Obsessions : Day 040

So what is a musician’s responsibility, as an artist, to music before all else?

Electronica, in musical terms, is a sort of textless world... The prospect of less politics may be what makes this seem so encouraging. After all, it captures the inspiration of so many solo music-makers, along with the immediacy of the process. It’s emotive technology.

We love to relate to the artist as a person. And, we love to visualize artistry, especially when we can experience it fully, and with all of our senses.

The humanity of the artist does, after all, elevate people as a whole, when we align ourselves with the arts. We like to believe that the person who created the work, knows fallibility, just like we do. It also reinforces this ideal we have for DIY culture; and that everything is ultimately attainable. We might even consider how an artist's likeability-index is a greater factor in that artist’s influence across cultural circles today, than it was perhaps in the 1600s, when reputation was based largely upon hearsay, which was very slow-moving, especially by today’s standards.

Visibility is increasing for everybody, and for every thing. And, at once, it never changes at all.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We are generally intolerant of things we don’t understand. And as musicians, we love to taunt and tame the limits of modern music consumers. Targeting the unreasonably short fuse is a viable place to start.

We pervert sound, we make the unfashionable listenable. We suggest that anything that was formerly listenable is still exercisable as an option.

Quick wits challenge slow tempers. I have actually sat in many movie theatres and concert halls, loving to watch people squirm. I find this really interesting.

One critic of my release, “Paris: A Musical Overpass,” kept using the word insistent to describe what she heard in common to this and to “3 Mains” – she was trying to be kind, God bless her.

We listen, and even make ourselves aware, as musical phrases emerge and repeat, that we as listeners continue to evolve over that same span of time, regardless of what we think the sound is accomplishing for us. We are, in fact, finishing an unfinished work.

We like the breakdown in the singularity of meaning, for the art-object. People are no longer designing finished works, and we are no longer consumers of finished work. Artists are creating unfinished ones – to be remixed and restructured in a dialogue that includes others, and elements of chance.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Experimentation in the realm of audio as music, is certainly no new topic. Being experimental is of value to every artist, in all media.

Sometimes it seems to lack relevance; we have seen pioneers championing electronic technology since the first half of the 20th century. As a topic for discussion, it is perhaps less relevant to ask, “In what way is the Day For Night catalogue experimental?” and instead, “Why should it be so, and how can this possibly matter?”

The value we assign to experimentation is hard to measure exactly, but it is a consistent marker.

It continues to inspire all that we do, from what we choose to create and consume, to what gets us up in the morning, and also what keeps us from going to sleep at night. Sometimes, we must also masquerade experimentation in less obvious packages, which would otherwise too often scare away a new and potentially timid audience.

Such a belief about audience bears examination, too.

In the field of modern classical composition, how can a topic so battered and trite as minimalism be weighed in the current age, when met against the leagues of serialist composers such as Boulez, Cage and Stockhausen, and all of their scholastic disciples? All of these legends have had their run in the academic world – there appears to be material there to study, and this is informed by process as well.

Are those other minimalists from the 60s and 70s (they now prefer to be unnamed) forever resigned to a dimmed future, based upon the unfortunate associations between sonic compositions with repeating patterns, and the minimally blank canvases – from two similarly named, but differently fueled media? (I certainly hope not.)

Instead, one might ask, “Does this new work challenge a preconception?” And in the case of musical minimalism, it is evidently a challenge to the patience of a willing audience.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brian Eno, in his introduction for the latest edition of Michael Nyman's “Experimental Music: Cage & Beyond", makes some excellent points about the trajectory of 20th century experimental music and our intellectual fetishes..

The best books about art movements become more than just descriptions:
they become part of what they set out to describe.

I particularly like what this sentence illustrates; about how any cultural movement might see a divergence between academics and non-academics. I like especially what it says about all art – that we should deliberately feel and experience the differences between the intellectual options that replace the experiential ones.

Eno mentions that music colleges, in his time, were not interested in minimalism and experimentalists of the late 60's
but the art colleges “ate it up.” There were the composers like Cornelius Cardew and Gavin Bryars who earned their living teaching art students, and who saw their contribution in a more pure, intellectual, spiritual experience. These became known as part of the English School, and Eno describes that as “a place where we could entertain and test philosophical propositions or encapsulate intriguing game-like procedures.”

This may be what makes music interesting.

Whereas the avant-garde could be seen as a proper site for real musical skills, and was therefore being slowly co-opted into the academy, the stuff we were interested in was so explicitly anti-academic that it claimed to have been often written for non-musicians.This, versus the ones who were interested in the pure sonic experience – the sensual, tonal pieces, which were full of repetition.

