Nazis and Sci Fi: Issues of Humanity and a Musical Soundtrack

A number of differing and yet, I think, related issues have been troubling my mind this last week. Partly, this is because this last week included my birthday, a once yearly chance for me to contemplate my mortality as the life clock gets another year added to it. Further to this, I came to the end of my tether with Twitter which has seemed to me increasingly pointless.  The sense of pointlessness it engenders is something that's happened to me before with other social media. Its fair to say I have a love/hate relationship with such things. I tend to amass thousands of followers then wonder what the point of it all is before deleting everyone, one by one, followed shortly after by the account.

On a more positive note I was doing research into the Nazi concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or KZ in German) of the Second World War which is a harrowing subject to say the least. This is partly because I've grown fluent in German over the years (thanks to living there) and as I have aged studying this period of history, in the language of those who were on the Nazi side, is something that has become very meaningful to me. You start to get nuances of meaning that its impossible to do in translations or through the official records of the war from the other side. In addition, whilst living in Berlin I had seen Nazi architecture such as Tempelhof Airport or the Prora "Kraft durch Freude" holiday apartments on the island of Rügen which stretch for 3 kilometres in one huge building and wondered at the mindset of those who would build such things. I find it fascinating to wonder at the mind of such people and ask what this says about humanity.

Also this last week I watched a number of great films. The most impactful of these was a film called "Under The Skin". Its quite hard to describe the film because whilst ostensibly it is a sci fi film about an alien who comes to Earth to lure men to their deaths and what happens to her (the alien in question is played by Scarlett Johansson), it ends up being so much more than that. It is openly an arthouse film not intended for general or mass consumption and it shows no interest at all in exposition or explaining itself. Aside from a quite bare plot the viewer is very much left to decide what the film was for, what it was about and what it means. The answer seems at least partly to be that this film is concerned with ideas of humanity, what that is and seeing us as just another species. (The film might be said to view humanity from the perspective of the alien.) Perhaps the key idea in the film, on my initial understanding of it anyway, is the moment the alien feels some empathy with her prey, men looking for sex with her in her alluring female disguise. For when she does feel empathy she lets one of her prey go and deviates from her mission. The idea seems to be that once you feel empathy with someone you start to see them differently. I would talk more about the film but wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone who might want to see it. It is perhaps the most thought-provoking film I have ever seen. But its not an easy watch. Viewer reaction appears to be that you either love it or hate it. There is no in between. Either way, its left me with more questions then any other film I've ever watched.

So how else could I react to all these various stimuli except by making more music? In the last 48-72 hours I have been busy creating a 2 hour suite based around ideas of humanity informed both by my reflection on the film and the Nazi death camps. It is in 2 parts, roughly of an hour each, and each part is named after a German phrase usurped by the Nazis for their propaganda purposes. The first section is called "Jedem Das Seine" (German: To Each His Own). The Nazis had this phrase wrought into the iron gate at the entrance of Buchenwald concentration camp where tens of thousands were murdered. Under Nazi ideology the meaning of this phrase was "You Get What You Deserve" and the slogan was visible to those inside the camp, silently mocking them as a virulent piece of psychological warfare and torture. The second section of my project I called "Arbeit Macht Frei" (German: Work Sets You Free) which was famously the sign at the entrance to Auschwitz but also, before that, wrought into the gate at Dachau, the first concentration camp of them all which is 10 miles north west of Munich. This was yet more Nazi psychological warfare as the only way millions got free in these camps was by being forced to inhale Zyklon B cyanide gas.

I'd like to say a little about each of the 8 songs in the project and the ideas behind them in a moment. The project overall is entitled "Human/Being" and the musical style here is largely informed by the Berlin School of music, long synthesizer pieces containing electronic noise, synthesized patterns and so on. Everything is synthesized in the music and there are no samples or drums. The pieces are of appreciable length and all are between 13 and 18 minutes long. I wanted to treat the subject seriously and create a piece of artwork that acted as a soundtrack to the ideas I was focusing on. So I was consciously making a thoughtful soundtrack and crafting my ideas on this occasion. Let me briefly go through the project, track by track:

Human/Being

A. Jedem das Seine

1. Jedem das Seine

I have already explained what this phrase meant but I haven't explained just how horrific it seems to me. The idea that you might forcibly incarcerate people based on ideology (and this ideology was not merely racial. The Nazi ideology included the forcible death of many who were homosexual, disabled, with incurable medical conditions, the mentally ill, the ideologically opposed and others who didn't "fit in") and then tell them that they are in a death camp "because they deserve to be there" is, to my mind, sick and horrifying. It is illustrative of an idea that is key to the thinking of both the Nazis and the protagonist in the film. Its the idea that in order to hurt someone or kill them you must first think that they deserve it or think nothing of them at all. You must dehumanise them, see them differently to how you see the things or ones you love. If you saw them as the same then how could you hurt them? But see them as nothing, as less than nothing, as things who deserve what they get, and you can kill them without emotion or mercy. Noticeably, in the film the female killer at first kills her male prey in an almost emotionless state.

And there is another idea involved here too. Does everyone "get what they deserve" in life? I don't think they do. As a biblical writer says, "The evil prosper and the good suffer".

2. In Memoria Hominum

The phrase is Latin and means "In memory of Humanity". I wanted to write a piece here that soundtracked the idea of humanity and what it is. What, indeed, is humanity? What does it mean to be human? The film addressed this in an interesting and unique way by having some other being look at us as a class. Through the film you start to ask yourself as you watch who we are, just some strange species on a planet, not special, not particularly moral or good. Just other creatures. And yet do we feel there is something inherent to being human? Can we lose that? And then you think about the men and women who fought for the Nazis, who killed millions, so many men and women that they needed industrial machinery to bury them all. One story I read told of the liberation of Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. There were around 13,000 emaciated bodies openly lying on the ground around the camp when The British Army liberated the camp. Where was the humanity in that? Was there any humanity left? I ponder in this piece on the question of if humanity even exists anymore in an age when we can kill millions at the press of a button, safely shielded from even having to see the death we can deal.

3. Gut und Böse

This piece takes as its starting point the idea of good and evil which is what "Gut und Böse" is in German. It comes from something attributed to the Jewish Austrian concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl who is, as an aside, also a famous psychologist. His psychological method was honed in a number of death camps, Auschwitz and Dachau among them. Not all his family were as lucky as him to survive. At the end of the war he resumed his medical practice and one of the things he said has stuck with me. He noted that wherever you go there are basically two types of people, decent and indecent or, in my terminology, good and evil. These are found, so Frankl says, in all walks of life, all groups and all classes. So there would have been both good and bad prisoners in the camps and good and bad Nazis. This piece is me pondering on that thought.

4. Endlösung

It is common today to talk of "The Holocaust". But this is not a term from the war itself. Neither Nazis nor Allies would have any idea what you meant if you went back in time and referred to this term for it is not a contemporaneous one. It came into fashion some years later in the late 1970s. At the time the Nazi term for the serial extinction (especially of Jews) was Die Endlösung. Endlösung means "final solution". This piece is very simply my solemn meditation on this very idea and the fact that it was a real thing with millions of casualties.

B. Arbeit Macht Frei

5. Arbeit macht Frei

The phrase, as already noted, most famously wrought above the entrance to Auschwitz where millions were murdered. It is harrowing in the extreme to read of how prisoners were brought to the railway station there. The Nazis made attempts to fool them into thinking they were just being taken to another holding camp, fearing panic if the prisoners at once sensed what was about to happen to them. Here I meditate on humanity again and ask what kind of species does this? If one can do it then surely anyone can? Is evil a virus? Can it be caught? Is it contagious? Or perhaps to be human is to have the capacity for horrific acts?

