• 1 – Don’t make boring music!
There’s enough dull, average, run-of-the-mill stuff out there – let the stuff you write fall into the other categories…the ones like “exciting” and “outstanding” and “extraordinary!”.
Many of the other problems associated with being a musician (finding fans, getting exposure, promoting, marketing, branding, being able to afford breakfast etc) magically disappear if you make incredible, outstanding, unique, mind-blowing music.

• 2 – Don’t do it how everyone else would!
Trust your own tastes, inspirations and ideas. Don’t worry about whether people will think it’s weird or “wrong” – follow your instincts and do what seems right to you. The more you stay in tune with what you feel is right, the more “you” your music will be…and that will me it’s less like my hypothetical “everybody else”

• 3 – Don’t be dishonest!
If you try to write music in a style that you don’t like, just for the temptation of cash monies…think twice about it. It might work for a while but the situation is doomed to fail. You won’t be that interested in writing it – and that will come across in the music eventually. You also won’t devote yourself to it, which will affect how you present it, promote it, talk about it…everything. It will also be a waste of your abilities in the end. You’re a superhero – use your powers for good, or risk becoming Zod!

• 4 – Don’t play it safe!
There’s loads of safe music. It doesn’t have anything too unexpected in it. It doesn’t have any surprises in it. There’s no risk in it. Does that sound like your idea of a good time?

• 5 – Don’t put things out unfinished.
If it’s not ready to your satisfaction, it’s not for other people ears. Your music represents you, and I’m sure you don’t go out to dinner half-naked. Don’t send your music on a first date with it’s hair messed up and dirty clothes on. Scrub up, shave the hairy bits, spray on a nice smell and make a good first impression!

• 6 – Don’t accept second best
You ever seen a performer on stage say something that implies they are not giving it 100%? It turns the audience against them in a second. I saw a guy (who’s quite famous) tell the crowd that he didn’t really want to play this venue but was forced to because of his contract. He got booed for the rest of the show. He didn’t want to perform for us, and we knew it. Don’t give an audience your second best effort, they will know.
You should never put yourself in the position of feeling like you have to say sorry to your fans.
Put right any flaws in your music before it’s let loose on the public…..unless (here’s my usual “exception that proves the rule” bit) the mistake adds something to the music. It might be a humorous outtake…or a mistake that improves a track…but if there’s a benefit for the listener then consider keeping it in. Otherwise…nuke the mistake! Nobody want to hear them!

• 7 – Don’t Stop Believing
Not the crappy tv show!
I mean don’t let your self esteem drop. Everyone has doubts and worries about what they are doing, especially after knock-backs. When it comes to the crunch, your uniqueness is assured, it’s just finding the most effective way of expressing it to others that is the problem. Never doubt that you can do it…if you fail, then learn and try again, better. Never give in and never give up.
Failing gives you vital lessons…the only true failure is not learning from mistakes.


by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: vitasamb2001 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Making music is like storytelling - you guide the listener through a slice of time, taking them where you want them to go, for the effect you want to achieve.

If you want to shock you can take them down a familiar route and then suddenly change the surroundings to an unfamiliar and shocking landscape....

If you want to relax and reassure them you can create a safe, happy environment where nothing will ever hurt them.

Where did your story start? And where does it finish? How can you show that progression in your music? What will your audience learn along the way?

Remember that good storytelling is always a learning experience for the listener - and music is no exception. When people enter into that contract of listening and being guided, they open themselves up to being taken on a journey...they are waiting to learn and experience the things you tell them...

What is your story?

by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What Writing music is NOT:

...it's not about talent.
...it's not about technical ability.
...it's not about the gear you use.
Writing a piece of music is about how much of yourself you are willing to invest in it.
It is about how hard you are willing to work.
It's about how many failures you won't let yourself make...
It's about thinking clearly...it's about letting your inspiration do the hard creative part, and getting your rational mind to fill in the blanks.
I believe that anyone can write a great track..it just takes the commitment, the effort and the will to not give up until it is done.
It's about trying harder than anyone else.
It's about confronting the problem and figuring out a better solution than anyone else!


by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Elton John’s partner David Furnish (yeah I can’t believe I’m quoting him either) once said “Anyone with an addiction is not being honest about something in their life” – and I think the same applies to motivation.

Whenever I’ve felt demotivated when working on some music, it’s always been because of some doubt somewhere about what I’m doing. Whether it’s doubts about if the project is worth investing my time in, or I have a feeling it’s going to fall through and my music will end up not being used…perhaps it’s something I don’t really feel happy about being involved in. Maybe I secretly feel too insecure to be putting your music into a certain project – or possibly feel I’m too good for another one.

Whatever the reason, feeling demotivated is a clear warning sign. It shows that deep down I don’t want to do it.

It shouldn’t normally take too much soul searching to find the answer…and reaching a completely honest answer is vital.
If you don’t want to write music because there’s something good on tv, or you want to go out instead – well it depends on the context (if you have a deadline for a track the next day and you would rather be out clubbing, then perhaps re-evaluate what you feel is important to you!), but in general I’ve found that this sort of thing is procrastination.
To avoid the stress of doing it, you fix your mind on some random activity that suddenly seems enormously alluring.
Face the fears and doubts…they are an imaginary boundary, and as Frank Zappa said “Think it over, and it will fall down…” – if the doubts and fears are genuine, then this is a difficult position, as something in you does not want to do what you are doing, and you need to look at what that means for you.

As negative as that seems, I’d always say to look for the positive in situations like this. It was this exact quandary that shifted my life from making music, to helping others to improve their music making.

Something in me was saying “this is not the right thing for you” – and I’d devoted my whole life to music, and becoming a better musician…it was hard to listen to that voice, but it did steer me in the right direction, it just took a while for me to figure out what I wanted….

When you are doing what you love, in the way that you want to…motivation will never be a problem…if anything it will be a problem stopping yourself doing it all day!

by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: Francesco Marino / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I've mentioned in a few places that when you are making music everything serves the message.

I think I need to qualify this a bit to avoid confusion!

By "everything", I mean the musical ideas you have, how you use them, the sounds/timbres you use and the structure of the track. In a word, I mean the sound you have made.

