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.
I am really excited to have a chapter in this beautiful book that celebrates the work of renowned UK minimalist composer Gavin Bryars. The book really explores the impact Gavin had on the music industry, initially with Brian Eno and other artists who formed the ambient and experimental early popular/ classical music crossovers. As a celebration of his 80th year, this is an exploration of the creative life of an iconic and great bloke.
My chapter looks at his connection between art and music, exploring the innovative teaching methods he used at Portsmouth and Leicester art schools in addition to the formation of the incredible Portsmouth Sinphonia.
A perfect christmas present for your cultured family member and/or friend
So its that wonderful time of the year when top 10, 20, 50 lists are compiled by all and sundry, books, albums, tracks, exhibitions, TV programmes, films etc.. Culture laid bare by the usual protagonists. In my world of popular music culture the lack of diversity and retrospective nature of the so called music books of the year I find staggeringly depressing. Topping the Times list is the alternative mainstream funk of Sly Stone, sound interesting to me, but the rest include tombs on Madonna, Bowie, the BeeGees and Barabara Streisand. OMG. Surely music books of the year should not be so biographically in the past and mono cultured. There is a whole other array of music writers and publishers that the regular mainstram of White Rabbits, Faber, Rough Trade have a slightly more eclectic mix, including Jeremy Deller’s Art is Magic, although it does include Rick Rubin’s rambling rough ruminations on creativity. He aint no Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi that.s for sure. Too many male authors too, lads talking about lads in bands. Boring. Atleast Audrey Godden’s reconstruction of Factory Records hits many a list. Whatever year final retrospective you view there is a lack of black identified music genres including grime, jungle, reggae, or global music outpourings around South American, Asian, or African music cultures. Music is also of the hear and now, not just for getting back to the Beatles and their ilk.
Just before the onset of those traditional festivities where families argue or try and flick an After Eight from forehead to mouth without using fingers, I am speaking about connections between punk and jungle music genres at the wonderful Punk Scholars Network conference.………
Punk is timeless and extends beyond the year zero late 1970s definition and identification in which it is commonly held. In connecting to other time points and genres I interpret jungle as a genre which combines many of the same elements, reflecting on the wider connotations of punk, stepping into the Hardcore Continuum identified by music journalist Simon Reynolds which led through techno, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, and grime.
Key elements of punk and jungle show equivalence:DIY, creative emancipation, postmodern eclecticism of genres, dole and squatting, technological shifts, subcultures, resetting the music landscape, minimalism, anyone can be a musician, pirate radio, delivering an original sonic difference. Visual arts also played a key role as jungle initially connected with graffiti whereas punk defined new fashion, emerging from Dada and art inspired spaces. Punk and jungle resonated sonically, music that is dynamic, danceable, and fluttered speaker membranes.
Every scene, or scenius (the genius of certain scenes – thanks Brian Eno), cooperative genius needs a key instigator to push it forward so within punk, managers Bernie Rhodes and Malcolm McLaren forged the scene whereas jungle was led by its musicians, specifically Goldie or Roni Size in London and Bristol respectively. Community spaces including key venues, rehearsal and recording studios also supported and defined both scenii (scenius in plural), from the Roxy to the Blue Note.
Acknowledging the punk continuum in preceding genres such as jungle, reduces retrospection and highlights future punk infused possibilities for popular music scenes related to inner city modern life.
Come along, its the most fun you can have in any conference anywhere ever!
Gradually we descend through the blustery moments of autumn hoping to arrive within the warm embrace of log fires, nights in and out, fluffy socks, pipe and slippers. A time to dive into creative pursuits to fight off the dark (k)nights. About a year ago I excitedly released my first book Blank Canvas, containing musing on creative development alongside a wonderful array of interviewees such as Brian Eno, Pauline Black, Bill Drummond, Stephen Mallinder, Gina Birch, Helen McCookerybook, Lester Square and the dearly departed Keith Levene. It has been great seeing its journey into the world.
Every morning through 2023 I have woken by 6am at the latest and furiously tapped away for an hour each day, conjuring up my next book Resonance. It is a semi autobiographical frolic through music scenes, using the concept of scenius (collective genius) as a lens. It’s currently a mash of ideas, thoughts, pages of autonomic writing, exploring individual to collective creativity. I always get over excited as I develop creative products, so I need to calm down and take a steady path to the finish line.
Here is a little snippet:
Resonance is a story of collective success through individual failure, where my own role petered out but the collective force continues to resonate and scenes run on. The genius of the Love – did did, do do did did. I’m going to have some fun. Fun lots of fun. And I did fail many times. Pulling apart the bellows of accordions through over vigorous activity, desperate to be heard. Playing a battered trombone which had more dents than tubing. Spending a month in a Southern Spanish villa where there was only local English cuisine available, rehearsing diligently parts for a new album which would all be completely scrapped on our return to Paris. Trying to synch multiple ADAT digital tape machines, time stretching over night, selling dodgy grey market synths on Charing Cross Road. I was working for a camping company based in Hemel Hempstead when I saw a small advert in the middle of a page in Loot, the ads paper of choice, looking for a hi-fi installer. I whizzed down to London, got offered the job, given a brand new silver Astra van, and was soon installing tech stuff for the rich and famous. Sultan of Brunei, Rodney Trotter, Bros, Pamela Bordes and Princess Diana. I am terrible at DIY and managed to place a Bang and Olufsen flat speaker on one of her walls, walk gently away and it crashed to the floor, ripping its brackets out and leaving a great gash. We quickly left. The company (Le Set) went out of business soon after. Hi-Fi was big business in the 1980s. People bought high quality boxes and spent fortunes on ever shorter cables, hoping to experience every nuance of sound that recording studios imparted. Listening for pleasure, placing your favourite seat equidistance between your KEF or Quad Electrostatics. The Linn Sondek, imperfect perfection. Sound quality was universal, something to seek out and aspire to. I’m not sure our latest mp3s can remember those times.
