A Change is As Good As A Rest

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

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

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

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

Aphex Twin

Autechre

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

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

                                             Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter

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

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

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

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

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

The Value of Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evaluating Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Artist Interview: Noisecast

Today's artist interview is with a guy I came across on Twitter. I listened to a couple of his "Noisecasts" and was greatly impressed by them and so I decided to see if he would be interested in an interview. I'm glad to say he was and this is reproduced below. After having read the interview feel free to have a wander over to Mixcloud where you can hear examples of the audio collages he has made. These are at https://www.mixcloud.com/noisecast/  

1. How did you get into making music?

I joined a band when I was 14. I didn’t know how to play anything but picked up bass and managed to write some pretty terrible songs. We had a decent drummer so that kinda carried it. After realizing we were a bit rubbish, I sold the bass and picked up some decks. From around ’94 drum n bass was an unhealthy obsession for me for a few years and I spent every penny I could on vinyl. I remember really wanting to make electronic music (DnB) back then and having not much of an idea how to or what you needed get to start. When I got bored of drum n bass, record collecting slowed down a bit for me but with a better mix of stuff (blues, jazz, rock, soul, reggae and whatever else).

Much later on I eventually picked up an MPC and started making sample based hip hop beats. I’ve never gotten very far with computer based music. Looking at a computer screen when making music presents too many distractions and options for my liking. Hitting pads on an MPC until something sounds right was more my speed and felt more satisfying too. So initially it was just looping, layering and chopping samples for me. Using sounds from my records and wanting to do cool stuff with them over looped beats. I was pretty strict about everything being 100% sample based then. The sound that achieves can be really cool but I had some weird purist restrictive thing about it. Which was a help at first, in that it pushed me to make the MPC do anything I needed it to do, but I’m glad I got away from it. Restricting your sound that much doesn’t really make much sense to me now. When I did first try using a synth I couldn’t ever get it to sit right with the samples and didn’t understand what any of the stupid wavy lines next to the knobs meant.

So not knowing any of that stuff I got a job working music technology and picked some of it up along with a bunch of other gear. That job and having access to all the gear you want turned out to be a massive passion killer for making music. I think there was a period for maybe about 4-5 years where I didn’t make a single tune. Anyway, I’ve since got rid of anything I don’t need and appreciate what I have a lot more, and I'm pretty sure I know what most of it does now.


2. What role does music play for you? How important is it and how does it influence you?

Going to see live music is maybe my favourite thing to do. It’s loud and you’re not expected to listen to anyone just the music and there is drinking. I don’t mind being sober and listening to people sometimes too but usually that’s not as much fun. Live music will influence me a lot more than hearing new music on an album I may really like in terms of ideas for making new music. I’ll always have stronger ideas after decent live music. Doesn’t matter what kind of music. I find that I’ll pick up on much more from a good live gig.

In terms of making music, what’s most important to me at the moment is avoiding sounding too much like anyone else, to not be precious about ideas and not sounding like complete garbage. That’s the balance I aim for anyway, but I’m still working on it. Just having something creative to do, whether or not the results are any good, is what’s important. Obviously it’s more satisfying when I do something I’m pleased with. Occasionally that will happen and it feels good.

I’m fairly obsessive about music in general but I’ve never really thought about why that is. I just enjoy it.


3. What do you currently use to make music? Are you happy with that or how would you like it to change?

My current set up is an Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler, Grendel Drone Commander, some Moog effect pedals, an Eventide Space reverb as well as some iPad apps. I also have couple of MPC’s (the 1000 & 3000), a Moog Voyager, DSI Tempest drum machine, a couple of pre-amps and turntables which are in storage for the time being. Everything attaches to an RME Fireface 400 interface and then through to Genelec monitors. My laptop is there just as a tape recorder and for editing. One thing I really like about the Fireface is that you can leave your hardware hooked up to it and don’t need to turn your computer on to use it. So unless I’m actually recording something, there’s no computer involved.

Every bit of kit I have definitely adds a specific flavour of sound and they all mesh nicely together for me. Next year I’ll have a new dedicated space for making music again so am looking forward to bringing it all back together. I miss having access to my record collection too. It will be cool to have everything back in one place.