6. In Plain Sight

My point of departure here applies equally to the film and to the Nazis. Both were in plain sight. The alien killer in the film takes the form of a sexy young woman to lure men to their doom. She doesn't hide and snatch them in the shadows or transport them away or shoot them with a ray gun. She drives round in a van and tries to pick them up. In fact, this actually happens too since in the film Johansson really wore a disguise of a fur jacket and a black wig and actually tried to pick up Scottish men (the film was made in Glasgow) who didn't know it was her. Her van contained concealed cameras and the men were retrospectively asked to sign a waiver so they would appear in the finished film. This was done for the purpose of realism and only Johansson knew what was really happening.

The idea I explore here is that evil does not hide. Its right there in front of you. But you need to see it for what it is.

7. Empathie

This, for me, is a key idea both in the terms of my two areas of inspiration and in terms of what being human means: Empathy. This is where it begins and ends. As already hinted at, if you lose empathy then all sorts of horrors become possible. And if you have it, as in the film, what is and isn't possible changes. So here I write a soundtrack for empathy and meditate on the idea in a very reverential way.

8. Prey/Pray

Here the idea was notions of hunter and prey. This applies to the film but in ways I can't explain without revealing too much plot. See the film to explore that. It also clearly applies to the Nazis too who viciously hunted down all those their ideology identified as inferior. The Nazis even had a term for these kinds of people: "Lebensunwertes Lebens" - lives not worthy of living. Many people who they decided fitted into this category were forcibly euthanized. My idea here is twofold: that people, human beings, can become prey and that that should therefore pray - to who I cannot say.

So, in the end, what I have produced in Human/Being is a two hour electronic score musing and meditating on these ideas of humanity, human being and being as a human using contexts where these things were very much attacked and under threat - exposed to the analytical gaze. They are not meant to provide any answers but they are meant to bring some context and act as a soundtrack to the ideas.

You may now be wondering where you can hear this project and the answer is that currently you can't. I have fallen out of love with putting my music online. It garners little attention which is, frankly, depressing - although I have never needed external appreciation to create and don't seek pats on the back from others about it. The only purpose it ever served was to talk about it but that has happened less and less. It now becomes burdensome to keep doing it for nothing. What I will say as a compromise is this: if I get ten requests to make it available I will upload it somewhere. If not then I won't.

And that was my week. I rejoice, at least, that it had a creative outlet.

The Definitive All You Will Ever Need To Know About Elektronische Existenz

What is Elektronische Existenz? Elektronische Existenz (which is electronic existence written in German) is a 13 chapter music series which I started writing in the Spring of 2014. It started in dubious circumstances. At the time I was writing under the project name 13LFO and I wrote these four tracks which were stand out tracks, probably the best I had ever done to that point. I was going to mix them in with some past work (that was far inferior) and put it out as the first 13LFO album. But I wasn't happy with that. These four tracks were head and shoulders better than the tracks they were with. I decided to put them together as a four track album of 36 minutes in length. I called that album "Elektronische Existenz" after some thought because the title perfectly positioned the work in the musical and philosophical contexts that I work in - electronic music and existential philosophies.

I was so pleased with this album that I wanted to repeat the trick. This is always a dangerous thing to do because you set yourself a standard. I always think in general that the more work you do the more chance some of it will dip below the standard you expect. Elektronische Existenz was and remains a special album to me in which every sound, note and beat is perfect - just as it came from the "womb" of my imagination. I work improvisationally so this is an important consideration. I captured some perfect moments - or as perfect as any moment can be. But those moments can't be repeated or captured forever. I made three more four track albums and I had a series of 4 albums.

It was at this point that things really began to take off. I was happy with the four album series. But I wanted to double it. What happened next was that I created four more albums, each with only two tracks this time but of longer length. Along with this I started thinking about the mythology behind the tracks and how they were related. Elektronische Existenz tells the story, in music, of a character called "The Wanderer" (German: Der Wanderer). I envision the whole project as a story or mythology of this character. I'll flesh out the detail of that below. But, for now, its enough to know that this is a story that has three acts and an epilogue. Chapters 1-4, 5-8, 9-12 and chapter 13 as epilogue.

For several months the project stayed at 8 chapters or albums. At this point The Wanderer was "dead tired" (the final track of the 8th album being titled "Todmüde" - dead tired) and his status (alive or dead) was ambiguous at best. I was happy to leave the story there though until a chance event took me in a new direction. I watched a video about a Japanese forest at the foot of an active volcano, Mount Fuji, named Aokigahara. This is the second most popular suicide spot in the world, a creepy, impenetrable forest growing straight out of past volcanic lava. Each year several hundred Japanese go there to die. And so I imagined The Wanderer, dead tired, fleeing to this forest. I did two more albums of two tracks each making a total of 10 albums in the series.

But I wasn't finished. Thirteen has always been a very important number for me (I was born on the 13th) and, lately, I have become fixated with it and mathematical or other uses of it. (Elektronische Existenz is 346 minutes long. If you add 3+4+6 you get 13.) The Wanderer, as a character, is based on me and my own life. Elektronische Existenz is an autobiography in music using the mythology of The Wanderer as a literary device. Because of all this, and having come so far, I wanted there to be 13 chapters or albums to the story. But at that stage, with 10 albums in the bag, I wasn't ready to do 3 more albums. And so I did a sort of epilogue and made EEXIII, chapter 13. I wanted to make it clear at this point that The Wanderer wasn't dead. Chapter 10 had ended with "Conundrum" and the idea that, for all his travel and travails, The Wanderer was still faced with the same existential issue at the end as he had had at the beginning. The epilogue was purposely "The Wanderer is not dead" hence the "In place of" in the titles of the three tracks that make up album 13.

We now fast forward a few months and it occurs to me that there is a lacuna in the story, a chapters 11 and 12 sized hole. What happens to The Wanderer between realising he still has the same conundrum as at the start and the epilogue? I am very happy to say that this gap has now been filled and the story has been completed since I have now written albums 11 and 12. And so my 13 album project, 346 minutes of it, 37 tracks of it, my Meisterwerk, my Magnum Opus, is completed. It started from just 4 tracks I thought deserved better than to be chucked in with some others and grew to be a whole mythology in music.

Let me lay out the track order for you:

Elektronische Existenz

ACT ONE

1. The Wanderer and His Shadow
2. The Wanderer and His Shadow II
3. The Wanderer and His Shadow III
4. Metal Blue LFO

Elektronische Existenz II

1. Adamantium
2. Serious Philosophical Question
3. Bleak Disturbances
4. Feld

Elektronische Existenz III

1. Blau
2. Existenz
3. Überlebensstrategie
4. Beängstigend

Elektronische Existenz IV

1. Existential On Your Ass
2. World
3. Vergessen
4. Logjammin

END OF ACT ONE

ACT TWO

Elektronische Existenz V

1. Lament für Existenz
2. Die Störung

Elektronische Existenz VI

1. The Man in The Photograph
2. The Man Behind The Photograph

Elektronische Existenz VII

1. Schmerz-Symphonie
2. Panzer Tanz

Elektronische Existenz VIII

1. Existenzkrise
2. Todmüde

END OF ACT TWO

ACT THREE, PART ONE

Elektronische Existenz IX

1. Aokigahara 青木ヶ原
2. Yūrei 幽霊

Elektronische Existenz X

1. Das Bedauern
2. Conundrum

ACT THREE, PART TWO

EEXI

1. Im Schatten
2. Apocalypsis
3. Interrupted

EEXII

1. Fantasia 1
2. Fantasia 2
3. Fantasia 3

END OF ACT THREE

EPILOGUE

EEXIII

1. In Place of An Ending
2. In Place of A Parting
3. In Place of A Dying


A perusal of those titles will perhaps reveal a number of things of note. Yes, my character The Wanderer is inspired by my reading of and intimacy with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche who added an extra section to his 1878 book "Human, All Too Human" entitled "The Wanderer and His Shadow". Yes, it is intimately bound up with the last 10 years of my life in which, never before expecting to ever leave the shores of England (and never really seeing why I needed to), the fates cast lots and I found myself living in Germany, a land I came to love more than my own. Yes, the story is cast as a play with 3 acts and an epilogue. These three acts are, in broad brush strokes, an introduction to The Wanderer in Act One, his life and circumstances. In Act Two his fall or down-going is recounted. Act Three is his "dark night of the soul" and the Epilogue is, naturally enough, a resolution of the story that isn't a resolution at all.

