memory arcade - stairs

A near finished track for a new project.

~begin essay rant on musical development

I’ve been stuck for a long time when making music, when I reach a point in building a track that it loses the sound I’m going for, which is the more textural, soundscape based work of 16161d.bandcamp.com, and so because it doesn’t fit the sound I’m trying to develop, I’ll not bother finishing the track, and I’ll abandon it or quickly lose interest or motivation.

However, as much as I love my structureless, soundscape based work which is a very refined and developed sound, I do love more electronic based work, big influences being Boards of Canada, Aphex twin and Autechre. My really early music was more electronic based and structured, and at some point I kind of lost that in the pursuit of a more specific sound, but those early works have a sound that I’ve always loved. I’m not very patient with electronic music either unless it’s very good, Autechre make very good electronic music that can evolve over 10 minutes, their music is technical genius however and very rhythmic based, whereas I like to work more with swells and pads, for me my electronic tracks will probably have to be short, just for my own tolerance sake, Boards of Canada have a few very short 1 minute tracks on a few of their albums, and this idea of throwing out the window the idea of tracks having to be a fixed length is great, a short track that hits a sweet spot will make it easier to listen to again, and listen to often. One thing I’ve always struggled with is rhythm, it’s why so little of my music has any kind of rhythm or drum beats in them, when I hear a drum beat, I just can never be satisfied with it, to me it sounds so basic and plain, and so I usually just remove them if I ever start a track with one. This is a contradiction however, because I absolutely do not hate rhythm at all, I love the complex beats found in Jazz music, and in the artist mentioned above who all do mindblowing things with rhythm.

I have for awhile now however, found a way to appreciate using beats in my music, and thats from an early track I made which used broken beats from just a time-stretched recording of public transport, in the recording it produced this very natural rhythmic element, and so I’ve been exploring that now more, listening to field recordings and picking out natural rhythmic elements, such as something creaking, footsteps, a distant noise, and manipulating these, or even starting with a standard electronic beat, and stretching it out and processing it until it’s just barely recognisable. I’d like to work with rhythm on a very micro scale, Jan Jelinek is a great artist who mades minimal house music using very minimal beats, I’ve also heard it done very nicely in work by Fennesz.

So I’ll probably from now on when working on music, not abandon all tracks that end up becoming more structured, but work on developing them even more, as I feel I’m capable of feeling more from exploring the two different ways of composing. It’s way more of a challenge for me to make some more structured, unlike soundscape based work, where the sounds mostly naturally evolve themselves and require not a lot of technical ability but a very sharp ear for mixing those sounds, electronic music is by it’s very nature, very technical music, and so for me to make a track like that, it needs to be perfect or I can’t be satisfied with it, to me it will just be another shitty track that wants to be something, rather than have a life of it’s own, so I need to use my sharp ear for sound to guide me, and then constantly refine it and get the mix right so that those elements really shine the most.

It will probably take me a bit longer as a result until this an album is ready, but I know the sound I am after and it’s just a matter of doing it. Outside of this project, I have quite a few ideas lined up for 16161d.bandcamp.com, really textural and organic work, a mix of soundscape, and ambient noise. There is also another project in the works, alongside a friend of mine who plays guitar, we are developing folk metal music, using mostly the sounds I develop from 16161d.bandcamp.com, to create a kind of atmospheric heavy sound, inspired by bands such as Wolves in the throne room and Alcest, but with all our other great influences such as Mogwai and Sonic Youth, which are creeping their way into the sound, but ultimately, it’s another job trying to develop our own sound and not fall victim to just making music that is trying to do what everyone else has achieved, but which is very personal and has a voice of its own.

~end musical rant

local–zero–ii:

Ever wanted to know what i sound like.?

My boys podcast series continues, edgy and weird. The editing thats gone into it is quite amazing for such little attention it receives. 

Baby drifting through space

Baby

Been awhile since I posted images of my workspace (or used tumblr at all really, I fixed my blog page)