So now we’re in the year 2021 but it still feels like we’re on the 594,424 day of March 2020. Like all of us I have been living the quarantine life and don’t have any plans on changing that in the next year as the vaccines start to roll out. So it has been a while since my last real significant release of music. In the beginning of 2020 I released “Rule of three” just in time to start the joys of lockdown. I loved that album but in the end it was just missing something for me. I think in writing it all the previous year I had such hopes for its story and flow and in the end I just wanted it to be done and I think it showed. My hope is in the future I will be able to get back in there and re-write some of it to make it feel more like the work I had intended. But but but in new and exciting news, my work from 2020 is now in the final stages of completion!!! I am actually in the final stages of mastering and fixes and if all goes well I could have release dates for my next works soon!
So speaking of this new work what is it???
Coming off the last release I was disappointed so I went back to my idea book and gave things another think. What kind of music do I write, what am I trying to say or share? These were the questions that I slammed up against and it went about as well as as I could have hoped. 6 months of writing and performing bits, throwing half of it away and starting over and then repeating that till I got to where I am now.
This is what I have learned about my music:
Its not really music as it is more of a personal auditory soundtrack of my emotions and experiences. I was talking to a friend and said “you know what I don’t write music I write auditory spells”. I think this was the missing bit for me because I got my head too far into the game of trying to be what others were describing me as and now I feel less trapped by my own cage of definitions.
When I write I usually start grouping ideas into relatively loose buckets around some kind of theme I have made up for myself. In previous incarnations “13 parts” is a story about a stray cat rolling through a cyberpunk city and for “rule of three” it was a weird story about the many voices of the stories we tell ourselves. So for this year I had started a folder called “Organics” which was going to be about blending with the digital but then I made another folder “Mandelbrot” and then another called “terminal” and another called “Phones”. As you can probably guess this was a bit much but I think that reflects the incredible chaotic energy of 2020, I could not focus to save my life watching what was happen outside. I beat myself up for this really hard and in the end this wild set of folders was really good.
After a good long time the narrative finally showed itself, I am going to be doing two different releases “Made from Airports” and “Pocket Dimensions” .
Made from Airports - Remember airports, not just the flying but actual airpots. I love and at the same time completely worn out by the idea of airpots. I traveled a lot and I was in airports a lot and made lots of little recordings and had recordings from friends and wanted to use them some how. So I worked to make these clips be apart of, made with sound’s of, and constructed in a way that gives a feel of a travel day for me.I purpose do not cover actual air travel as I am saving that for a later project or the continuation of this project. No “made from Airports” is really just about airports, up until 2020 I kinda believed that airports are the most lived in public spaces that nobody actually calls a home so it needed to be its own story. Its long and full of lots of empty spaces to get lost in and honestly the track “terminal too” is a beast and if does not make you feel as worn out as actually being in an airport terminal all day if listened to intensely.
Pocket Dimensions: This is a big lineup of work and the combination of “Organics, Mandelbrot, and parts of Phones”. I wanted to have a collection that reflected my own disconnect from the world and the joy of popping into auditory worlds where I could be taken away. But its not that random its more of this, imagine if you are some kind of witch or mage and you store your memories in tiny little pocket worlds outside of this reality and that these memories live in there own little pocket worlds start to evolve and grow on their own. Its a collection that I think reflects my own contradiction of emotions some are more forward as to what they are and others are left up to you to intemperate for yourself.
For reference on the original theme buckets:
Organics - All about how to be more organic both with my playing and instrument choices and really even playing. There is also a really big element of found audio like using my voice to make a sampler synth or just even lots more vocals both my own and dear friends. (in the future I hope to get more confident and just sing the stuff I want)
Mandelbrot - Mathematical was the original inspiration. Math is really neat and so are mechanical things like watches. I wanted to represent this in audio and so there are lots of tracks that have lots of mechanical beats but also like fractals kind of spiral off in a way and returning to structure.
Phones - I love old school telephones and kinda everything about them. In a side project that I am working on “hopefully due out later this year” there is a lot of focus on telephony and I wanted just a little flavour of that in pocket dimensions. I grew up with a land line and being a hacker phones and hacking were best friends so I wanted to share some of that because when I was a kid and I picked up the phone it was really easy to imagine that what was on the other line was in a different world. It was connection personified to me and of course I know how it all works now but as a kid it just felt magical and honestly in a way it really still does for me.
So thats really it I am lost in the final editing and scoring and slowly moving through the mastering process. Since I do all of the work myself I have to break it into chunks to get my head in the right space for each task. Its a lot to do from writing, performing, composing, editing, and mastering but there is a giant satisfaction sticker for being able to do it all yourself. Is it as perfect as if I had someone else do it no but its mine and I am still really proud of that. As my dear partner said to me when I was lamenting on about how I suck at this to shut up because I need to stop comparing myself to anyone else and just focus on what I want and whats fun for me. I cherish those words deeply.