When I say the "message", I mean that music is a language, and it expresses things. The language is recognised by humans in a peculiar way and unique way. It is the sort of language the mind uses to express feelings, instincts and emotions. Meanings are personal and flexible. It is not the same as languages that use specific words for specific objects and concepts. Music works on a lower, more primitive and powerful level than conscious thought...but it doesn't only work on that level.

This all seems to fit together nicely...except there's one problem.

What a piece of music expresses is determined by the listener - not the creator.

The "message" is not fixed - it is created uniquely by each listener. Listeners may share a similar message, but like snowflakes and memories...no two will ever be exactly alike.

The creator can try to evoke ideas or feelings with their music, but they can never guarantee the content of the message that the listener will receive.

Hence, everything that you put into your music serves the message - even if you do not intend a message, or if the music is generated by some algorithm or artificial process. The message will be generated by the listener as a response regardless of the intention of the creator.

Curiously, a solution to this contradiction lies in instinct - what you instinctively know how to say in this strange language will also have the best chance of being communicated accurately, at some level, to other humans. We all share the same basic construction...deep down we all work in the same way. Tune in to what you instinctively feel is right for your music, and you will reach out directly to other people in a more honest way.

by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Being a musician is about dealing with emotion. It’s often about connecting with the listener and telling them a story that connects emotionally with them. Whether it’s a classical symphony or a dancefloor banger - you’ve got to connect with that unknown person on the other end of the line.

Unfortunately, the process of making music can be a highly emotional one in itself, and you can easily get caught up in a terrible trap. The trap of knowing what your intentions are with your piece of music.

When this happens, you forget the listeners point of view, and you start thinking:

“oh hell yeah, I’m nailing this track, I’m on a roll and I’m completely awesome!”

Sure it sounds like that when you know what the message is, and how you did it, and how much work you put into it....and you’ve just spent all night on it.

The casual listener will have no interest in whether or not you’ve written better or worse tracks...they won’t care if you stayed up all night trying to get one particular detail right.

They’ll react to it instinctively, right!?

This is where the sobered up “morning after” listen comes in. If your track still kicks ass at 7:30am the next morning (and you’ve actually been to sleep for a decent period of time - all nighters don’t count here) then you have probably hit your mark.

There is not a creative musician in the land who has not experienced the “I’m a genius” moment in the heat of creation, only to be brought crushingly down to earth the next morning.

The message here is - listen to your music like a stranger would. Don’t be soft on yourself... be your own harshest critic, and you’ll already have faced the worst criticism.


by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We've all had those phases - the reverse Midas Touch, where everything you touch turns to poop.

Every note you put down suddenly seems empty and worthless....everything goes wrong, everything sounds rubbish. Even the cat leaves the room.

I'm going to take a big risk now....as what I'm about to say might come across as extremely irritating, and possibly a little smug and condescending.

But...these phases...are....a symptom. They reflect your attitude at a certain time, and that is all. They are a mood...and nothing can change your mood faster than winning the lottery. I mean, nothing can change your mood faster than distraction. Changing your focus.

I've found that these "I can't make good music" phases almost always coincide with a one or more of the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: A lacklustre state pertaining to life in general...a feeling of lingering shoddiness about life.
Scenario 2: Anger or frustration lingering in the mind.
Scenario 3: Some form of let down regarding musical activities...or sometimes a let down to do with something else important.
Scenario 4: Feeling unappreciated and/or wanting to make it known to other people you feel unappreciated.
In a word: FEELINGSORRYFORYOURSELF

You might disagree...but to be honest when you're in one of your moods there's no reasoning with you! *slams door*

These phases are very easy to get out of...you just need to change what you are saying to yourself. Instead of all the negative stuff, start reminding yourself of what you have done that has been praised before...and remind yourself that this feeling is not imposed upon you by "fate"...it's just emotions becoming destructive. You could use that feeling of being down or frustrated or angry, but in a positive, creative way.

There is one danger. It is that you'll get out of it, then mess up the first thing you do, and send yourself back into the bad mood again. So watch out for that one!

The point of this is that you get what you concentrate on...and when negative feelings take over they can seem to have a real, physical effect. Their power can be removed by taking control of your thoughts and turning them towards the positive again.

Ask "how can I use these feelings to make some music?" or "How can I express this?" rather than tell yourself destructive things like "I'm rubbish at music and everything I do is crappy".

Your mind has a knack for answering questions creatively...whereas it just lingers on statements. Telling yourself negative things will only have you wallowing in self pity. Ask yourself for a positive way out and your mind will scramble to find a way....


by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: Francesco Marino / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1 - Change your approach
There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “If you keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting the same result”. This applies to all areas of life, but when it comes to creative activities, it’s even more potent. Any time that your interesting in making music wanes, whether it’s because of a lack of success, or because you were finding you couldn’t get the results you wanted - whatever the reason - changing the way you work and even the reason that you work can have a positive effect. It can instantly knock out bad habits and dead-end thought patterns, and get you focusing on exploring new ideas and processes. Even something as simple as changing the tools you use, or the room you work in can help, anything that removes the negative associations with what was happening before. Try some different software - or a different way of recording...if you only did sequencing before, try playing things live. If you were using samples, try programming synths...check out the opposites of what your were doing before.

2 - Learn something new
Nothing re-ignites passion for a subject more than finding out something new about it. Look in places you have never explored before, discover sounds and ideas you’ve never encountered. Read a book about a musician you don’t know much about, or perhaps even buy a textbook on a particular style or period of history. Look online at music encyclopedias...find odd little snippets of knowledge, novelties and oddities!

3 - Explore your past and set a course for the future.
Sometimes in this long journey, we lose track of where we came from. If the journey is hard work, we even lose track of where we are headed! When confusion has set in and nothing seems fun anymore, there is only one thing to do. Get back to your roots! Look over your past, the first music you loved...go back and listen to it again. Try to find that spark that was in there...what was it that made this music so special for you back then? When I’ve done this, I’ve sometimes had strange moments where I remember what my ambitions were back then. It all comes back...the things I wanted to do and be. Even if you don’t want those things any more, they were important to you and they steered you into the decisions that you made. I’m not saying you need to follow the ideas that come up from this - I’m just saying that it can be worthwhile going back over how you got to where you are. What happened? Were you in control or did the tide take control over your fate? If you could choose where you wanted to go from here - what would you choose to do, or be?