Perhaps now is a good time to go through Elektronische Existenz, album by album, chapter by chapter, track by track, and tell the musical story of The Wanderer.

1. The Wanderer and His Shadow

Our introduction to The Wanderer, a hesistant, sensitive, thoughtful fellow.

Musically, here everything is about taking your time, appreciating slowly, getting to know your surroundings. I always wanted to write music that had gravitas and substance but that was also thoroughly cutting edge, even ahead of the curve. In many ways much I do creatively is about marrying together diverse things. Because this is a reflection of my character.

2. The Wanderer and His Shadow II

The Wanderer is further characterised. Here ideas of slowness, even sloth, come to the fore. The music is at a slower pace, never too slow but slow, taking its time. The music of a man who goes at his own pace, maybe even out of step with the world. Much was played in Elektronische Existenz by hand without being quantised. Hence you will often hear things where they feel awkward or dissonant. This is deliberate and characterises The Wanderer.

3. The Wanderer and His Shadow III

A large part of the story of The Wanderer is about how people suffering much pain and trouble in life can still manage to see or conjure beauty. Or maybe to even ask the question of if they can. The testimony of this story is that they can still indeed. It is, I think, something of a miracle. This track is about conjuring some of that beauty. There is also a further theme, that of innocence. The Wanderer values innocence above all other things. The bell tone melody here is all about conjuring innocence.

4. Metal Blue LFO

Maybe this track should be "The Wanderer and His Shadow IV" - but it isn't. We start to move ground in our story. An LFO, of course, is often used in a synthesizer as a modulation source, lending movement to another sound. Here this track oscillates our story as we head out deeper into the character of The Wanderer. A common theme in my work, in terms of sounds and timbres, are machine sounds. These are often used as threatening cues. Machines speak of regularity and order, things The Wanderer does not like. He feels more at home in the chaos, symbolised here by the monotone that underpins the track. The harsh drums indicate work and the world of work, something The Wanderer finds alien and harsh and completely unsuited for. The "metal blue" refers to the colour of the sky on the cover for this album, brooding and foreboding.

5. Adamantium

This song represents both vulnerability (the bass drum pattern a crude imitation of shivering) and the desire for strength, an adamantium shield. It is the soundscape of a man alone in the world. The rising and falling sound is the sound of the rest of the people in the world going about their business. I imagine a vista, a huge desert and The Wanderer stands on a hill and surveys it. This is his world.

6. Serious Philosophical Question

Albert Camus said that there was only one serious philosophical question: why we should go on living. This track puts this question, the question of suicide, into focus as it strikes The Wanderer. So this track is a track of uncertainty, perhaps slightly to do with fear or strangeness. Again, it is about imagining a place, this time a mental place, and giving it sounds.

7. Bleak Disturbances

Perhaps this track is self explanatory, especially once you have heard it. It recreates the bleak landscape inside The Wanderer's head, full of questions he cannot answer with healthy doses of nothingness and meaninglessness on top. It is a hymn to a troubled and serious man. Here I tried to use sounds that suggested thought, but troubled thought, thought that was difficult to have and that led nowhere.

8. Feld

Feld is a hymn to a place - Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin. A former Nazi airfield and the place through which the Allies saved the people of West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift of the late 40s, this magnificent place is now a municipal park of outstanding size and natural beauty. It is The Wanderer's favourite place and spiritual home. Musically, then, I tried to give it a beautiful, mythical quality. Whilst not exactly the choir of angels, here I attempted to make this place seem like a dream.

9. Blau

A track about feeling blue. And yet still keeping it funky. You may find that contradictory. Yes, it is.

10. Existenz

A track to give substance to the everyday, boring, dull, always the same existence of The Wanderer. And yet, musically, the challenge there is to put that across whilst writing interesting music. The key, I think, is not to think about it but to just do it. Every track in this project is based in, and comes from, improvisation.

11.  Überlebensstrategie

The title means "survival strategy". This track has to make real the idea of The Wanderer thinking of ways that he can survive his life. Thus, again, we have sounds that are meant to suggest thought or thoughts. Do they lead anywhere? Sounds were very important to me into this project. I wanted to use ones you don't hear everywhere and put them in original combinations. This track is one such example.

12. Beängstigend

Frightened. Here I attempted to create a nightmare, not necessarily a terrifying nightmare, but a creepy, strange one.

13. Existential On Your Ass

Could you take a philosophy and put it to music? That is what I did here with this track. As The Wanderer considers his life in existential terms, so the music considers Existentialism in musical terms.

14. World

Once more we have another soundscape about The Wanderer's world. Again, I used sounds to try and suggest activity out in that world as The Wanderer looks on. This idea of things happening that The Wanderer observes is prevalent throughout the whole first act of the story. The sound palette suggests a slightly Eastern influence.

15. Vergessen

Vergessen is a unique track in this project. Its the one track I am never sure if I like or not. It was made in much the same way as the rest using my usual practices and habits. But, I don't know, it doesn't convince me. However, in the context of the story it fits. "Vergessen" means "forget" and, in the story, it functions as The Wanderer pointing out to himself that not everything is sacred, not all things must be valued. Sometimes things just happen and the best response is to forget them and move on. So the music fits in the story. You may or may not like it. But narratively it is every bit as right for this project as any other track. So whilst not necessarily being totally convinced by the track, it serves many useful functions besides. Why should a composer like all his work anyway?

16. Logjammin

The title is random (and comes from "The Big Lebowski"). The idea here was to wrap up act one (originally it was to end the project of course when the project was just four albums). So the track works as a marker, an ending of sorts. Here the idea was something about complexity. The Wanderer's life feels very complex. For this reason I used the repeating pattern. Repetition plays a part in The Wanderer's life too - almost to mental torment! The bass represents The Wanderer's deep feelings.

17. Lament für Existenz

Until I wrote chapter 12 this was the longest track here - and deliberately so. A long, drawn out, meditational, lament for The Wanderer's existence. This one was all about trying to get the emotion recorded in sound. So, the timbres used were vitally important as were the notes. I hope you think I used the right sounds and got the point across. Additionally, this track begins the second act and The Wanderer's down-going to his "dead tiredness". Thus, this piece is very important in setting the mood.

18. Die Störung

The Wanderer suffers a glitch or a breakdown after his lamenting. The tone here is subdued, mysterious. There is also a sense of holding back or wanting time to recover. Again, sounds used to indicate action around The Wanderer but not made by The Wanderer.

19. The Man in The Photograph

Tracks 19 and 20 are based on a photograph of himself that The Wanderer looks at. It was taken in a happier time. This track is the soundtrack to the man we see when looking at that photograph. So this is meant to be slightly more "up" musically speaking. I used 80s drum machine sounds (Drumtraks, DMX, LinnDrum) here as I was indirectly influenced by listening to some Jan Hammer and his music for "Miami Vice".

