synth users? This thought began to snowball. Modular synthesists popped into my mind to be quickly replaced by others. Snippets of the hundreds of modular synth videos I must have seen replayed in my mind. They were all full of middle-aged white men. I thought of those I had interacted with over a number of years. All white guys too. Some women appeared, white ones of course, as Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Suzanne Ciani and Bana Haffar flashed through my mind. I started to think that maybe modular synthesis is just something that white guys (and a few white girls) do. And I began to ask myself why this is. Is there something about it that makes it an overwhelmingly white activity? At last I thought of a couple of black guys I knew who had modular systems, Corry Banks of BBoy Tech Report and the Beatppl podcast and Saintjoe of SoundsandGear.com. Both of these guys are only people I know of because of their Internet content. But, still, that's two black guys in a sea of whiteness. What's going on?

              White synth dudes Klaus Schulze and Richard Devine

I thought some more about our modular synth culture. I wondered if it is analogous to the Prog Rock of the 1970s which was, in the eyes of some, a boring, white man's cerebral music, the forerunner of Dadrock. I asked myself why so much modular music is abstract and often found on albums about space or machines or robots. Often modular music seems to be abstract musical collages (which is not a bad thing. I make them myself!). Then I noted that the two black guys I could think of who do use modular have only got into it recently and they are, if I may put it like this, two guys who are expressly interested in music technology. Both have their own Internet channels in which they do reviews of gear and talk about the gear scene. They are gearheads. So it might have been almost inevitable they would get into modular at some point since its growth in popularity is almost exponential these days. If you like synths it is becoming almost impossible to ignore and many modern fixed synth keyboards are coming out now with CV and Gate connections or even more comprehensive ways to integrate themselves with a modular synth world. So the gear angle could be a way into the modular synth world as it was for these two guys. But I wonder if the music it makes would be? Who is modular synth music appealing to?

Its fair to say that this initial thought led to a wider thinking about modular synth culture for me. You may suggest that it doesn't matter who takes part in this culture so long as they enjoy it and you may want to be critical of my observation that modular synth seems to be a largely white activity. "So what?" may be your response to that. Well, to be clear, I'm not sure what, if anything, follows from my observation here. But I think its basically a true observation and it fascinates me as to why this might be so. Modular synthesis is a very specific kind of activity which requires, for most users, a reasonable amount of money to purchase ever-increasing amounts of electronics equipment in order to take part. So, clearly, you have to be other than dirt poor in order to partake. This then filters in to a discussion of society in general and the socio-economic groupings into which various kinds of people fit. Yes, I'm sure you can see where this line of thinking is heading. Its food for thought. Its to point out that modular synthesis is not a game everyone can play. The nature of what it takes to take part is itself a limiting factor.

But I don't just think that modular synth is a matter of who can take part financially. Ask yourself who the role models and mentors of modular synth are. Historically, we have inventors like Bob Moog and Don Buchla. White guys. We have 70s musical heroes and early adopters like Morton Subotnick, Keith Emerson, Klaus Schulze and other random Germans with stacked Moogs. White guys. In the modern world its Richard Devine or Alessandro Cortini or maybe Mark Verbos with one of his techno sets. White guys. It seems that the role models, community mentors and makers are mostly white guys too. Does anyone even know some non-white makers and designers of modular synth gear? This, to my mind, all plays out in the kind of music modular synthesists make. Now its too blunt to describe this as "white music". I wouldn't even know what "white music" is. As a term this would be completely unhelpful. And yet, as I tried to describe above, it does seem to me that the music I hear coming from modular synths, made overwhelmingly by white middle-aged men, falls into some broad categories. 

