Its Time To Talk About Synthesizers and Sound

A few things floating around in the atmosphere prompt me to write today's blog which is to be about synthesizers and sound. Within the community of folks interested in these subjects there are all kinds of people. Some of these people are worth listening to and many are not. Just as some simply want to be popular, others are more thoughtful and purely artistic. Now the website Sonicstate.com recently published an article called Synthesis Innovation: Are You Sure We Can Handle It? in which the writer made the point that its not actually that easy to design a new synth that breaks new ground. We are, so the point was made, trapped in our conventional understandings of sound and synthesis. And, then again, if someone did make something new we might not like it... because its new and unfamiliar. People, in general, like what they know. This is very true in music and very relevant to Sonicstate.com which publishes a lot of gear reviews (mostly synths) and often the opinions given of anything new or a bit different are critical seemingly, to my mind, because the reviewer is a bit set in his ways. He wants something he knows it seems to me. Yes Nick Batt, I do mean you.

But regardless of the trials and tribulations necessary to create a new, groundbreaking synthesizer, something most of us will never be involved in anyway, there is a further question about new sound. And in the comments under this article the discussion turned more towards that. This is something I'm very interested in both as a music maker myself and as the host of the Electronic Oddities Podcast in which I often purposefully look for music no one has ever heard before and make a podcast out of it. I am greatly satisfied by doing this because, first of all, its exactly about finding something I've not heard before. Its about the refreshment that comes from something new. And I love this feeling that this music I'm hearing is not familiar, not using all the hackneyed old tropes and not something that could be played on TV or radio outside a dedicated show called "alternative" or something like that. A lot of this music is never going to be popular and certainly not mainstream. But that is its attraction. Its the attraction of the different. Its a counter culture. It is here you go if you want new, different, other, wild, crazy, alternative or strange.

But yet when discussing this with regular folk such as one might find in public forums I become very frustrated because most people do not think this way. To most people music is a tune about 4 minutes long with singing involved if possible. This is the kind of music that is "commercial", the kind that "pays the bills". But, I ask myself, what has music got to do with paying bills? Well for some people, I admit, it has a lot to do with it. But this isn't necessarily so. Music is just arranged sound and silence at the end of the day and money has nothing to do with it. One respondent to the article I mentioned talked about the stock sounds that come with synthesizers and made the point that such sounds are used by "successful producers". But is being a "successful producer" a musical ambition or a commercial one? The two are not the same thing. Being a "successful producer" is what I would call setting the musical bar as low as humanly possible. There is a reason most successful musical acts are not known for their musical innovation. Of course, a few slip through the net. They manage to combine innovation and creativity with popularity. But mostly not. They are the front for a bank of producers and 15 song writers. In my view most really exciting and interesting music has barely even been heard. And you have to find it yourself.

Now synthesizers are merely devices for making sounds. But it seems that often they make the same or similar ones. Of course, this problem will get exponentially worse as time passes because people will have more opportunity to make noises with them and they will, inevitably, tend to go down similar paths. There is a whole conventionality about this that I have already referred to and this becomes an issue if you want something new or different. Its for this reason that I have been a fan of modular synthesis, especially the Eurorack format, because here the building blocks of sound are broken down into hundreds of possible individual modules. No one manufacturer has any idea to what use you will put their creation or with what other elements you will combine it. The very format itself is, thus, pregnant with sonic possibilities. So I tend to think that when a new or "groundbreaking" synth is being discussed or pined for on synth forums that maybe people are missing the point. This new synth you want is right in front of your eyes. You just need to build it. It can be made of whatever is out there and these elements can be combined in any way you please. The results will be, at best, a fantastically exciting world of possibility. You just need to make the effort to create it. Surely this is an area in which "new" sounds can be discovered?

           A custom modular synth made by Latvian company, Erica Synths

I don't know what kind of music you regularly listen to but in the music I listen to, so-called experimental, noise, various kinds of ambient, avant-garde, IDM, etc., (all electronic) I hear lots of new, different and interesting sounds all the time. I firmly believe its not that there are no new sounds left to find, its that most people are just conventional, boring and totally unimaginative (music makers and listeners). "New sounds" generally won't be found in pop songs, chart music or things for general consumption. So if this is your musical diet I suggest you look elsewhere. And let me say that here "noise" is only a tiny part of what I'm talking about. "Sound design" is what I'm really talking about, the creation of atmospheres, ambiences and textures. Such music, and it is music, is as old as commercial synthesizers. I can refer you to records from 1969-1970 using synthesis to do just this. Those who read this blog or listen to my podcasts will know of examples of it that I've referred to before. Some synthesists, those I would characterize as at the more artistic end of the spectrum, have always wanted to make such music. You will note, of course, that in synthesizer music history there are instrumental synth albums that have sold in 8 figures (such as Oxygene by J-M Jarre). But then we need to remember never to confuse "good music" with "popularity". I make a weekly podcast of electronic music that showcases lots of never heard artists happy to just make their own thing unconcerned by popularity, fame or "what music makers want from instruments" which is a shorthand for the needs of boring, gigging musicians who wouldn't know creativity or originality if it left teethmarks in their backsides. If you produce for a mass market then you are inevitably compromised by that same market. Popular artists who make their "experimental" record often experience a dip in popularity as a result. And then go back to their formula for popularity.

The problem here is that nearly everyone is happy to reproduce something that they heard before. Very few are unhappy with that and want to be completely different. I've lost count of the unsigned bands and artists who say they sound (and often advertise themselves as sounding) like somebody else you might have heard of. I sit there thinking "WHAT?" If you sound like somebody else then I might as well go and listen to them instead. Its fair to say that originality is not often in vogue with many. People are too conventional to be different. We see this also with the sounds that are put into synths, both the hardware and software varieties. These get used by multiple people so that the sounds become known. This is not necessarily all bad if you happen to like the particular sound but music is something, I think, which always needs to keep being refreshed. It is a human failing that it is all too easy to be lazy but in music it can also be rewarding to do everything yourself. Anyone who has a synthesizer has a device that can be used in multiple ways with the sole purpose of creating sounds. And these devices do not necessarily have to be used as intended either. The whole genre of Acid House comes from a use and abuse of the Roland TB-303, for example. This device was originally put out by Roland as a relatively tame accompaniment device for people who played other things. It allowed you to not have a bassist. But in the hands of inventive people it became the lead instrument for bass heavy dance music. These same inventive people, I think, are drawn to modular synthesis too because such people are driven by an artistic desire for the new or different. Their polar opposite, to my mind, are those who want to design a patch memory system for modular synths which, up until this point, have no way to save the sounds you make on them. Once the patch cords are removed your sound is gone. THAT IS A GOOD THING!! The problem is that even new things eventually become ossified over time. Roland itself now remakes its old instruments in digital format (including the TB-303 now reborn as the TB-03) and sells them as a standard.

