The Last Angel of History starts by introducing a musical trio of cosmic influencers — George Clinton, Sun Ra, and Lee Perry — as an extension of Robert Johnson, who received the “black technology” of the blues in exchange for his soul. Or does this legend refer to a sort of visitation? We then move forward (or backward, as these interviews date from 1995) to techno and breakbeat jungle as recent applications of this technology. Science fiction is posited as an accurate reflection of the African diaspora, and we hear from the likes of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany. This all serves as an Afrofuturism manifesto, aided in tone by the enigmatic pronouncements of a “data thief” and director John Akomfrah’s mind-melting edits and shadowy stagings of the interview segments. A fascinating artifact with lingering contemporary significance.
3+1: danielfuzztone
Today we’re celebrating my long-time friend Daniel Fuller who took the lockdown era’s lemons and made ambient drone music. Daniel’s someone I’ve known and respected as a talented writer over the years. But, since the latter half of the 2010s, he’s come into his own as an electronic music producer.
I was fortunate to witness Daniel’s sonic progression. Emails started arriving with links to new posts on his SoundCloud page, along with requests for opinions. Daniel’s taste, ear, and sense of music history are top-notch, so, unsurprisingly, the music’s always been good. Then the emails and the music starting landing with an astonishing frequency. The songs were flowing, and I could hear the remarkable evolution of Daniel’s music. His soundscapes went from good to very good to regularly excellent. (Having a consistent creative practice has its rewards, folks.)
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one pushing Daniel to release an album. With so many songs to choose from, I had no doubt he could assemble a fantastic set of music. Then, finally: Thoughts & Abandonment is that album, released under Daniel’s danielfuzztone nom de plume (he’s used that one on various projects for a while).
As an album, Thoughts & Abandonment stands out for its old-school approach. Daniel eschews DAWs and soft-synths for hardware noise-makers (Roland, Korg, and Casio are represented) and a modest but strategic collection of guitar pedals. And if it’s not coming from an onboard arpeggiator, then it’s probably played by hand right into the recorder. The result is a gritty atmosphere with more in common with Cluster, Suicide, and Klaus Schulze than contemporary signposts. But Thoughts & Abandonment isn’t a throw-back — danielfuzztone’s layered drones and gentle ambient melodies slide easily into any modern “Music To Space Out To” playlist.
I grabbed Daniel by the email and had him answer some questions for a bit of the old 3+1. His responses are thoughtful and drive home the benefits of creative consistency.
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1. How does your past as a music writer affect your mindset now that you’re actively creating music? Do you think it makes you more self-critical or better equipped to bat those feelings away?
It’s a double-edged sword. And something I have been very conscious of. But instead of being self-critical, I decided just to be myself. I’m certainly not the first writer who pursued making their own music — Philip Sherburne comes to mind. And in fact, I consider this my third “era” of producing (previously during high school and then college).
I didn’t want to fall into the trap of recording tunes simply reflecting my music library; a curation of personal taste which is all too easy to succumb to. Yes, you can play “spot the influences” with the album — Brian Eno, My Bloody Valentine, and Boards of Canada would all be easy reference points. And you would certainly be correct. I love those artists, and they continue to inspire me.
But what I explore is my life’s journey. Not in a selfish, self-absorbed way, but rather fully committed to making music that reflects how I feel and think about the world around us — good, bad, and ugly. I can’t help to be influenced by the wonderful artists I listen to, but I also believe folks are too afraid just to be themselves. For better or worse — this is who I am. This is what I can contribute.
2. It’s not unnoticed that your prolific music output coincided with the pandemic and lockdown. Do you think you’d have an album out now if there were no pandemic? Or, if so, would it be different in style or tone?
The pandemic — and my two-year sobriety — worked in tandem to push my creative productivity. To be honest, I don’t think I would have produced the album in the time frame I did without those two variables.
I have about 90 minutes after my morning AA meeting and when I need to report online to my healthcare writing job at 9:00 am — we’re fully remote — and I have been using that window every day to create music without fail. On weekends, I probably squeeze in about two hours each morning.
