Twenty years ago we embarked on an adventure to the furthest reaches of cyberspace and our collective minds are still there among the hoards of advertising and cybersex. We have created our own gods in our image among the information super highway, a world that is rife with corruption, neuroses and materialism.

What’s there at the end of the universe, for me and for everyone I know, and even the ones who I don’t? Why don’t I know the ones who I don’t know and why do I know the people I do know, are they arranged neatly, right in front of my eyes just for me. Are they just false demi-gods? Are they nothing more than carefully created hallucinations, or worse, post-apocalyptic androids, pleasing to the eye but cold and vague?  Or do we each create our own world based on our perceived notion of the so-called perfect world built on our image. Why is time a vacuum, endlessly sucking without rest, without mercy, sucking life away, day and night, as time tick-tocks away-a constant flow of continuity, evident of a world ruled by the watch, but who keeps time on this watch? Maybe god keeps the time, or maybe the big bang just happened mysteriously without rhyme or reason. We may never know, may never want to know or just cannot accept the things that are put in front of us to be that of god’s work.

Lewis reached his apartment at about midnight without any troubles, he didn’t feel tired but his body was exhausted, straight away he found the liquor cabinet and poured himself bourbon and slumped into a chair. On the end-side table found a pack of cigarettes, he lit one and began to think.

His apartment was much like his office except bigger and was broodingly dark. He took a couple deep drags on his cigarette then the vid-phone started to go crazy. He wondered who could be calling so late. He dragged himself from the chair and over to the vid-phone, he pressed the receive button and the face of Blake Proctor appeared looking uneasy and extremely drunk in front of him.

“What’s the matter Blake, it’s late”.

“You ever get the feeling like you’re being watched?”

“No. What on earth are you talking about man? ”

“I think the cops or someone was here, I think….I know someone was following me tonight.”

“Nonsense man…. you must be dreaming… you getting enough sleep?”

“I’M NOT DREAMING THIS LEWIS I KNOW SOMETHINGS UP!”

“Okay calm down…tell me what happened.”

“There are people out there that don’t agree with what we’re doing here Lewis, you do realise that.”

“I do realise that Blake.”

“The government, religious sects you name it.”

“What do you want me to do about this”? It’s a matter for the police… maybe you should tell them.”

“NO! I…I don’t want to involve the cops in this… They’re getting more like vigilantes every day… I don’t trust them.”

“Suit yourself Blake but it’s late I must be going.”

“Okay, I’m just thought I’d call to let you know.”

“Thank you Blake and goodnight.”

Lewis turns off the vid-phone and makes his way back to his chair, at which point he remembers his stash of pills, so he takes a handful and washes than down with bourbon then retires to bed, only to have the most awful drug induced nightmares.

 

****

 

“You and I are going to talk. Just you and me… I’m going to ask you some questions before we begin the session.”

Doctor Lexicon removed his bifocals and rubbed forehead, then produced a pen and note book from his desk and started scrawling lines on a blank page, stopped then gave the homeless man sitting across from him a quizzical look.

“Now I shall start the questions.’’

The homeless man made no attempt at any social niceties he just sat silent in the office waiting for the first question that the strange doctor was going to ask. He still had no idea why he was in this place, he wanted to go back to the streets where belonged, holding up in every dirty nock and cranny that the mean streets had to offer dodging cops and terrorist gangs. That was the life for him; it was his lot in life that he was resigned to.

“Name please?” uttered Lexicon as he replaced his bifocals back to his face.

“Alvin Apple.” The homeless man rasped.

“Date of birth?”

“July fourth.”

“What year?”

“1982.”

“Next of kin?”

“No one, my parents are dead.”

“No siblings?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been subjected to radiation or disease?”

“No.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a huge Beatles fan and this song is one of my favourites. Like many Beatles songs this song has an undeniable hook and catchy lyrics and a fantastic melody. I like this song because it was one of the first Beatles songs that I learnt to play on guitar and I just love the lyrics, they really speak to me on some deeper level.

I guess I’m a person who needs a lot of help, but when I was young I thought I knew it all and was too proud to ask for it, but now I’m older I understand that I can’t do it all myself, that it’s alright to ask for help. I find the lyric very relatable to me as a person and feel as though the song was written with me in mind, hence the connection I feel to it- almost all songs people like have some memory or sentiment attached to them, and hence the reason they like them.

I respect this song and the rest of the Beatles back catalogue because they were true innovators and pioneers of the classic model of the rock band, they experimented with many different techniques and inspired a generation of young emerging bands of diverse musical backgrounds.

 

‘Cross the breeze is a song by post-punk avant garde band Sonic Youth from the album Daydream Nation released in 1988. The experience of listening to this piece of music is that of raw emotion and power, both conveyed by the voice (Kim Gordon’s vocals) and the instruments, (Lee and Thurston’s guitars) which perfectly captures the bands aesthetic.