20. The Man Behind The Photograph

But then there is always the other side of the story. Whereas on the surface all looked happy, behind the scenes things were much more serious and difficult. The wavering lead sound that comes in towards the end of the track indicates crying inside. This is a sad, sad, track. I find this track very emotional to listen to as it essentially lays bare The Wanderer's pain.

21. Schmerz-Symphonie

The pain leads to a "pain symphony". Here is that thing again with wanting to write something of substance but thoroughly modern. I find that much of that is all about finding, and combining, the right sounds. Essentially, I wrote this as a self-contained piece.

22. Panzer Tanz

This track is somewhat absurd. It imagines The Wanderer dancing in his protective armour, effectively protected, perhaps, but also isolated from the world. A little piece of madness amongst the sad reflection.

23. Existenzkrise

Originally, one of the two tracks that would end Elektronische Existenz (at the second or third time of asking), this makes up one of the sections of the project that stand out the most. Here The Wanderer has an existential crisis. I don't know how you would put that into music except to say that here I have. I hear a lot of angst.

24. Todmüde

The original end of the two act version of the project and, in many ways, a perfect song indicating an end. It is so ambiguous that you might think The Wanderer dead by the end. I think this track perfectly captures the senses of pain, struggle and defeat that The Wanderer feels. He is "dead tired", he wants to just stop and give up. The sounds, therefore, are appropriately powerful and yet somehow limp, life ebbing away from them. It sounds portentous and ethereal. Is The Wanderer still there?

25. Aokigahara

The sounds of a creepy, impenetrable Japanese forest where people go to disappear and die.

26. Yurei

A ghost dance as the Yurei (Japanese spirits) move around the forest and in the vicinity of The Wanderer.

27. Das Bedauern

A track that is meant to capture a specific mood, a regretful, repenting sorrow. Perhaps this is a little self-indulgence too and so the music, which is not the best in this project, suggests that. Slightly bland but in the service of a purpose.

28. Conundrum

The music here suggests that one is trapped in a circle or a maze. There is no way out. The pattern just repeats. It even gets more complex as the track runs its course. Again, this piece was at one time the end of the project and so this is another marker.

29. Im Schatten

The music here was to suggest a person in the shadows. A certain darkness is necessary for this and so a haunting melody gets introduced. The sound palette is once again creepy, strange and unexpected. And yet is there still a glimpse of some beauty?

30. Apocalypsis

Here a deep psychological event is signified, an apocalypse. Thus, I used sounds to suggest confusion or complexity yet also deep tones to suggest things of great import.

31. Interrupted

Another song about breakdown. This time I decided to use a confused beat and sounds that, perhaps, don't really go together. Such is the language of breakdown.

32. Fantasia 1

The Wanderer falls into fantasy in an attempt to escape the consequences of his broken state. Here I reused and re-purposed some recent music I had done as it was both of a quality and a tone that fitted in well with the idea of a fantasy. Note the scissors snipping sound!

33. Fantasia 2

This fantasy is in two parts. I concentrated on strong synth sounds here. Again, I wasn't afraid to take my time with this piece and it ended up being the longest in the project. A real fantasy ending with the lush pad sound!

34. Fantasia 3

This piece rounds out the fantasy and concludes the complicated third act. Consequently, it is itself a little unsure of itself and here I used dissonance for effect. The sounds don't necessarily go together and the pitches are, perhaps, at odds too. Not all fantasy is good or pleasing. And fantasies often don't make sense.

35. In Place of An Ending

The epilogue begins with ambience and bell melodies. It can only mean that the end is nigh.

36. In Place of A Parting

Crows, familiars of death, caw at the start of this piece. And then the piece changes completely into a ramshackle, absurdist groove. The sounds are all wrong. It makes no sense. Exactly.

37. In Place of A Dying

We might expect a dirge at the end. But this isn't a dying. Its in place of one. Instead, there is a repeating confused melody which keeps its cards close to its chest. Its all very ambiguous. And then more absurdist grooves. What has happened to The Wanderer? What does this mean for him? And what is the significance of that final blast of white noise? Like Tony Soprano cut to black, no one really knows........


And, finally, here is The Myth of The Wanderer, the story told in music.

The Myth of The Wanderer

1-4 (EE1)

The Wanderer lay in his bed. It was midday. He didn't get up anymore and hadn't for years. No point. Beside him lay his shadow. His burden. It was all the times he'd been let down, all the times his mum had insulted or ignored him when she should have praised or encouraged him. It was every time he'd been judged for his lack of looks, every time his abilities had been overlooked because he didn't know the right people, every time he was just a stranger. It was all the times he'd been rejected in life - and there were many. It was every bad decision he had ever made - and, these days, he didn't make any other kind. It was all these things and more besides hardened and ossified over decades so that they had become his very environment, his experience of life, all he knew. Everything he pondered about life and the world was in this context.

And yet despite all this pain and ugliness he still wanted to see beauty, he still wanted to risk imagining something pretty. It was his only hope. He oscillated between hope and despair.

5-8 (EE2)

And yet to do this it felt at times as if he needed to be made of stone. Feelings are risks that some people cannot take. Its not that the pain can get too much, although of course it can, its that sometimes you would just do anything to have some respite from it. If only you could be made of Adamantium, unbreakable, impenetrable. Life is bleak and there is the ever present question of what it is for. This was a real, genuine, constant problem for The Wanderer. He was really alone in the world and couldn't make out why he was there or what the point of it was. Why not just end it? There is nothing to lose and you are only bringing the schedule forward anyway rather than changing the script. We all die. And yet the beauty of place stays the hand again. A special place, Das Feld, brings a feeling of safety.

9-12 (EE3)

But what to do when life is a constant struggle, when every activity comes with a "what for?" attached? The feeling of melancholy permeates all existence, you struggle to find a survival strategy. Little things assume meaning out of all proportion to their importance both in good and bad ways. You are frightened.

13-16 (EE4)

Things occasionally fall apart. You become random, up and down. One minute this, the next that. The randomness becomes a defence and you seek out the new just so that you don't have to bear the same day after day. It all becomes about how you experience the now. There is no tomorrow, no yesterday. Just let now be bearable you think to yourself. I want to forget. There is only this moment. You stop thinking of life as an on-going narrative because that will only remind you how terrible it has been and how hopeless it is yet to be.

17-18 (EE5)

"Oh what have I become?" thinks The Wanderer. He laments his existence. There is an upset, a breakdown, a glitch, in his existence. Its one of many choke points he has had in life. He knows there will be more. Oh terrible burden that he has been given.

19-20 (EE6)

He considers himself in a photograph. He is sitting at a table outside in the woods of the Spreewald, an area south east of Berlin, all lakes and rivers and trees. He is eating ice cream from a bowl. An enigmatic smile plays on his face, not overt but discernible nevertheless. One imagines the smile is for the photographer but we do not see who that is. And then he considers the feelings that he felt inside as the picture was took and that tells a different story. We never know the things that people carry with them daily. Only The Wanderer sees his shadow. Only The Wanderer cannot be without it.

21-22 (EE7)

The Wanderer writes a pain symphony, an ode to his sufferings. He dances with momentary and tragic joy, covered in the armour that allows him to go on living, that both protects and isolates him.

23-24 (EE8)

But it is not enough. You can make a noise to drown out something else but eventually you must stop. All the survival strategies come to nought and what you are is still there, plain and simple, in front of you. Acknowledging it, you come to the moment of existential crisis that such acknowledgment always brings. The Wanderer collapses under a tree. He has sought solace in mountains and woods far away from other people. He wants to be absorbed into the ground.

