When I first started making music more seriously, I had two kinds of things I worked on: my ‘actual’ music, and then other tunes that I envisaged making just to DJ. They’d be the kinds of tracks no one’s heard of, and which sound like they could have been from a variety of different eras. Tunes to drive the track ID people crazy. I liked the idea of building up a whole set of music that didn’t sound like mine but which was all actually written by me.
I never learned to DJ but, perhaps unsurprisingly, for a long time those tunes were the only ones I was able to finish. Something something don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the done. I’ll share some of them here sometime.
Thankfully (I think), I’m now able to finish my ‘actual’ music. But I still like the idea of creating older-sounding projects, the kind that you might expect to find on a compilation of Tanzanian psychedelic synth rock from the 1970s or something.
In some ways, I kind of think that’s the best way to have your music encountered: years later, in a completely different context, by people you’d never have imagined listening to it. Far removed from all the tedious crap that surrounds music but which isn’t music.
You’re not encountering this tune decades later (though who’s to say). I started it a couple of weeks ago, and finished it yesterday. While it’s not an anonymous work, I did enjoy making the drums sound a bit old and fucked up with heavy compression and saturation, and just generally letting the whole thing hang a bit loose and pulpy, chicken bones included.
Maybe I’ll have enough tracks for a full set someday, though I’ll need someone else to DJ them. Any volunteers?
And the ceiling's so low I get down on my knees. And I've always known I don't have the best sort of knees. All the joints you know are here but they don't work so good. I'm coming now, I'm coming back to you, I'm coming now, I'm coming back to you, I'm healed. All bones are entwined if you listen with your feelings, There are bones in the chicken that you're eating.