For the moment though, I’m content just with the ASR-10 and Drone Commander which is all I have space for just now. You can pretty much build any sound you want in the ASR and its effects engine is incredible. The ASR-10 is bit quirky to get to know and gets stupid hot very quickly but the workflow is really nice. Plus I just love the sound of old samplers. The MPC 3000 is probably my other favourite piece of kit. It was in a gnarly mess when I picked it up but I’ve refurbished everything I could on it. It still has little issues here and there but I forgive them and just get on with it. If I’m sequencing anything (other than the DSI Tempest), it will be from inside the MPC 3000. Recording samples through it is some magic fairy dust kinda deal. I love the sound of that thing. Both the ASR-10 and the MPC 3000 have compact flash card readers installed on them now via SCSI to avoid floppy disks which saves a lot of headache.

While I don’t currently have access to my record collection, I’ve been sampling a lot more sounds from old movies. The best stuff I tend to find is usually from old horror, martial arts or sci-fi films. That’s something I’ve always done but have been a lot more reliant on it this year. It’s also spurred me to use more ambient soundscape sounds that I’ll record with my phone.

The Moog pedals are a lot of fun to use, sound amazing and there’s always new ways set them up and whatnot. Great fun to use alongside the Grendel Drone Commander and Eventide Space. The Grendel DC is the only thing I’ve picked up recently. It’s sounds really dirty, compliments the Moog pedals nicely and is compact enough that I can sit it on a pedalboard with them.

I’ve no plans to buy any more gear just now. I like what I have and enjoy finding new ways of using them together. I don’t think I really need anything more. …..BUT!! If I were to get anything new, I guess it would be practical to have a bigger interface so all my gear could hooked up at the same time. A cheapo cassette multitrack would be cool. Always enjoy messing with those and cassettes remind me of making mix tapes. Some new weird fx boxes or pedals would be sweet but I’ve tried not to tempt myself in to any for the last year or so successfully. A new portable recorder thingy (a leaky battery murdered my last one) and binaural mics to record sounds with would also be cool. For now I’m happy enough just using my phone for that. Most of the time I find it’s best to just make do with what’s at hand and not worry about getting any new gear. New ideas are what’s important, doesn’t matter so much what you doodle them out with. If I have gear lust I’ll try to cure it with a £5 iOS app rather than something pricey that I don’t really have space for right now. It’s not quite the same as having a cool piece of new kit to play with but it allows me to mess with new stuff without the burden of new gear to incorporate.

iOs apps that I use a lot are Soundscaper, Borderlands, Hexaglyphics, csSpectrual and Sampler. Usually when I’m recording anything out of the iPad it will pass through the ASR-10 effects engine, Moog pedals or Eventide Space to add a little something extra to it.


4. What projects are you currently involved with and what about them is attractive to you?

At the moment, just the Noisecast podcast. I’ve bunches of new ideas, some doodles I’ve been doing on the side,  some half finished projects and other stuff I want to work on, but I should be off on travel break before long. Anything new is on hold until I come back. Before doing Noisecast I had not tried doing anything like this musically before. I just opened a project in my DAW and decided that I was going to fill it with half an hour of sound. The idea behind it was to try new stuff, not be precious about ideas and a call it finished project. Music is so disposable now calling it a podcast seemed a good way to do it. Stream it once and never listen to it again. No need to bother with fancy track names. 

Having all the different parts (or ‘tracks’) within a single project in the DAW works well for me. It’s cool trying different instruments (or samples) I’d built in the ASR against the different parts within the project to see what would fit best where. Flipping ideas between tracks helps make it a bit more like a continuous piece of sound rather than a bunch of tracks that have been thrown in together. It’s also fun working without aiming for any particular structure or form. Just doodling ideas out. Sometimes they’ll end up a 1 min thing, other times a 15 min track. Doesn’t matter, just keep it and move on. The only rule I set was to always to pick something new to mess with - like a time signature I’m not comfy with or not having any tempo at all, or maybe using a sample I’ve kept banked but never managed to fit into anything before. As long as it includes fitting something new in then it’s worth doing.

