✘ Microtrend-hopping, hyper-stimulated maniacs define vast culture areas
And: Bio-sonification; Low lift actions to boost engagement; When music goes bad on social; The ultimate artist management hub; Your work as part of a larger conversation
The Internet has become our infinite resource. All information is always immediately on hand. All interpretations are also always immediately available. We have democratized access to knowledge and interpretation of this knowledge. It’s possible to create a 90 seconds clip of music - with accompanying video - in 15 seconds. This is it, we have conquered life. We can have ownership of our work, but we don’t care. This is irony, but not in the Pitchfork giving a 10 to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sense. Or actually, maybe it is exactly that kind of irony - the way it’s both irony and earnest. Back in 2010, Pitchfork was the pinnacle of hipster irony. Nowadays, this irony is baked into our everyday lives. We have lost our ability to be either ironic or earnest, we’re always immediately both.
Microgenre mayhem
What are you listening to? Back in May, I wrote about how your micro-identity is killing music. About how we’re stuck in a series of fast-rising, fast-dropping interest curves. And each curve has one or more genres attached to it. And each genre has its own little signals that allow other people to understand they’re a part of the same group - while they’re not. It’s almost like we’re gaslighting ourselves. So what are you listening to? Plonk? Flunk? Crunk? Does it actually really matter? Each new microgenre is basically just another way to find a path through music’s capitalism.
Flip it
Ah yes, capitalism - the motor that drives music’s growth, but also which drives the idea that we need to always grow. However, there’s other ways of looking at the world. Think about solidarity leadership. Think about the Dark Forest. But, also look at history. Anthropologists and archaeologists alike have been spending the last decades debunking a lot of the myths of progress which all inevitably lead to techno-determinism. Look at cities - these supposedly came from farming communities and with more people congregating came more centralized authorities. But as David Graeber and David Wengrow have shown, there’s no linear path in this history. Many cities never even had a centralized authority or religion.
So let’s flip this idea that we’re all so hyper-stimulated maniacs on its head. Remember how Tristra defined this last year:
“This is the age of synesthesia, the age of evolving, but firm ties between the experiences of the senses, powerful new associations that will transform how we imagine the world.”
We don’t need to look and listen to the world as this linear path of evolution. Actually, it turns out that’s also not how the world works at all. It’s also not how humans work. We’re messy, we’re connecting, we’re hopping from microtrend to microtrend. And maybe that’s not much more than a reaction against the homogenization of digital culture.
Culture areas
Even in the Paleolithic, the historical record shows that culture spread far and wide. Even across continents, we find people speaking shared languages, making similar art, etc. Right now, we still do this. Culture areas are vast and we can find our tribes all over the world. We even crave these connections, finding them - often - through music. This is why projects like Sound of Fractures’ SCENES or Max Cooper’s Unspoken Words work so well. Music triggers emotions, microtrend or not, and through that emotion we can share something of ourselves. That’s what we want, hyper-stimulated maniac, or not.
LINKS
🌳 Meet the electronic musicians collaborating with nature through bio-sonification (Becca Inglis)
“Boyd turned these recordings into her first EP, ‘From The Understory’. “I made these electronic beds, putting those notes generated by plants through synthesisers.” For some tracks, she composed music around these beds, her voice layered in delicate rounds above a metallic resonance or bubbling synths. Elsewhere, they formed electrical flourishes beneath organic instruments, like Alice’s tinkling piano keyboard.”
✘ This is so cool, taking field recordings to a whole new level. Read the whole piece, listen to all the music.
🛗 Want more fans vibing? Low lift actions to help boost engagement & grow your fanbase (Steph Guerrero)
“An easy (and often overlooked) way to cut through the algorithm is to simply create a broadcast channel and provide short, exclusive content to those who subscribe. This shows your followers that you are interested in creating intimate and dedicated spaces for your community.”
✘ There’s so much you can do as an artist, but choosing what suits you is the hard part. Steph has a great run down with the kind of break down that will help you know how you feel about it.
🙊 Viral and deadly: When music goes bad on social (Gregory Pryor & Nick Breen)
“However, and critically for brands and commercial enterprises, the licensing agreements these platforms have in place typically cover personal, non-commercial use only. When brands, influencers or other professional users exploit music in a commercial context (such as in advertisements or sponsored content) without securing the appropriate commercial synchronization licences, they are infringing copyright. This gives rise to significant legal consequences.”
✘ The devil is always in the detail when it comes to copyright and Gregory and Nick show what can go wrong. They talk about several cases that I’ve mentioned previously here in this LINKS section as well.
⚙️ Case study: How we built the ultimate artist management hub for RODA Artists (Lou Amadei, Justin De Marco, Francis di Stasio)
“Navigating the music industry today means you're wearing more hats than ever. Managers and artists are effectively acting as the label, marketer, social media manager, pitching director, publicist, and more. Meanwhile, they’re dealing with more third-party portals, platforms, tools, and interfaces than ever before.”
✘ So often when we talk about tech, we talk about all the shiny new things. Sometimes, it’s great to just build some tools that help fix someone’s problem.
🔌 On viewing your work as part of a larger conversation (Octavia Bright & Emma Cohen)
“When you relinquish the fantasy version of yourself, the fantasy version of your own life, you can reckon with the fundamental mystery contained within the reality of who you are. And then you learn how to accept it and live with it. And then you learn how to listen to–whether you call it intuition, whether you call it self, I don’t know, but there is something else there. There’s that other voice basically, the part of the self that is knowledgeable.”
✘ Slightly off-beat from the usual readings here, but very powerful. Not just on a personal level, but also for artists who need to continually think about how they’re positioning themselves and what that means for their work.
MUSIC
I’m not usually that keen on remix albums or EPs. However, Chelsea Wolfe’s She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She is probably my favourite record of the year so far. Now, there’s a remix EP, and it’s stunning. I’m especially taken by Ash Koosha’s remix of Dusk in which she not only reimagines the music, but also Chelsea’s voice.