25-26 (EE9)

He finds himself surrounded by trees in a forest that blocks out the world. There is only him now, him and the ghosts that swirl around him, the ghosts of his past, of himself, of this place and the others who came here seeking peace from the dissonance with which they were plagued. This is a portal between worlds, one of life and one of death, a place of decision.

27-28 (EE10)

He is overcome by a regretful, repenting sorrow - for himself certainly. But also for his life - as an experience and as a thing that was thrust upon him. For years he would gladly have given it back and he wishes he could now. And he realises that, for all his years, he is left with the same problem, the same conundrum, he always had: how to make sense of all the things he is when they just don't make sense.

29-31 (EE11)

All The Wanderer's life now lies in shadow. He inhabits the dark places, shying away from light, contact, others. He does not want to be himself with his conundrum. There is an apocalypse as the unsolvable problem is a burden he cannot leave behind. For the one person you can never leave behind is yourself. Inevitably, whilst this can be coped with on a day to day level, there is always a build up that must break out at some point. He reaches this point and breaks down. He lies there, broken.

32-34 (EE12)

The Wanderer seeks escape in fantasy. He dreams of places he would like to be, things he would like to have, women he would like to fuck. All kinds of scenarios play through his mind, good, bad and outrageous. He avoids life and who he is by pretending to be someone, anyone else. He creates fantasy personalities and multiple online identities to live out the fantasy.

35-37 (EE13)

The circle repeats and life goes on. The Wanderer is trapped in a constant loop. This is his life, all he has known. Even as he has lived through it, it has shaped him and made the experience part of his character. Like many who suffer from mental issues, the very things which plague him now feel as if they are him. To let go of his pain and insecurities, his fears and stresses, would now seem to him as if it was to make him a completely new person, not him. His identity is now the person his life has made him. It was, perhaps, an inevitable consequence. This identity is now all he has.

And so The Wanderer retreats into less habited spaces. What happened to him in the end nobody knows....


PS Why were the covers all pylons that were distorted?

The pylon was The Wanderer and the distortions were a visual signifying the effects of things on his life.

Elektronische Existenz is now available for download again at elektronischeexistenz.bandcamp.com

I Need To Get Off The Internet

I need to get off the internet. Its driving me mad. A swirling, random cacophony of mindless and usually uninformed opinions, often masquerading as fact, is the last thing I need in my life. It is soul-crushingly depressing to go there every day and see people competing like trained mice in some great mouse aquarium for your attention - and knowing that you are supposed to be competing for the attention of others as well. This is where begging and promoted tweets come from and ice bucket challenges start. To play this game you need opinions on everything - even when 95% of the day's stories will probably never impact you in any meaningful way. Don't let that bother you though. Just wade in with your uniformed, off-the-top-of-your-head prejudices because its not knowing anything that counts, its taking part. Commercial media will help you in this by asking the public's opinion about anything and everything. They want your feels because, godammit, your feels count.

Social media is, of course, the worst culprit. Post something, anything, on You Tube and people you have never heard of will queue up to insult and ridicule you in as many ways as possible. Go on Twitter and see people competing to be the funniest person in the world, turning every possible subject under the sun into something as frivolous as possible. Go on Facebook to find posts by every nonentity in the world who think that YOU need to know what their opinion is about things. Really, when you think about it social media is a candy floss factory. (That's cotton candy for American viewers.) Social media turns EVERYTHING into a sickly sweet, tastes-good-in-your-mouth treat but later on, when you've eaten too much, you will just have a gut ache. I am now very much starting to see the wisdom of what British comedian Stewart Lee has said about the internet and why he maintains no social media accounts. No one needs this in their life. Not even the desperate and lonely who see it as a way to contact another human being. In fact, they probably need it least of all.

But I don't want to sound ungrateful to the internet before I attempt to leave it behind me and forget it ever existed. I must be fair and admit that it has changed my life really. I am at the age where my life splits neatly in two between an age without the internet and an age with it. So I've seen both sides. I would likely never have done many things I have done in the second half of my life if the internet had never been invented. For example, I would never have lived in another country for several years. Several relationships with women (and quite a bit of sex) would never have happened without the internet. I'm the kind of introverted person who finds the internet appealing too. This is because I am ugly but have charm and wit. So through a screen I get the chance to showcase what I have got without the horror of actually having to look at me, sitting there in front of you. Thank you internet.

Right now I am thinking of a log cabin in some woods. There are mountains nearby and a raging mountain torrent cascades down the hill. Its idyllic and, most importantly, not a fucking soul lives within 200 miles of me. Its just me and the wilderness. I've seen places like it on the internet and sites like the blog "Cabin Porn" do a very good job of luring me away into fantasy.

I need to get off the internet.

A Music Manifesto

A new year is traditionally a time for new thinking and new ideas. Some even go so far as to make resolutions, resolutions which usually don't make it past the first week or two of the year. Such is the inherent fallibility of human beings. It is not quite coincidental that at the start of this new year I come to write a manifesto for my music going forward.

I have always wanted to move forward in the music that I make. It has always held weight with me that you should just not stand still making and re-making essentially the same thing over and over again. Where is the fun or the purpose in that? And so I have always looked for the illusion of progress if not actual progress itself.

In this past year I have, maybe for the first time in depth, studied the music that I have made and where it has come from. I have moved to explicitly detailing the philosophy behind and in the making of what I do. I have explicitly done things a certain way for a reason. The place I made music became more like a cross between a philosophy class and a science lab than a music room. I have begun to do music experiments to try and demonstrate things or to stimulate thinking. I am not making something that is entertainment. It is arguable if I ever was. Such subjective things are far from my interest these days.

In addition, I have been reading - and attempting to understand - the writings of the 20th century's philosopher of music par excellence - John Cage. I guess it was my time to meet him. I have been stimulated into new thinking and new ways by doing so and that is never a bad thing. You need to move the goalposts. Or someone needs to move them for you. His book of lectures and writings "Silence" has been my primary source. I recommend it to everyone reading this for it is a book not just about music and its theory but about life and how all of life is music. For in all of life there is sound.

And so in the light of my now overtly philosophical and experimental approach to music I want to make a number of statements, my "manifesto" going forward - if that doesn't sound too pompously grand.

1. Recognise that art and music is fiction. You are telling a story or, at the very least, filling up a musical cup with your values.

2. Music is about the arrangement of sounds and silence.

3. The composer's first and maybe only duty is to be interesting.

4. Music should say something.

5. Music, whether you like it or not, is about ideas. You have no control over if it is but some over what they might be.

6. Music is not about being bad or good. It is about having something to say or not.

7. Experimental music is about making all sounds and silence musical to every ear.

8. The task of the engaged listener of music is to make new relationships between the sounds and silences that they hear. The goal is to make new and not to simply re-hash the old in every possible combination.

9. Music involves engaged composing and engaged listening.

10. The experimental musician will constantly think of ways to break down the conservative categories that societies impose upon music. The highest good is to make new.

11. Sound is a matter of pitch, timbre, loudness and duration. Experimental music will focus on all four rather than the usual focus which majors on pitch and thus concerns itself merely with melody and harmony. In this way the concept of what music is will itself broaden.

12. If you want to broaden your own musical horizons remove yourself from the equation as much as possible.

13. The music of the future will be interested in the contrasts of sounds.

14. Music is "a purposeful purposelessness" about life. It reflects it, shapes it, commentates upon it.

15. Experimental music concerns itself with "the co-existence of dissimilars" and with the fusion of things formerly thought not to go together. The task is to realise that harmony is merely the familiar and disharmony the unfamiliar in relation to things that go together.