I know this because I make an electronic music podcast called The Electronic Oddities Podcast and it regularly features modular synth music I've located online, primarily on Bandcamp. So I know exactly how many albums tagged "modular synth" are out there that are space themed (a lot!) and how many seem to be generally about things to do with science or technology (many of the rest). This idea, perhaps, started with Kraftwerk and their "Man Machine", and they are surely significant role models (if only in terms of the aesthetic they create) in the synthesis community and within electronic music more widely. But Kraftwerk were also an influence on early Hip Hop music and 80s Electro that was largely a music created by people of color. Everyone knows that it was a Kraftwerk riff that was lifted and used in Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa, for example. I've also heard guys like Detroit Techno producer, Carl Craig, talk about the effect of Kraftwerk upon the music he has made. So it seems true that music made by some white guys can crossover and influence the music made by those of other cultures too. I note that both of the black modular synthesists I could think of earlier also have backgrounds in Hip Hop and both were formerly probably much more familiar with an MPC (which Akai always seem to advertize using black musicians) than a modular synth.

So where is this discussion going? Well I think it tells me that modular synth, as a kind of gear and as a music that is made with it, is quite a narrow interest. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing, or even if you agree with this analysis, is, of course, your call to make. There was a recent discussion, started by a comment Richard Devine made about the sound of the new Behringer Deepmind 12 synthesizer, over whether there is such a thing as "the modular sound". Opinion was divided on that. Some agreed on kinds of sounds that were likely to be made by modulars (Devine himself referenced organic sounds with much movement within them if I remember correctly) whilst others wanted to say there was no such sound since a modular is so versatile it could not ever be reduced to a signature sound or sounds. And yet, if we open this out a little, it seems to be that there may be, at the very least, recurring topics and recurring sounds to accompany them. I've made mention of what I think they are (space, technology and science more generally) already. Modulars, it seems to me, lead their mostly white users down similar paths (ones that are soundscapes or bleepy bloops?). The question this makes me ask is "Is this creating a kind of narrow monoculture?" I find myself asking if an influx of people from other cultures and other musical traditions might not change the nature of the music made on modular synths. For avoidance of doubt, I don't think this would be a bad thing for I think we can all learn from each other.

If we look at music more generally we can see that certain kinds of people tend to make certain kinds of music. People progress in peer groups of like minds and like tastes. Often when one member of the group goes a certain way others notice and follow on. I put the whiteness of the modular synth grouping down to this in some respects. As I tried to show earlier, the black role models in this kind of music (or people of other, non-white ethnicities more generally) are almost totally lacking. We see this too in a gear context. A new module comes out. Someone famous gets it. You want it too. Anyone who follows modular synth forums knows which modules are the hot modules everyone is meant to have. I imagine most people reading this who have a modular system have the Make Noise Maths, for example! But these are cultural understandings that you need to be part of the group to get and I think its important, in some senses, to remember that modular synth is a culture in its own right. You do need to be an insider in many ways to fully partake of the interest itself. And that's where who makes up this community becomes interesting. For if its only one type of person, or very few types of people, then perhaps the whole is not being refreshed and energized by as many sources of potentially new ideas and thinking as it could be. 

Well, all this is just a thought. You may see my point but maybe you don't. I will sit on the sidelines and carry on observing, looking for interesting new developments and possible sub-cultures within the world of modular synthesis. I'd like to think that, as a community, we are capable of the new and of innovation and of going new ways and welcoming new kinds of people and not merely repeating the old ones or those of our heroes. It remains to be seen.




PS Since writing this blog its been brought to my attention that Richard Devine is actually of Asian descent. I obviously wasn't aware of this at the time of writing and no offence was meant by describing him above as white. I can only apologize for my ignorance.

Music Taste is Irrational!