You are probably getting my point here that this comes down to a matter of mentality. It comes down to what music is for you. If its to make a career or to appease people commissioning music well then you have to give them what they think they want. These are limitations and, depending on your attitude to these things, maybe ones that are too much for you. But if you have more artistic freedom and a mind to wander then you are free to roam wider, disconnected from the need to appease anybody or anything but your own desire to roam across sonic landscapes and textures. This is what I do when I make my podcasts. These are good because they are not reliant on one person or their creative impulses. You can mix and match the tastes of many. But I must warn you Spotify-infested hordes that finding something new or different takes effort. It can't just be served up to you by some commerce monkey in a playlist. A big problem with this is how music is heard in the first place. You can search for yourself, a time-consuming process, and you will certainly find new, different and interesting things. But the vast majority don't search at all. They want to be spoon-fed whatever the mainstream gives them. Then they complain there's nothing new. Well of course there isn't! Those who make money out of selling music do so by serving up the same, the safe things, what people know. They wouldn't offer you something new and avant-garde. So my point is its up to listeners to seek out new and interesting music. It is out there.

People, of course, have differing tastes. They always will. And none of this matters. We should know by now that there is no "good music" and no "bad music". There is only music I like now and music I don't. And even that may change for people's tastes can change. Those tastes are also not coherent or logical. I like glitchy IDM music but my childhood has also bequeathed me a love of some of the hits of Englebert Humperdinck (ask your parents or grandparents). I didn't choose to like any of this music. I just did. The fact is it doesn't matter what you like or why. There is nothing special and nothing to be gained by liking one thing over another. Its all just music. That said, the whole point of this blog has been that if you want new, as the original article I referred to was about, then you will only find new sounds as a music maker or new sounds as a music listener by either making them or searching to find them. There is no shortcut. You will get out in proportion to what you put in.

You have only yourself to blame.

Postscript

One man who I think knew all this was the recently deceased synthesizer designer and engineer, Don Buchla. He created many instruments, beginning in the 1960s, which were aimed to create new types of electronic music. He did many unconventional things at the time, such as not attaching a musical keyboard to many of his instruments, which forced their users to go a different way about creating electronic sound. He was a man who refused to compromise design for popularity. (Bob Moog, who was also a pioneering synthesizer designer, did add keyboards to his instruments and received many more plaudits - and sales - as a result.) He inspired not only many electronic musicians but many electronics engineers who now incorporate designs he inspired into their own electronic devices and so his legacy of innovation continues today beyond his own life span. He will be much missed. RIP Don.

Music and Genre

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of genres in music. This is a silly statement. For I can say that I like ska music, the acid sound, EBM, kosmische music, sound art, and some other things and these are all genres of music. Genres are musical sub-cultures that share some recognizable features, helpful ways to group certain sounds together and hopefully in a descriptively useful way that cuts some ice and actually helps the users of the term to know what is being talked about. The problem, however, is that often this isn't the case at all and especially if you haven't experienced a musical genre from the inside. Another problem is that genres can become more narrowly and narrowly defined. What, for example, is Aggrotech and how is it different from EBM or electro-industrial? I admit to being completely at a loss. I recently read a comment talking about "Black Ambient". I have no idea what that is or how it might be different from "Dark Ambient" which is another genre label I have come across. I admit that I ask myself if any perceived difference matters. What use is a term that doesn't have wide currency anyway? Using it doesn't help because in order to understand its meaning you'd need to experience the difference yourself.

So there is an issue with increasingly narrow sub-genres. These operate more as identifiers for insiders than instantly recognizable labels for the masses. Such labels aren't always welcome either. Some musicians don't want to be nailed down to one label or genre. Recently I put up a podcast in my Electronic Oddities series formed around Electroclash music. When I do a genre show I always try to formulate in my head a compact description of what I think this genre is trying to encapsulate. I included Ladytron in that podcast even though Ladytron have, in the past, refused the Electroclash tag. But I noticed that some others regarded their sound as fitting within the genre and so I included them. The song I picked doesn't sound out of place so maybe it was a good decision. But I can understand Ladytron's point.

Of course, for some people identifying with a particular genre might be important to them. These people set out to fit in with a genre and its important to them they are recognized as this sound. One example here is Noise Music, especially Harsh Noise. This is just a noise wall with barely any variation between tracks or bands. But it is a distinctive and definable sound and some simply want to join in making it. Another example might be EDM. EDM is a very produced (some would say over produced) and polished form of dance music made with a computer. It has a recognizable sound that separates it out from rawer forms of dance music. EDM is very popular and lots of music makers who already have computers are very keen to make it. They all sound the same so its not hard to miss. But this is where my problem with genre starts to raise its head.

My problem with genre is that it is limiting. As a musician I would hate to think people can use one word to describe what it is I do. I'd regard it as an insult and myself as a failure if that was the case. I guess my own self-image is that, musically, I have more strings to my bow than just sounding one way. Now some people want to sound one way. That's up to them. I'd regard it as not overly interesting though as once you've heard a song or two what more is there really to listen to? You've heard what this person or people do and you aren't going to get anymore variety than that. This is a silly statement too. There are plenty of acts I've heard and liked in my life who really only sound one way and I have no problem with them at all. If you like a certain sound then you like it. But I'm trying to get at something more than this. There are also experimental groups that I like. These have more of an unpredictability about them and I like them for that fact. These groups avoid categorization, which is what putting musicians in genres really is, and I like that idea. I don't want to be categorized myself. "Experimental" is a good tag for this and some people use the term as a genre term too. But "experimental" tells you next to nothing about what someone is going to sound like. 