I’ll do a third ep before I leave for travel and then hopefully carry it on whenever it is I get back. This one will be different to the first two as it’ll be based around one or two longer Drone Commander improvs I recorded, rather than shorter sketches. I’ll layer it up with other stuff and call it a finished. Hopefully it won’t be entirely as bad as that sounds.


5. What sort of music do you see yourself as making? Are there other kinds of music you want to make or wish you could make?

Self-indulgent dark sci-fi nonsense? Dark ambient would probably the easiest box to fling Noisecast in. It’s definitely soundtrack influenced. I’ve collected a fair bit of soundtrack vinyl and a lot of the sounds I sample are taken from old films. I’ve always been a film geek and like referencing it in music. Working to picture is something I’d like to try. Maybe re-scoring part of a film or scoring music to a graphic novel and then putting that together in a digital format. I’ve lots of ideas for stuff and putting different sounds together but talking about them seems like nonsense until you actually get on with doing them.

I’ll do something a bit more beat orientated when I’m back for sure. Working out some kind of live set is on my ‘maybe to do list’.. and perhaps some noise-pop-polka jams?


6. A musical genie grants you three wishes. What are they?

To be able to teleport my music studio anywhere in the world at anytime I need it. 

Reincarnate Hendrix for a last gig somewhere smallish. Anyone reading this is invited.

No one else gets a musical genie. I want to feel special.


Noisecast is on Twitter at @NoisecastFM

A Musical Journey

I thought it was time that I wrote another blog about music but I was stuck as to what to write about. All these blogs of mine, pretty much like everything else I either say or write, are moments of inspiration blurted out - often without filter. But the one necessary factor in this case is to have the inspiration in the first place. But I was struggling to find something to write about as I had lots of little ideas which didn't seem to flesh out into a full blog. And so I've had to try and find a way to bring in whatever is floating around in my headspace and make a coherent whole from it. People always take you more seriously if you seem to know what you are talking about. If you can bluff that you will go far!

So my device for the shaping of my thoughts today is the subject of a musical journey. Specifically here I'm thinking of my own which starts with the records my mum had in her 1970s Radiogram, a contraption which was a combination of a radio, a record player and a sideboard. In it were, amongst other things, Pat Boone's single "Speedy Gonzales", The Greatest Hits of Englebert Humperdinck, "You're My World" by Cilla Black, numerous Jim Reeves albums and The Greatest Hits of Abba. Not the hippest catalogue of records you are ever likely to find. But that was my introduction to music along with the radio of the 1970s with its Alvin Stardusts, Bay City Rollers and Bee Gees. I bought my own first record in 1980. It was "Baggy Trousers" by Madness. The first music I had expressly liked for myself was the late 1970s Ska revival bands in England. Primarily this was Madness, The Specials, Bad Manners, The Selecter and The Beat.

The early 1980s changed things though. It was a time of new sounds. Specifically, it was a time of synthesizers emerging into popular music. Of course, in more arty or progressive circles synths had been employed soon after their invention throughout the 1970s. But as a boy I was not aware of Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre. However, when I heard The Human League or OMD or Depeche Mode on the radio I was introduced to synthesizers. Two acts especially prominent for me at the time were The Thompson Twins and Howard Jones. I cringe slightly about this now. Just regard this blog as my confessional for past sins. I was not a child of rich parents but I did somehow manage to go to two concerts in the 80s. One was the aforementioned Thompson Twins. The other was Midge Ure vintage Ultravox.

More important than the bands which caught my ear though was the febrile state of music in the 80s which wrestles in my consciousness for the title of best music decade in my memory. It would only be in later life that I had the wisdom and maturity to see that nothing stands alone or comes from nothing. Everything has a precursor and is inspired by something that came before it. And so the 80s cannot stand musically without the 70s. This is especially true of perhaps one of the major creative forces of the 80s - new forms of dance music - whether that be House, Techno, Electro or Rap. All of these had roots in 70s Disco as well as Soul and Funk but they somehow got paired with a German electronic sensibility. Often this is accredited - lazily so - to just Kraftwerk. But you have to see the environment Kraftwerk were working in to see that they weren't the only ones doing what they did. Or even the first. Listen to the album "Zuckerzeit" by Kluster, for example. It came out before "Autobahn" even existed.