Pre-COVID, I could produce a track in just a couple of days, but it would take months to follow up with the next one. One of the many benefits of my sobriety has been a more focused creative drive, which I credit with helping me stay clean.
As far as content, I didn’t want the album to be a musical time capsule about the COVID-era, so I steered clear of any obvious or overt references. A couple of tracks recorded during this time but not on the album include political and/or election angles. But in that context, the music has nothing to do with the pandemic but was certainly enabled because of it.
3. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen happen at a concert?
I do have my share of crazy rock-show stories like any long-time fan — for instance, go see Guided by Voices — but I’ll tell you about a non-musical act my friends are sick of hearing about. I was fortunate to see the late-comedian Bill Hicks perform in West Palm Beach during two nights in November 1993 — about three months before he passed.
The first night, a really drunk woman started to heckle Bill just minutes into his set. He paused and then focused his attention (and considerable bile) on dismantling her lack of respect down to her bare bones. Never seen anything quite like it before or since. She was quickly escorted out. Probably the most punk-rock moment I’ve ever experienced.
On the second night, my then-girlfriend and I sat in the front row of tables traditionally reserved at comedy clubs of the era for non-smokers. However, my girlfriend smoked, and her pack of cigarettes was sitting on the table. Bill noticed the pack and politely asked if he could have one. He then mentioned he had quit smoking but recently started again. Bill Hicks would later die on February 26, 1994, due to pancreatic/liver cancer.
+1: Something you love that more people should know about.
Writer and model-misanthrope Ambrose Bierce. He was a Civil War soldier and journalist who went on to write fictional tales of the Reconstruction-era South, complete with roaming bands of renegade troops, violence, depravity, and plenty of ghosts.
While I’ve in no way scratched the surface of his literary library — he mainly published compilations of short stories — his hallucinogenic prose fascinated me from an early age. Like many American students, I first discovered his short An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in middle school (also via the 1962 French film The Owl River).
And course, The Devil’s Dictionary has become the bible on satirical humor. I keep it close so I can read random entries when a laugh or dose of cynicism is required.
Visit danielfuzztone on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.
Music Streaming in a Dream World
“If a world is dreamable, maybe it can be dreamed into being.” This quote is from the author David Mitchell, spoken in the fantastic PBS documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s also how I’m opening this piece where I imagine how NFTs could create a better world for music commerce. Unfortunately, it’s probably only a dreamable world or, as you’ll see, an alternate universe. This vision presumes a different history. Whether we can dream it into being is up for grabs.
OK, confession time. Like you, I’m sick of hearing about NFTs. I wrote about them twice (here and here), and my feelings are well-known. You may believe NFTs are good for artists, that they introduce a technological layer that intensifies fandom, that they signal some sort of future direction in artistic distribution. Those things may all be accurate, but, honestly, most participating in NFTs right now are seen by the general public as get-rich-quick schemers at worst and privileged (or reckless) at best. The incentive doesn’t matter. It’s this perception that has writer Tim Maughan comparing buyers to Martin Shkreli and MusicREDEF’s Matty Karas calling for musicians to ‘pause’ any participation in the NFT marketplace.
Compared to a couple of months ago, the hype and interest in NFTs are dwindling. I know this because they’re no longer the topic of every other Clubhouse room (though I guess Clubhouse has receded as well). So, with the bandwagon ebbing, I figure this is finally a good time to talk about a thought experiment I ran in my head where I imagined a dreamable world. The spark was the question, “how could NFTs change music distribution for the good of everyone?”
(Before we go any further, know that I’m a dabbler, not an expert, on this topic. Please be gentle with me. I welcome thoughtful critiques and corrections in the comments.)