Recently I came across another genre discussion that revolved around "the modular sound". This, so it is assumed, is the sound made by modular synthesizers. This discussion was started off by the famous modular synth user, Richard Devine, when he commented in one of the first teaser videos for the new Behringer Deepmind 12 synth that it sounded "very modular". Hannes Pasqualini wrote an excellent piece about this comment and if "the modular sound" even exists and you can read that HERE! and you should read it for its an interesting discussion of if this sound even exists and, if so, what it is. In the article Devine himself was very clear that he thinks there is such a sound, its a sound that is "organic and changing constantly". I know exactly what he means by this. I myself would probably have mentioned a sound that involved constantly changing modulations, a sense of movement and a feeling of being a musical organism, you can hear all the parts working in their place but it somehow all feels as if it is a unified whole. I note, however, that in the Facebook discussion where I found reference to Pasqualini's article there were a few people quite adamant that there was no such thing as "the modular sound". They emphasized the possibilities of the machine and argued this meant there was no such sound. But if when I mentioned "the modular sound" ideas of what that might be came into your head then maybe the phrase denotes something after all. (I note that much "modular music" one may hear is brief jams that people make for videos they put online. This phenomenon itself contributes to a modular sound in that it is so-called "noodling".)

Of course, I turn all these genre discussions back upon myself for, like many musicians, I want to be able to describe what it is I do. In this connection "the modular sound" is interesting to me not least because, over the years, sometimes people have said to me that some of my music sounds very "modular" or "analog" (not the same thing of course!) when the truth has usually been that the songs they were hearing were made entirely in software. I often do set out to try and ape a certain sound though (or I just find one that reminds me of something) and so the comments that I got, quite innocently and honestly, confirmed in me some measure of success and that, yes, there are people out there who associate certain sounds with certain equipment. I often deliberately muddy these waters too because I've often lied to people who have asked me what I used to make something. This, please understand, was not from any malicious intent. It was more mischievous in that I have noticed people make judgments based on what they think you have used. I merely wanted to disrupt these, to me, invalid judgments and make the listener return once more to the sound they are hearing. Musicians, especially of the electronic variety, can be very snobbish or judgmental about equipment and I simply wish to not play that game. Comment on what you hear not what was used to make it when listening to music is the focus!

Now I think there's ample reason to say that my music is not one thing. I might sometimes call it "experimental" but this is a relative term. Experimental to who exactly? One person's experiment is another's "I've heard this before". I think what I'd actually like to be is a genre of one: "music that sounds like me". No one else can sound like me if I allow my personality to shine through what I do for no one else is me. This is my technique and I try to make music containing that spark of uniqueness, that brings that little bit of me to the fore. This, of course, will not tell you what I sound like. But, as I've tried to explain, part of me is resistant to genre labels in the first place. You get to know what I sound like by listening to me. And this is surely the point of music anyway. If it can be explained away by a genre label it removes the need to listen to it. So I try not to fit in with genre and I try to be varied so that what I do cannot be crammed into the same musical box. That said, my music has taken a turn this year in what, to date, doesn't seem like such a vintage year to me. My music often reflects the world I see around me and is, in some sense, an expression of this. Yesterday I lay trying to come up with words to describe it. I got

1. Noisy

2. Abstract

3. Atonal

4. Bricolage

Now this isn't a genre and that's good. In practice a lot of my output this year, which has increasingly used random sounds I have found online (a notable change in content from former years), has been unpleasant noise, messy and sterile. These are aesthetic judgments by me, its maker. But it has served a purpose for I have seen the world destroying itself, chaos rising and things politically, socially and culturally making less and less sense. Would not noisy, abstract, atonal bricolage be the music for a world that was like this? It seems that I have thought so. Of course, I have to be the kind of musician I am for this to be so. Some musicians, it seems, start off with an idea in their head. They then try to recreate this idea in sound. But I am not like that. I never start with an idea. Instead, I start with a musical situation. This compromises instruments, sounds and, primarily, thoughts and feelings about non-musical subjects. In effect, before I begin I collect a pool of things that I am going to use. The way I make music is then to filter the instruments and sounds through the thoughts and feelings. My music, however abstract, is always about some idea or feeling and success is articulating that in sound. So I regard my genre as sounding like me for my music is what I think and feel in sound.

I find this way of doing things much more authentic than following some genre. But there will be others who want to do exactly that and that is their choice. As I've already intimated, my thoughts on genre aren't consistent anyway - and nor need they be. There are good and bad things about genre and we aren't required to have merely one thought about the subject. What is much more important is finding your own way and finding a sound that you truly identify with (from a musician's point of view). 

The Electronic Oddities Podcast, which often features differing musical genres, can be found at https://www.mixcloud.com/DrExistenz/ 

My music, whatever it might be made with (and I'm not telling!), can be found at https://elektronischeexistenz.bandcamp.com/ 

Exploiting R2-D2

A big subject amongst creative people in the digital age is the subject of piracy and, more specifically, of stealing in general. Barely a day goes past without some example of artistic theft being brought to public attention whether this be someone lifting songs from a Soundcloud account and then blatantly passing them off as their own, photographs being used or modified in an uncredited way or people being asked to use their creative gifts for free. It can rightly be said, with little hyperbole, that the creative impulses of human beings are constantly and consistently being exploited by other people for their own gain and sometimes for their monetary profit. Indeed, so insidious and constant is this tendency these days that it has become thoroughly normalized. People see artistic work as something of little worth that can be had for free. Its often pointed out that artists suffer because of this due to their inability to support themselves from creative lifestyles. Its logically possible to take the view that every act of theft or expectation of something for free contributes to this mentality regardless of how trivial or inconsequential you may regard any individual example as being. I should point out, before I carry on, that I don't have clean hands here. I live in exactly the society I've described and am prey to the same dubious impulses. So today's blog is not holier than thou. I'm just as guilty as the next person. I've also been the victim of theft. On Soundcloud my entire set of music, over 60 tracks, was stolen and put up elsewhere for money in 2010. Last year I became aware that a Russian account was routinely downloading my Bandcamp tracks and making them available on a Russian website. This is routine and normal for many.

The reason I discuss all this is because last night whilst idling through my Twitter timeline I came across someone advertising a T shirt he had made. As I sometimes but certainly not always do (I expect like everyone else), I went to have a look at the product he was selling. It was a T shirt with the image of R2-D2 from Star Wars on it. R2-D2 had been coloured in. It wasn't a bad T shirt. I can imagine that some people would want to buy it. But the question that came into my head immediately and, I admit, not at first totally seriously was "Has this image been licensed from George Lucas/Disney?" Now, of course, R2-D2 is not this guy's artistic creation. Its someone else's and certainly held by some body or entity as their's to artistically license and exploit for profit as they see fit. Of course, neither this person nor the online record label he is attached to and selling this product through had even so much as broached this question in the process of their activities. The impression I got from their responses was that there was seemingly no problem here. The artist concerned gave me the argument that Lucas and Disney were rich enough (so this somehow makes it OK) and the online record label sent back a sarcastic picture apparently intimating I was getting my panties in a bunch over nothing. So, according to these two, both of whom are seemingly reluctant to even acknowledge that this is fairly obvious stealing, there's no problem here. Stealing someone else's design is fine. You don't even need to question yourself over what you are doing.