Both aspects were always present in experimental music of the 60s, often to the exclusion of everything that lay in between. I admit to being concerned more with processes, than end products myself.

So if this was experimental music, what was the experiment? Perhaps it was the continual re-asking of the question, “what also could music be?”

What makes music interesting, is our desire and ability to experience something as music. A process of apprehending, that we, as listeners, choose to conduct...This has moved the site of music from out there to in here.

Music – it’s something your mind does.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You open your mind when you experience the new.

This is a fundamental element of wanting to enjoy myself as much as possible. If I judge while I listen, I tend not to find much to enjoy. Maybe, because I begin by assuming that I'm right first, and that if I don't get it, then that's the artist’s fault. When I cast a veil of suspicion over an influence, my options become less interesting... and it's actually not that much fun being right about that after all.

But life’s too short not to experience other viewpoints without prejudice – and that music, film, and art all make the same assumption, when they're exploring the new.

Namely, that you're going to be open to their message, and so here it is, unexpurgated.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, that's funny.

I'm remembering now – perhaps due in part to recently taking in 24 Hour Party People – the very first time I remember hearing New Order and liking them.

It was, of course, hearing Blue Monday on KROQ, which my father would let me play in his car – on the way back from Odyssey Video, in 1983, and thinking, back then, that it sounded plastic for my tastes.

This was also the first time that I liked it – and that it for once didn't irritate me, but rather, intrigued me, because something was undoubtedly right about it, as well – despite the absolute certainty I’d held until that point, that technology was possibly destructive and evil.

I was also still putting together what it felt like, relative to Joy Division, whose moodier airs on Closer had so definitely seduced me. That music, I felt I had a more classical grasp on; this music, on the other hand, stood up to repeated listening, but also revealed little about its source.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s funny how we choose to listen to music.

Music people somehow fall into two vague categories, people who are genuinely interested in music and fans of the medium itself – and casual listeners, whose conscious efforts are often left out of the matter, but who enjoy their role as consumers.

Fans of the medium will sometimes form even form clans – audiophiles take on the D.I.Y.-ers on the issues of sound a purist medium, even touching on form over function topics.

Generally speaking, our conscious attention has an interesting relationship with new sounds, and their effects upon mood. Sometimes we listen as closely as we can. Headphone listening. Headmuzik, that’s the best kind...like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, or Scanner 1 – on an overcast day.

I have a personal recollection – it’s about the David Toop disc Screen Ceremonies – it changed some of my beliefs about the potential of musical conditioning. I ended up using it to condition myself to fall asleep at will, with the help of some Percocet I had been prescribed. I was recovering from surgery, some years ago. It turns out that I am no longer an insomniac. I learned that studying and listening to interesting sound has the same effect as counting sheep.

Screen Ceremonies is a good example of an induction or auditory spell. I absorbed its potential at very low listening levels, while reading into the musical editorial from his book, Ocean Of Sound, all from a reclining position.

The immenseness of calm and overwhelm at once were truly inspirational – and the potential hugeness of it all still inspires me to this day.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This one is justified visually, by the signage in big record shops, as a purported improvement over listening with your ears. This is the one that says listen with your beliefs. And, this is a form of compartmentalizing personal experience.

Of course, most artists reject categorisation of their work. It's insulting. It demeans and diminishes what the individual is capable of.

Some artists will create a successful brand for themselves, support that primary goal with enough consistent work to begin to develop an artistic thesis – but then find that after a few years, shifting and evolution is something that typecasting resists.

And naturally, without categories, so many people argue they couldn't discuss music otherwise, like it needs to be converted into a verbal abstraction, or architecture for the masses.

Posted by Eric Scott at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Could it really be important enough to discuss what makes music important?

Yes and no. Other people who are genuinely interested in music will definitely join me on this one.

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Thanks to debatably, either Elvis Costello, or Frank Zappa for that gem. Or both.

We aren’t really interested in reading about something we can hear. So, in general, our ocular and auditory senses get a good dose through the industries of entertainment and sponsorship. It seems likely enough, too.

As the invariable product of a metaculture, obsessed with technology since the industrial revolution. Make something, find a use for it later is the motto of many inventors and designers. (And I hang my head, as I am definitely guilty of that one, at least on a drawing-board level.)

Perhaps Salvador Dalí correctly intuited that his lack of clarity, into the motivations for his own painting justified his theory of surreal, subconscious thought processes. Then again, nobody forces anyone else to release useless shit onto the market...So why does this continue to bother us?