If you had known me back in 2008 you would have met a different person to the man I am today. Back then, I worked a day job but at night I had a different employment for I was also a DJ. I specialized in parties and so I was expected to play the music of the mainstream... or "dance mixes" of the same music. I played a lot of what was (and might still be) called "Funky House". Even now, in some barely touched archive, I have about 160 mixes of music that I recorded from those times. Nearly every single one of those mixes, which I made live, is at 128 beats per minute, the sweet spot for dance music if you play House Music. Every one of the mixes is an incessant "four to the floor" beat from start to finish. Most of the tracks played appear to be made in computers and use computer instruments. (You can usually tell this if the sounds made seem to be things you couldn't easily play but would be easy to draw on a computer screen in some program.) I find it almost impossible to listen to any of these mixes today. The music seems cheesy and the mixes are monotonous. I ask myself, sometimes, how I ever could have listened to it at all. But when you are a DJ you have to give the people what they want or you don't last very long. Its a scenario which breeds monotony as people want the same thing and the same style repeated every time. I would go to the same Army camp, for example, and play pretty much the same tracks every month. Its what they wanted and that's what got me the gig and the money for doing it.  

Two things happened to me last night. One, I was asked by someone to review an album they had just released so I sent a message asking them to give me a few days. I then listened to it. Two, I was followed by someone on Twitter and I clicked the link to their album in their bio and listened to it as well. The first album, the one I'd been asked to review, I completely disliked. But, nevertheless, its the reason I am writing this blog. The music was samey and formulaic. It couldn't have been more written to a template if it had been written by a robot according to programming. The formula was to start the track with a bit of speech, preferably from "the hood" and spoken by someone of black origin (the album nominally fuses rap with noise, a prospect I was actually looking forward to as something different), before segueing unceremoniously into a number of minutes of harsh noise or what is known in the noise genre of music as a "noise wall". Every track was like this and there was no variation. If you had listened to one track then you had listened to them all. This lack of variation disappointed me but I suppose the composer or composers of the album find it to be a formula they like. And that's their business not mine. 

The second album, the one I idly clicked on the link to, was altogether different. It was what I would describe as "Indie pop electronics" which probably isn't a genre but is my description for what I heard. This music was varied and interesting and I listened to every sound from start to finish. I even tweeted the person concerned who had followed me in the first place to let them know I was enjoying their album (without reply). The music of this second album allowed me to dream as I lay there in the fading light of a Spring evening and think about the sounds I was hearing and how they fit together. The music was somewhat enchanting. This was much in distinction to the album I had been asked to listen to which closed down my imagination and made me wonder why anyone would make music like this at all. Its worth saying at this point that, in both cases, I had started listening with an open mind and without any preconceptions. This is a necessary skill, not least in my DJ background, as you will often be required to listen to things you don't like. I did so here.

So what's the point of mentioning all of this? Well, firstly, I was asked to review an album, the first one mentioned here, and so I wanted to do that as asked. But, having listened to it, I knew that I had a problem. I don't like the album, as should be clear by now, and so there was and is no way I could say that I do or, in weasel words, have mealy-mouthed things to say about it to cover over this fact. So, secondly, I needed an angle if I was going to write about this album at all. We are in the fourth paragraph of this blog already and I'm not entirely sure what this angle is yet. Hopefully, I find one before the end of the blog. However, I must admit that I've clicked on a few of my old DJ mixes from 8 years ago and the monotonous beat isn't doing so much for my mood!

But then its Baby D to the rescue! It seems I mixed in one or two good tracks amidst the constant dance megamixes! (The track is "So Pure" if you're interested.) So let's talk a little about musical taste. This is surely not a static thing either from person to person or within one person from time to time. A lot of the tracks I played 8-10 years ago I actually liked back then but now you couldn't force me to listen to them. I've moved on whereas they have stayed the same. They could not travel with me. You may have a similar story to tell about some style of music or group of tracks. But what is "musical taste" in the first place? I want to argue that it is irrational and cannot be explained in terms of reason or rationality. Why do you like something? You might be able to give a retrospective reason or follow a thought process which justifies your liking something after the fact. But you can't say that this reasoning occurred prior to you liking the thing. "Why" you like the thing is altogether more mysterious than this. It has to do with a number of things too. Your identity at that point in time, how you came across it and in what connection are certainly part of these things, as is how easily you are pressured into liking something in the first place. You may be a relatively easy-going person or a person with a very strong and defined sense of what is likeable or not.