For this dream to work, we need an alternate timeline with two significant differences to ours. First of all, NFTs can’t be environmentally detrimental. I’m not playing along if they are. So, in our thought experiment, that problem’s solved. And secondly, the invention of NFTs and everything around them (blockchain, etc.) predates the current streaming model. That’s because I’m offering a substitute to the fraction-of-a-penny-per-stream framework firmly established in our present.
Decentralization is the key here. Unlike DRM, which linked an MP3 to a specific device (like the iPod), in this thought experiment an audio file backed by an NFT plays on any device or software that can verify ownership. Thus the purchase of a song or an album is also the purchase of its NFT, granting access via various streaming apps. The recording artist or label sets the price and the scarcity. And the absence of scarcity is an option.
There are music marketplaces where these NFTs are purchased. These online stores can look something like Bandcamp, where the NFT buyer can download the accompanying audio or bundle it with merch. These purchases can also go through the website of the label or band — exclusively, if desired. In our dream world, there are handy WordPress plugins for this.
Here’s where we get into the cool stuff within the dream world. I mentioned scarcity. Most music releases will have unlimited NFTs pointing to the audio as the band will want as many listeners as possible. But this model also allows the possibility for limited editions. Let’s say your band wants to release a live album limited to 500 copies. You will only mint 500 NFTs, and you can price these at a collector’s price. Accompanying each with a limited vinyl version of the album, sent to the fan upon purchase, is possible, too. But the digital version has scarcity on its own.
Theoretically, band members can directly receive a piece of an NFT sale. Let’s say a band with four members makes $40 for the sale of each limited album (after any store cuts or processing fees). If the band splits everything evenly, the members will each get $10 every time an album and its NFT are sold, sent directly, and right at the time of sale. This action is embedded in the NFT’s smart contract. The band can set this split for their non-limited $5-a-pop album releases, too.
A fan (or ex-fan) can resell the limited-edition album using its NFT. This creates a digital version of the used CD bin. If the band gains popularity, then the price might go up, just like a rare album on Discogs. But unlike that Discogs sale, the band members can continue to get a cut of each resale as long as the NFT’s smart contract says so. (If there’s a physical album tied to the NFT, then the two could be resold separately. But the value is much higher if sold together.)
Let’s get back to decentralization and imagine what Spotify (as an example) looks like in this dream world. Labels and artists have the option to make their music listenable on Spotify but can set the number of listens until an NFT purchase is required.1This is similar to a feature currently available to artists and labels on Bandcamp. The band in our example sets the songs on its regular albums to play three times per listener account on Spotify — but the limited edition album songs would play only once or not at all. This way, playlists and discovery aren’t disrupted. Songs from the band’s regular albums will still play unimpeded when they show up in Discovery Weekly or Release Radar. But if a fan really likes a song, she’ll have to purchase the NFT to play it more than three times. Spotify could also act as a marketplace for these purchases (“Purchase this album to keep listening”).
Signing up for a streaming account links your NFT wallet to the dream world version of Spotify. The platform verifies all of your NFT purchases. You can play those as much as you want. And the limited edition album is only available for listening to the 500 fans who purchased it. In this thought experiment, the same thing happens when you get an account with Apple Music or Qobuz or any streaming platform — your wallet is recognized, and you can play all your purchases in addition to whatever is available to you on the platform. Any account data, including your playlists, also seamlessly travel with you, platform-to-platform.
That’s the idea. Decentralized streaming where labels and artists set the rules and get paid, all thanks to the often maligned NFT. It’s a hell of a dream, but even my imagination couldn’t work through a few problems with this thought experiment:
- What’s the incentive for the decentralized streaming platforms? How would Spotify make money? They could act as a marketplace and take their cut, but they’d potentially compete with the band’s website. Perhaps there would be some type of subscription model where you’d want to use this platform because it has much better features than the others. In other words, the streaming platforms would be motivated to differentiate rather than remain interchangeable. Or the streamers could fall back on intrusive advertising, which turns this dream world into a nightmare.