The late 80s in the UK was when the "Acid House" scene began to arrive. Besides the musical forbears that gave birth to this music there was also a necessary technological component - new musical instruments. The 80s was a time when the big, lumbering, analogue synth beasts of the 70s were finally miniaturized or, in many cases, digitized to produce smaller and more affordable boxes which kids with the appropriate aptitude could start using to make beats. And you didn't need to be a player to use them either. It was the start of music that was programmed rather than played, a controversial shift of emphasis in some quarters. Earlier in the 80s the turntable had been turned into an instrument by the likes of Grandmaster Flash. But later the drum machine, primarily in the guise of the TR-808, the synth, often the TB-303, or the sampler, paradigmatically the SP1200, were used to make dance music. It was around the mid 80s that I first played a synth. Actually it was two synths, the SH-101 and the Juno 106. They weren't mine. I never could have afforded one of either. They were my friend's and I made sure I went there as often as I could to have another chance to play around with them.

At this point my historical tale takes a detour. I want to ask in what way our journeys influence us. Or even if they do in ways we can describe. Of course, we can all make up stories of how we think things have influenced us. For some people those stories are very important if not foundational to what they do. But if you read of the things I listened to and liked in my first 20 years then none of them are really important to any music I have subsequently made. In fact, its very much about face as far as I'm concerned. Its the things I missed that I only found out about out years or even decades later that have come to influence me. There are reasons for this. Primarily these are reasons of opportunity. At that time I had no means to make any music of my own and it was also a traumatic time for me personally. I would really only come to grips with things a decade later for the first time when those memories had long faded. If things had been different it could have been Aphex Twin, Autechre and me. But it wasn't.

And its Autechre I want to talk about now. Groups like this, along with Boards of Canada and a whole swathe of experimental German acts such as Can, Popol Vuh, Amon Düül II and Faust are music I only heard FOR THE FIRST TIME in the last 5 years. Some readers might find that statement quite hard to believe but I must say that its true. And this is one thing about musical journeys: they are very personal. There is so much music in the world. You cannot listen to all of it and so you make choices. I firmly believe, however, that there is, as one book of the bible says, "a time for everything". And everything in its time. You may have got the vibe above that my mum did not like very cool music. Maybe the genes have been passed down. But then again I have a very individualist character. I'm happy to walk the road I walk even if it be alone and with few companions or passersby.  The point, I think, as both a listener and maker of music, is to learn something from the journey. And these last 5 years have been a very intensive learning period for me. I see, for example, how so much electronic music of today (the good and the very, very bad) could not be without much of the German electronic music of the 70s. It just was a necessary precursor. 

And so to Autechre, a northern English electronic duo and purveyors of what is sometimes called IDM or "Intelligent" dance music. The music has come to be known for its erraticism, its irregular beats and freneticism made possible by use of computers and software (although they are officially machine agnostic and use a range of equipment). Indeed, Sean Booth, one member of the band, once answered the question "What instrument would you keep if you could only keep one?" with "The computer because of its flexibility". Here we don't have instrumental purists who value a beloved keyboard. Post 80s makers of electronic music, people who don't play and never could, value the new tools of the trade, digital tools which some might say aren't even instruments at all. They are production devices. It is easy to say why many kids who are musically interested today regard the computer as natural, normal and uncontroversial in a musical context and why they take acts like Autechre, programmers and coders working with machines, as their musical heroes. It was not always so! But the Autechre guys grew up making mixes on tape machines and so to them a computer is probably just a digital version of the same thing. It shows that the journey plays a part in the path ahead as well.

Sean Booth, in a very interesting and quite long set of answers to fan questions online, seems to agree with this kind of thinking. He doesn't think of Autechre as having the very singular sound that many people think they do. He talks of "a web of connections and us linked to a few of them" which acknowledges that he sees links to others. This is both true and false for I think they have developed an identity all their own. But Booth, in answering questions, is happy to acknowledge that factors such as sense of place, "the water" and even "all that grey" (of the sky in the north of England) go into making the sound that Autechre have. As I'm from a similar area close by to their roots I can very well understand that. However, even from their first album, Incunabula, it seems to me that there has always been an added twist to the Electro influences they often reference and pay homage too. This accounts for the beats whereas the factors Booth mentions account for the solemnity in the melodies. What in them turns them to the frenetic almost noise abstraction their tracks sometimes become - who knows?! The thing is, when you listen to early Kluster from 1970s Germany you hear a very similar mentality. But no explanatory link is known.