Notice here that I am not using a vocabulary of good or bad. Indeed, I'm consciously avoiding it. There is no such thing as good or bad music. There is just sound. When you say something is good or bad all you mean is that you like it or you don't. It is your own personal and non-transferable stamp of approval or disapproval. So, therefore, whilst I can say that the album of "rap noise" that I heard did not find my own personal stamp of approval I cannot say it is either good or bad. I can talk about it (as I have above) and say what I liked or did not like about it but this never transfers into a binding description of it. I can't even tell you that if I listen to it again next week that I won't, at that time and place, then decide I like it! This phenomenon sometimes occurs with my own music. I make my music quite fast and in an improvised way. Often (very often) its a matter of snap judgments and I never really know if I like the finished piece because I haven't really had the chance to sit back and make that decision. Its only in the following days and weeks, when I do that sitting back and listening, that I can then hear what I have actually made in context. It is only then that I come to appreciate the sonic relationships between the things I recorded. Or not.

So I think that music taste is both irrational (or emotional) and personal. Its not anything anyone should get too over-excited about in terms of its importance. People like stuff and they don't. This is subject to change from person to person and from time to time. This is all fine. No need to call the Culture Cops or the Music Police. If you want to make or listen to songs that are a portion of rap and then 8 minutes of harsh noise then do it. I wish you well with it because I think that the vital thing in music and culture is variety. Ironically, to my mind, this is variety even where all the songs on the album are the same. Yes, its true I would see more scope for variation in the particular album I'm talking about here. (I still think that a more varied mash up of rap and noise would be a great idea for an album.) I make electronic albums with sound and noise too. But I need my sounds and noise to be more varied and more subtle. This binds no one else to do the same. Its just my personal choice. But, taking an overall view, it is good that this rap noise album exists. It offers another choice and its one that someone else may like. All tastes are equal so that's fair enough. There is no overarching catalog of tastes which ranks some as better and others as worse and neither is the democracy of the public a binding guide either. Because some song is Number 1 does not make it good or bind you to like it. 

I imagine that this was not the kind of album review that I was being asked for and, I have to say, its true that I used to do album reviews on a previous blog but stopped doing them because one over-sensitive soul took my honest review of his work very personally and decided I had slated his work when, in fact, all I had done was said what I liked and disliked about it (liking it overall). But there is no point doing a review unless it is honest. Like Aslan, I am not a tame lion. And this is not the music press here. I'm not here to show you what a pretentious writer I am and pontificate about what "great taste" I have using all the twirly prose I can muster. Indeed, if you've read this far you know that I think the concept "great taste" would make zero sense. There is just taste, a sense we all have, for very complicated reasons, of what we all each like and don't like. That's all it is and that's as far as it goes. All I can say about taste is that you should push the boundaries of yours and see how far they can stretch. I guarantee you will surprise yourself and these little surprises are what keep life interesting. (I've now hit some of my old mixes that are more underground and I'm tapping my toes!) For me music and culture is a matter of variety, of nuance and of bricolage. Sticking to one thing and repeating it would be the only "sin of taste" that I could criticize. 

For reference I will give you the details of the two albums I mentioned here:

The album I didn't like and was asked to review was "For Tha Dead Homiez" by Hood Cannibal on Harsh Noise Movement Records and can be heard HERE! 

The album I did like was "The Diet For Life (Eat Less)" by Z Lovecraft Presents DJ Thigh Gap and it can be heard HERE! 

Of course, my personal opinions are absolutely not relevant for you since your tastes will be completely different to mine. This is just one reason I think reviews are largely useless, a tool for the lazy based on some supposed authority or honor you give to the person giving the review. But I've never yet come across a reviewer who I admire so much that I give him or her the position of deciding what I will like. And neither should you!

PS As I finish up this blog I'm listening to a dance remix of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby"!!

PPS Since writing the blog I've received the following communication from Harsh Noise Movement Records which I quote word for word for sake of completeness: "Glad you like it! "... Dead Homiez" is a Harsh Noise album not a crossover. Its rap theme is purely a piss take. Nothing more."