Overstimulus is but one way to get the world to submit to this spectacle.

Posted by Eric Scott at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t know exactly what it all means, or what might happen next, but... I definitely like it.

That has generally been the assessment, or ethic, of all Day For Night work produced, usually at the moment of completion. Occasionally, I make attempts to re-contextualise my finished results. So, too often, the work is finished, then it’s unfinished, and finally, it’s finished again. Until it’s not.

Over time, I locate new relationships between the things I am currently making, and other things I have previously made. This, for example, was the basis for drawing the underground map that became NIGHTlinkRail.

Presently, that map is now as much an illustration of past work, as it is a navigational tool, which I use to move forth, into areas of future work within the Day For Night catalogue.

Posted by Eric Scott at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

…Because nobody likes having anyone telling them what to do.

Posted by Eric Scott at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The imprint catalogue for Day For Night, much in the tradition the Factory Records cataloguing system, is more of a curator's definition of an artists’ catalogue... Rather, it is not of objects to buy, but rather of events and situations, (Day 001, Day 002, etc.) all placed within a single context – order from chaos with a contextual framework of systems and numbering.

This context is how we then choose to define it, when we judge whether or not it feels like art.

The rigorous nature and structure have manifold purposes of illustration.

The numbering system is about the predictability of all numbering systems. It's about managing expectations. If you do something only once, the subjects of precision and consistency never come up, until the second time. By the third time, something structural can become apparent.

Why is structure and rigor important? We don't know really, some days it just becomes clear that it's what's missing, especially when we fully appreciate chaos. Our eyes always look for pattern and order.

One might hypothesize that the only way we can actually memorize and learn is by recognizing patterns from chaos.

Posted by Eric Scott at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Personal expression sells.

I derive my client work from pre-existing personal work. Ideas are neither good nor bad, but are merely awaiting to be positioned, and to find their ideal home.

Personal tastes have always been a starting point for any work worth creating; therefore I have (essentially) close personal relationships with my clients and with the work itself. I only seek out commissions I would consider pursuing over a longer term – endorsements of what we can make happen together. That’s because usually, personal selling is 95 % of the work.

There is nothing I loathe more than boredom. For this reason, I rarely find myself bored.

I keep a library of ideas on my computer hard drive. Over time, this has proven to become a really useful system. Largely, this permits reappropriation – borrowing from oneself – and believe me, thievery is the sincerest form of flattery. Thus, I keep an archive going at all times: an image gallery of screens, sounds, designs, interactive toys, movies. These are a continual reminder of where I want to go.

The library serves continually as a visual reference in client meetings:
• For inspiration in motion design
• For deployment in writing
• For deployment in music

Everything that is anything, must also be a system unto itself, in the interests of making it teachable. That way, we can leave things better than the way we found them.

I have always been fascinated with the concept of a perfect system:
• Everything I do emanates from reusable ideas,
• Reusable bites of code
• Reusable words
• Everything must be permitted to lead to something else
• Everything must be permitted to evolve, and to lead to something better

Forward movement is the only movement worth pursuing in the long run, and therefore, also in the short run. So maybe it’s better to sacrifice the short run for the long run, and to make wiser decisions in the present.

Personally, this requires a continual assessment of where I want to go. Everything we do is poetry in motion. I have no-one to teach but myself at the moment.

Life is a continuous workshop.

Posted by Eric Scott at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of my work is predominantly about loneliness. We write about what we know. I was born alone, have lived alone, and assume that even when we die, we die, probably, alone. Grim, to some, maybe. To me, this is simply fact, and it lacks any particular charge – it is as potentially helpful, as it is hindering, as beliefs go.

The other viewpoint that guides my work is that principally, we are all good beings, and that we are all simply capable of great things.

So, my creative goal is the make sure that neither viewpoint overshadows the other.

Posted by Eric Scott at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the main reason I do any of this is that I want to leave the world a better place than the way I found it.

But what is Day For Night? That’s some question. Nobody knows for sure.

But my bet is that it’s something to do with my fascination with music.

Every time I sit down at a computer, I start typing, hoping that I will figure out something more than I knew the day before – about what Day For Night truly means. But it’s more of a today kind of thing; like what does Day For Night mean today?

I’ll come up with descriptors and definitions. Positioning statements.
Grandiose stuff, like: “DayForNight.com! An Ordering System – and a System of Order.”
Sooo clever ...Get it? The Day For Night obsession with cataloguing and numbering, meets the demand to satisfying B2B and B2C commercial ends.
Or “Day For Night. Design From The Inside Out.” I must admit to quite liking that one, which was given to us in J.J. Abrams’ description of what he feels I do.