Now, as I said last night to the person concerned, this isn't my fight. It is, in the parlance of our times, no skin off my nose. George Lucas and Disney are both indeed staggeringly rich. I don't really care more than those involved here if they lose a few dollars they might have otherwise gotten if this had been done properly. And its also true that I'm no one's moral police. As I stated above, when I started this conversation I wasn't even doing so totally seriously. I suppose I raised the issue to find out the response. It was a heuristic question to attempt to find out the attitude at work here. The artist selling the T shirt gave the reply that the creators/owners of the property were rich enough already and the record label said they would stop if Lucas or Disney complained. Neither answer is good enough and anyone reading this as well as those concerned knows it. But apparently its difficult for some to admit this even with their hands in the till and their pants pulled down on camera for all to see. As I said at the start, such activity has become ingrained and normalized. The idea "I want to use something so I just will" is there in the midst of us and its not going away anytime soon. 

However, its not always universal. I'm aware of another artistic person on my Twitter timeline who recently wanted to use some music from the artist Moby. As I understand it he wanted to do some work on a set of ambient music he had put online, I think for free ironically enough, and then put it out on his own account. It transpired that this musician had gone so far as to contact Moby or his management directly to see if he was allowed and able to do this. I admit that, when I learned about this, I flinched inwardly a little. If Moby had dumped this online for free then why ask at all? Surely it could be taken as read it was OK to use the material? By highlighting the issue with those concerned it could only really go badly if they said no, right? And, besides, Moby would likely never find out anyway. My artist friend is not the most popular musician in the world, as he himself would admit, albeit he should probably be more popular than he is. If he went and did whatever he wanted with Moby's music the chances of Moby finding out in the vast jungle of the Internet is extremely negligible. I expect this latter belief is at the heart of what the person with the R2-D2 T shirt and his record label think too. They don't expect those who really own the image will find out. No harm, no foul, right?

So why did this become such as issue for me that I wrote a blog about it? I can't really say but I think its the exploitation at the heart of the issue that tweaks my moral nipples so that I can't ignore it. What I've discussed here is blatant stealing however those at the heart of the matter want to avoid, belittle or ignore the fact. They are both in the wrong and guilty of artistic theft and exploitation. So Lucas and Disney, or whoever actually owns the image if R2-D2, are probably mega-rich and its doubtful they will miss the few dollars they might have made. But that's not the issue. I'm certainly not raising this out of concern for their bank balance. I'm raising this as a way of asking if stealing is OK now. What do you think? Is stealing OK? Does it matter? Are there consequences from the idea that I can decide for myself on a case by case basis if I should be allowed to steal? The conventional attitude is certainly "No harm, no foul". But, like many conventions, is that valid? What are the ramifications for people just deciding for themselves whether they should steal or not? Is it OK in society if we just become laws unto ourselves? Sure, this is hardly the crime of the century but, as one supermarket chain here is fond of saying, "every little helps". Every little supposedly inconsequential act goes onto the fire and helps it burn that little bit brighter. It all contributes to the mentality "Stuff is free if I want it to be". I have asked the record label concerned if its OK if I download and sell their entire music catalog as my own now. I don't expect it is but that's exactly what hypocrisy is. As I reported above, apparently the problem with hypocrisy is that I'm in the wrong for getting my panties in a bunch about it.

Now this T shirt issue would still be wrong if they gave the T shirt away for free. But at least then those concerned wouldn't be openly seeking to profit from the skill, work and ideas of others. Currently, they are. That's their choice and their problem if, by some miracle, things ever went tits up. What I refuse to accept, however, is that it doesn't matter. Its not "a bit of fun" as the record label wrote back to me. Getting money for nothing surely might be fun for them but all it does for the rest of us, in its own tiny, barely measurable way, is corrupts public morality. Maybe that doesn't matter either.

But isn't that merely the thin end of a particularly nihilistic wedge?

So What Are You Really Making Music For?

I've repeated many times over the years that I hate advertising myself. There is something about it that just makes me curl up into a ball inside and squirm. I have become a naturally private person. I value being left alone and anonymity. I want to be left to my own devices because my chief ability, I think, is having ideas. Left alone I can have these ideas and try and make something of them without interference from other concerns. My idea of hell is to be famous. I literally cannot think of anything worse. I would go crazy very quickly if I was constantly getting requests or comments about not just the things I do but me myself as well. But you're probably wondering what the problem is as you sit there reading this. Surely, you're thinking, there is no danger of me becoming famous anyway? You're right to think this because there isn't. And even if there was I'd probably stamp on it as soon as I noticed it anyway. I've done the fame/money equation in my head a few times and I think the money would not be worth the fame.

My name is Andrew and I make electronic music. I put this music online and, to some, this suggests that I want attention, for it if not for myself. Up until now I would have reluctantly agreed with you. As a girlfriend of mine once remarked, "Why are you putting it online if you don't want people to like it?" This may seem a reasonable question to you and you may think she had a point. I am a fairly prodigious producer of music. Over 3,000 tracks in hundreds of albums in 8 years is my guesstimate for my latest spurt of activity. Pretty much all of that has been online at one time or another. Most of it now isn't save for my latest new album, not yet one week old, and two albums of "greatest hits" that I have let stand on my Bandcamp account as examples of pieces of music I am most proud of. But I find myself asking again why it is there at all.

I had a thought the other day which was pre-meditated by the fact that my new album, U8, received zero attention in the first two or three days it was online. I don't garner much attention really but zero attention is just as rare. I can usually expect a few plays and maybe five downloads for anything I do. If the stars align maybe an album will hit ten or even twenty downloads. The things that get more are rare exceptions. But there are exceptions. I have one album this year with ninety five downloads. It occurred to me in the moment I recognized my latest work had produced no attention that, actually, I was now free, free of having to make music that somebody else, somebody out there, might like. I started to ask myself, yet again, why I'm making this music and if making this music for reasons other than to count my plays and downloads was enough. I had an allied thought too. I considered that if I liked music by some third party then I wouldn't care who else liked it or how popular it was. In that case it would be wholly good enough that I liked it. So why couldn't this be good enough or sufficient with my own music too?

