Current policy is to remove harmful or limiting adjectives from any stage of the creative, or music-making process. As I began to use language that felt free of terminology, labeling or artistic judgment, I found that I also felt happier about much of it. Instead, I was favoring a system of organizing music by its […]

Begin by putting all the ideas into a kind of bag. This restores a greater degree of equality between each idea. This, in turn, builds awareness of the effects (sometimes adverse) which labels can have upon our beliefs about what we create and do. So de-labeling at the beginning, that is a system that works […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

You open your mind, and this is where 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

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 the way to Day 100) all placed within a […]

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 […]

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 […]