A change of direction

My view has always been that music embodies a philosophical system, a way of looking at the world, and that each creative decision reflects the artist’s world view – whether consciously or not. One of the reasons I have been happy presenting my music in a rather handmade, low-fi form was because I felt that this was connected with a larger body of theories I have about the creation of culture, and it’s role (I don’t think I could describe concisely this larger body of theory, except to say that it revolves around concepts like contextualisation, content vs. presentation, anti-perfectionism and anti-”Hollywoodisation”/perfectionism).

But I’ve had a kind of an intellectual crisis with this, because my approach has been misinterpreted by some people who have written about the music. Maybe the problem is not ever having enough interviews to explain my methods; critics preferring generally to stay a safe distance if they want to stick in the knife.

The problem is, by deliberately keeping the music free of technological “gimmicks” I have unintentionally echoed the recording methods of a kind of Golden Age of indie music. This is because the equipment I use, the manner in which I use it, and so on, is very redolent of that era. So my music has come out sounding more early-90’s, more “classic Shoegaze” than I wished.

I absolutely love the contemporary feel of the mixes that Ulrich Schnauss and Mark Peters did for the recent Sonic Cathedral single. These mixes, these interpretations of my recordings, are really the thing that seems to be taking the band out “classic” (i.e. out of date) shoegaze music, and into something modern, contemporary, exciting. I really feel that this is the direction we need to be heading in and it suggests a change in the intellectual underpinning of the music.

So my choice now is how to change this – how to make music that addresses this change, music that is rich and textural and modern. I have to find a way of balancing outsider interests and opinions within the frame of what I want to do – what direction I am going in. Whether in band stuff, or anything I do on my own. It’s an interesting problem.