Surprise! A post on Make Your Own Taste.
And of course it’s about me. But not entirely.
This music blog used to be a going concern, around 2012–14. I wrote lots of articles and reviews about new and old music in genres that interested me. It got quite a lot of readers, at least by my standards. Ultimately, however, it took away all the time I wanted to spend MAKING music of my own, right around the time I was having a creative renaissance.
So I quit writing about music.
Now, there’s a recent development. I’ve been writing again — fiction. And I’m going to be publishing a novel with an actual publisher next year, so this is a new beginning for me. At the same time, my explosion of musical creativity that went on for a decade + appears to be drying up. I’m tired of looking at waveforms on screen, cramping my hand up, mixing, mastering…but especially of releasing. Oh, how I’m tired of that last bit.
Being a totally independent musician can be disheartening in the digital world. Yes, cheap or even free DAWs (digital audio workstations) make it easy for just about anyone to record their own music. You can collaborate remotely with others. And Bandcamp makes it easy to release your music for free. You can also distribute to streaming services quite cheaply. So there’s lots of ways to get your music out there that we couldn’t have dreamed of thirty years ago.
But when you do… Well, welcome to land of crickets and tumbleweeds. Everyone’s doing it, no one’s listening. So you get caught on a constant roller coaster. You love creating, and you put your heart and soul into it. Then you release this energy into the world. Your few fans will buy it right away, if you have any. After a couple of days, though… Nothing. Your audience never expands. You seek reviews, you seek engagement, but there’s no way to get those. Labels don’t answer your emails, nor do review sites. You may just as well leave the music on your hard drive.
As wholesomely fulfilling as it is actually making the music, you get caught in a cycle where you feel the need to be more prolific than you might otherwise care to be, because the only time you feel the high of engagement is when you have a brand-new release — just before the collapse back down to zero engagement.
Even worse, you may be caught in the digital whirlpool that sucks you in, mentally. Sites like Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, etc., allow you to go on at will and see who is listening and where. So you become a stat-watcher. It is, course, all part of the tech industry’s goal of keeping your attention fixed to a screen twenty-four hours a day. Minutes of every day go down the toilet as you become more and more obsessed with stats, and it just becomes a mindless habit to check these things.
Well, eventually, if you notice you’re doing this, you know it has to stop. Either you learn to manage your behavior as well as your expectations, or you have a choice to make. I did learn to control it, but in the end I tired of all of it.
To be clear, this represents one kind of person’s experience. Some people blithely sail along, uncaring about all the experiences I describe above. They probably can’t identify with what I describe at all. And I salute them. Long may they create. For those of us who experience the psychic malady I describe at having to try to exist in a marketplace, though, it’s quite hard.
With everything in the balance, I’ve decided on a hiatus from music, which has been the most important thing in my life other than my loved ones. For decades I’ve pursued becoming the best musician I can be, expressing my deepest feelings in the best possible way, always chasing the perfect sound or lyric and trying to capture that by improving my production skills. And I look back at my body of work, and I’m satisfied. I did what I set out to do, whether I end up returning to it or not. Every genre, every sentiment, every sound — I’ve tried them all.
Now, don’t get me wrong. If you’re starting off now, this will all be very exciting still, making all the music you ever wanted to, seeing your Bandcamp page all pretty, and seeing the plays come in and some purchases too. I hope you relish it and that the delight never goes away for you. But we’re all different.
I decided to be “bloody-minded,” though, about my significance in the scheme of things on the way out the door, and to honor all my efforts by putting together a big final send-off in the form of a large compilation, which I’ve titled “Ethereally Obscure,” because my music is often ethereal and I’m obscure. Is this an act of defiance? Yes. Many are called, and few are chosen. That’s the way of life. But does that mean my music, or your music, are less significant than the music made by people who have been critically lauded, promoted by labels, and materially successful? Is it worse than their music? No.
To be honest, while I would certainly like it if people buy/download it, it’s not really about that. It’s about bloody-mindedness, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “very determined and refusing to give up.”
So, having all these hundreds of tracks to choose from, I decide to carefully select my 60 favorite or most representative from recordings by all my “names”: my own real singer-songwriter name, The Gateless Gate, Khan Tengri, Twilight Fields, and Sons of Birches. I also put together a comp titled “Unwanted Compliments,” which collects 18 cover versions that I feel I nailed.
The physical version of this 6-disc set is available ridiculously cheap (like, ridiculously) + shipping. The digital version is “name your price” on Bandcamp (see below).
If you like ambient music, folk music, psychedelic music, new age, and prog-rock, well, give it a try. You may like some of it. And if you do, please share this comp!
BLOGGING COMEBACK
One door closes (well, you close it) and another one opens. In a more limited way, I intend to revive this blog with short reviews, occasional longer ones, and a new feature: interviews. I do hope musicians I contact will agree to be interviewed.
I’m excited to bring you some of the great music and artists I’ve discovered since the last time I blogged regularly…which was a long time ago! I’m a far more educated listener on contemporary music than I was ten years ago.
First, I’ll be doing a read/overhaul to make sure I still like everything I said ten years ago. Then I’ll relaunch sometime in fall ’24.
And I’ll also finally have to figure out blocks in WordPress. Ugh.
Please check back!
—- ALLISTER