- Related to the incentive question, who hosts the audio files? The NFTs would point to audio files that listeners access through streaming platforms and apps. These could be hosted anywhere — it could even be the label or artist’s responsibility — but the bandwidth gets pricey if the songs are big hits. And, if the platforms aren’t hosting the songs, who secures the rights and pays publishing royalty? (Note that if the streaming companies aren’t hosting the audio or solely responsible for rights, their operating costs will decrease significantly.)
- Would this create a piracy renaissance? Nothing stops a person who purchases the band’s limited edition album from ripping it off the streaming platform and making it available to all. The convenience of streaming (and the attraction of whatever unique features each platform offers) would need to be irresistible.
On the plus side, this dream world model removes my main gripes with the NFT craze: the patronage (or get-rich-quick) aspect of NFTs and the financial inaccessibility of the technology to the ordinary fan. These NFTs can be cheap. Similar to Bandcamp’s option, there could easily be pay-what-you-want NFTs, putting the value in the purchaser’s hands. More than just the crypto-rich can participate. And the bands are only auctioning if they want to.2And I haven’t touched on the data transparency available to bands under this model — the play metrics would be incredibly detailed.
You’d think the current streaming paradigm of Spotify et al. is established — the genie left the bottle over a decade ago. But alternative experiments are happening in earnest, and interest among songwriters and musicians is high. Look at the success of Bandcamp. And there are compelling blockchain-led alternatives like Audius and BitSong. Many more prototypes and ideas are on the horizon.
It’s fun and instructive to play with alternatives to how streaming and streaming payments work today. Music streaming is a relative infant within the historical scope of the music business. There’s still time and room to innovate, to push for solutions that better serve both listeners and our music’s value. New ideas and thought experiments are necessary and I encourage you to play along. And just maybe, one of our dreamable worlds will be dreamed into being.
Roedelius’s Gentle Journey
Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a gentle giant trotting through the timeline of kosmiche music (perhaps a better genre term than the maligned ‘Krautrock’ designation). As a giant, his influence is enormous, but Roedelius’s quiet insistence on working diligently in history’s background accords to his gentle demeanor.
Roedelius’s role in the 1968 formation of Berlin’s Zodiak Free Arts Lab spawned Tangerine Dream, Ashra Temple, and his own Kluster trio with Dieter Moebius and Conrad Schnitzler. Kluster transformed to Cluster a couple of years later once Conrad Schnitzler departed, and the now-duo adopted the more organic and tranquil sound that remains Roedelius’s template. Famously, Cluster recorded two classic albums with Brian Eno — the second of which includes one of my favorite Eno vocal performances on “The Belldog“.
To many, this ’70s period is peak Roedelius, but he keeps riding the spaceways with a solo discography that’s long and a collaborative discography that’s even longer. And there’s a newer incarnation of Kluster/Cluster called Qluster featuring Roedelius and audio engineer Onnen Bock.
Now in his late-80s, Roedelius is going strong, still composing and producing melodic, experimental music. He continued to play shows and tour internationally right up until the COVID blockade. In March of 2017, I was lucky to see Roedelius perform at Orlando’s Timucua White House. I wrote briefly about that show here where I called the music “experimental and quiet, not at all jarring, and serenely [transmitting] the artist’s feelings in a tumultuous world.” Afterward, I met Roedelius, who was cordial and talkative. He even told my friend who regularly visits Germany to “look him up” on his next overseas journey.
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As always, I’m fascinated with the creative habits of different artists. I ran across a couple of older interviews with Roedelius on the music magazine archive site Mu:zines and found a few notes about his process. In this 1984 interview, Roedelius describes an improvisational cut-and-paste method that is emblematic of the kosmiche pioneers:
I usually do most of the recording at home. Whenever the mood takes me, I sit at my piano – a lovely old Bosendorfer grand, over 100 years old – and play, and I put everything I play on tape. Then I play back that tape and select the best parts from it, and work on them until I’m happy with the way they sound.’