Music as Identity

In my last blog I mentioned noise and noise in that blog was a kind of music. You may be one of those people who doesn't consider that noise is music but I would disagree with you. John Cage defined music as the arrangement of sound and silence so it seems to me that if you accept that noise is sound then any arrangement of it must also be music. This seems reasonable to me and those who make the kind of music I would call "noise" vary wildly in any case. Noise, for me, would extend from the abstract sound collages native to early 1970s "Kosmische" music to the glitchy "IDM" beats of Autechre to the ingrained, experimental, industrial randomness of Throbbing Gristle (and much else besides). Noise, for me, encompasses the abstract, the random, the non-standard, the unpredictable, the incoherent, the absurd. It is not merely shouting into a microphone whilst strumming your guitar with the volume on full - although it could be. Noise, in my estimation, is made by those who are very artistically involved and invested in the music they make. There is usually some overt point or purpose behind it. I would also argue that noise makers have a fascination with sounds and do not merely want to create unending variations of the same ones.

The recent history of my music-making goes something like this. In the Autumn of 2013 I returned to the UK from living in Berlin, Germany. I was at a low point and the music I made then was uninspiring and formulaic. About six months later, in the Spring of 2014, I began to emerge from this malaise by experimenting with metallic sounds. In this period I was still thinking kind of melodically and I made poignant tunes that were, perhaps, a hangover from the low point I had been at. It was in the Autumn of 2014 that my musical philosophy received a fresh influx of inspiration when I discovered two now constant and abiding influences. These were John Cage and Kosmische music. It was not so much the case that I liked this music (such a thing as musical taste is largely irrelevant) but more the case that these people had ideas about what music is at all in the first place. I was struck by the fact, in the case of the Kosmische musicians, that they expressly wanted to make a new music, a music that could be theirs, something that wasn't beholden either to a tradition or to totem figures of the past. This showed that music is part of a culture and that you place yourself inside a tradition when you make it. Music becomes about identity. It says who you are. With Cage it was very much his compositional attitude, approach and ideas that were key. Music is organizing sounds and silence, nothing more and nothing less. Isn't that just a refreshingly simple definition, something that sets you free as a musical creator?

The track Discipline by Throbbing Gristle is, for some, not the easiest thing to listen to. Feel free to listen to it on You Tube if you've never heard it before. It is charitably described as a vocalist shouting over sounds. I'm not going to tell you its the greatest song ever made but that's not the point anyway. The point for someone with an inquiring mind like me is why would someone make a song like that in the first place? This leads into another question which is why does anyone make a song the way they do? Everyone who makes music has forbears and knows of other music and so its true to say that everyone has influences. But it might not always be thought that musical writers have ideas or identity behind their music when they make it. I think they do. I think the music you make says something about you, who you see yourself as, where you think you fit in, what you want to be and how you see the world. I could at this point furnish lots of examples that I think make this point but I'll leave it to you to think about my suggestion for yourself instead. 

My point in mentioning this is because I want to encourage people to think both more widely and deeply about music in the first place. At one level music can just be taken as another composition that you either like or don't like. I increasingly find this shallow and you have my influences to thank for me thinking this way. Music has long been used to influence people however and not just at political rallies for mainstream candidates trying to hook you in with a catchy tune. Even if one thinks back to more primitive times music was used, for example in cultic rituals, to engender an atmosphere and create  a mood conducive to the activity concerned. One thinks of the Dionysian feasts in ancient Greek culture where revelers would whip themselves up into intoxicated frenzy. Music there helped to achieve this and had a purpose. I think that more often than we might like to admit music does have a purpose. Its incredibly narrow thinking to regard music as merely "entertainment". Its much more complicated than that. For example, did John Lennon write "Imagine" (which I think is the worst song ever made) to entertain or to make a point? At the very least it is a bit of both.

