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.