4 - Make new mistakes!
Throw away your old habits, and make a whole bunch of new mistakes. I’m really good at making mistakes, and I heartily recommend them, some of my best ideas have come from them. From playing a wrong note and finding that the tune sounds better for it, to assigning the wrong instrument to a midi track and getting as great sound...mistakes are great, as you can’t do them wrong! All you need to do is make the most of the happy accidents, and dust yourself off from the less pleasant ones.

5 - Do what makes you feel good.
Making music can often mean making habits - we do the same things over and over, the same thought processes and the same actions...we just develop ways of doing things that are comfortable and reliable. When these habits mean that we end up on autopilot - we end up with uninspired results and unhappy musicians! Often, we feel like we need to “press on” and keep going, even if it’s not getting us anywhere, because the other option is to give up. Of course there’s other options! Taking a break can be a good one, especially if you’re like me and always want to work through bad patches. Don’t be scared to give yourself a break. Do what makes you feel good - but be smart, sometimes challenging yourself can lead to greater satisfaction. Feeling good doesn’t just mean going out and partying...I mean find a way to get more happiness from your music. Make the music you want to, for the reasons that make sense to you.

by Dave Graham

Image: m_bartosch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The only criticism I’ve had of this blog is the strange old quote: “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. The person said that music is for listening to, not reading about. In one sense I agree…describing the actual sound music is a mostly pointless pursuit. Discussing the process of writing, and means of writing is far from it.
Some people instinctively believe that structuring and “intellectualising” music is plain wrong. They probably believe that music should be raw and heartfelt, and that over thinking it takes away it’s core.
I agree and disagree in equal measure!
Music is a communication between two living things, one sending a message and the other receiving it. Both of these living things are ever-changing, turbulent and emotional beings, and the language they are using is instinctive and vague….it is not about precision, it is about feel.
Given the nebulous nature of musical exchange between the creator and the listener – I think it can be interesting to see what happens when you use words to describe it…you get a strange translation, because there is no objective meaning. You get a rainbow of possible meanings…none of which nails the essence of the music, but all of which give a hint and an insight…. However…I think the wise musician understands both viewpoints, and makes the most of whatever theory and knowledge appeals to them, combined with instinct and the raw power of inspiration. That’s where the best music comes from…and that balance should be sought at all times!

by Dave Graham

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s a question that most of us avoid. I’m not sure how to answer it, it seems there’s lot of different answers depending on which part of my brain is responding.

The intellectual bit would say (rather aloofly): “Because I have new ideas that deserve to be part of music history, to a greater or lesser extent”

The anxious part of me would say (with shaking voice): ” Because I feel more free communicating through music than words…it’s where I can be myself”

The wannabe rock star part of me would snarl: “To impress girls…actually, to impress everyone and get rich and famous and all that stuff”The self-reflective part of me would say: “What I write isn’t important, it’s just ego-wallowing really”

The realistic part of me would say (glumly) : ” There’s millions of people who can do what I do,

I won’t make it, I won’t get paid, I won’t even enjoy trying to be successful…I’m not even sure I want to be successful… “

And so on. I don’t know why I write music, especially considering the adverse conditions that I make it in.

I do know, however, that making music always represents hope and it represents continuation of existence, if not personally then at least species-wise. At it’s core it is a message to all who come after. Like hieroglyphs on an ancient Egyptian tablet, the message may not be understood exactly in the countless years to come, but the fact that there is message screams these words: ” I was here, I was alive, and I did this”.

“I was here, I was alive, and I did this”
Write music because one day you won’t be around to write it anymore. Today you can create a message that resonates through time forever.

Do not squander that opportunity. Think of the person who carved the hieroglyphs…they finished work and went home to their family, probably complaining about work and the boss.

But the message traveled 3000 years to an unimaginable future…the message survived while nothing of the maker remains.

Write music because one day you won’t be around to write it anymore. Today you can create a message that resonates through time forever!

by Dave Graham

David Learnt composition (harmony, counterpoint and orchestration) to degree level through studying Schoenbergs Fundamentals of Musical Composition, the classic text on twentieth century harmony by Vincent Persichetti, Henry Mancini's Sounds and Scores, Rimsky-Korsakov's excellent books on orchestration as well as studying any scores that intrigued me.

He is a founder member of two bands, avant pop duo Cnut, and orchestral doombience outfit Regolith, and have performed across Europe with them.

Image: prozac1 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"But somewhere a piece of our disguise still sticks to us, which we forgot. A trace of exaggeration remains on our eyebrows; we don’t notice that the corners of our mouth are twisted. And this is how we go around, a laughing-stock and a half-truth: neither real beings nor actors.”

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Stuart Semple has become an established artist who reviews ephemeral media images through his painting, placing them in the context of an emotional historical collage. His use of what some might call ‘saturated’ media symbols owes a debt to Warhol and the pop art generation. However the contrast between their work and his most accurately describes the differences between Baby Boomer political egocentrism and Generation Y’s apparent modus operandi of using fame and celebrity as the pinnacle of personal statement. A position that Stuart ambiguously mocks, deifies and defines. At the time of the Fake Plastic Love exhibition he had become at once an overtly celebrity focussed painter and also a media savvy celebrity whose bio reads as a hagiography of a hardworking outsider given an insider pedestal.

While this posturing may appear commonplace, which is precisely his point, Stuart Semple is amongst the most successful artists of his generation as his bio illustrates:

“Commercial success soon followed with Stuart’s London exhibition ‘Epiphany’ (2006) taking over $1 Million in sales. However, it was his curatorial projects “The Black Market’ in NYC and ‘Mash-ups’ at The Design and Artists Copyright Society (London) that caused critics to sit up and listen to Stuart’s argument that “pop culture is a powerful vehicle for real meaning… after all it’s an almost universal language that we are most fluent in”. (Stuart Semple Bio)

The paradox within his bio hinges on his emphasis on empowering hard work versus serendipity or patronage and the elevation of disposable images and icons almost in an effort to ‘save’ fame from the transience of its nature. In Semple’s world the viewer seems driven to ask whether we have failed the fame monolith by being fickle, rather than simply walking away from what might appear to be the shallow, impersonal and exploitative nature of advertising. Given that these images and modes of being are inescapable in a consumer society Semple’s take has to be seen as an empowering one.