Obsession, good word. But doing that kind of positioning thing gets me going for about twenty minutes, until I realize that it’s a mistake – while invariably all are true statements, or variations, they’re still getting a little off the point.

Originally, the purpose of publishing some of my theses – under the collective title Obsession – is to document the process of Day For Night and its workings, from creation through output; even to clarify relationships between some of my post-Situationist influences: Jamie Reid, Malcolm McLaren. Factory Records, Design by Peter Saville. Rob Gretton, The Durutti Column...and who can forget Tony Wilson. It seems only natural to raise questions about these figures, in light of my lofty ideals.

Consistently these individuals and their works have inspired and triggered my output stages. Filtered through me, everything – music, values, inspiration, comedy, art, noise, nature, animals, people, tribalism, like-mindedness, archival strategies, typography, order systems, chaos, the spectacle...and ultimately, even Situationism – eventually becomes Day For Night.

These figures have inspired me during my drive to inspire others – to put their lives into action and find consistency of purpose; to seek out and pursue worthy ideals. In my case, all objectives relate to my continuing fascination with musical and artistic expression, and especially, the contrasts between a human lightness and a reclusive darkness.

It also seems appropriate to mention, here, that I often work alone to achieve these ends.

But then something happens – I show and share around these things with others – my VIP list – and much appears to be connected. Over time, these creations have attracted the kinds of people and businesses who want to give me money to develop these kinds of things for them too, so Day For Night has effectively become a modest business, after pleasure.

Posted by Eric Scott at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You know the ones – when your mind simply will not focus, and everything you feel like saying is best summarized by that 4-bar phrase from the song that passes through your head, just long enough to create an impression and then disappear, before a different one from a different song, takes its place. On those nights, I feel scattered.

And tonight is one of those nights.

I am sitting on the studio floor; no, make that the sofa, and then, occasionally the stuffed chair in the corner – most comfortable – using a makeshift ottoman (an office chair that swivels uncontrollably under the weight of my legs as I continually reposition them to shift my weight.)

There are over two dozen CDs on the floor next to the sofa and the player. I used to be sitting in the office next door, but after 14 hours in there, I've relocated everything to – a different room; because I just won't stop yet. The stacks around me grow more chaotic, as the surfeit of my wandering musical attention seeks company with Freeform, Sun Electric, Bisk, David Toop (both in the literary and audio realms, as my copy of “Ocean Of Sound” sits as reference beside the CD Screen Ceremonies, which hasn't left my bedside since 1995. Later, I explain to Patty that it's the only disc I've established an on-demand sleep-response to; conditioned during my recovery from a bout of surgery, and under the drowsy influence of Percocet some years ago.)

As my thoughts race, somehow some of them still make their way into the Olympus MP3 dictaphone, which stores individual files of my musical ideas, business meeting notes, and my occasional verbal diarrhea. At one point, I record a monologue of uninterrupted thought, about the frustrations of being one half of a business, and I use up 18 solid minutes without taking a breath. Nearby, a copy of the All-Music Guide To Electronica gets a repeated flicking-through as one name or sound bite conjures up another, and these references become a roadmap to tonight's musical journey.

Today I realize that I have become a glutton for music ephemera, while I cut, copy and paste paragraphs like these, adjusting my thoughts onscreen, and attempt to grasp the symbiotic space of creation – where harmony of word and mind become one. Tonight, this impression never actually does come, but so many new ideas do so along the way, and all of these get noted down in its place.

My reference piles up higher; quickly I add my copy of the Designers Republic book 3D->2D and Kim Hiorthoy's manifesto, Tree Weekend. I am inspired by sheer abstraction, and some of life's more complex responsibilities evaporate, or at least, fade just slightly while I’m in this space.

+ + +

I am repeatedly distracted by the silence coming from my studio; if I could clone myself now, I'd also be in there finishing up Mousse, the track which was borne in the wee hours of last night when I attempted to record a mere 2-bar riff – within minutes, what I had begun had descended into musical chaos, an amalgam of 9 unmixed layers of Rhythm Factory. This logistical nightmare, employing a range of 3 keyboard sounds and several happy accidents -- I found I'd left the track's record-mode in overdub instead of replace) so I know that I have a lot of cleaning up to do.

This absorbs into my conflict, over which I exercise restraint of judgment, because I know that all will come to fruition, but only when the time is right.

There are some nights, when I am scattered like this. Many of them. And when I get up in the morning, everything gets put right again, before another day begins.

Posted by Eric Scott at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)