16. If you want to explore, learn to love noise.

DISCUSS.

Cod Music Philosophy: What Matters in Making Music

This blog is about me telling you why my way of making music is better than yours and why you really should be doing things like I do. Because your way is wrong, takes too long, misses the point and doesn't get to the heart of what music really is.

But don't let any of that put you off.

I've written before about how I make music and maybe you have read some of those blogs. This year my way of doing what I do has, as it should, undergone some transformations. If anything, the pre-existing predilections I had have become more extreme. It is in thinking about what has happened and what effects it that I have come to new conclusions about what it is I am doing and why. And it is in talking with other people who do things a different (and far worse) way that I see the sense in what I am doing. So let's unpack this a little.

When I record music I play. In two senses. In the first sense in that I always play in the music I record. I am not a very good player of anything but I am an autodidact. And so I try to do everything myself. I play in drum patterns on pads. I will play in any notes on a keyboard. And if I do it badly then I do it badly. The important point is that a performance was recorded and the dynamics of my playing are recorded too. You don't get dynamics of playing with a mouse drawing on a sequencer. That is to say that the link with a physical performance is preserved my way. As it should be. The second sense of my play is that when I make music I always have fun. It is a game. It is entertaining yourself. A playful frame of mind is by far the most creative. This is demonstrated in that I, in this frame of mind, have a pretty much 100% success rate of musical ideas to finished tunes. It is extremely rare I reject an idea that forms this way.

So why is this important? Because music is a physical thing. Sound is vibration. Physicality is inherent. Music is deliberation regarding sound. That is, music is deliberation regarding a physical process, the process of creating sound. This is why when I have recording sessions I stand up. Forget that these days you can be completely sedentary in a computer chair wiggling your mouse. Forget that microprocessors can simulate the sound-making process. Forget those things because both sound and music are more primeval than that. Instead concentrate on the thrill you get when you press a key, strum some strings, hit a drum or myriad other things, and a sound is produced, one you made directly. That is the vital, primeval connection I am talking about. That is why people prefer to make music with things they can directly affect and know that they did it. Its why people making music using instruments have more fun than people sitting at desks. And also remember that music and sound are physical things in their effects. Music creates and affects emotions and they physically change the state and feeling of your body. There is no aspect of music that is not, and should not, be physical.

So, besides playing and preserving physicality in my music, I also like to improvise. Lately, as you will know if you have read other blog articles, I have even explicitly introduced randomness. What's so good about this? Well, it removes the barrier that is the creator. Or, at least, it puts him or her in the background a bit more. Too much music today is too knowing. It is soaked in cynicism. Many people put forward having an idea in their head and knowing what they want as a good thing. They are wrong. Its a bad thing, a barrier, a limitation - and not the good kind of limitation. It guarantees that you will always sound how you purposely want to. How can that be good? Wouldn't you rather create yourself and make something new, something you COULDN'T have imagined or made on purpose? Wanting to match the idea in your head is ultimately a deeply conservative act and anti an experimentalism which frees you for new musical experiences. It is wanting to shape the music but not yourself be shaped or changed by it.

And that, I think, is a very crucial distinction to make. The dominant model of the musical creator as king over his creations puts in place very many ideas which, I say, are not helpful. I believe that music should change things. And top of that list should probably be the creator of the music themselves. But, it seems to me, not many people want to be changed by their music. Instead, they are obsessed with creating some perfect thing which exactly matches their creatorly wishes. I can't think of anything worse. Not only will it not be perfect (perfection is a mirage and therefore a massive waste of creative energy) but all it will do as a musical act is petrify their musical choices. It is, to me, creating musical fossils. It also remains true that perfection is deeply boring. Its the imperfect things which are the most interesting in this world, the flawed, the accidental, the random. In short, the things you couldn't have imagined but that just happened, that came out of nothing but your creative energies put to use in some time and space. Are you trying to create your little piece of perfection by deliberation? You are wasting your time.

Another area where you are likely wasting your time is production. We live in a computer world now. I can't think of any piece of musical software (commonly called Digital Audio Workstations) which doesn't these days have templates for everything. Its basically impossible for even the most non- tech savvy individual to sound bad. So whack on your master template onto the master channel of your track and there you go. Job done. What's that? You are coming back to me with a load of pseudo-professional BS about sound dynamics, room dampening, phase cancellation and the like? Well, if you want to sound like Coldplay or U2 then, yes, you may be right. But none of that interests me. I want to sound NOT like them. I don't want to sound like the currently in favour "professional" idea of what something sounds like and the sheen of commerciality which that is all about does not remotely interest me. I firmly believe that there is NO SUCH A THING as a bad sound. In fact there are only two types of sound: the sound you want to create and the sound you don't. There are no hard and fast rules, no rights from wrongs. There are just wants and taste: Both are yours. You might not like dull, muddy mixes. But I might want to create them. And, remember, its not as if either you or I are being objective about this. Sound is a subjective matter. What sounds "good" or "bad" is informed by multiple things - not least by what you have been told sounds good and bad. So, please, don't act like there is right and wrong here.

BUT! I will say this. Sculpting your sound IS important. But its important at the beginning of the process not at the end. If you didn't care what sounds you made at the start then no amount of "producing" at the end will be able to save it. Make great sounds BEFORE you start playing and then use those sounds creatively. You will find that works much better. SOUND is the most important thing in music. I have said for years that if you use great sounds then it is virtually impossible to make a bad song. A love of sound, I think, is a necessary pre-requisite to making good music.

And while we are talking about "producing" I want you to ask yourself a question. Is it really realistic to think that millions of people in their bedrooms or back room studios who want to make music are all suddenly fantastic producers? I see a lot of people describe themselves as producers. They call themselves that because it seems to them that they are doing what some professional person who works in a studio facility might do. They aren't. One reason I don't emphasise the production role in what I do (and, to be fair, I largely bypass the process completely) is because I am humble enough to say that I know next to nothing about it. A real producer or sound engineer has studied the craft, maybe taken exams and worked in commercial facilities. The rest of us are just hacks in varying degrees. Now there are those who would quibble with my abilities (I mean you Jeff!) but I must say, in all honesty, that I never produce. What I do is merely organise sounds. That's not sophism. I've made music for decades and never considered things like phase cancellation, noise floors or lots of other things you can read about in professional audio journals. And do you know why? Because where's the fun in that? It is simply not in my music-making mentality to get anally retentive and boring about sound. Sound, for me, is just having fun. Nothing more, nothing less. And anything that isn't fun, in this context, I could care less about.

So perhaps now it makes more sense why my process is about playing, performing and simply pressing record and saying I'm done. All I'm interested in is authentically communicating a personal performance, or sequence of performances, from myself onto some recorded medium. Indeed, lately I've even wondered about the recording part. Recording things is another way to set things in stone and, philosophically, I have issues with that. But maybe those issues are things for another day.

2014 in Review: A Look At My Musical Year

There's just two weeks to go in 2014 and its that time of year when you look back and ask yourself what has been achieved. I see myself as a musician, a person who is creative with sound and who looks to combine sounds - primarily in interesting and artistic, if not entertaining, ways. I don't necessarily do this for the general public and certainly not for fame or acclamation. Although, of course, who of us does not like validation from other people? But, I think, I've always been quite clear that I make music for myself as a kind of running commentary on my life, where its at and my more philosophical views. That might strike you as quite a strange motive for music-making. And maybe it is. But its mine and there it is. Certainly I would much rather take that as my motive than a whoring after likes, follows and downloads.