Blank Canvas can be purchased directly from the wonderful people at Intellect publishing or through all good retailers.
Watching Top of the Pops at 7pm on a Thursday evening in the 1980s. There were only 3 channels, or 2 if you were from a strictly English middle class background and banned from watching the sin of ITV, where adverts and common accents prevailed. Friday mornings saw avid discussion of the latest fashion, moves, sounds, tribes drily piped into our homes by John Peel or his overly smiley fellow presenters. Peel was an instigator, someone who broke the norm but was high profile, someone you could get behind and follow.
There were other Radio 1 DJs in the UK such as Annie Nightingale, David “Kid” Jensen, and Janice Long who were also important but less resonant. Without Peel these DJ’s might not have successfully traversed mainstream and underground arenas. One person centrifugally centred, orbits spinning right round baby right around his beloved Liverpool.
On 25th October 2004 John Peel died at the same moment that my youngest daughter was whizzing into the world, catapulted out and almost immediately tying herself in knots by an overly long umbilical cord. as is tradition, I kept a copy of the newspaper from her birth day, splashed with news of Peel’s untimely death. An icon who had informed the music tastes of millions, defined genres, was gone at the same moment my lovely new daughter was born. I’m sure she will have as much impact but in a different way.
Music connects to our worlds, what we perceive as life as A Tribe Called Quest extol in the brilliant Black Noise by Tricia Rose’s (1994, p.68), suggesting ‘the rhythmic instinction to yield to travel beyond existing forces in life. If you want to get rhythm then you need to join a tribe’. Natural cohesiveness that transcends our world, both imagined and real, featuring a collective consciousness that pervades and sweeps through the music. Modern Western cultures struggle with the concept of collective consciousness because there is often a negative impact that occurs. Within a scenius (a scene containing unusually high levels of genius) the group think supports positive elements, such as in the London Jazz scenius where places such as The Total Refreshment Centre and the Tomorrows Warriors school help people on a group path, showing value in nurturing communal musiking. Stories told within mainstream media rely on collective consciousness to push ideas, generally in a negative way. Get Brexit Done, Covid-19 lockdowns, the Middle East situation where a lack of historical knowledge is used to sway arguments. Which side are you on, the Palestinians or the Israelis, when the situation is much more nuanced, non linear. Chaos Theory is utilised to confuse and subvert populations. Obvious 20th Century examples include Stalin, Hitler, Apartheid, Anti- black racism, Trump, Johnson, Berlesconi. Dominic Cummings sadly slumped at a desk on live TV lying, needing an eye test to confirm that he was driving a car. If you can start to move the juggernaut of the group down one path then it is unstoppable as there is no room to turn around and the vessel is so large that it would take forever anyway. Brian Eno demonstrated Chaos Theory with his 2 handed pendulum, where simple motion on the first one creates infinite non repeated movements on the second. So a little nudge one way can send all kinds of confusion across the next, thereby subordinated populations. Collective consciousness came through in punk, hip hop, techno, jungle etc.. through commonalities of fashion, style, music, art, taste, lifestyle, place, rhythm, dance. There are instigators, those key people who lead the collective in a certain direction. We are all swayed in some way, which can be a positive in cultural scenes but have global destroying effects in political spheres.
Synergy and serendipity are key elements of creative development, where working together and chance combine, natural energies allowed to collide so that ultimate experiences emerge. My book Blank Canvas, relates to coming from an empty space where previous learning doesn’t affect outcomes. This is a space where synergy and serendipity can be allowed to foster. Synergy can be defined as when the collective whole is greater than what could be achieved just by individual parts. Synergy connects to flow, a collective natural magic where everything just fits into place. Don’t you have those days when everything seems to work perfectly. You wake up, the weather is beautiful, your body feels great, you hug your partner, the morning light sifting through creates beautiful patterns. You gaze through the kitchen window to see the sun rising out of the flat calm sea which is starting to glow and has a lovely deep blue hue.The coffee machine is ready, there are lots of berries in the fridge, the news on the radio is uplifting. It’s a Friday morning, best day of the week. You have time to sit and write before going for a gentle run to the beach and diving into the still deep blue water. You win toward the gradually rising sun with a few other early birds happily swimming along. Somedays it all fits into place. Collective synergy is about alliance, coming together as one. Music composition has a synergy in that as you develop a piece it starts to gather a natural flow if you allow it. You might start with your main melody, riff or rhythm but working on certain parts then informs the next. Like knocking the first skittle over in bowling, you don’t know what kinetic effect this will have on the rest of them until their energy is transferred. I was just writing about flow and then on Doodle up pops a picture of Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. Happy 89th birthday Dr Flow. Serendipity.
Article in the Observer paper which uses Blank Canvas and art schools in the title. Is it plagiarism or just obvious? Anything which discusses their importance and inter connection is great
