Four Things #21
Four Things #21..
Welcome to the sequel of the revenge of the return of the comeback of the second iteration of the rise of my Four Things newsletter. It's been a very long time since I've written one of these but hey two per year is better than none! There have been many, many instances where I'd come across interesting reading/viewing/listening material and made notes in order to expand on them in Four Things, but with a writing muscle getting rustier and rustier it just got increasingly harder to make time for it and get the newsletter out there. Even now, I'm still busy but at least the amount of things I'm involving myself in have decreased, which helps a bit.
Anyway, this year I think has been a year of re-alignment. While it's not quite clear whether we are in a 'post covid' era, everyone seems to be looking for their own space in a scene that is itself searching for answers and stability. A lot of the interesting ideas from 2020 on how to proceed as a music community (Bandcamp Fridays, Twitch, music media diversity, PROs, DJing and the environment, music education, Black Bandcamp etc.) are now weighed for value, and either discarded or developed into something more practical and/or professional. I predict the next few weeks and months a lot of these good ideas will see the light of day, a great example is this.
Your thoughts, observations and feedback are always appreciated! Feel free to pass on the link to your friends, or check out the archive right here https://tinyletter.com/Martyn-Deykers. Stay safe & healthy - Keep the Faith..
Martyn
November 17th, 2021
FIRST THING: IT WAS ALWAYS THERE
The 3024 Mentoring program has been a mostly positive constant for me in a year and a half of COVID trials and tribulations. I must admit I only had half a plan when I started in March 2020 but kept shaping and reshaping the program to improve it, make it more community-based and adapt to a changing electronic music scene. The past few months I've been spending more time talking on the program about Scene and Community, the differences (and pitfalls) between IRL and URL communities, how to contribute to them and how to document them. (Recently I invited the writer Emma Warren on the program to talk about her pamphlet "Documenting your Culture" and her book "Make Some Space", about the Total Refreshment Center venue in Hackney London which was (sadly past tense) a pillar of the new UK jazz scene.)
Over the summer, Jeroen and I released a three part compilation on 3024 that established the Mentoring Program itself as a community of sorts. Besides having members of the program contributing music, the A&R'ing and production process of the comps became part of the curriculum, so it is very much a joint effort from all members of the program, even those who have no music on the comps. The point of mentoring is not so much to teach people how to make music, but rather to help unearth ideas that are already present. In other words the music "was always there" - we just had to go and find it! Check out the "It Was Always There" compilations here, here and here.
SECOND THING: WE WANT EFX
In my opinion some of the greatest music writing and documenting is being done in hiphop nowadays. I've mused about writers like Marcus Moore and Hanif Abdurraqib before, and would definitely like to mention the excellent 30 for 30 podcast series "The King of Crenshaw" about Nipsey Hussle hosted by DC-based Justin Tinsley, as well as the Smithsonian/Folkways Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap project (on the documenting tip). For me personally, 90s hip hop has become and enormous source of comfort during the pandemic and I've really enjoyed revisiting this amazing era for flow, style and innovation. Besides the East and West Coast movements that have been well documented, many interesting rap groups from other parts of the US started innovating flows and influencing future stars. These innovations and ideas ranged from pretty wacky (We still need to have a chat about Fu-Schnickens at some point:)), highly underrated (Bone Thugs n Harmony from Ohio, one of the greatest rap groups), and several low key very influential groups like Main Source, Poor Righteous Teachers, Leaders of the New School and of course Das EFX. Speaking of the latter, I came across this great interview with Dray and Skoob (DAS stands for Dray And Skoob) on DJ Self's radio show, where they tell the story of getting signed to EPMD's label after a talent contest in Richmond, Virginia. I always loved their style, where they inserted made up words to keep the flow continuous ("I biggidy-burn riggidy-rubber when I blabber great, I miggidy-make the Wonder Twins deactivate"), something that was later copied by Kriss Kross ("wiggidy-wack") and others. The internet giveth with this magnificent unreleased tracks mixtape including a J Dilla version of "Microphone Master" (!). One of my favorite hip hop videos from that time was also by them, "We Want EFX" from 1992's album "Dead Serious". More hyper than Pinocchio's nose!
THIRD THING: THE HEGEMONY OF THE DAW
A little while ago James Holden sent me this interesting piece by Michael Terren called "The Hegemony of the DAW" and I've been thinking about it ever since. We often view affordable digital music tools like DAWs as a democratizing force, after all, more people being able to make music is always better! But what's often overlooked is that software is programmed, and echoes the cultural viewpoint of the programmer behind it. DAWs can actually be narrowing musical possibilities and are unaccommodating towards creating non western music for example. Pitchfork also spent some time on this subject, and wrote about two pieces of software that focus on microtonal tuning systems which means you can write music in other scales. To go even further into the reconsidering-your-software wormhole, a friend sent me another excellent Michael Terren article for Bellona Mag which is worth your time called "Plug In Capitalism", about Native Instruments and iZotope.
FOURTH THING: FIELDS WE FOUND
From now on I want to dedicate one of the 'Things' in every newsletter to a new artist I've come across, kicking off with the British producer Fields We Found who also records as ADG. He's been a member of the mentoring program for a while and submitted a techno banger of a tune to one of the compilations last summer, but really found himself after he started recording these long drawn out modular experiments. What I really love about the recordings is that they avoid the pitfalls of modular navel-gazing and focus instead on pacing and development. This makes his particular strain of ambient compositions not just fun to make, but also to listen to! Check out this really great album called "Thanks" on Amsterdam based ambient label Ambientologist, worth checking out and has gotten me through many early morning inbox sessions. Enjoy and see you next time!