I have used a number of pseudonyms this year to make music. The primary ones were The Geeky Disco Experiment, one I had used for a few years, and newer ones Dr Existenz and Herr Absurd. There is not really any difference between them in terms of the music made. They are just names and a chance to carve out different identities.

2014 was another year in which my music got better. This has been happening for a few years now and I like the fact. Of course, I finish the year having just done a big experiment in making music randomly. This started, overtly, half way through my Dark Series of four albums and continued explicitly throughout my Random Series which came about precisely to experiment with randomness. This has given me a new window on the music-making experience, something I have always thought about theoretically as well as doing practically. I am a very lazy person and, as has been noted by Bill Gates of lazy people in general, that makes me good at finding shortcuts to cut down on things unnecessary. Indeed, that was primarily why I had always been an improviser. Thinking about it just seemed like too much hard work when you could set things up and just play.

When I look at my output from the year I am, once again, staggered by some of the tracks that appeared. You need to remember that my processes are extremely tailored to capture a moment. I don't write music with any ideas in my head of what I want it to be. I wouldn't know how to do that. Its a counter-intuitive way of doing things to me. Indeed, its hard to say that I write music at all. I simply record what happens when I am in front of an instrument or another music-making device. That "what happens" is what becomes molded into the song. I have a very, very high hit rate. In fact, its extremely rare that I reject an idea that comes to me. For example, in making my recent Random Series of four albums and thirty one total tracks I only rejected one of the thirty two ideas I had. So that's like a 90+% success rate of ideas being turned into finished songs. I always know within five or ten minutes if an idea is going to work or not. If it gets past this time limitation it will end up being a song. They nearly all do.

I think the reason for that is mostly because my process is now very honed after a number of years. I am simply trying to let out what is inside when I record music or create some track. So I just need to chill, relax and play (as in have fun). If you do that I have found that what is inside comes out pretty easily. It doesn't matter what tools you are using. If its in there to come out then providing an environment where it can should usually be enough. I deliberately play up the fun angle. You need to be enjoying yourself when creating. Its not some dour, serious process although what comes out may be dour and serious if that is your mood. My music is very intimately tied to me and my personality. I can see that clearly and, I suppose, I play up to that fact. I often refer to it privately as a musical autobiography that is constantly being written.

 So what about the high points of the music I did. Well, first to mention that there were some not so good pieces - one of which I have never listened to since I did it (the quickly forgotten album "Sordid"). I do have the occasional disaster. But this was more than made up for by the successes. The most notable of these is the collection known as Elektronische Existenz (my most downloaded album) which I wrote mostly around the middle of the year. It had been preceeded by two albums which established a mood for me in "Blue" and "Static Metal". These albums established a melancholic mood and a fascination with certain FM type sounds and they seemed to set me in a groove. Now I can have a prolific output at times (partly due to the circumstances of my life) and this lead to one. I then produced the first of what was to be three collections of thirty one songs. Elektronische Existenz, as a whole collection, (it was originally released as 10 EPs and an epilogue titled EEXIII) is remarkably consistent in terms of its quality. Only one of the songs, as I judge, slips below the standard (and that is forgivable as a reminder to me that things can't always be wonderful). Imagine having such high quality across thirty one songs! Its harder for us prolific guys to be consistent because there is so much more to judge us by.

Later in the year, passing through three albums under the moniker Dr Existenz, I did two more series of thirty one songs - the so-called Dark and Random Series. I never intended to write multi-volume collections but, looking back, I'm glad I did. I am a storyteller and I like reading and hearing mythologies. Elektronische Existenz is even a musical mythology itself about the character "Der Wanderer" - another name I took for myself during the year. I don't know how I could be much more explicitly autobiographical than writing a thirty one track musical and mythological autobiography about a character who is supposed to represent me! I even included a mythology with the complete collection of songs when I released them all together in one package.

In the summer of 2014 I visited Berlin. I was a little lost when I went there and I was hoping to find something by going back to the place that only a year before I had lived in. I ended up only spending a week there. I had planned for longer. It gave birth, in the immediate aftermath, to two albums, Berlinerisch and Bürgerablage. The first was crunchy sounding and very frustrated. Its not a favourite of mine whilst I can, at the same time, see my DNA within it. As an aside, I do not think that all music necessarily has to be good. I think things need to be aesthetically interesting more than simply good or bad. Otherwise everything just turns into a simple popularity contest and that is intellectual poverty of the highest order. If I can be interesting, to myself in what I do and, just maybe, to one or two others whose opinions I value, then that is enough for me. Interesting will always be good.

 

Bürgerablage was a different ball game. It was made, primarily, using actual machines, Korg Volcas and Electribes. The Volcas were bought expressly for the purpose and then passed onto another musician. It was good for me to get back to machines, something I had a preference for in previous years and where I started my musical journey decades ago when computer music simply didn't exist. However, a number of bouts of poverty had slowly dwindled my equipment over the years and I had had to keep reshaping what was at my disposal and re-configuring my processes accordingly. Bürgerablage is the sound of physical oscillators at play. One or two good tunes popped out in the fun. 

And so maybe you see through the rundown of the year just where my musical instincts lie. They lie in fun, in play, in nothing that is too complex or deliberate or professional. They lie in a simple honesty to record and represent where I am, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking. In short, how I see my place in the world. My music is describing the outlook of a man thrown into existence and struggling to explain the world around him. At a rough guess I have done at least over 150 separate songs this year. Maybe more. That's one every 2 or 3 days. For the entire year. Maybe now you see why I describe my music this way and why I seek to do experiments with my music to try and understand things more and broaden my experience. I'm basically a thinker and searcher. As I wrote on the description of a recent album, you may think I'm doing music when I upload another album. But I'm not, not really. I'm doing philosophy. I'm recording  a mindset, an understanding (or lack of understanding) of something. It needs a little interpretation from the listener. But that's the fun. And the challenge. My music is a challenge. Deliberately so.

The following is a rundown of 20 tracks from 2014 that I think represent my output from the year. They are not my "top 20". I honestly couldn't decide what the best twenty were. As I have explained, I'm a human tape recorder. I don't set out to make a great track a certain way or with an aim in mind. But, nevertheless, they are all near the top of any such list I would make and they represent me fairly as I have been throughout this past year. Many are still available online and I'll give you the places to look, should you be interested to look, at the end.

1. Dataflöw (Chaos Computer)

2. In The Mindgloom (The Fictional Existence of Dr Existenz)

3. Blank Stare (Dark Moods)

4. Pppffff (Static Metal)

5. The Present (Dark Visions)

6. The Wanderer and His Shadow III (Elektronische Existenz)

7. Jötnar (Dark Mythologies)

8. Todmüde (Elektronische Existenz VIII)

9. Digital (Random Machines)

10. Terrible Brutal and Cruel (Dr Existenz)

11. MOWUS (Dark Visions)

12. Bürgerablage (Bürgerablage)

13. Pistograf (Entropy Device)

14. You have Been Industrialised (Blue)

15. Barghest (Dark Mythologies)

16. Steckschlüssel (Teil 2) (Bürgerablage)

17. Loopers/Looping (Random Machines)

18. My Life is Having Its Revenge Upon Me (Dr Existenz)

19. The Future (Dark Visions)

20. Grey Future (Blue)

My work as Herr Absurd and Dr Existenz is still online at drexistenz.bandcamp.com and herrabsurd.bandcamp.com My "The Geeky Disco Experiment" archive is currently not available online but Static Metal, Berlinerisch and Bürgerablage are available at the Dr Existenz site.

PS Thanks to all who have listened to or even downloaded my musical musings throughout 2014. Good to share some of the journey with you.