The piano features heavily in Roedelius’s music, and, indeed, it’s the starting point for most of his compositions. Treatments, synthesized sounds, and collaborating musicians get added once the edited tape is ready. Here’s another 1984 interview where Roedelius describes the recording of his album Gift of the Moment:
I have a grand piano at home and the basic album tracks were recorded there using a Revox A77 in stereo at 7½ips, I made sure I got ‘space’ on the tape, then I went into the studio in Rotterdam and transferred the stereo recording onto one track of the 4-track — the album was done on 4-track with dbx — and then I started adding to the music using the different instruments…
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I bring up Roedelius because there are two new opportunities to discover and appreciate his music. First is the latest episode of the excellent SOUNDWAVE podcast featuring a retrospective mix compiled by Roedelius himself. This nearly 90-minute selection is the perfect primer for anyone seeking a historical sampling of Roedelius’s output. It’s also fascinating to hear the songs that Roedelius includes, whether these are his favorites or just pieces he thought were the best fit for a podcast mix. (“The Belldog” makes an early appearance.) Hearing Roedelius’s decade-spanning output in a curated context emphasizes the timelessness of his music.
Next, here’s a rare (maybe the only?) Roedelius livestream performance from a little over a week ago. I received a text from my sometimes-Germany-visiting friend alerting me that Roedelius had just started a “surprise” livestream. I tuned in, and there he is, deep in concentration, beaming haunting sounds from a pair of laptops, an iPad, a controller, and a pair of keyboards. This performance is a mix of its own, featuring a few Roedelius classics, and it drifts pleasantly into your surroundings. Listening live, I lost myself in these sonics, writing several paragraphs and achieving that hallowed ‘flow state.’ But, if you attempt the same, be warned that Roedelius’s vibe is interrupted a couple of times by his laptop’s notification pings. And then there’s the endearing moment just past the halfway mark where Roedelius walks off for a moment after announcing, “I have to go for a pee.” Serious music doesn’t have to be so serious after all.
A Certain Smoothness
Everybody’s Languishing → Adam Grant’s article in The New York Times on “languishing” seems to have connected with a lot of people. Grant defines languishing as “a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.” Jason Kottke spoke for all of us when he commented, “Yeeeeeep. Yep. Yep. 1000% how I’ve been feeling today and on and off for months now.”
We expected unnerving feelings at the beginning of the pandemic. There were warnings to not give in to frustration and sadness, not to kick ourselves if lockdown’s supposed extra at-home time didn’t result in our replication of Newton’s Year of Wonders. Many of us, of course, were hit hard emotionally. But now that there’s light at the end of the tunnel — thanks in part to vaccines, actual leadership, the economy surviving — we should all be Snoopy-dancing, right? Instead, some of us are languishing.
I recently looked back on my journal from a year ago, a reminder of how I felt in the early days of COVID-times. Unsurprisingly, I was despondent in uncertainty, but I was getting things done. I sent an episode of my email newsletter out every week for like eight (or more) straight weeks. I was blogging all the time. And I was continuing to make small moves on the professional side with my music publishing and consulting gigs.
But, man, these last couple of months have been TOUGH. I’m appreciative and thankful to get through the past year — for one thing, I and all of my loved ones are fully vaccinated — but motivation is in the outhouse. I’m no longer consistent with my newsletter, and it feels like I haven’t blogged here in ages. I’m getting professional work done, but my pace is slower than Béla Tarr’s camera trolly.
That’s why Grant’s article resonates. It’s reassurance — Grant’s nail-on-the-head description of ‘languishing’ confirms that it’s not just me. Whew. And, magically, naming this condition is a great help. Says Grant, “Psychologists find that one of the best strategies for managing emotions is to name them … it could help to defog our vision, giving us a clearer window into what had been a blurry experience.” See also: Steven Pressfield’s technique of naming “the Resistance.”