OK, I admit that everyone wants to be popular. Everyone wants to feel loved, liked and appreciated. Why does social media have like and favorite buttons if not to garner cheap appreciation for things you post? But what does it say about the person who finds self-worth in such things? I'd like to believe very much that I'm not so easily pleased. So, to get back to my conundrum, I ask myself again why it can't be good enough that I like my music. I think that now, having had the insight of no plays or downloads, it can be. I'm fairly realistic about my own music, I think. Its not all at the same level and the way I work means that its only in retrospect that I can sift and filter the better from the worse, the stuff that grows from the things that fade. All my music passes a basic "instinct" test I give it before I put anything online and that test is to ask if I'd want to be associated with it. But, over time, I can figure out the really good bits from the rest. My album A Maze of Electronic Sounds is seventy bits of music over eight years that is "better" than the rest. Time has helped me make that decision and I think every track of that album is fantastic. The album currently has twenty one downloads. But I don't care. I play tracks from it every day and it eases my path through this vale of tears called life. Job done.

Of course, there's more to it than that, especially if I want to be seen as some kind of artist and appreciated not simply for "product" but for having a set of skills or abilities or insights. Does the idea of this tickle my vanity? Yes, of course. This plays into ideas of identity and self-worth again. I am a human being. I have a human psychology. People want to feel appreciated and appreciated for definite reasons. My self-image is of an artistic creator. Now its extremely rare that anyone will comment on my music. This is partly my fault in that I've deliberately put it somewhere people cannot comment as they listen. Someone who wanted to comment to me about my music would have to go to the lengths of deliberately going to my social media and expressly addressing a comment to me. It seems that for almost everyone this is a step too far. I've had bad commenting experiences in the past. I made the mistake of putting work some years ago on You Tube and let's just say that You Tube has no filter when it comes to commenters. Some very hurtful things were said which, being the person I am, it was hard to get past. When thinking about comments its strange that we always imagine only good ones. But some are more than ready to give you both barrels without thoughts of consequences. 

The thing is that we usually take what we do very seriously and we imagine that others will too. But to others what we do might be a joke. Are we ready to hear that? What we do is for us often a very personal matter. In my case this is very true. My musical work is basically a narrative about my life experience in sound. It is "honest not good" as I have phrased it on my Bandcamp biography. To criticize it is basically to criticize my experience and say there is something wrong with it. So, for me at least, there are stakes involved here. I imagine this is true for other musicians, painters, poets and all types of artistic people too. But this only makes me go back and ask myself the "What I am doing this for?" question all over again. It makes me ask what role "the general public" have in this scenario. Do I need other people to value my experience of life expressed in sound? No, I don't. My experience is what it is whether you like or agree with it or not. And all genuine experience is valid as well. So I don't need anyone to say that what I did has any validity. The fact I did it is all the validity it will ever need.

So I find myself thinking that I need to start seeing my own music like someone else's. If I like it that's good enough. No one else's validation is needed. Its perfectly fine for it to be my secret if that's what it is to be. It can be like that record you hear which no one else has and it feels a little special to you because of that. If the music has its effect on me then its work is done. As I write I'm listening to my track "Sad Song" from the album Lousy Marketing Strategy. This track always gets under my skin. Not only is it one that I actually play keyboards on (rare), but it expresses perfectly my own sense of melancholy that I carry with me everywhere. Yet, at the end of this track, a dance breaks out. It, thus, tells me a little story about myself. No one else has this relationship with this piece of music for no one else realizes or experiences this. It occurs to me now so strongly that this is enough. It doesn't need to be appreciated by others or seen for what it is by someone else. Every time I hear this track it tells me this story of myself again. That is its work and it does it well. 

And yet, even after all this realization, I still feel pangs of vanity. "This is all true but, still, if a few people liked it and told you how great it was that would be OK, no?" I suppose it would. But its neither necessary nor sufficient. If I made music just so someone else would tell me they liked it (assuming I could even do such a thing) then I would feel so hollow and fraudulent thereafter. I'm only making music at all to give expression to my experience of life. It absolutely must be true to that or the process of making and listening would be a destructive one for me personally. I suppose this leaves the question hanging in the air of its worth to other people. Apparently, that worth is not much. I cannot say I have any fan, not one that I'm overtly aware of anyway. Clearly some few people are in that five people who seem to download most things I do. Thank you if that's you. Its just that I think I need to make sense of my music without factoring in outside influences. To be prey to "likes and faves" is to be a cork in an ocean I do not control. I'd rather make sense of what I'm doing in a more stable atmosphere if that's at all possible. The world is fluctuating enough already as it is. Indeed, as Nietzsche knows well, all things are flux. (Nietzsche himself, I'm reminded, was not popular in his own lifetime. His books sold only a few hundred copies each. He would be amazed at what a philosophical superstar he has become. And probably also appalled.)

I don't know what this means for the future or whether I will just stop putting music online. I've been less than motivated recently. However, the Bandcamp counters don't lie: I know how many plays I get and how many of those are barely 30 seconds of my track that might be fifteen minutes long! Do I really need the distraction of that in my life like some silent, anonymous critique of my art's worth? Is it true that it would be better not to know? Of course, there may be those reading this who are thinking "No, don't take your music away, blah, blah, blah....". But you already know my reply to this: if you value it then why isn't it being listened to and downloaded? Now I'm coming across like some bitter and disappointed fellow who is sad because no one likes his music. But, truly, I'm not sad at all. Quite the opposite. I know my music's worth to me. I know how hearing it back tells me things about myself, how it helps me explain my experience of the world and that is a huge help to me. The rest of you listeners out there don't even enter into this equation. Other listeners are, as it were, a side issue.

As I finish writing this blog it occurs to me that there was one comment a couple of years back that really did touch me. It was by someone who has now sadly died and he was a musician himself. A couple of years ago in 2014 I made a track called "Lament for Existenz". It was as emotional and melancholic as you might imagine from that title. This other musician, a young man half my age, went out of his way to tell me that this track really touched him. It meant a lot to me that he did that because, knowing a little about him, I knew that he had health issues of his own and so knew something of the personal struggles that life can bring. So I felt, upon hearing his comment, that, somehow, my track had managed to communicate to a like mind. I've always remembered that I treasured this about the track whenever I hear it again. I suppose I hope that this is what my music can do for others as well. But I'm not doing it for that reason. It was touching to know that I had created something that someone else could feel though. Because most of all I think I'd like to believe that what I'm communicating in my music is something real. Because if its real then who cares what anyone else thinks?