EDIT: Elektronische Existenz, Blue and Static Metal are now up again at elektronischeexistenz.bandcamp.com

Random Machines and Indeterminacy Engines: My Latest Projects And Other Ramblings

This week I have been conducting some musical experiments. Or writing albums as the rest of you might call it. Recently I had been doing some thinking about how I make my music and what informs that process because I thought that this was an important thing to do. Many people, or so it seems, have a pre-determined notion in their head about this or are informed by supposed "professional" notions of the process. I was content with neither of these things and determined to think for myself through the issues.

I came to the conclusion that I was a major hurdle in creating new and vibrant music. In fact, I came to the conclusion that all of us are. We can only make music as ourselves. We are informed by notions of what is right and wrong and have personal preferences regarding how things should be. We will always favour this synth sound over that one or that guitar tone in preference to another. It is human to have preferences. Let me make it clear that these things, and our choices, affect what comes out of our speakers to a much greater degree than any fiddling or messing with faders as we mix what we have recorded. And yet how much time have you given to this major conceptual premise of any music-making as opposed to the latter? Maybe not as much as you should have.

So its my intuition that people don't think enough about what it is they are doing. A fair chunk of the time you allocate to your project should not be doing anything else but thinking about it, conceptualising it. What are you trying to achieve? What will you use? Is there anything you especially want to try out? Is your music meant to represent, or even reproduce or create, any idea or emotion? The questions you find relevant to your project will be your own. But there should be questions. And there should be some conceptual weight behind what you are doing. Otherwise you are just playing. That's fine. But it is what it is. Work that has pretentions to be art needs to be more than play. Unless "just play" is the artform!

As you may know, recently I have been exploring randomness and chance in music in an effort to escape the gravitational pull of my own choices. I had stumbled upon John Cage and read some of his writings. In more recent weeks I have thought this through in my own context and limitations. Its a necessarily on-going process. In the last week I recorded two projects, Random Machines and Indeterminacy Engine. They are, to lesser and greater degrees, works of controlled randomness. Crucial decisions, ones that a musical creator would usually consciously choose because they wanted to determine what happened in the music, were purposely taken from my hands by utilizing tools which allowed random choices to be made.

In the first project, Random Machines, I conceived of random talking over a musical background, the two not in anyway meant to coincide. This is taken from an idea John Cage and David Tudor utilized way back in 1959. There Cage read out one minute stories in one room whilst Tudor played piano and manipulated tape in another. Neither knew what the other was doing or when. In my case I read out the blog of a friend on Twitter that just happened to be advertised as I was thinking of my idea, taking that as my text to be read out. For the music I set up some random instruments in Propellerhead Reason. And then I married the two together.

My second experiment was more thorough-going in its randomness. I set up what I chose to call an "Indeterminacy Engine", a device (actually 2 devices in the end) that was created with the express intention of allowing as much randomness as possible. I again chose Reason as the perfect environment for this experiment with its proliferation of cables and utilization of CV control in software form. This allowed all manner of things to be connected to a sequencer and controlled using CV curves or gate and pitch events which could be drawn and plotted at random and programmed to change throughout the tracks recorded. Thus, the instruments could essentially be operated at random outside of choosing the sounds they played. This was my concession to the creator's vanity.

As was stated, I created two Indeterminacy Engines, one for synth sounds and one for percussion sounds. The percussion engine was centred around two drum modules with the sounds individually wired into a mixer so that send effects could be used on individual drum sounds in varying amounts. However, as the drum kits and patterns were to also be randomized how this might work out in practice was another unknown. It was a neat but controllable way of allowing the randomness to happen. With all this set up, I randomized the patterns and changed sound sets between pieces in order to create the 8 track album.

But the question is what, if anything, do I learn from this?

One thing I learn, and talking to my friend Jeff who is currently mixing every frequency of his latest project to within an inch of it's life this is confirmed, is that the idea is to get the sounds as right as they can be at the start of your project rather than at the finish. This also informs how I create my projects. You will never find me running 60, 80 or 100 tracks. I usually can do it in under 8 because I don't wish to complicate matters, either deliberately or undeliberately. This, you might say, is my iconoclastic or eccentric approach to things. Yes, I will quite happily tell "the professionals" to go and stuff themselves and take their received wisdom with them. All the genuinely creative people did it their own way anyway. And doing it "like a pro" guarantees you nothing but that you sound like someone else's idea of what correct is. Big deal. "Being pro" is the excuse of someone who doesn't have the nous to think for themselves. (Too harsh?)

I have always believed that when it comes to music you should really just keep it as simple as possible. For years I never touched a dial. I just recorded what I did and that was it. Over time I learned that a bit of reverb added some presence and that to keep your music from sounding dull you emphasize the high frequencies a little on your master output. I'm not advising anyone here. To be honest, I don't think its that important. What you decide to record, the ideas you have, matter much more to any music than tinker's tricks at a mixing desk. And no one has ever told me my music sounded bad for all my lack of "professional knowledge" (which I regard as dogma in any case). Some have told me it sounded good though. And for avoidance of doubt I'm making music for my ears anyway.

So I don't go overboard with a million tracks and 5 effects for each sound source. I don't spend 5 days trying to get just the right amount of convolution reverb. I set it and forget it, usually using the same settings for any and every project I do. It works. I keep it simple and I look for good sounds to use. "Always get your sound right as near to the sound source as possible" was something I once remember reading. Its really good advice I think. It saves a lot of the interminable hassle of recording. And have a good idea, I would add.

As far as all the randomness goes I am learning that you need to control it. We live on planet earth but how many other planets, that we know of, could we live on? The point in that example is that randomness may provide staggering beauty quite by chance but more often than not it supplies inhospitable conditions. Clearly, when applied to music, uncontrolled randomness could supply 100 million terribly sounding tracks. And one good one. But none of us have time for that so my experiments are teaching me that it is about finding ways to tame the chance elements and utilize and control them to produce musically pleasing results. You have to ride the wave of chaos. That's an on-going journey I am making and my experiments are encouraging me to do so. The end game is to widen and deepen my musical world, to go places I could never consciously go because my preferences would always lead me down similar paths. I don't want to keep repeating myself and so I must always try new things and move on.

We musicians need to remember that there is truly no right and wrong way to do things. I see and hear so many people burdened by how they think it should be done who would never have it occur to them to question or even explore the possibilities for themselves. Arguments from authority (which is all all the "pro" talk is) reinforced by magazines, media and professionals themselves have never impressed me because I am basically anti-authoritarian. So do what works. Do what sounds good in your ears. Do what you enjoy. You cannot go wrong. You can't. You might even write a Tubular Bells, Oxygene or Dark Side of The Moon one day. Because no one knows what will come out of their speakers as they sit down to write. Mike Oldfield, JMJ and Pink Floyd didn't know either. Until they checked their bank balances. Music is the world of the possible, of the being bold enough to dream. If you are lucky you might capture that dream but you have to be prepared to dream in the first place.

And that leads me to my last point. If you make instrumental music don't let anyone tell you it isn't popular. As I tweeted a day or two ago, there are instrumental albums that have sold in 8 figure numbers. The world record for the greatest concert attendance has been held by Jean Michel Jarre numerous times (and still is at 3.5 million for a concert in Moscow). This is not indicative of music that is "not popular". I believe that electronic instrumental musicians actually choose a harder and better job for themselves. Singing is for the mainstream where people only want to sing the words back. But when you have no words the tune or, as with my interest, more especially the sounds must carry much more weight. That is what interests me and its not a lesser form of music. It is, for my money, a more interesting one.

Should you wish to, you can hear Random Machines and Indeterminacy Engine at herrabsurd.bandcamp.com