Days prior to Semple’s Fake Plastic Love exhibition Trebuchet caught up with Stuart on a noisy East London fire escape to discuss his choice of imagery and meaning in his paintings.

Stuart Semple: I make use of familiar images from the 80s, using icons as well as taking snapshots of things. I think the process of taking snapshots of momentary things, firstly making them strange and then making them permanent through the process of painting.

In a number of ways, it’s not just about preserving them but putting them back to what they were. They were seen as disposable, throwaway, by painting them it is sort of like claiming them back from mass media and putting them back into art again. On a personal level this enables me to make sense of things that I grew up with.

Trebuchet: Revaluating them?

Stuart Semple: When I was growing up in the 80s these things were - I don’t know if it’s quite right to say they were aspirational, but they certainly gave me my first feelings of something larger. But as you get older you get more jaded so now when you look back at these ‘nostalgic’ things, you’ve lost something. Here I’ve tried to look at them again in such as way as to rediscover that sense of feeling.

Nostalgic? Your paintings seem for more forward looking.

Stuart Semple: When you look back at symbols from the 80s, in a way they become rarefied, they become more special. They seem more ‘hi impact’ as opposed to now when things are more homogenised.

But is that the case? Perhaps this sort of nostalgia for a less homogenised, more meaningful past perhaps this is more of late 20s things rather than something characteristic of the 80s?

Stuart Semple: It could well be! But branding is different now. Advertising is different as when we were growing up things did change. Before, people bought washing up liquid based on whether it made their hands soft now people buy things based on it making them sexually attractive. The slant from where brands are more than what they sell is normal now and manufactured pop bands fell in from that and it did make things more homogenised in a way. However, powering it was a real creative impulse, almost a genuineness which is mostly lacking now. Those were the days of dissatisfaction, poverty, the Thatcher years and all that. Now we have the 5 minute celebrity.


This change from functional to moral basis of advertising/branding, the change in advertising from softer hand soap powder to soap powder that makes you a better person, is reflected in this series of paintings? For instance how is this reflected in your painting ‘Thunder in Our Hearts’?

Stuart Semple: Well you’ve got two women and you can’t see their eyes. They’re obvious catwalk models, the Castle Grayskull, Pinky from Pinky and the brain, and a pentagram with a logo in the middle.

[Silence]

So, the pentagram… ah. You made some Alastair Crowley t-shirts didn’t you?

Stuart Semple: Yes

Are you familiar with his work?

Stuart Semple: Yes

…The book of the law…

Stuart Semple: Yes

Does that inform your work?

Stuart Semple: Not at all! For me that is just something I read as a teenager. What I liked about Crowley was his use of symbolism, strong images that are strongly iconic.

Similarly though, your work is strongly symbolic where you use juxtaposed images to convey a sort of resonant meaning by placing different things together.
Do you think that identity is formed in the same way?

Stuart Semple: If we’re in a landscape, a cultural landscape, with strong references to TV it puts the individual in a different arena depending on who they are. Each person has a different cultural make up and a painting might describe who they are. I might be 50% punk, 20% Emo, 30% Castle Grayskull and this might describe someone better than painting them in bark or whatever.

So there are no absolutes when it comes to a person’s identity then?

Stuart Semple: No there is no absolutes. I think for my generation, take Myspace for instance there is a need to update a photo of yourself every five minutes to validate what you identity is. I think people need to see their reflection in something for it to be real.

Is replacing some other, more physical way of creating identity?

Stuart Semple: I don’t know. Perhaps it has something to do with celebrity obsession where people feel the need to see themselves external media to feel part of something?

This reflects a general sense of meaningless in society as a whole?

Stuart Semple: Perhaps there is certainly something there where people think ‘I physically look like a pop star that’s why I’m as valid as one’.

On eve of what, I think will be a landmark show what do think about becoming a public person. Are you constructing a public persona?

Stuart Semple: I don’t know. I think of people like Damien Hirst and the Young British Artists (YBA) and what they did with their confrontational approach but try and make things, or find something more internal and externalise it. Like using the idea of branding and brand images that works well in that way. I think people have a real distaste for branding as something evil but I think there can be something very artistic it in. Take someone like Andy Warhol who played with image and branding in what he did.

Is that what you aim to do, control an image of yourself as a brand?

Stuart Semple: I don’t think you can control it but you have show something genuine. You can try.

When you smuggled a painting into the Saatchi gallery supporting the YBAs whre you trying to do something revolutionary, are you trying to energise people in the art world?

Stuart Semple: I was genuinely really annoyed. I was thinking ‘what is he on about’ all these artists who he’s championed or whatever are brilliant and suddenly he’s saying that they’re irrelevant or not important. I mean he’s made millions out of it and then to say that it’s crazy.

So does price equal value in art?

Stuart Semple: Well I think there is a point in the art world where it becomes about money and not about work. There is an ‘art world’ where you can put on a show in East London and other artists come and see your work and that’s great and then there is another art world where all the right people attend and the prices go up etc. and then it isn’t about art anymore and that’s the kind of thing that I have a problem with. But then once an artist as a brand becomes more desirable and that sells then the sort of people you become involved with means that it’s more difficult to control your brand etc.



What interests you about brands and marketing?

Stuart Semple: I’ve studied brands a lot. A lot. I like the headspaces that branding gets into. Branding now is very complex. It takes in street art and guerrilla marketing I think it borders on art in a lot of ways. For me marketing is about communication more than anything else and for me as an artist you want to communicate. I mean you paint these things to say something so you look at the ways to get your message across.

It’s been said that the paintings in this show are about isolation and alienation, but then they’re also very accessible.

Stuart Semple: I think they’re accessible because of the language. The language is straight from popular culture. So they are symbolic in a way that a lot of people can identify with them. So in that way I want to reach people not just art world people but a lot of people across the board. I still feel like an outsider in the art world but I am a part of it I suppose in much the same way as people, myself included, feel represented in the world but also separate.



As part of the 2007 Frieze Art Fair the Fake Plastic Love exhibition opened to critical and popular acclaim. The show broke the $1 Million sales mark within the first five minutes and attracted over 10,000 visitors. Reviewers such as The Financial Times describing Stuart as ‘The Basquiat of the noughties’, the Independent newspaper placed him within the top 20 artists and ArtNews drew the comparison between Semple and Hamilton exactly 50 years after the latter had defined pop art.