For me music is a lot of the things I've mentioned above. It is certainly something which says something about you. The kind of music you choose to make is a choice as are the conditions that you choose to make it under. This can demonstrate if you intend to be a person who wants to "fit in" or if you see yourself as an outsider. It can show that you want to be seen as part of one culture but not another. It can indicate if you regard yourself as traditional or avant garde. It can also show if you are content to use standard tropes or want to take a non-standard approach. My recent albums have very much been trying to fit into non-standard tropes, being abstract collages of sounds, often dissonant, that require the effort of listening to them as a whole to appreciate what I was trying to do. Here we do not talk about "good" and "bad" for these are superficial judgments of likes and dislikes and these things are of no importance. There is more to be said and to be heard about music than if you personally happen to like it or not in the moment you hear it. I wonder, for example, if you ever purposely listen to forms of music that you don't like to think about why you don't like them? This is something I have done and its helped me to formulate what I think music is and what its for by doing it. I think that music is something that can be learned about and in listening to it you learn about yourself, others, and the world. The thought here, again, is that music is about much more than either entertainment or your likes and dislikes.

This, I think, is why my own music has inevitably become more random, non-standard, abstract and self-conscious about use of sounds right up to today with my last two albums, Texture and Adrift, being first and foremost sound collages. They invite you to a world outside of pop music, rock music, mainstream tropes, standard sounds, things that would sound nice on the radio or something that you would listen to at a family gathering. They are albums which demand attention on their own terms and for many that might be too big of an ask, something too jarring to contemplate. Of course, having said what I've said above, you would imagine they also say plenty about me and how I see the world. That's very true. But I'd turn that back on my readers and ask what does the music you make and/or listen to say about you and how you see the world? Listening back to my album Texture, as I am as I write this blog, I'm struck how very much like Kosmische music it really sounds. If you told me it was from 1971 by someone with a German sounding name I'd believe you. I say this not to take pride in the fact but to note how much my recent influences have insidiously taken me over. I didn't set out thinking "My album must sound like Kosmische music". And yet it does and it makes me jump to realize it. I then note that I do identify with the purposes and use of sounds that those people had who made that kind of music did. I see myself being influenced by my appreciation of the world and then writing blogs that try to influence it back.

A question occurs to me at this point: does any of this matter? Does it matter what music you make, what music you like? On the one hand, no, it doesn't. But people act as if it does. More than once I've stupidly got involved in arguments about what music is good and what music is bad. But this is absurd. No music is inherently good and no music is inherently bad. Its all a matter of taste and taste is a matter of identity. People get heated about whether you like this or that because they have invested some of themselves in the judgments they have made about things. To say this song I cherish is rubbish is, in a way, to say that you think I am. And vice versa. Music is sometimes portrayed as this trivial thing that is commercial, disposable and throwaway. These days there are stories almost every day of how it is now a valueless commodity that many people won't even pay for, either as consumers or as those who want music for their projects but won't pay musicians to provide it. Something is certainly going on there but, argument after trivial argument on the Internet shows, people are still very much invested in music and particularly in what they consider as their music. Music is a matter of identity, it is a personal and cultural marker.

So, since this is my personal blog, what of me? Well, I'm happy to keep on being the non-standard, dissonant, abstract, non-conventional person I seem eager to be. I've stopped chasing likes, follows and downloads. Believe it or not I did once try to be a person who made music people would like! Thank the non-existent gods I saw the light on that one! The music I made then was lame, insipid shit. Making music to please an audience is a hateful business. You must be yourself. Authenticity is key. Now I just think that my music is there. Listen or don't. My music is and always has been a musical statement of something more than pitches and scales and as I write I think its getting more interesting as time passes by. "Being interesting" is my musical threshold in making an album and since I make it for me then if it interests me that is the standard. All I can hope after that is that it maybe interests one or two others as well. I make music that is a journey and an experience. It is for listeners to decide if its a journey they want to take and an experience they want to have. Even if its not I hope my blog today encourages my readers to think a bit more about any music they make or listen to and that they ask themselves wider questions because of it.

My music is available at https://elektronischeexistenz.bandcamp.com/