While becoming obsessed with exploring Drone and Noise genres of music, I started to find artists I enjoyed using the term “sound artist” over the usual “musician” categorisation – those being the likes of Francisco Merino (under the name Phroq), Joe Colley and Daniel Menche – who while still making what I would deem “noise music” their approach seemed to be more thoughtful and more concept based than the average full on in the red harsh noise I was listening to, incorporating more electro-acoustic and concrete elements with more of a compositional and more restrained structure. Further down the line I started to discover artists who focused more on creating smaller scale sounds, being particularly interested in the works of Steve Roden and Francisco Lopez who also used the term, who were making sounds on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and creating music that was barely there at all.

To me, this exposure to the term “sound art” has created a seperation between styles of experimental music, dividing more improvised and reckless approaches from more carefully composed and thoughtful ones. To me, this is not a division by genre, Harsh Noise or Drone can be sound art but that is not inherent, it depends on how the music sounds, how it is created and most importantly what the artist considers it to be. To me sound art implies a concept or intent, whether that being having an in depth meaning/connection to the real world the focus on the use/abuse of a piece of equipment, or the intent for the music to be used in an art gallery as an instillation.

At the moment I would not consider what I make to be Sound Art, but my intent to study Sound Arts comes from a desire to take my music more seriously and following what I have heard the artists I have listed here doing, I would like to experiment more with extreme dynamics and psychedelic sound as well as finding out what I can do with instillation work.