Stuart Semple Website

Author Matthew Devereux and Trebuchet’s Kailas Elmer caught up in conversation to discuss his hypertextual novel on risk, structure, relationships, war and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The Gambler is available online as a highly referenced satirical dramatic novel. Characters score and dive the midst of a myriad of links, literary exaggeration, drama and deep pathos. While he proclaims that:

“I have very little idea of what my online novella "The Gambler: A Shakespearean-Dostoevskyian-Reiszian take on the 2010 South Africa World Cup" is about. And I wrote it. So it hardly surprises me that the majority of the feedback I have received so far is a mixture of confusion, puzzlement, bewilderment, and beffudlement.”

the truth is that the novel is a deep and knowing political and cultural investigation into modern themes of schizophrenic media confusion and the creation of personal narrative. Much like Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange at first glance the reader, initially alienated by the language, is quickly drawn in by an undeniable logic and syllogism which weaves together a variety of elements into a great read.

Matthew Devereux: I’ve always enjoyed a ‘whole’ made up of disparate elements and collage.

Kailas Elmer: Does this inform the way you work?

I do make collages to some extent but not as much as I would like to. I’m fascinated by the creativity of words and images. I think there are three main creativities; words and images and also the creativity of numbers. Which I haven’t explored at all.
Numbers to me are quite confusing. I don’t look at numbers in the same way as I do words. Words are there to be played with endlessly. Mentioning Roland Barthes I think that words and the pleasures of text, jouissance meaning joy but also with the double meaning to orgasm is something that has always appealed to me. The riotous joy of writing. This goes back to Rabelais who is a huge influence (to me). Particularly the confluence of high and low. One minute we’re talking about literature the next football!

So your recent work on the gambling fits into this?

I’ve been writing for years. But a lot of what I’ve written has been written and deleted as I feel it’s part of a process. A process that has been leading up to the two things I’m writing at the moment; The Gambler and Chess Fanstasta: 1001 love letters to the game. Chess has a lot to do with the Arabian Nights and Scheherazade and having to tell all these stories to be free. Narrative as a way to gain emancipation. All these texts are Internet based at the moment and while there are freedoms to that and there are also limitations.
The Gambler is about gambling and in some way it’s about Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler which he had to write in a month to pay off his debts, before he wrote Crime and Punishment. Reading The Gambler compared to his other works there are sections which are quite pulpish especially in relationship to Crime and Punishment. There are lots of things that I want to write ahead which are less... not internet based necessarily...
To be honest the writing process is this hermetic process and one writes in an isolated fashion. And looking at it after it’s done... it’s like a childbirth. But now it’s growing up and I feel detached from it. I’m not sure what it’s exact angles are, where it’s going to lead...
Chess Fantasia is a lot clearer to me in terms of where it can lead and what I want to do with it.
At one level the Gambler is story of six characters, in Woking where I grew up, and about their desperate attempts before the World Cup to get to the World Cup. This matches my own desperate desires to get to the World Cup.
I’ve always loved football, ever since I was very young. I have all sorts of reservations about sport and the sporting mentality, about the Corinthian spirit on the one hand; that there is a value that transcends the victory and loss conditions and the mentality of the zero-sum game. This is the mentality of war and the Cold War. I find a fascination between the tension of these two states or mentalities.
But I think that sport has a way of measuring aspects of the zero-sum game and structuring it in a non-violent context. There are rules. Which I think is both a good thing and interesting process.

So you think that there six characters in Woking are trying to actualise their dreams of getting to South Africa in the same way? Zero-sum success
and a process of getting there?

Another key aspect of The Gambler is about attitudes to risk taking. I think that while it is dangerous to simplify and being reductionist, in the aggregate Masculinity is perhaps related to risk taking and femininity is related to risk aversion or risk curtailment. So I’m interested in the mathematical relationship between gambling and assurance. As I understand it they are two sides of the same coin, related but opposite.

A perception of risk

Yes a perception of risk and then an attitude towards how one should behave towards risk taking. Gambling is all about is risk taking and the psychology of that I find absolutely fascinating, particularly how that relates to finance and banking etc.

Absolutely. If you think about it insurance is a gamble where people are betting on themselves to lose whereas gambling people are optimistic that
they are going to win. Arguably though it the same psychological process.

Exactly, but of course there is the counter view that many gamblers gamble to lose. I’ve read that many gamblers gamble as a form of punishment.

Sure and many people that take out insurance hoping that their houses never burn down!

(laughs)

So can you tell me how these ideas on gambling are investigated in the novel (without giving the game away)?
It starts off at a crossroad point when they’re about to go to South Africa but it starts at the end point of their desperate desire to get there by any means. So the first character Billy Liar, based on the Keith Waterhouse character, he has this obsessive and compulsive attitude to risk taking. This has relationship with Hope. Their relationship is falling apart because she can no longer handle his constant recklessness. The edition of The Gambler that I have by Dostoevsky has an introduction by Jonathan Franzen and he argues that no writer had wrestled with materialism so intelligently (as Dostoyevsky in The Gambler). He tackles the addictiveness of gambling and materialism, in that reveals the psychology of gambling is always being towards that next big win.
All the characters have these tensions and frustration with the way their lives are and they want things to be different. They want society to be different, which is an undertone of the whole novel as well. This country (UK) is at a crossroads at the moment where no one is sure what these changes are but this word ‘change’ has become a political mantra both here and in the United States. This word ‘change’ isn’t defined and there is a confusion about what this change is. Looking at this last election Conservatism and Liberalism have taken this on and where conservatism historically been about...

Conservatism.

Precisely, the avoidance of change. It’s sort of an insurance policy side of politics. But not in this election.

Change is almost a strange optimism of disaffection. People only want change if they’re unhappy or feel unfulfilled. So the presupposition is that people are unhappy. Which ties into a larger phenomenon globally where people are told they are unhappy in specific ways. Which isn’t to say things aren’t wrong but that the directing of this disaffection in particular ways by political parties can be seen as a pretty basic manipulation. There is a trend culturally to emphasise people’s disaffection and powerlessness if only to create a need for a political saviour.
The characters you’ve created in The Gambler, desperate and dispossessed, seem to be trying to make order out of the chaos, to escape from their chaotic lives to South Africa. The habitual gambler is doing this I think and certainly gambling is a way of psychologically ordering random situations to a predefined conclusion. How would you say that each of characters approaches the ordering of their lives towards their goals?

