This first week was an introduction to the unit from Milo and Annie, and I had already had a brief understanding of what is being expected of us from talking to the third years last year, so during the summer break, I was trying to remain active creatively to keep up the momentum going into this. A lot of the work that I was doing during the Summer, I feel, has the possibility to lead into a larger piece of work for this, so I want to list the most considerable of them.
https://silverdove.bandcamp.com/album/heart-of-grief
I had been working on this album over the summer as a means to explore the connection between English lo-fi drone works (primarily Culver & Witchblood, but also Smut, Karst, Jazzfinger, etc) with Harsh Noise Wall/Ambient Noise Wall, combining the deadened guitar drones with muddy static texturing to create a consistently bleak enveloping mood. For a “wall noise” album, it is considerably high effort, which I am glad was translated when getting feedback from others, and I feel like it is one of the most personally gratifying things I’ve made.
https://lagomorphrecs.bandcamp.com/album/fox-box
A friend of mine had started a label recently, where she releases all these high-effort, gorgeously packaged objects. I asked her about releasing something since she liked my music anyway, and pretty quickly, it became a task of releasing a box set. Originally, it was going to be a USB stick multimedia release, but it became 4 CDrs of music and 1 DVDr of some old jams I did in Wales for a few people, and it is all Drone Ambient, pretty long hummers, some Guitar, some Strings, Keyboards, Laptop, etc. I would consider all of it to be my best ambient material, and realistically, I should have held onto it a bit longer because I feel like it would have been nice to use it for this project and pour even more time into it (but would probably have cost me the fun presentation of the work). It has been a while after the official “release,” though, and people aren’t getting their copies, so I’m hoping that people get to hear it soon.
https://afomt.bandcamp.com/track/i-dont-need-you
I also had the pleasure of doing a split album with Zachary Ledsinger, who is someone whose work I have always found greatly inspiring within the ambient and “Wall Noise” spheres in which I exist. My track here, I think, is probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, a loop of a guitar phrase stretched out for as long as possible, inspired by Celer, Loren Connors, Taku Sugimoto, smothered with resonators and reverb, and improvised with to form a warm pillow made of stereo.
Something I’ve been meaning to do, mostly because of what I feel are “Academic” expectations, is to make my work more presentable/”serious”. I do feel like I am making “serious” work, mind you, I don’t release anything that I think is bad or mediocre, I just like to engage with the ridiculous and immature aesthetic that the esoteric “internet-ty” space that I occupy & am influenced by bolsters, I feel more motivated when the work is less formal. I don’t want to promise something that I don’t feel like I can/would want to deliver; I like making my music playful not only because I find it amusing, but also because this way it is more genuine, it removes pretence, I want to be honest, and this informality helps me achieve that. Immediacy is something important to me in that sense.
I feel like sharing a maybe more comprehensive list of releases that I’ve done in the summer that I think are standouts, on my label Rearview Mountain, which is a netlabel I host off of my own site to remove the middle man from my music.
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/foxfuneral (Loop of a short Celer track that I want to live in, exercise in purification/refraction through resonant filters.)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/streetsofkenny (There has been a group squatting in an abandoned community center by my house, and they have been kind of turning it into that kind of space anyway, doing some artworks on the building and outside it. Coming back home, the area has gotten more sketchy. I wanted to make something dedicated to Kensington, where I grew up, so I made this drone ambient “cover” of Shack’s Streets of Kenny track as a kind of reflection of the past onto the present.)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/030725 (Jam with a childhood friend over 2 seconds of Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/guitarthismorning (Very tired guitar loop music. Really evocative feelings hopefully.)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/weakendssufferinggaze (New Duo with my friend Fili, heavy guitar brood.)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/inwardstatis (5-person “internet jam”, usually we play wall noise, but we got a new member and wanted to play some guitar, so it’s heavy drone stuff)
https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/liveatcrewestation (Made at the train station on the way to London, I like capturing these important moments like this. Improvising with some piano chords on my laptop and with the environment. The cover is very ridiculous.)
(There is more that I haven’t mentioned, maybe to spare embarrassment)
But, back onto making a more “serious” iteration of what I’m doing, I feel like it would be valuable to make work that breaks out of the space that I currently occupy and the habits I have developed because of that. I don’t feel like the sound has to be drastically different, as I am quite confident in what I am making, but feel like within a “sound art” space, I am self crippling with my aesthetics with both my “raw” sound ideal and messy visual style. I am not quite sure what form I want it to take quite yet, but I know that for at least one of the 2 projects, I want to make a “serious” iteration of something that I’m doing, whether it be the Wall Noise stuff, Harsh Noise stuff, Ambient Stuff, Drone Guitar Stuff, whatever. I am doing a lot of music anyway and never really stop, it would be nice to mull over something for a lot longer and as a result have it come out as something more impactful/final than what I usually do with releasing sessions of sound making.
I have a few projects that I am working on alongside this that I could incorporate into the work, such as an anniversary release for my netlabel Rearview Mountain, which will be released as a 2xC120 Cassette, and so far is shaping up to have 20 tracks from different artists. Also finishing an album under my alias Silk Fingers, which is a Drone/Noise/Psych project inspired by Post-Nightcore, Harsh Noise, Sunroof!, Axolotl, it sounds like a glitterbomb and a headache, and I really enjoy making it. I am also planning on releasing another box set for my alias Silver Dove’s 5th year anniversary next February, trying to get other people’s input on what should be compiled since the discography for that project is ridiculously long, as well as planning a Silk Fingers collaboration with my friend Okosan, who does “Post-Nightcore” ambient/noise, and a Silk Fingers collaboration with my friend Durianhead, who is doing similar ecstatic glitter music but with more a “musical” tint because of his Berklee studies and Jazz and Autechre infactuations. What I am hoping doesn’t happen is that I have to put any of this on hold; I make a lot of music and want to be able to go between projects simultaneously, as that is a workflow that I enjoy the most, so I felt like all these initial projects are worth mentioning as they will be informing, coexisting with or maybe becoming one of the projects I want to use for this work. I still have a lot of time to think about this more, so we will see what happens naturally, I don’t want to force something and it to come out terrible.