The article contains tactical advice for dealing with the anguish of languishing. Grant suggests adding small challenges in your day as completing these tasks is a mood enhancer. I assume scheduling challenges in the morning is a good move, to get on the good foot. I’m guilty of usually mulling about for the first few hours of the day, coffee in hand, stressing out about the day ahead more and more as the minutes pass. How about I take that coffee to my desk and write a little something for the blog? That’s a small challenge that always feels fantastic upon completion. This tactic also reinforces that elusive and necessary daily writing practice. And Grant is correct — the day adopts a certain smoothness when the morning begins with a decent word count.
We’ll see how it goes. As usual, I’ve got plans (lots of ’em), and I want to do them. I’m ready to stomp this ‘languishing’ sensation into the dirt and enjoy the eventual fruits of our post-pandemic season.
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Unwitting Idol → In a story that someone is undoubtedly going to option for a movie, Vladislav Ivanov found himself contractually obligated to compete in a Chinese boy band competition show. Initially hired as a translator, the Russian’s good looks inspired the offer to “try a new life” and join the high-stakes contest. Ivanov quickly realized that ‘member of a boy band’ was not one of his aspirations. Unfortunately, he was held to song-and-dance servitude under threat of a fine if he broke his agreement. The only way out was if the audience voted him off the show:
Using the stage name Lelush, Ivanov told viewers “don’t love me, you’ll get no results”, and repeatedly pleaded with people not to vote for him. His first song was a half-hearted Russian rap, in stark contrast to the high-pop of his competitors. “Please don’t make me go to the finals, I’m tired,” he said in a later episode.
As you may have guessed, this behavior only endeared the beleaguered Ivanov to his ‘fans’ who repeatedly voted to keep him in the competition. Some suspect Ivanov’s resistance was a calculated maneuver, like the reality show contestant who assumes the villain role because people want to see what villains will do next. But a friend verifies Ivanov’s reluctance is real: “He sent me a SOS message saying he couldn’t stand it.” Luckily for Ivanov (but not the rest of us, tbh), his pleading was finally answered. The viewers relented and voted him off the show in the presumably tense final competition.
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Gaze Craze → I had a feeling that the kids are alright, but this clinches it. Following the curious sea-shanty trend, Gen Z’ers are now resurfacing the classics of shoegaze on TikTok. Videos of whippersnappers vibing to My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, and other favorites from before they were born fill my heart with warm fuzzies. Vice looks at this mini-phenomenon and concludes that this moment — the pandemic come-down moment! — is ripe for a shoegaze revival:
16-year-old Jude Atkins says they got into shoegaze “about a year ago”… “The atmosphere of shoegaze really fits with the bleak, post-COVID, world we’re in. Everyone’s trapped inside and shoegaze has a very dreamy quality to it,” says Atkins.
The Vice piece also features an observation from music critic Mark Richardson that shoegaze’s sonic gender blurring, often (sonically) equal parts masculine and feminine, appeals to a generation that strongly values inclusion. He mentions the mixed-gender membership of bands like Slowdive and Lush, but I’m thinking more of the vocals on Loveless — it’s known that some of the songs’ ‘female’ voices are actually an electronically processed Kevin Shields.
The shoegaze sound has always nudged from the periphery — one can hear hints of its influence in music that’s surprisingly mainstream — but the true test of a revival is when new musicians take up the mantle. Well, apparently, this is happening. Spotify reported twice as many recordings classified as ‘shoegaze’ released in 2019 than in 1996. Granted, part of the increase is due to the ease of releasing music now vs. the required manufacturing expenses of the ’90s, but still.
Personally, I won’t believe we’re in the throes of a full-on shoegaze revival until everyone starts listening to Black Tambourine again, especially this song:
Michael Bratt’s Tour of the Darkroom
Michael Bratt is a D.C.-based composer with an impressive CV, having studied music extensively, conducted orchestras, scored films, and co-founded ensembles like Cleveland’s FiveOne Experimental Orchestra. His is a life enveloped in modern music, both as an enthusiast and a practitioner. The approach is academic — a lot of thought goes into his music, as you’ll discover below — but doesn’t ignore the visceral pleasure of a beautiful, meaningful recording.
