Editors' Blogs

Okay, first things first. I released a new album yesterday. It's a trio set on the Earth Mantra netlabel, taken from live improvisations my friends Darrell Burgan, David Herpich, and I did back in April. It's called Curiosa Positronica, and I hope you get a kick out of it.

Why is this worth a blog entry? Just because of a quick observation I made when playing this stuff to some friends. Their overall attitude was one of intense surprise at the musical content: "But we thought you were, you know, one of those, you know, electronic musicians... you know, all computers and sequencers and stuff! This sounds like you were, you know, actually playing!"

Well, DUH!

People are always astounded by the idea of electronic musicians actually playing their instruments. Hands on keys, or strings, or drum sticks... what the heck is that all about? And if you're so all-fired eager to play, why not play something people understand?

The trick here is to separate the method from the music. Forty years ago, sequencers and synthesizers were new and groundbreaking stuff. Experimental musicians used them because no one else knew how. Thanks largely to the efforts of a certain Robert Moog, that barrier came down, and the tools of the experimental musician were refined and placed in the hands of everyone else.

Fast forward four decades. Everyone else is now producing chopped-up, sanitized, overly precise, utterly emotionless crap using these tools, and blaming the experimental musicians for having unleashed this horror on the innocent and unsuspecting world. And then they have the nerve to look shocked when they see us, you know, playing our instruments!

The fact is, kids... we've been there and done that. We learned a long time ago that if you let these machines get out of hand, they'll control you rather than you controlling them. They can make a song in perfect tune and perfect time, remove all the clams and bum notes and odd quirks from performances, and make anyone, and I do mean anyone, sing without going out of tune... at the cost of the heart and soul, the humanity, the lovely imperfections and messy bits that give music its charm and power and realism.

It's really not our fault that you all haven't learned our lessons yet. But you're getting there. We're back to doing electronic music with a real sense of heart and soul, playing it live on stage for real audiences or in internet radio broadcasts for real audiences. And you're rebelling against the tools that take the guts out of your music, and capturing recordings of real beauty and power... going back to, you know, actually knowing how to play your instruments, listen to your bandmates, sing in tune, keep good time, all that stuff that supposedly went out of fashion.

But as real musicianship comes slowly and painfully back into fashion, despite the best efforts of major-label artists and radio stations to squish it out of existence in favor of sterile and predictable pap... don't blame us for having sent you all down that path in the first place, decades ago. We made those mistakes and learned our lessons and moved on. And we'll be glad to welcome you when you come along too, bringing rock and pop and country and R&B and many other overly-sanitized genres back to the good old days of people playing and singing and making it real.

We won't even flinch when you look back at the crud you left behind and blame us for it. That's the price you pay for being ahead of the curve. :)