So my own musical journey stopped, in a mainstream sense, sometime in the late 90s. Ever since then, bar one or two Keane and Scissor Sisters shaped detours, I have gone back to music made 20 or 30 or even 40 years before, the music that all the cool people of the time probably liked from day one. But I must admit that I cannot claim to have been there at the time, in at the start of the phenomenon. Mostly I had never heard of these people! This is stuff I missed. I can now see why mums and dads never have any idea about what's in the charts. You reach a point where you stop caring and you get settled with "what you like". In the 90s I had liked guitar bands. Now that's all so much "meh" to me - although I retain an abiding admiration for Iron Maiden. This doesn't square with avant garde electronics you are thinking. But it does square with a sensibility for liking things that are not cool. Because Iron Maiden never were and never tried to be. Another link is that I like music that carves out its own niche - that can only be one act. Iron Maiden fulfill that criterion - as do Autechre.

And this is the lesson of my story - such as it is. I like music that is confident in its own skin, not overly concerned with the whims of fashion or the vacuum of popularity. I like acts that carve out their own sonic terrain and that is why now I listen to German Kosmische Musik or Berlin School. The people who made that made something different guided by their own values and choices. Their heirs were people like Autechre (via Americans who turned the German music into Electro and Techno) who had a sonic interest rather than an interest in a 3 minute song for a chart. As Sean Booth relates it, they wanted to "just plug the gear in and see what comes out rather than playing a song, we thought it would be more fun to store a ton of patterns and then manipulate the gear to create the arrangement on the spot". Put that in the mouth of the Germans at the start of the 70s and it would ring equally true. And its a mentality that I have come to have in my own, much more humble, musical offerings. It took me over 40 years to work it out.

Is Conservation Contrary to Nature?

The blog that you are about to read might confound or upset your own personal beliefs. But before you decide that I am an anarchist who wishes to see wanton and random destruction I want you to read the full blog, attempt to understand it on my terms and give me a fair hearing. You will then have the task of taking on board what I've said and bringing it into critical interaction with the beliefs you already have. This, as I understand it, is something like how our belief systems progress anyway. And so I ask for a hearing.

My blog today starts from one of my own beliefs. This belief is that conservation, not just ecological conservation but pretty much all forms of conservation, are contrary to nature. What do I mean by saying this? I mean that the nature of the universe, the way it works, the way things are ordered, the way this universe progresses, is not based on the conservation of individual specific things. The universe, for example, does not have as one of its guiding principles that you or I must be saved. It does not think that lions or elephants or rhinos or whales or planet Earth or our sun or our galaxy should exist forever. Indeed, it doesn't think that anything should. It just is. Conservation is not a part of its make up. The universe is a big engine of change.

So what is a part of its make up? From observation it seems that constant, radical, permanent change is a part of its make up. The universe, left to its own devices, is merely the living history of forms of energy if you break it down to basics. These forms of energy interact with one another to produce the things we see, hear, and experience. More importantly, they interact to produce things that we will never see, hear, experience or even imagine. Existence, in this sense, is just energy doing what energy does. There are no over-arching rules for it and nothing is mandated to exist or not exist because the universe is impassive and uninterested in what is - or is not. Its just random, chaotic energy. Out of this random chaos came us - quite inexplicably to my mind but that's another discussion. We human beings are not impassive or uninterested. Indeed, we need to be concerned and interested in order to survive. And so from this universe of chaotic energy we interested beings were produced.

I have observed the interest in ecological conservation as a phenomenon with my own growing interest for many years. Its one debate which can get some human beings very hot under the collar. When I hear people saying that we need to "save the planet" I often ask myself "What for?" For me its never really good enough to assume the rightness of an agenda merely because it seems to be either moral or, in some sense, on the side of good. I know both morality and goodness as interested ideas which are in no sense neutral but always serving some interest. You might think that the interests of saving the planet are very good ones but I would always seek to undermine the foundations of a belief to ask what presuppositions it stands on. Our beliefs always have these groundings and they are often very revealing and easily toppled. Such are human belief systems.

