dance music – BLANK CANVAS

Let it all flow: 88888

I have been on a journey writing my second book for what has probably been about a year now. Everyday I get up at 6am and write for an hour, letting my unconscious lead me, a time where the troubled mind has yet to arrive, a pure blank canvas. Today the sign of prosperity and hope arrived:

I try to ignore milestones, just write and then later edit, allowing the flow to take control. These are the words as I passed 88888

Dancing is a way of staying fit without the conscious effort. In fact I sometimes go to a dance fit class at my local gym, where I am the only bloke. It’s a tough class that makes me laugh. Some people have been attending for years, creating their own mini scenius, joy unbound. Dancing with friends to great mixes, DJ’s who are really taking the group on a journey that resonates, reinforcing your connection to your friends, the feeling that you are in the best place in the world, the only space that matters at that time. You rely on the DJ and dancing, remembering those special moments when DJ and audience combined in rapturous harmony. DJ Rod Davies at the New Milton Town Hall in 1981 spinning early Depeche Mode or Heaven 17; the Unity St club in Bristol, 1986, water dripping from the ceiling to the deep dark underworld of the Dug Out; the Whirl-y-Gig at Womad festival, connecting world and electronic music in the open air; the Blue Note, Hoxton of course, a tunnel of love; Planet Shroom or Megadog, adding a large dose of psychedelics; to DJ Woodies mix at tiny, personal GrassRoots festival, a cohesive and reaffirming experience, taking you on a journey through pop, country, soul, hip hop, grime and dubstep with a drum and bass base. Dancing outside has a liberating and fresh feel. It feels right and celebratory of the earth rather than being surrounded by man-made objects. Everyones feet resonating with the ground and the earth coming back with its reflective vibrations. Dancing with stars flying over a Cornish sky, meteorites flashing occasional trails through the milky way. A unique feeling of connection with the world which the warmth of the English summer or paddling on a Thai beach can create. The collaborative flow between people who might have just met, each with their own small groups of mates sharing the love, all coming together, right now, over me. The rave, protest march, tube train on the first day back at work, the football crowd celebrating a last minute winner for the home team, watching a film at the cinema where the audience all gasp at the plot twist, a simultaneous flow., like traffic in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, interconnecting mopeds, each with individual lives and experiences circling around each other. They never seem to touch, let alone crash, in a whirlwind of impossibility millions of bikes head off in their individual directions for a common goal. Everyone going somewhere, existing, milling around.

group of people dancing at Shambala music festival

Social Rhythm

Hoedown at Hanks, Boomtown 2023

Musicologist Sophie Zehetmayer explores elements of music that resonate with the world. The social rhythm which we all undertake in our own unique ways, like the moped riders of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, out on their own journeys without ever intersecting with each other, kept apart by constantly blaring horns. Social rhythm connects to our working hours, economic laws, and daily scheduling. Affect and political power, representation, the body. Hate, fear, shame, disgust or happiness perhaps, aligning to affect and rhythm as theorised by Sarah Ahmed. From the Body to being embodied. SENSATION. The name of a life changing exhibition of Young British Artist’s work at the Royal Academy in London. A shark cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde. An artist can be a sensation, coming through the ranks to be a star, but also it is about how the work resonates, its sensory connections to our thoughts and feelings. Bodies replicate, take the shape of the movement, of the collective over time, morphing, changing due to feedback, resolution, and through repetition. I see this as connecting to the knobs and sliders of an electronic synthesiser, a machine which originally was trying to replicate traditional sounds but became its own instrument, with variances between makes and models due to the filters and routing of sound, the materials and the way they have been used. ADSR – attack, sustain, delay and release. Something which sounds like an operational delivery for a war machine but also to cybernetic concepts of organism. The five steps of operation in cybernetic systems: goal activation, action selection, action, outcome interpretation, goal comparison. A manmade instrument and social system in perfect harmony. Standing over a synthesiser, patching cables between the various sections so you can create your own unique sonic: oscillators vibrating, generating the raw triangular or square sound waves, which can be mixed and then filtered through cut off and resonance before being shaped by the ADSR. Synthesisers, like samplers and AI, were meant to ruin music, take away the role of the true musician but have become essential tools that vibrate with the intensity of society. The use of synths in modern dance music highlights the deep emotions they generate, where filter sweeps can take resonant sounds into the bodies of masses, vibrating core frequencies of ecstasy. In these moments we are connected, at one with the world and those around us, the tribe dancing to the same beat. Simplicity, repetition and movement. Forgetting the troubles of the world around us but just connecting on the same level. The social sonic.

Internet Radio

As a very part time musician composer producer kind of person it is difficult to find the time to produce music and the th frustration comes of actually trying to find anyone to play it/ listen to it/ feedback; hate it love it buy it. Over the last few years I have been involved with a Twitter/ X based music scene, where generally unsigned artists making slightly avantgarde or non totally commercial electronic music inhabit. BBC Introducing was one space, but that is an increasingly singer songwriter gateway into radio airplay. In my genre of melodic not quite dance electronica a really supportive network of likeminded artists exists, supporting each others mainly part time hobbies. Names like Kiffie, Signal Committee, Trevas, Mothloop, and myself Inochi seem to constantly appear, as if by magic, on the same internet radio shows. I have no idea of listening figures for some of the shows we are played on but it definitely warms the cockles of your creative heart. I mean what is musicking all about anyway? Making your fortune, heading off into the sunset with a banana daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. Possibly. But really, for me its about having an existence which includes music at the forefront, not making a living, but providing some feedback and support, acknowledgement that you have a place on same airwaves.

Big up to Radio Wigwam, Big Satsuma Radio and Trust the Doc internet radio shows who are all playing Inochi tracks this weekend. We are all listening and playing music this weekend in recognition of the epoch changing British poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who so sadly passed yesterday, 7th December 2023.