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rpm challenge: the conundrum
By svc | February 19, 2008
It’s been a hectic time since I last posted. Lots of encroachments from Real Life have left me with less studio time than intended, but that’s just the nature of this modern, wiggly world…
The time that I have been working on music has been split about 70/30 between learning production techniques in Ableton Live through experimentation (I swear that every time I use that program it either teaches me something new or forces me to unlearn something) and recording improvisational noise performances. I’ve recorded about three hours of performance so far. Most of it is a mix between dark ambient soundscaping and chaotic bursts of noise in the style of traditional power electronics… pretty much what I’ve been doing for years as a primary performance method.
Herein lies my problem. I don’t want to do the exact same thing that I’ve done before. I want to push my personal envelope into a different territory of aggressive noise. My mind is formulating a clear goal for the sound I want to achieve, and I’m certainly motivated, but my skills with the new equipment aren’t good enough to get there yet. I like to think I’m a quick study, but I don’t know that I’m quick enough to pull together what I want before the RPM deadline.
Although I’m not looking to make some kind of a cookiecutter “breakcore by numbers” album, a large number of the artists that I like and look to as conscious influences are tagged with the breakcore label. My take on breakcore is very similar to that of Christoph Fringeli: it’s not so much a genre as a “hybrid strategy.” It’s the common-ground overlap of a lot of different high intensity musical approaches that are converging through use of similar tools and techniques. I’m drawn to this roiling edge of activity for the same reasons that I was drawn to punk rock and industrial music years ago… there’s honesty and vitality on that edge.
At the time of this writing, there are ten days left before the end of the RPM challenge, and I’m faced with a decision:
- Release a perfectly adequate atonal noise album cut together from existing studio sessions that doesn’t meet my personal expectations of a release, but fulfills the parameters of the RPM Challenge (10 songs/35 minutes minimum), or
- Spend the time to make an album/EP in the aggressive style that I envision, and risk the possibility of not meeting the parameters of the RPM Challenge before the deadline.
I have a feeling that this will be vexing me right up to the edge of this last weekend.
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Parting note: Nau-Zee-Aun, the primary musical project of Voidstar Productions/Zero Times Infinity mastermind David Dodson, is preparing a Very Special Treat for their forthcoming shows in New York and New Jersey. I’m sworn to secrecy, but I will say that it’s one of the most unique performance ideas that I’ve heard about in a while and will really be something to see…
Topics: Music |
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
When I started I planned on making a goofy pop album, then after three weeks of the gout, 20 hours of over-time at work per week, and a brain that would absolutely not cooperate, I’m going to end up with a 40 minute blob of arpeggiated nonsense I think I’ll end up calling what “Neil deGrasse Tyson sees when he’s on acid”. By the way, Steve Jobs can choke to death on the biggest mule knob in the universe — recording on my Mac is absolute technical torture. I long for the days of my Pentium 75 and a CDR full of warez — life was easier back then.