The sound of the song is created by Lee and Thurston’s guitars which are not tuned to concert pitch, in fact they mainly use model or cross-note tunings which produce discordant intervals to create their atmostheric compositions. They also have an unconventional approach to playing their guitars, by using various items of hardware on the strings, such as drills and shoving drum sticks up under the strings they were able to coax many different howls and groans, squeals and drones from guitar set to specific tunings.

The band emerged from the underground scene of NYC- the music itself being like an abstract portrait of the city and its many cultures.

I first heard this song sometime in the 90s and the album was my first excursion into the world of Sonic Youth. Of all the cultural references of the band my favourite was their appearance on The Simpsons, which in fact started to burrow the bands presence into my social sub-conscious and made me always aware of the band and very curious about the band at the same time. I took the plunge and bought the album, which on first listening seemed so very familiar to me, even the cover art seemed to be already imprinted on me (or maybe that was because it was a painting by Gerhard Richter, one of my all-time favourite painters) the classic image of a candle, the flame still burning bright after all these years.

The song is like a journey through many genres and musical abstractions, the structure of the song is Avant Garde, but there is still a deep-rooted link to society and pop culture present within the material. The song form and structure do not adhere to traditional pop sensabilities, although Sonic Youth did achieve success in the early 90s and are a part of pop culture themselves. It is also important to note that the Grunge scene was also popular at the same time Sonic Youth were at their peak in terms of success and that they were instrumental in helping follow Grunge band Nirvana in signing a contract with Geffen.

What is my music identity and what ‘baggage’ do I bring with me on this journey? How do my musical experiences shape my perception of new music? I don’t know if I can answer these questions until I take a trip back in time to when I was first developing a love and deep appreciation of music of all genres which culminated in who I am today. These first little memories when music changed from at first being just something with a good tempo you heard on FM radio to something far more important that it’s a way of life, you live and breathe it, even taste it in your throat, can smell it in Smokey bars where people go to drink and be entertained by some voracious covers band, it’s the passion, the energy that brings music to life. Its individuals that give music such power to soothe the savage beast, to turn dreams into reality, to make something from nothing, to have songs caught in their throats that can only be expelled by opening ones mouth and letting the songs converge apon arenas, concert halls, opera houses and the like, the primal screams against repression and the mundane started in times when the ‘man-monkey’ first discovered sound, ‘cos it was all around him’, then realised he had the ability to create his own unique sounds, from his own voice- at that time many howls and screams-then discovered the ability to fashion instruments from bone and the bodies of the dead maybe, but in any case this is irrelevant unless you have a healthy imagination and a love for music; because this is the true abstract language of the world.

When you have to think back years ago, even decades ago, you soon realise that the topic shifts from the music specifically, to the ways in which you listened to and heard music. For example everyone wants to know whose concert you went to and what big super stars you saw when they were in their prime. I always use to pester my parents about how many Beatles gigs they went to, but they may went to some much better Moody Blues shows, we only seem to care about who we deem fit, in that respect music is very subjective. You do notice the old trends make a comeback, fashion, music, films, retro valve amps and most importantly vinyl LPs. You know, that’s how my dad listened to his music, on a huge stereo with record player and big booming speakers. Then decades later I find myself doing exactly the same thing, but not with retro albums but new ones from artists who like me know that the bass sounds better on vinyl. In fact I was quite the avant collector of vinyl, my first vinyl LP was ‘Hello Nasty’ by the ‘Beastie Boys’, from there my tastes and collection continued to grow and got more eclectic. When I think back I had some really experimental albums such as ‘Ciccone Youth, The Whitey Album’ and ‘Sideways Soul: Dub Narcotic Sound System meets the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in a Dancehall Style’ just to name a few.

Experimentation is the nexus point, a vital link in the machine; a point of departure from the normal archetypes of ethnomusicology. Experimentation allows us to express ourselves while also learning, for it is through trial and error that we succeed in our learnings.

The epiphany was the discovery of multi-genre music, encompassing many different styles, varying time signatures and free-form structures.

Multi-genre music is simply starting a song or composition in for example a jazz style, then moving on to afro Caribbean, or swing, you are free to include as many different genres within the piece as you would cross-genre within literature.  This is a vital link to becoming more progressive musically. It sums up my style of music as a performer and as a listener. My musical tastes are varied and diverse, I can accept and draw inspiration from many different genres of music. I see music as like a blank canvas for which you need to add musical colours and textures in order to give music depth and space for all the elements to work together.

Early 1996 I heard an album from Beck Hanson with inspired me to look at music in a different light, to reassess the things I once knew about how music was written and performed and theme that are included.

I started learning the guitar in high school and subsequently learnt the rules of music theory. The dogmatic sense of foreboding within the theory seemed to halt my sense of enjoyment and pride in accomplishment.