Stranger Things

This is a blog about the recent Netflix show, Stranger Things. If you have no interest in this subject then this blog might not be for you. The blog will contain spoilers so if you still want to see the show in a virgin state without any fore-knowledge of what will happen then you should read no further. 

Stranger Things is an 8 part Netflix TV show set in 1983 in Hawkins, Indiana. It is deliberately, knowingly and consciously made so as to reflect numerous cultural references to this time and is set up by some as "Spielberg TV". This label will give viewers a clue as what to expect if they've seen anything from Close Encounters to Poltergeist to E.T: The Extraterrestrial. The show is Sci-Fi with tinges of horror although I must admit I was never once scared and I am something of a softy when it comes to watching horror. The acting cast is largely unknowns (to me at least) but Winona Ryder takes a leading part, another link to strange 80s Sci-Fi-Horror since she was in Beetlejuice. The other actor I recognized was Matthew Modine, who plays a shady government character carrying out experiments of dubious legality.

The plot, in general terms, is about a boy who goes missing near a secret government facility where dark and dangerous experiments are carried out. His young friends, strongly reminiscent of The Goonies for you 80s buffs, resolve to find him as does his mother (Winona Ryder), his brother and the town Chief of Police, Jim Hopper. The Chief's name, I think, cannot have been chosen at random. "Jim Hopper" was an unseen character in the 1987 film, Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In Predator this character had been butchered and killed by the titular character before Schwarzenegger and his men are sent in to rescue the people Hopper had been sent to save. There are further Predator references. When it is determined that a creature is coming into our world from another dimension to hunt it is referred to in the script as a "predator". And then there is the fact that the show is set in Hawkins. Hawkins was the name of the first of Schwarzenegger's men killed in the film Predator. Whether these references are real or imagined though is largely irrelevant. (Chief Hopper reminds me of Chief Brody from Jaws.) The show is a deliberate mish-mash of references, real and imagined, and sets out to be so. If you're aware of 80s films, TV and comics you'll have lots to chew on. There are numerous scenes which, if not a homage to other things, are blatantly ripped off from them. This extends from the lift in the government facility being like the one Sigourney Weaver gets into in Aliens to multiple references to the film Poltergeist to Modine being a latter day Smoking Man from The X-Files. These are not all 80s references of course. But that doesn't matter either. Stranger Things wallows in the cross referencing. Its Tumblr TV for the fan fiction generation.

At the heart of the dark, government facility that is the geographical center of the show is the character 011 (Eleven, El). She is a 12 year old girl stolen from her mother who has various mental enhancements such as telekinesis (moving things by power of thought alone). Due to her abilities, which are deliberately sought after and trained by Modine's character, she can pass from our dimension to another one termed in the show "The Upside Down". This is a shadow world, a dark version of our own (seemingly modeled somewhat after Aliens, specifically the Xenomorph cocooning). It is from this dimension that the show's monsters come. It does not necessarily seem that the monsters want anything. They are shown to have no plan or motive but they are shown to enter our world, for example, to find food. It seems they may also be drawn by blood. What interaction there is or has been between the two worlds of the show is not directly probed except to say that Eleven was responsible for tearing a portal between them in the basement of the government facility when she was made to enter the other dimension and became so frightened that her powers literally ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe. The government spooks have seemingly since been probing this dimension with the coercement of Eleven until, that is, she escapes where she runs into the young friends of our missing boy which is where the show starts. 

I have to admit that I find the basic plot interesting. The first thing to note about the show is that I watched all 8 episodes in one go and never really got the feeling that I wanted to stop. I'm at a stage in life now where I no longer feel the need to like things because its expected or because "everyone else does". I think my years have earned me the right just to be brutally honest about if I like something or not and in the last few years I've been more than willing to stop watching things I thought were crap. I have no one to offend or to be offended by anymore now so I can just be honest. And, honestly, the show held my interest. Yes, at first I didn't like it. There are characters more prominent in the early episodes I was wholly unsympathetic to and I wanted them to be got rid of but by the middle episodes the story picked up, some characters faded into the background and others had more prominence. Always central, as one story strand, were the kids which I referred to as The Goonies throughout. Its a shame, then, that for me this group was one of the worst parts of the show. The Goonies is a film I'm aware of but have never watched through completely and this for the reason that a Spielbergian tale of kids getting into adventures is something that I just don't want to watch. If you watch Stranger Things you have to be prepared for one story strand being exactly this. Personally, I find stuff like that schmaltzy and hokey. It wasn't dialed up to 11 here (see what I did there?) but it was not the strongest aspect of the show for me.

One aspect of the show that has garnered numerous comments as I scan my Twitter timeline is the music. However, here, once more, I find myself of a dissenting view. The score and theme tune are electronic (read: synthesizers) and I am followed on Twitter by numerous synth nerds, a category of which I also count myself a member. And yet I wonder what, in this case, I was listening to instead of the synth wonder score these others seem to have been hearing. Among the many 80s references of the show are the films of John Carpenter, especially The Thing, and it occurs to me that the score is intending to be a Carpenter homage. In this case, however, I simply think it fails to do it. I hovered between the view that the score simply didn't fit the show or was simply unremarkable. It certainly wasn't Carpenteresque enough not least due to the seeming lack of Moog bass. I'm afraid it takes more than a few lush analog synth chords and an arpeggio on top to impress me. If you want to hear a genuinely good score to a Sci-Fi project then go and watch Under The Skin (another film referenced here when Eleven visits The Upside Down). The score to that by Mica Levi is outstanding. The score to Stranger Things is not.

So what do I make of the show? Basically, I liked it. It grew on me and the fact I could watch the whole thing in one sitting helped. The first couple of episodes were not endearing to me. If I'd had to wait a week to watch the next I may have ducked out and not bothered. But since today we can download or stream whole seasons in one go there was an immediate chance for the show to improve itself. And it did. By episodes four and five I felt the show was certainly interesting enough to find out what happened in the end. I found the ending weak. Of course, the boy will be found. But some other choices I felt were cop outs or just plain wrong. One character, a teenage girl, goes through the whole teenage love thing in one story strand and the writers made a choice which I frankly flat out disagreed with at the end and this grated. But I think the writers earned the right to tell their own story so if it grated or not its no deal breaker. I did not feel that the dialogue was always the best even if the story outline in general was good and engaging. Those pesky kids, The Goonies, were always on hand but I didn't like their performances except for that of Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven. The rest of the performances were good enough without being stand out.