Michael sent his new album The Darkroom, a set containing one solo song and four collaborations. It’s “a collection of ambient electroacoustic works,” he tells me. “Many of the tracks are extremely personal in nature, and some of these collaborations have been three or four years in development.” The solo track opening The Darkroom, “Visions,” planted the seed for the project six years ago.
This patience is refreshing in an age when we’re told to release nonstop music. It also results in an attention to detail, as heard throughout The Darkroom. Take the title cut as an example, where strings and flutes play off each other elegantly while a more abrasive electronic section sneakily rises from silence to dominance. Or the plucked piano notes of “As the Earth Grew Still,” spaced together with implied distance before gradually coalescing in harmonic layers. In other words, nothing here sounds hashed out.
Each of the collaborative songs features a different artist or ensemble. There’s Azerbaijani-American flutist Jeiran Hasan, the harp-viola-flute ensemble The Lynx Trio, guitarist Bruce Middle, and the double-u duo. With explicit intention, Bratt considers these compositions true collaborations rather than ‘guest spots.’ “When I work with someone, there is a lot of back and forth,” Bratt explains. “I rarely write something, hand it off, and that’s the end of it.”
Based on the weight of talent and intellect on The Darkroom, you might expect an album that’s heavy and impenetrable. But it’s a soulful listen, very human and reflective, with many moments that are gently disarming. “You Belong Here” comes to mind, with processed guitars and subtly droning electronics conveying a comfortable loneliness.
When Michael Bratt sent me The Darkroom, I asked for a few more details in my reply. He responded with a track-by-track tour of the album, outlining the methods and inspirations for each song. These notes are terrific and illuminate the thought that went into this project. It would be a shame to excerpt these explanations, so I’ll let Michael take it from here as I publish his comments in full:
“Visions” → “The inspiration for this piece came from the Bach cello suites (G Major Minuet 1). In that piece, Bach utilizes registers to create three independent lines of music to give the impression of polyphony. I wondered how I could accomplish the same idea utilizing technology. Instead of working with register, I chose to use the pan position. The majority of the piece is a simple square wave that’s panned fast enough to create a Gestalt effect in the brain, which gives the impression, or vision of polyphony.”
“Fire From Within” → “The title comes from Pablo Neruda‘s poem, “As if you were on fire from within, the moon lives in the lining of your skin.” Both Jeiran Hasan and I have known each other for years. We were part of the Cleveland new music ensemble, FiveOne Experimental Orchestra. The poem references this inner fire or desire in people, to the point where our skin glows and everyone can see it. That’s the imagery that I was after.”
“The Darkroom” → “Growing up, my father (an amateur photographer) had a darkroom in our basement. This work evokes those feelings of freedom through organic form. The piece gradually works on an idea that continually develops over and over. The music is minimalist and is monochromatic, much like the black and white photographs my father took as a child. While it’s compartmentalized, focusing on one idea, it doesn’t contain a form or separate sections. It’s meant to be taken as a whole idea.”
“You Belong Here” → “One of the teenagers at my church committed suicide two days before service. I ran the mixing board at the church that Sunday, and the pastor had everyone disperse into small prayer sessions around the church as the band serenaded. Everyone was devastated, trying to hold it together. I captured that recording of the band from the mixer and slowed it down 2000%. That became the basis for the guitar solo with Bruce Middle. The sermon from that day was titled ‘You Belong Here.'”
“As the Earth Grew Still” → “My original concept for ‘As the Earth Grew Still’ was a piece about intimacy (human connection). I knew that I would be collaborating with Robert and Melissa Wells and was looking forward to working with a couple who knew each other intimately. Unfortunately, much changed in our world during 2020, and it irrevocably disrupted my writing process. The piece grew to be a reflection of my isolation locked in social distancing with my family. It employs a visual cueing system I developed that allows me to synchronize pianos together in non-related meters and tempi. This is done through a computer application I wrote which creates a website that the performers visit on their mobile devices — replicating my experience in isolation when we were doing things separately — together.”
