Month: January 2021

I have a lot of respect for Alexandra and her work within film scoring, however I found this lecture quite dull. I like how she was influenced by minimalism which as a genre I don’t truly understand, as surely minimalism is more than a genre, surely it’s a way of thinking & not something that in sound culture terms is defined by a group of men making weird music in the earlyish 20th century. Just a thought. Attached is a song that I mixed for a friend of mine called IZCO released on Rinse FM’s label imprint, I’d say this song is minimalism , no ?.

Shanti Suki Osman’s view on Art and sound is one I respect highly. She sees it as communication in it’s rawest form, and an ability to communicate is a responsibility. She takes this responsibility and uses it in a way to amplify important issues that need to be raised, an example of this I her podcast which she uses to deal with an uplift women of colour. Shanti is very cool, her career started in an electro pop band with a feminist edge and her relationship with sound developed more and more after that. I think that is one of the most beautiful things about art in general, how you are never really in control of where it takes you, as much as you may think you are in control of your interests.

Lisa Busby’s music interested me a lot, on first listen the starkness and coldness of the sonic textures intrigued me and put me off at the same time. However upon hearing her speak about sound and her music, I totally got it and I understood and appreciated her angle. I appreciated her refusal to conform to norms of music and categorisation and genre. This is an idea I support HEAVILY, my personal viewpoint on this is that ‘genre’ as we know it is a tool which I believe is founded on societal division and racism. To me all I see is that genre is a way of dividing people, this is something I don’t believe in at all, segregation isn’t just physical, segregation in art can be just as detrimental. Why can’t we all share the same space?. Why is some art more highbrow than others?. Why do black people have their own categories?. Why when a black person makes rock music it is still in the urban category?. Why is classical music white?.

Yasmin was a great guest speaker, her career focus resonates heavily with me as she comes from the same background as me and that background is SOUNDSYSTEM CULTURE.

That culture is in my blood my mother an avid reggae and jazz collector and DJ and my Dad a producer in the Broken Beat and Trip hop scenes in London which are two scenes that got almost everything from soundsystem culture. Yasmin said that soundsystem culture is about making the spirituality of music real, and she couldn’t be more right. I was 9 years old when I have my first memory of Notting Hill carnival, in fact its one of my earliest memory’s, hearing the bass press inside my young chest, sitting on my uncles lap eating jerk chicken and Mac n Cheese whilst my Mother is entranced by the sounds, the smell of what I would later know as Thai weed coming out in smoke from the mouths of my elders. The spirit of reggae music is inside me, it’s about liberation of the mind free from the shackles of the western world who’s goals since the beginning have been to deify the ego, to play God, to push the narrative ‘THE WHITE MAN KNOWS BEST’, no he doesn’t it’s for any human to say he knows more than the next. That’s why as oppressed people we are so musical, yes it’s in out genes but also it’s a quest for liberation, a quest to return to the days our ancestors ruled kingdoms unthinkable in todays world. Yasmin spoke about the spirit of the ancestors in movement, music and dance and that’s why I think at the root of Sound as art, it is the African people and the diaspora that have truly taken it to it’s spiritual depths. As the quest for liberation bares a heavy burden on the soul and that burden must be released, often art is just that release.

Marcus Garvey -“Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”

Leslie Gaston Bird is an audio engineer who’s work spans from mixing for likes of Todd Rundgren to working for NPR & innovating the live performance broadcast world. She did this by being the first audio engineer to actually record live bands playing live and sync the audio rather than just getting them to mime to their song. I thought this was really cool that she was one of the first people to do this. In my head it makes me think about innovation and how often innovation can lie just underneath our noses but we may never realise it. I like how she described sound as an art form as well as a science, this sparked a debate in my head where I came to the conclusion that science is art as without it art could not exist. She also spoke heavily about her use of Dolby to create 3D spaces and how useful it is as an audio engineer and sound designer as it is very helpful in creating tangible environments within sound.

live space, traditional clubs music venues, breeds a ritualistic experience for the performer/audience

solid of revolution – polyrhythmic + melodic growth whilst remaining ambiguous

the quadrophic melody creates melody with physical space .

Tribute to whistle- a sombre tribute to nature within urban decay and man made structure. Creates a world an artificial forest almost with speaker positioning.

I’m noticing a common theme in her work which is to create physical spaces with surround speakers.

Her space is static, each piece is one thing.

Images are limiting, gives direction to the sound interpretation that are always not accurate or needed.

Work comes from experiments & accidents.

I like the way Jessica presented her work to us, to me her work is something of an extension to the human physical experience, this is because her purpose in her work is to create a human tangible world within her art. I think this is poignant to me especially, as coming from a background in Jazz and Hip-Hop our way of thinking and our way of creating music and sound is to create almost a mirror of our reality, however beautiful or stark this may be, I like Jessicas work as I think subconsciously that is her thought process.

This thought processes reminds me of one of the earliest songs I made with my friend. This song sonically and lyrically reflects the starkness of growing up poor in inner city London, reflected by the murky yet dreamy sounds and heavy bass. I was 16 at the time of making this and I think that made the song and production even realer to me as looked at life with an innocent hopeful gaze, but couldn’t help feel for the struggle and strife I was growing up around.