Something should be said about the format as a whole. I admit that I find it a bit annoying that a show sets out to reference lots of other things as a part of its DNA as this show did. But, overall, I feel they handled it pretty well. There were few blatant rip-offs and many subtle reminders. I found myself saying "I've seen this before" numerous times. One of the most obvious was Eleven touching the TV and changing shows which was very reminiscent of Carol-Ann from Poltergeist doing the same. "They're here!" Most of all I think that even though they set out to be in many ways a glorified fan fiction of cultural references they have managed to make their own show and create new characters that others can now make fictions of. The world they have created is as credible as any of the other fictional worlds they relied upon to help tell their tale. Apparently there is to be a season two and I'm at least intrigued enough to give it a go if not commit to the whole thing based on what they've done with season one. Personally, I'd like more about The Upside Down and Eleven's powers and less pesky kids and romance story lines. But that's just me.

Lousy Marketing Strategy

"The devil makes work for idle hands" is a well known English saying. The idea behind it is that bored people will sometimes do dumb things just because they are bored. In my normal experience of life I have a lot of time to get bored and sometimes I do and then crazy ideas come into my head. Most, of course, simply fly away again to the nether world from which they sprung. But some get to work in my active mind and try and flesh themselves out into things I might actually do. Today's blog is about one of of these things that made it.

I often muse about my music and its reception. I imagine I am not unusual in this respect, one of the now probably several millions of people in the richer nations of the world who make music and put it online for others to hear. I also imagine that probably well over 90% of these people get virtually no listeners or downloads just like me. Last year I had 907 downloads of my albums and 2405 listens to my tracks (of which only 344 were listens to a whole track). Its not a lot. So an idea came into my head from whichever dark pits these things ascend: what if you put the exact same music up that virtually no one listens to but pretend that its by someone else? Maybe someone much more attractive than a middle-aged Englishman with a penchant for being philosophical and random? So I did.

Now I wonder what you are expecting me to tell you happened? It went like this. I created a fake Facebook page for someone who doesn't exist. The person was a 25 year old female electronic musician from Berlin. She had pictures of herself (which I borrowed from online and altered so they couldn't be found in a Google search) and her studio equipment (but not together) and very soon after the creation of the page she had music online to download for free. (I did not want to cheat anyone out of any money. No harm, no foul.) She joined some Facebook music groups and took part in discussions. She posted her music into the many music groups on Facebook. The response was, perhaps, as you might expect. This fictional artist got 2400 plays in 10 days, the same amount it took me one year to get. The 200 free downloads you get on Bandcamp were exhausted in the same time. The music I had used as "her's" wasn't even the music I considered my best. It was merely some secondary tracks all from this year which when they were on my account garnered next to no attention at all. These same tracks are now amongst my top listened to and downloaded tracks. But not because of them or because of me. Because the person they were thought to come from was a good looking young woman with a bubbly personality.

What should I make of this? The electronic music world is overwhelmingly full of the same kind of person: males. Many of these males just want to chat about their gear all day. To pose as a female is immediately to stand out and I admit I did this on purpose. I wanted to be a magnet that the unwary or unsuspecting would not be able to resist. In fact, I could be considerably richer now because several potential purchasers contacted the Facebook account I set up to offer my fake artist money. Some wanted to send me money direct, others wanted me to offer my album on "pay what you want" terms. Others wanted to do collaborations. A couple wanted me to make videos with them or go for photo shoots to help my profile. I refused all offers. The account attracted hundreds of friend requests most of which I turned down. I added some just to aid plausibility. The thought strikes me that I could have carried this on for months if not years and made money from it. But that wasn't my intention. I just wanted, in a curious and non-malicious way, to find out how popular my music would be if people didn't think it was me that was doing it. The answer, you might think, would be damaging to my self-esteem. When its by me its not very popular. When its by a young woman it is much more so. But its the same music!

Maybe you are shouting at the screen now. So far, so obvious. Young women are more popular than middle-aged guys. What's the drama? Well "the drama" is that I am a middle-aged guy and the only way that is going to change is that I will soon enough become an old guy. I have learnt that people do not appreciate my music based on what it is but they base it on all kinds of other stuff like who made it, what they look like and, as I discovered in the many discussions I had, what they use. This basically means that whatever music I make I start off with a huge handicap. Something I am and cannot change is holding back the potential of what I do: being me. How should I react to that?

This all ties in to ideas about status, and particularly my status, in life. I sometimes make music and I sometimes write blogs and that is really all I do. You're probably wondering how I stay alive but that's a secret I don't want to share. That's because its a sad tale and not a bad tale, by the way. People are allowed their secrets. Anyway. I make music and write blogs. I consider myself an electronic musician and if someone asks me what I do, and they virtually never do because I don't know anyone or go anywhere, then that is what I say I do. This doesn't mean I am a professional. A professional to me is someone who does a certain task for money or to support themselves. Additionally, it may mean they adhere to a set of standards that people who do that task to support themselves may hold in common. But I don't make a cent from my music because I choose to give it away. Partly, I think, this is a defense mechanism. If I charged money it would probably be very negatively received if no one wanted to pay. By making it free I save myself that heartache. Partly, though, its also ideological. I give my music away and therefore I owe no one anything. You haven't paid for it and so you have no call to demand anything from me in return. Commerce, wherever it takes place, sets up obligations and I want none involved in my music making.

Commerce, however, is often a guiding standard of our world. If I tell someone I'm a musician and they say "Where can I buy your music?" and I tell them they can't because I give it away for free they look at me funny. What kind of professional makes no money from his or her profession? The suggestion is then that I am a fraud. To be a professional is to make money from what you do. So I am not a professional because I earn no money from my music. I'm also not one, incidentally, because I go my own way regarding the standards I use to make it as well. I get very annoyed when people write things telling me where a professional would place their speakers or how they would go about recording something or what the "proper" way to achieve some musical task is. I think you can do things how the hell you like. In music you decide what the goals are and how to get there. But if only it was the music that were important. When people hear sound coming into their ears they may know nothing about its origins. All there is in that moment is sound. I wish it remained that way. This, for me, is a precious, sacred moment. But it doesn't stay that way. The innocence of Eden is shattered by the thirst for the Tree of Knowledge. Instead people might judge how professional I am and that might reflect on my music. Maybe they were hoping it came from someone more good looking or with a better set of synths. It wouldn't matter to these people that I am as serious about the music I have made as any artist (who makes money from music) they could name. It wouldn't in that moment be just about the music anymore. Superfluous stuff poisons the well.