They all have very different approaches. They have different approaches based on being male and female. A lot of the text deals with how male and female characters approach risk and structure and change.
The text itself is hypertextual. There are lots of links through to other sites and contextual so each character’ approach is drawn together from and in this hypertextual environment. But it is a question of structuring.
All the characters exist in this incredible rush, they have this sense of everything moving very kinetically, moving fast and dynamically. The character Fran, is the Gambler, she is one who is really into it, and she’s not even into football that much and thinks gambling is immoral. She think’s that gambling is immoral in same way that Nuclear war is immoral.
Nuclear weapons are the ultimate expression of the zero-sum game, the collective human suicide is something that we’ve confronted ourselves. I think this is huge. In fact it’s banal to say it’s huge. Fran’s feeling of unease toward gambling is related to her unease about zero-sum games, victory at all costs. How this relates to football is that it is a zero-sum game with rules.
Part of the characters approaches to risk are about how they interact with the rules of the game to whatever end and what that means for relationships and what makes a healthy relationship. The nature of human relationships is really what the book is all about.

The Gambler:
http://gamblerbluffer.blogspot.com/
http://matthewdevereux.blogspot.com/

World Cup Haiku:
http://haikuworldcup.blogspot.com

“You have come here; you must think about minimalism... The digital routing of ideas based on sound, its flaws, delicacies, its enlightenment, and its value for the times to come. It’s clicks & cuts. And as you guessed, it clicks and cuts. Remember the days when all was easy? When a new sound created a sound generation every couple of months, and progression was not an internal quality of electronic music, but its driving force?…times when a new genre wasn’t just a sub-something of a sub-something, but fact? Well, stop remembering; these days have arrived once again, and they have changed.” Sascha Kösch, Liner notes to clicks + cuts (Mille Plateaux, 2000)

In popular music, the endless eulogies to sex, love and loneliness are reworked for each generation with whatever references mark something as contemporary. Outside of what appears in the mainstream lies music and musicians that want to explore other ideas and make other statements. In the 90s the internet connected people as never before allowing talented amateurs anywhere to create for each other everywhere. The scene moved from fixed locations to cyberspace and niche music was allowed to get more obscure as any individual could find likeminded audiences somewhere online. Old forms blurred with underground sub-genres of music splintering and realigning infinitely.

The sheer mass of information available made musicians academic and in some cases academics musicians. In 1993, a German philosopher and club goer founded a politically charged and fiercely literate electronic label that was inspired musicians and listeners alike for over a decade before succumbing to economic forces. That label was Mille Plateaux, a multifaceted icon of the dot.com musical era and now in 2010 it’s coming back. However, the question has to be asked is Mille Plateaux still relevant today and if so what part of it; the heart, the head, the pocket or the ideal?

History

A label with impressive history in electronic music, Mille Plateaux became renowned for releasing experimental music in the minimal techno and glitch genres. The pioneering and truly seminal sounds and techniques featured on those records have influenced every genre from folk to rap, soundtracks to rock and beyond.
Artists such as Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot), Kid 606, Akufen, Frank Bretschneider, Twerk, Thomas Köner, Vladislav Delay, Porter Ricks, Stewart Walker, Cristian Vogel, Wolfgang Voigt (Gas), Oval and Microstoria all had key releases on Mille Plateaux in the 90s and spearheaded a self-conscious aesthetic of radical intellectualism, breaking from the past and carving new spaces for musicians to exist. Philosophically they drew inspiration from a number of post-structuralist sources but the most essential distillation of this alignment came from the label head, Achim Szepanski.

Achim Szepanski, a writer and philosopher began the label in Frankfurt, Germany in 1993 and named the label after Mille Plateaux by theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980). Considered a landmark in post-structuralist theory Szepanski vocally brought the concepts of De-territorialization and the Rhizome to bear in the context of electronic music.

Musically, de-territorialisation can be widely meant to take sounds from their original contexts and reassemble the pieces, freed from their and the audience’s preconceptions of their original meanings and reprocess them into a new composition. More than simply sampling, with de-territorialisation there is an inference that the basic of structure of music, including the industry and melodic politics associated with it, should be freed and repurposed to suit the artist, event and the audience in rhizomatic fashion. Rhizomatic, or the rhizome as used by Deleuze and Guattari is taken to mean non-binary, non-hierarchial, multidisciplinary relationships that feed of and off each other in multiple ways to increase the inputs/outputs of and for each participant. These ideas manifested in a musical sensibility termed “Glitch” which used micro samples, noise, distortion and other sounds reminiscent of CD playing errors, broken machines, and industrial hum to create music that didn’t rely on traditional musical structures.

Unashamedly technological in both appeal and aesthetic, early artists were as much electrical and software engineers as musicians and particular music creation tools quickly developed from and for the community, for example MAX/MSP and Audiomulch. One of the Rhizomatic aspects of these tools was the ability to create interlocking sample and effect modules that triggered and affected each other, creating music that structured itself from the preconditions and relationships set up by the artist.

While the use of software and synthesiser based music was in no way new and neither was the concept that music could be created in this way, in 1993 a global Glitch community with Mille Plateaux at its heart, connected and supported by the advent of the internet, began to flourish. In the following eleven years Mille Plateaux continued to release both minimal club focussed and experimental music, most notably with the Clicks and Cuts compilation releases. As per the introduction of this article, in the liner notes, Sascha Kösch articulated the aesthetics of Glitch defined literally by the sound of “clicks_+_cuts:”. However as William Ashline suggests by 2000 the conceptual nature of Mille Plateaux releases had been in part supplanted by the recognition and reproduction of the sound by a wider audience:
“... the deterritorialization of the “glitch” quickly became reterritorialized in popular electronica. There was an effective detumescence of the hyper-intensity that accompanied its discovery. However, the boredom that finally greeted “glitch aesthetics” was a disapprobation that did not completely turn away from the pointillist, percussive advantages of clips and pops. In the early months of 2000, Mille Plateaux released the compilation “clicks_+_cuts,” which articulated the mutation of the “glitch” into a more onomatopoetic signifier, one far less aligned with “errors” of the machine than its benefits as a generator of minimal sound particles, or “microsounds,” used in an assemblage toward an abstraction having very little to do with conventional music.”