Of course, conservation is about more than wanting to save the planet or some species upon it (whether that is a rare kind of insect, a cuddly mammal or even us). I had a think and I reasoned that you could connect capitalists (who want to preserve their economic status in society as well as the value of capital), theists (who want a god to be the guarantor of everything that is as it is right now), Greens (who want to preserve the planet and species of life as we have them now) and Transhumanists (who want human beings to outlive our current surroundings and even our planet) all as types of people interested in conservation broadly understood. You may be able to think of others. Conservation is, of course, most commonly associated with the Greens but, as we can see, the drive to conserve things is actually apparent wherever people want things to stay roughly as they are right now (or in an idealized, utopian form of right now). My point, as I've said above, is quite simple: this is contrary to the way things are, contrary to nature, against the organizing principles of an indifferent universe.

You may argue that this is to misunderstand the way things are and that's a fair point to challenge me on. You may say that I am right and the universe doesn't care what stays or goes. It will just keep rolling on until the energy all dissipates in the eventual heat death of the universe in some trillions of years. In that context you may say that what is is then up to those species who can make something of it and that if the universe allows us to make and manufacture things a certain way, guided by our principles, then we should. I don't actually find this position all that wrong. My concern here, I suppose, is with those who reason that there is some form of rightness or naturalness or in-built goodness with this drive to conserve. To me it is entirely manufactured and interested as a phenomenon. It is the activity of self-interested and self-important beings. To want to save the whale because you have an impulse to save whales is one thing. To say that we have a responsibility to save whales is to use rhetoric in the service of an agenda. The universe doesn't care if whales live or die. It follows that there is no imperative for me to care either - although I may choose to and may give reasons for so doing. But these reasons will always be interested and (merely) rhetorical.

So what am I arguing against? I'm arguing against those who want to find or impose imperatives. I'm arguing against those who think that something put us here to "save the world". I'm arguing against those who see us as over and above nature as opposed to merely an interested and self-interested and self-important part of it, a species and individuals with a will to survive. I'm arguing against those who see us as anything other than a rather pathetic bug-like species on a nothing ball of rock in a nowhere solar system in an anonymous galaxy floating in a space so big you cannot begin to quantify it. I'm arguing against those who regard life as nothing to do with power and its operations and how those dynamics play out in human societies. Human beings are very conscious of their station in life and will seek to preserve or increase it. This, amongst other things, is why there are differing sides of the Green conservation argument. People have empires to protect. But seen from that angle life just becomes a power struggle between forms of energy marshalled to power differing agendas. We, instead of being the savior of our world, the universe and everything, are merely just more energy acting in the vastness of space until we dissipate.

So yes when I hear the slogans of Greens I chuckle. I wonder what we are saving and why. I smile at the naivety, if that's what it is, that just assumes this is the right thing to do. I wonder at the hubris that thinks we and our planet in some sense deserve to live. I wonder how these people have factored in the assumptions of our eventual destruction. I wonder how they explain away the fact that well over 90% of things that ever lived on Earth are gone forever without any human action whatsoever. Because that's what things just do - have their time and then cease to exist. I wonder where they reason the meaning they ascribe to things fits in. For nothing exists in a vacuum. (Feel free to ponder on the vacuum of space here and how that affects my last sentence.) The reasons we give for things, the beliefs we hold, are supported by other things and it is they, when articulated, that support our actions and drives. Life is wonderful and random. But it is not permanent. And, as far as I can see, it was never meant to be nor can it be. The drive to conserve is an interested human drive, just one contingent outworking of the energy that drives a form of life. This doesn't mean we shouldn't care or should ravage and destroy. Its just a context for something humans want to do for their own, personal reasons. It is, in the end, just one more example of the universe doing its thing, its the energy that exists exhausting itself until there's no more left. 

Its an example of the kind "Anything the universe allows is allowed".


Now you may feel free to think about this and decide who is right or wrong and, just as importantly, why.