Of course, there's no way to change any of this. People want to know stuff. Even if it would be better all round if they didn't. I could go back to pretending to be 25 year old woman of course. These seem to be continuously popular. I've learnt that pretense and deception can work. I don't doubt I could charm money into my life through a succession of fictional characters. And its not as if I don't need this money. Others would tell you that I certainly do. And that's probably one reason why I never ask for it. I'm very contrarian. But it has to be said that in this case I have a very lousy marketing strategy for the main thing I do. This is because I don't think that I am actually worth paying if I'm honest. It was very easy to pretend to be the other person. In fact, it was freedom from being me. You could pay her because she is giving you your money's worth. But me? You must be joking. But its the same music!

The woman is gone now. The four accounts she was associated with are deleted. She no longer exists. But the music does. Its my music. And its on my Bandcamp. It will not garner any of the attention it did whilst there was a pretty face and a nice chest to stick on the front of it. Instead, I've very deliberately put my own face on it. Gargoyle-like, it stares out at anyone dumb enough to stray there, a warning that nothing here is very attractive. The music was made by someone who is seriously interested in music though and always wants to learn and progress in using sounds to express things and just to bring some interest to the world. Is this enough? Probably not. I'm just using music to knit the days together really until they run out.

That will probably have to be enough.

PS This album is now no longer available. It lived on my Bandcamp for a few months garnering much less interest than it had when a pretty young woman was the figurehead for it and even though, in theory, I have a network of potentially around a thousand people I could advertise it to on Twitter who have chosen to follow me. Having read my thoughts above you may draw your own conclusions as to why and extrapolate accordingly.

Some Thoughts About Electronic Oddities

Its now just over a month since the first season of my ELECTRONIC ODDITIES PODCAST finished. You may or may not be overly familiar with the series and if you want or need a refresher you can find all thirteen shows in the series right HERE! 

The Electronic Oddities Podcast served a number of different functions for me. It was primarily a show I did to showcase new and differing kinds of electronic music. It served this purpose very well and encompassed a number of "old faves" of mine, and others, as well as music I and probably very few others had ever heard before. I wanted it to be a mix in every possible sense, of unknown and known, of music you might like and music I hoped you wouldn't. This later point gives away its educational purpose too. I was, in the thirteen shows, also trying to get some points across. In my head I hope that some listeners heard something they might not have liked before but now find that their horizons have shifted slightly. Certainly before this year I never would have included any noise music in such a show. And yet, in this series, noise tracks pop up here and there and show eleven is only use of noise. I approached the series seriously, trying to do a good job of it. Of course, you could point to lots of tracks and electronic music styles I probably missed out. But I was trying to do a good job.

I'm not usually one for feedback. I'm not on Facebook spam posting my works looking for hundreds of "You are great" type comments in reply. I treasure privacy and, to some extent, anonymity. This sets up a conflict when I make something or want to publicize something because I have to do something that, in some respects, my better nature is rebelling against. I would really rather let things speak for themselves if I can. This is hard though today because most people take the packaging for the product and have the attention span of a gnat. On Bandcamp I can see in the stats how people have barely given a track 30 seconds of their time and decided its not for them. This is a pitifully small span of time in which to make your impression. In a similar way, I didn't really want to put track listings on my podcasts on Mixcloud where Electronic Oddities is based but a couple of people semi-complained that they wanted to know what the tracks were and so I deferred. That bothered me because if people think they know then they will base judgments on that. But I didn't want them to "know". I wanted them to experience. The latter, I think, is the much more valuable thing in the end. "Knowing" is a closed thing whereas "experiencing" implies opening yourself up.

I noticed some interesting things about the podcast as I went through the thirteen weeks. Besides the surge of interest that came with the first show of a new thing, the most popular show has been the fifth one which was a modular synth special. This was probably the best advertised show, since there are numerous Facebook groups dedicated to modular synthesis in which to post the show's existence. So this perhaps explains this show's popularity. I was a little surprised, and a bit upset, that show nine, which was dedicated mostly to classic 80s dance music by people like Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Man Parrish, was the least popular. So-called "EDM" seems so all-consuming nowadays but without such artists, and the technology they harnessed to make it, there would be no EDM. This show was a history lesson and a reminder to remember where this music came from but it seems to have gone largely unheeded. My final show was music specially commissioned for the podcast and I'm glad that got a decent hearing. There are numerous talented people out there who make electronic music and its good, from time to time, to spread the word about some of them so we can share the encouragement of appreciation around. I was happy to put the time in to do my bit for that. Overall, pretty much every podcast of the thirteen made a mark in the Mixcloud charts. A number hit top ten in their genres. Some made top five.

All this tells me I was doing something that at least a few people might want to listen to. There were a number of thankful comments left too which were, of course, unrequested but welcome nevertheless. The problem comes when I ask myself what to do now. I have a fixation about not repeating myself so instinctively I fight against the notion of "Electronic Oddities Season 2". I could probably do that and hopefully maintain the standard I reached in season 1 but I would be asking myself why I was doing it the whole time. So the best scenario would be if I could carry on doing a similar thing but not the same thing. My aims in my next season of podcasts would be to continue playing an almost random mixture of electronic music, new and old, that might strike the prospective listener as interesting and engaging. I want to provide a podcast that people want to listen to and come to trust as worth listening to. I don't know if I did that first time round because there are some questions you shouldn't ask in case you don't like the answer. But I know a few people who said they looked forward to it. So maybe I did. I would probably want to broaden the scope of the show slightly so I have creative freedom to have themed shows or one-off specials. So I'm thinking something like "The Doktor Existenz Radio Show" at the moment. But it will still be everything Electronic Oddities is. And hopefully a bit more. 

Such a show will, of course, stand and fall by the music played and by word of mouth. I set myself fairly low targets in terms of listenership. For reference, my least listened to show in season one of Electronic Oddities was over the threshold I set for it being worthwhile. Whilst I might argue I'm doing this for myself, and that's true to some extent, in the end you don't publish podcasts unless there are listeners. I wasn't sure when I initially set out, earlier in the summer, that I would even finish series one. But now here I am musing on series 2. And I have some ideas for this. There are songs I want to play, themes I want to explore and new music I want to find. I just want to make a varied and interesting electronic music product for people who can appreciate the same thing. Hopefully, some of you reading this will join me for the ride for 13 weeks from September 2nd.