Then in 2004 EFA-Medien (a prominent German music distributor) collapsed, causing both Mille Plateaux and its parent company Force Inc. Music Works to file for bankruptcy. Once in administration the rights for both labels were sold and eventually bought by Marcus Gabler who is now relaunching Mille Plateaux (as well as its sublabels) with another instalment in the clicks + cuts series (5).

After talking to both Gabler and Szepanski it became clear that the both parties have very different agendas on what they want to achieve with labels and within music. Achim Szepanski is very much the highly literate conceptual artist, well versed in irony and arch positions as much as theory and politics. Gabler is much more commercially focussed, stressing that he comes from a pop music background and that good music has definable structures and contexts. Online, news that Mille Plateaux is relaunching without the involvement of its figurehead Szepanski has been met with bile and vitriol. It is the internet after all. Mille Plateaux has a place in many people’s heart as the particular sound and ethos of a younger and brighter time. So much so that it is possible that expectations are too high to give any new releases a fair hearing.

Marcus Gabler

When asked about what he likes about music and therefore what he values as a worthy release for Mille Plateaux, Gabler stated:
“When it’s catchy. I come from pop, especially the 80s when I grew up I always listened to stuff that caught my ears. I just had to sing this melody and the funny thing is even though there isn’t any melody in Mille Plateaux songs I get that same feeling.”

“For example it happened with the outro track on the Mille Plateaux compilation; every time I heard this demo I had these feeling. (On the demo) the intro and the outro had this feeling the rest of the tracks were simple IDM but this track had a certain character or recognisability. And that is what I’m looking for and that is what people are looking for. Something that sticks out, something they want to hear again for whatever reason. This is what I like about the songs I release and also for about almost everything I listen to.”

This sense of unreflexive appeal is key to what Gabler wants to achieve with Mille Plateaux and when questioned about whether his emphasis on composition and structure is at odds with the experimental history of Mille Plateaux he clarified:

“(I) mean composition and arrangement in the widest sense. It’s not necessary to have a ‘Song Structure’ but as with graphical art and sound art I’m always very suspicious when there is no structure. Of course the artist may say that he made the work with splashes of colour and it achieved the result that he wanted to achieve. I’m always suspicious of this and it just sounds random and random is not art and it’s been done anyway. So structure at least means ‘Idea’, that someone has to have an idea that can be called a musical idea. In sound art for example it’s hard to call it a composition but there is something there, and I can say ‘hey there is some idea here and it’s not purely random’. If I don’t have that I have to trash the demo”

And it is here that Gabler’s aim of wanting to bring artists like Ametsub (Japanese electronica artist) to a wider audience meet his opinions of what made Mille Plateaux influential in the first place.

“Ten years ago or even 15 years ago Mille Plateaux was always the spearhead of experimental electronic music and so it was probably to a high degree good because it was new and to a certain degree not because it was (actually) good.
Of course if you do something that is very new like Glitch or Clicks and Cuts it is going to be recognised and it will probably be influential to people but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is actually good. If something is new there is a confusion with new and good. However I believe these times are over there is not going to be second glitch movement or whatever it is.”
“I can’t see what could be the next big thing here.
The next small thing might be some organic dance thing but then (I think that) it’ll just be a mix of things that are already going on. In the end you have to be good since there is nothing new. So consequently there has to be more musical value in whatever comes out from a label, since there is nothing new, or at least have good sounds or production values.
If I was aiming to convert people, then yes this might actually happen with me thinking that I can’t rely on just being new. So I just have to rely on albums being good in one or another way. They would have been good ten years ago and they will probably be good ten years from now... Because the music has more musical value than 'innovational' value and so it may well attract a wider audience. I’m not sure but I can imagine that.”

Achim Szepanski

After speaking to Achim Szepanski one gets the sense of talking to a voracious intellect, someone who perhaps like Guy Debord could deride his inspirational pronouncements as drunken prattle if only to avoid becoming a public identity. While there is obviously a bitterness to how things went with Mille Plateaux, there is also a reflexivity to what Mille Plateaux was when it started to what it became. I asked what he thought of Gabler’s assertion that the releases of Mille Plateaux were good because they were new.

“You know, the ideas around interconnected art (digital and analogue) aren’t in and of themselves very new. For example French philosopher Daniel Charles was thinking in 70s and the 80s about this relationship. Probably there was a time in the middle of the 90s, including the enthusiasm of new economy, when we concentrated a little too much on digitalism. But the relationship between analogue and digital is nothing new at all.

The problem is, when I look back (for example) to the differences between Mille Plateaux and Force Inc, then Mille Plateaux that was not in the same way connected to the art-market like Force Inc. Force Inc. reflected more the trends of this market, the new audio- and rave industries. Now the ideology and the functions of the market rules, and people like Gabler have taken over which is an interesting development. It’s now all about following the trend-industries.
The way companies operate today is to be a part of Unterhaltungsindustrie (Adorno), not at all to establishing concepts in Art as Deleuze said ‘to work against the time’ and to ‘work concepts against the time, against the capital and the dialectic of money and market’ (is not the same or even in opposition). I’m not against innovation but it has to be included into concepts. We always tried to go in between the dialectic of established concepts and innovation.”

In past interviews and while at the helm of Mille Plateaux, he was more strident in his, what he saw as minimalist (and arguably Mille Plateaux’s and Force Inc.’s) position against the grain of market music made friendly by the media:

“What is interesting about Minimalism? Music is no longer representation, it does not copy anything, is nothing but a freely circulating form, something real which presents itself. Its reality is production. And although music is a language, i.e. significant, it does not have a significate. Its expressive meaning is just the literature of music journalists. Especially for a writer it is indispensable to add something to the music, and many of the acts even support this by boring biographies which surround the sonore space.”

Then, music also is a cynical sign because it occupies a place for reference which is brought on it but actually never existed. Then, music is a secret which has to be interpreted and suggests a meaning in content to force on the search for myths and fiction. Acts like to be embedded in a certain genre which then is filled up with references, values and strange stories and leaves behind most of the people as automates roaming around nostalgically.”