Intoxication

In the recent past I made an album of instrumental electronic music called Forces of Nature. You can read about what's behind that album elsewhere on this blog. The album Intoxication that I have just completed is a companion piece to this.

Sadly, for those second guessing the subject of this album, it is not about alcohol. The "intoxication" at issue here is metaphorical but no less real or powerful in its effects. The intoxication under discussion here is intoxication as discussed in the written works of German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche discusses intoxication from his first book, The Birth of Tragedy from The Spirit of Music right up until books in his final year of sanity in 1888. For example, in his Twilight of the Idols. "Intoxication" is what Nietzsche thinks the greatest, most creative, artistic spirits must have. He writes in that latter book:

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

But what is this Nietzschean intoxication? Nietzsche recognizes many forms of it - sexual, feasting, agitation, victory, cruelty. The list goes on. "The essence of intoxication is the feeling of plenitude and increased energy.... In this condition one enriches everything out of one's abundance: what one sees, what one desires, one sees swollen, pressing, strong, overladen with energy."

In short, Nietzsche envisages that the artist is full, and overfull, with inspiration as we might put it today. From their own fullness the creation comes to be. And surely there is something to this. Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, was writing in the context of Dionysian feasts and so it is not hard to understand where the idea of intoxication might have come from since at these feasts many were often quite literally intoxicated. Nietzsche expands on this idea metaphorically in the course of describing the conditions of culture and art as he saw it.

My album Intoxication is a hybrid project, however, in that it conflates two at first seemingly unrelated subjects that find their point of common interest in this idea of "intoxication". It is not the first time that I have done this this year. My first album projects of the year were Jedem Das Seine and Arbeit Macht Frei, two albums which united twin themes. In this case it was the horror of the Nazi concentration camps and the film Under The Skin which I conceived these two albums as an alternative soundtrack for. Here in Intoxication one side of the work reflects an interest in this Nietzschean notion of "intoxication" but the second is an altogether more serious subject - as before where I combined matters cultural and historical.

The second sense in which I use the term "intoxicated" here is in reference to current world events: specifically I use the term with reference to refugees - what some others may call "migrants". These are people I conceive of as being "intoxicated with life". That is to say that they find themselves in the direst of straights and they have that all consuming will to survive that only those who have looked death in the face really know. I can say from my own personal experience that someone never wants to stay alive so much as in that moment when their continued existence might be terminally in doubt.

So I find it easy to describe the many refugees we see across the world, many fleeing from war-ravaged areas, many others merely from living in poverty and squalor, as "intoxicated with life". They want to live and this desire fills them and overflows within them, pushing them across land and across seas and oceans in the hope that they might find the circumstances for it. I do not blame a single one of them. Indeed, I find it strange that in the 21st century, in 2015, the idea that we might let people die or go hungry because they happen to come from a different country to us is still prevalent. I ask myself if border regulations and our notions of civilization really count for much in such circumstances. In 2015 have we not progressed to the point where a human life can expect to find food, clothing and shelter as a matter of course? The answer, I'm afraid, is no. Our Western societies are very much infected with the idea that in order to have food and shelter you have to earn it. Thus, those who are not seen to be earning it are regarded as "scroungers" who are receiving "hand outs".

I don't see things this way. I say a plague on all your polite notions of society, of progress, of humanism, of needing to "earn" the right to live. Life will find a way and those intoxicated with life will naturally be pulled, as a magnet pulls iron, to those places where food and shelter and safety seem evident. Do not be surprised. Do not say "Go back where you came from". You would not go back where they came from. Do not say "They belong back in their land" when the history of this planet is the history of the people upon it moving around to places that supported them best. It is the significant characteristic of life that it wants to survive! Expect life, wherever it shows itself, to want to do exactly that!

So this album of mine called Intoxication unites an interest in the refugees of the world with the Nietzschean notion of a creative superabundance of energy. It is in this sense that it is a companion piece to Forces of Nature. I see it as a personal version of those forces. The force to create, the force to live and survive. Don't be surprised these things exist. Every organism that comes to be only wants to grow and make more of itself. Its genetic. It is the mystery of why there is anything at all instead of nothing.

You can listen to Intoxication on my Bandcamp HERE!