I’ve been thinking about how any creative practice, and for that matter, any creative taste or interest, develops along a continuum, where what you worked on last influences what you will work on next.  In this sense, one could not have arrived at the place they are now without following each of those steps in the process.  Similarly, the types of music or books or movies you enjoy are a product of what you used to enjoy and how that exposed you to something new (hopefully) which then led to A, which led to B, which led to C, and so on.  I think about this for both producing my own work, and also how that work may be received.  These aren’t questions with simple answers, which is probably why they continually come up.  

For example, what I’m working on now needs to build on Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band (my last album), which was building on Scattered Practices, which was… you get the idea.  I think there needs to be a development along this continuum because of the sequence of time, in addition to a purposeful choice to move forward, rather than recede to past practice.  One could not have happened without the experience of what came before it.  Because I felt that I had made enough use of Rhodes sounds by the time I finished Scattered Practices, I wanted to expand the instrumental palette for Surfaces… and because I did that, I want to take even more advantage of that idea, within the same sort of musique concrete/field recording influenced production framework and move further down a line which has already begun.  I don’t know exactly where it will go, but it’s possible that in 10 years I will be using exclusively acoustic instruments with very little editing.  I really doubt that, but the point is that the work has to go somewhere and it often goes to a certain place because of where it was moving.  This isn’t inevitable, and I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but it’s what I find interesting for myself, and I think it will continue for the foreseeable future.  

I’m connecting the continuum of production to that of perception because they are inherently linked.  Nothing happens in a vacuum and I don’t really think anything should.  Without attempting to cater to any specific group of people, someone is still needed to complete that circuit between the material made and the material perceived.  It’s all well and good to make art strictly for your self, and I completely applaud that if it’s the goal, but it adds more value to the rest of the world if someone else wants it to exist also.  I’m not really a populist when it comes to music, clearly, so I don’t mean that we should all want to gear everything to as large a number of people as possible, but more than two is a good start.

I think about this in terms of how people arrive at their particular taste, how people make up their reference points, and how these reference points are necessary to really understand any piece of music.  Some things can be experienced in a universal way for some people, regardless of what one has been exposed to in the past.  I think that much more often though, one needs to arrive at a certain acceptance of something, regardless of the level of appreciation, in a more sequential fashion (i.e. I used to like more popular heavy metal, which prepared me for hardcore, which prepared me for noise music, or I used to like hip hop, which prepared me for the idea of music made with electronics, which prepared me for drum and bass, which prepared me for techno).  These are hypothetical situations, which nonetheless have probably occurred in just those patterns millions of times.  If someone had only ever heard Buddy Holly and The Beatles, than in what way would they hear someone like Fennesz or Pantytec?  What container would they put those sounds in?  

This is related to the way we construct our patterns of reference and eventually our patterns of personal taste.  If you only like action movies, it’s more difficult to enjoy a subdued, talkative, indie film that is as much about the way the picture looks as it is about anything that happens in the frame.  If you get exposed to something in between those two ideas, and are engaged by it, than it’s a stepping stone in a direction.  (It can go the other way of course: subtlety towards car chases.)  

In music, I always find it interesting to hear people’s reference points in terms of what they compare things to.  More often than not it says more about what people are aware of than it does about their specific taste.  If our language shapes how we perceive the world, then not having words, not having the means of describing something sufficiently, makes it not fully exist.  Similarly, if your only points of reference are pop, rock and hip hop, than all music with no vocals and a kick drum becomes techno, or electronica (which, of course, assumes one has heard those terms).  Even if you do have a wider point of reference, it can still lead to comparing all music that is warm and mellow to Brian Eno, or all music with a steady 4/4 kick to Jeff Mills.  This isn’t to denigrate anyone for making these comparisons.  It isn’t a judgment statement, but simply something I find curious and end up bumping into a lot.  If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that (a) most people think that their reference points are descriptive enough, even when they aren’t and (b) there is always someone with more knowledge than you, so you might be part of category (a) without knowing it.  

People like to make fun of the seemingly endless amounts of sub-sub-genres popping up all the time, but the truth is that we need more of those, not less.  Just like we need more words to describe certain emotions or behaviors because there are nuances communicated in certain descriptors; the same goes for gradations of music.  The more reference points, the more words, the more detailed a description, which conveys more information that can ideally be helpful and clarifying and expose people to art that they will be happy with.  

I'm starting to work on some new material, and, really, thinking about it a lot more than anything else.  I find that I end up dwelling on where I want to go for a while before I can begin going there.  I just finished a new track, but besides that I've been doing more work in the realm of collecting sounds, playing shows, thinking about what kinds of sounds and instruments I want to get together, and watching lots of movies and looking at other visual art.  I find that film and paintings and collage and drawings offer me more inspiration than music most of the time.  I think it's akin to the way that music without words leaves more open to interpretation, work from other mediums is less overtly influencing than the one you are working in. 

This is part of preparing for working on a new album, which I expect will come together slowly over the next year or so.  I try to not dwell so much on album making this early in the process, but just let the guiding ideas take shape and have fun with it all, and pay closer attention to the big picture as it congeals more and becomes a unified thing, rather than a series of smaller things. 

In the meantime, I do have some shorter length releases coming up soonish.  A live set from this past September is going to be released by the Smallfish label on a 3"CD (100 copies only), and the Prologuing the Inevitable EP is coming on Konque, a label run by my buddies David Last and Sasha and Eddie (aka Alka_rex).  It has one track I made about a year ago, a David Last remix of it (which is dubby and weird and awesome), and a tune that was edited out of a recent live set in a theatre.  It's open to interpretation, but I hear it as more on the deep, hypnotic, muted techno tip than my last album.  (Emphasis on those adjectives more than the genre title.)  Also have a track coming on the next SMM comp on Ghostly, though I'm not sure when that's out yet.  Will post more info when I know about dates, and in general, I'll be writing more here.  I've been meaning to get some more of this out of my head in some concrete form for a little while, but time is what it is.  I think a lot more will come together in the coming months.   

My new album, entitled, Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band, will be out this October on Anticipate.  I'll probably post some alternate or live versions of tracks way before that date, so please check back.  Stylistically, it picks up where Scattered Practices left off, and diverges a bit, using a broader sound/instrument palette.  This has been the longest interval between album projects for me since I began releasing albums.  I'm not exactly sure how that is reflected in the material, but it feels different to me than in the past; somehow more infuenced by a greater number of sources, and influenced way more by sound itself than by any specific body of music.  I'll post info on the Anticipate site in a couple of weeks, with art, audio clips, and the like.