“Label policy less and less is about imaginary solutions like expressing a certain style symbolically. Label policy connects economy and biologistics and is embedded in virtuality and networks. Between this co-ordinates forms are generated; one can trust in the topology of networks, on superficial and fluctuating connections. Here, once again Deleuze could be quoted, because label policy is mob policy: limitation of numbers, distraction, Brownian variety of directions. To work as a condensation in weaves like that, as Deleuze says, to risk everything step by step, not to capitalise or to consolidate what has been achieved so far. A part of incident concatenations and crashes when the singular incidents a label policy is made of become dust. (Achim Szepanski on music, mob policy and minimalism, de:bug 2001)

But, ever in search of new music through pushing areas of musical experience, he too started to find the po-faced aesthetic of the click house scene predictable.
“Our offices were based in the red light district and obviously over the years we came in contact with owners of the bars. We even hold parties in table dancing clubs. It was kind of political provocation and a lot of people thought we were dealing now with sexism. But it was kind of provocation. The club scene was getting boring at that time, it was very established, and I was totally bored of it. So we went into that thing. We got some experiences, naughty experiences, but it was always connected to politics somehow.

...sometimes we had people from Japan coming over, they were expecting twenty nerds sitting around computers in the offices. But sometimes we had big parties in our offices and they didn’t understand the scene. It was sometimes quite confusing for them.
But yeah sometimes the aesthetic thing was part of the whole story but you know even techno had that man/masculine thing. It was never part of the Deleuze and Guattarian theory so for me it wasn’t a problem to go into this. It gave me a lot experiences and even research for what I was to write later.” (Szepanski is had written a number of novels akin to the works of David Foster Wallace and Will Self).

Currently, Szepanski is in the process of starting a small label called Rhizomatique for the purpose of releasing music with a few old conspirators, amongst them Thomas Köner. From our discussion it seems like the main purpose of this new label will be to document the events he’s planning.

“I don’t think that I’ll concentrate fully on music from now on. The rhizomatique thing will be more select. I won’t do a record label as Mille Plateaux or Force inc. was years ago as I don’t think you need this anymore. It’s now more about bringing the activities together, to be more analogue”

So is that it? Has the role of the record label as an inspirational force become irrelevant? As much as some might like to demonise Gabler, he is releasing records that would appear in the electronic sections of music stores and helping support the founders or musical children of those early seminal Mille Plateaux records. But it is undeniable that there is something missing; the irresistible tracts of feverish music theory, the honeymoon of digitalism and rise of normalcy and regularity in electronic. Arguably though this isn’t Gabler’s problem but one that Szepanski and others recognised ten years ago, that the peripheries are drawn back into the centre, style and genres become less irregular, more commodified and, to outsiders, less interesting as a result. It comes down to perspective; are we looking in or looking out? For a time it appeared you could be on the fringes of music possibility with the old Mille Plateaux buoyed by a new economy, looking out into the beyond simply by purchasing a record. However, if there was a purity in the music’s excitement and constant revolution it would be nostalgia to the point of ignorance to still look for it in the same sort of records. So where to next?

Seemingly the understanding behind Gabler’s conception of where music is and can go is that it is only through material innovation that new concepts can develop i.e. Mille Plateaux was good because no one had heard computer music before, or new technologies = new musical possibilities = new concepts. While this is certainly true it doesn’t take into account that concepts at the limits of possibility in turn create new technologies.

The desire for innovation, or at least interest, that drives Szepanski and for which Mille Plateaux became famous can’t solely be put down to the rise of the internet and its possibilities. A willingness to embrace effecting new experiences musically, whatever the impetus, was the core of Mille Plateaux. Moreover with the rise of microlabels catering for specific sub-genres, twinned with the rise and rise of social media, there are many more communities for musicians than ever before. However, as Gabler says there has to be a convincing core to music and the empty nature of the minimal sound that Szepanski championed can seem dull and hackneyed now when stripped of its historical relevance.

In contrast to music that is empty and disengaged and because of the hyper-political ‘hard times’ we live in, it seems we’re due for music that is vocal in what it’s trying to achieve. Not least because it is more fun for writers like myself to write about the mythologizing of artists lives as a product coating for easily consumable music.

Arguably music can be divided, as per Roland Barthes, in terms of being either ‘writerly’ or ‘readerly’. Readerly works being those that require nothing from the consumer but passive consumption; by hearing the record you’re given strict ideas of the meaning, the demographic and their pin-up ideals, the emotional response and in many cases even a specialised language to describe it. Writerly texts (which are usually less mainstream) on the other hand are those where the listener finds their own way through the sound, makes their own path and constructs their own narrative. While writerly music sounds exciting and free, there is a potential in minimal music to become very anodyne and very boring. Moreover, there comes a point when minimal writerly music becomes completely redundant to silence. In consideration of a progressive musical form outside of the binary of writerly vs. readerly Szepanski points to the French philosopher Michel Foucault who thought of his books as dynamic and in drawing parallels to his own efforts explained:
“ Foucault (thought) his books should function as little tool kits. The thinking of powers and knowledge is also thinking as strategy and subversion, which escapes even the writer's intentions. Foucault himself said that the more unplanned uses that his books take on the more it would please him.“

There have always been forms of music that set-up its own rules and then changed, allowing space for writerly interpretations (from Jazz to jam rock to Krautrock and beyond). But as a setting becomes the norm, much of these developments become in themselves formulaic i.e. trad jazz extrapolations of standards. More than simplistic passive listening, technology is increasingly allowing us to interact with how the music and event is produced and it is interesting to see musicians writing musical events rather than just music per se. More than this, as we learn more about how music effects us biologically, musicians are gaining more insight into how to create new tools for their outward looking listeners/participants. However the particular ‘toolkit’ based concept for music is expressed, the exact role of a record label in promoting and selling it is currently undefined. The truly progressive music of the future might require a truly progressive outward looking approach from its label. So far the idea of rhizomatic musical reproduction doesn’t appear to be on primary agenda for the new Mille Plateaux. Gabler is more of traditionalist than Szepanski and for a label renowned for being idealistic it’ll be interesting to see how Gabler’s vision manifests itself. In talking to him you get the sense that he has the utmost determination to make it work. The danger I see is that ‘it’ might turn out to be inward rather than outward looking releases.