Michael Bratt’s The Darkroom is available now on Bandcamp and various streaming platforms.
Undermining, Not Underlining
Discovery vs. Intention → What a fun conversation between Brian Eno and Stewart Brand, promoting We Are As Gods, a new documentary on Brand’s fascinating life. The first half uses Eno’s soundtrack contribution as a topic launching pad. The conversation touches on the intersection of film scoring with ambient music, how multi-track recording brought music closer to painting, and how endless options are making us all permanent curators. My favorite part comes at 17:00 when Brand asks Eno to differentiate, in terms of the creative process, discovery from intention:
I think the thing that decides that is whether you’ve got a deadline or not (laughs). The most important element in my working life, a lot of the time, is a deadline. The reason it’s important is it makes you realize you’ve got to stop pissing around. You have to finally decide on something. Whether I finish something or not completely depends on whether [a piece of music] has a destination and a deadline.
Eno goes on to describe his fabled archive of half-finished music — “6790 pieces … I noticed today” — most of which is created through discovery, i.e., “pissing around.” Then, when he gets an assignment (a destination with a deadline), he pulls something relevant to the project from the archive and finishes it. That’s an inspiring process and one I’d love to replicate.
I wonder how much time Eno spends “pissing around” and building this archive. I imagine an ideal would be one or two hours a day. And I’m curious how he decides on and enforces self-imposed deadlines to move his own projects forward.
Oh, and this quote in the video from Eno is a keeper: “What I like better than underlining is undermining.”
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Etcetera → Seth Godin’s advice on how to make your Zoom calls better. Now I want a beam splitter. ❋ This 2015 compilation is a psychedelic overview of On-U Sound’s post-punk dub: Trevor Jackson Presents: Science Fiction Dancehall Classics. ❋ Writer Ernest Wilkins explains why he’s joining the parade of newsletter publishers leaving Substack. This part is especially eye-opening: “I’ve lost anywhere between $400 and $1100 in churned subscriber revenue due to paid subscribers not wanting to give money to this platform anymore. I need it to be clear that for the two years on Substack before this, I had a 0% subscriber churn rate.” ❋ I’m excited about this forthcoming documentary on ‘sound activist’ Matthew Herbert, A Symphony of Noise. ❋ Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine in The New York Times: “My nieces and nephews — they would complain to me, ‘Why are you so purposely obscure? You know, it seems stupid.'”
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Rachika Nayar – Our Hands Against The Dusk → I’ve been delightfully obsessed with Rachika Nayar‘s debut album over the past couple of weeks. The Brooklyn-based artist (in both visuals and sound) has accomplished some heavy-lifting with Our Hands Against The Dusk — the album is unabashedly experimental and uncompromising but somehow remains accessible and, yes, beautiful. Guitar is the main instrument throughout, but it’s looped, processed, and sometimes ‘glitched’ into unfamiliarity. The opening track, “The Trembling of Glass,” is an introductory window to Nayar’s technique, with layers of texture and manipulation swept away in the last half to reveal a bare acoustic motif. It hooked me in straight away.
Interviewed in Magnetic, Nayar explains her method:
I see one aspect of my process on this album as tearing up an instrumental sample into a million pieces and then putting those fragments through cycles of recombination … these processes feel to me like exploring a single idea through multiple and multiplying perspectives — seeing one thing in all its different realities and selves.
When one listens closely, there are many opportunities to identify what Nayar is up to, but her execution is nuanced and organic, despite the music’s inherent digitalness. One hears these ‘million pieces’ as a whole, as guitars ring with hopeful tones on “New Strands” and pianos and cellos combine and intertwine on “No Future.” The effect is mesmerizing — dancing somewhere between music that’s ambient, experimental, and influenced by modern classical — but, most of all, it’s affecting. The emotion that went into creating this album is anything but disguised.
Our Hands Against The Dusk is the most impressive debut I’ve heard in a while. Don’t hesitate to open your ears and heart to it.
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