matt dalby journal

Friday 18 May 2012

A bit of an excursion from my recent playing with noise (and noisy recordings). A clean, decent fidelity song. Or at least short looped phrases layered over each other.

(Source: youtube.com)

Sunday 29 April 2012

Recorded relatively late today, after 9pm, this is a 23+ minute motorik rhythm. The only changes are the addition of new sounds and the consequent building of volume.

It’s probably not the kind of thing you want to sit and listen to. Join in. Dance. Hypnotise yourself.

The name comes from the fact it’s inspired by the Bettany Hughes BBC series Divine Women, especially the first programme.

As I’ve said elsewhere it’s entirely possible I’ve nicked the rhythm from somewhere else, quite likely the soundtrack of the programme. 

My journal is still on hiatus. I haven’t been writing it, for one.

There are reasons why I haven’t been writing it. Partly because I haven’t had much time, and when I have had time I haven’t had the inclination.

Anyone who’s followed the journal, or my main blog santiago’s dead wasp, or even my twitter feed @soundpoet since New Year may be dimly aware that I haven’t been as prolific, or as enthusiastic about things this year as I have in the recent past.

I can’t go into all the reasons for this. Some of it, as mentioned previously here and elsewhere I think, is arriving back in Manchester and having to immediately find work and a place to live. I also came from three months of a pretty constant day length of 11 hours, where dawn and dusk didn’t drag on, where it was bright and up around 18°C most days, to a cold, dark, wintery UK. Not to mention that Manchester is a smaller, lower-rise, less populous, quieter city than Kunming.

All of these things made coming back difficult. Then too, I expected things to be much the same as they had been when I went away. But of course they weren’t. I’d changed and grown, my friends had changed and grown, Womb was coming to an end. On a simple pragmatic level I had a lot less money than previously.

Now throw in the reasons I’ve felt a little shit that I can’t go into, and you may be able to see why I’ve felt disinclined to keep a journal.

It’s been more important for me to catch up with friends - always my first priority - and to try and get on with making art.

But even making art’s been a struggle. I managed an okay-ish piece for the Artists’ Bonfire, and I almost made myself ill completing 100+ visual poem pieces for the Maintenant event in London a couple of weeks back (at a time when I didn’t feel much like going anywhere). Other than that there’s been nothing, other than the sound/music I’ll come to shortly.

A friend suggested to me the other day that in terms of creativity I may have been pushing myself too hard. That after a busy couple of years maybe I could do with a break and should try and step back.

I think that she’s probably right, and that if I’m not careful, and keep pushing myself to try and create art that just isn’t there, on top of all the emotional upheaval at present, I run the risk of burning out.

I am going to try and step back and not pressure myself to create anything. Perhaps try and take a break from making art altogether for a few weeks.

The only exception to this being the sound/music I mentioned earlier. Before I went to China I had a brief creative flurry, and all the time I was there found it frustrating that it wasn’t really possible for me to make the kind of sounds I wanted.

Since returning I’ve experimented with both new ideas, and with ideas I’ve explored in the past. I started by making longform, dancey pieces based on beats and looped voice. They gradually mutated into pieces like mantras or chants.

At the same time as that transformation was happening I started to record quite conventional songs. I also revived, tidied up, and started to promote my YouTube channel.

In doing so I discovered some (often extremely) rough-sounding live performances and noisy recordings from some time ago. They excited me far more than the rather conservative songs, and restrained, polite longform pieces I was making. So I’ve started to explore that part of my creativity again.

As far as that goes I’m absolutely bursting with ideas and desperate to create more tracks. Even more I feel the need to perform live and play with noise in public very urgently. I did make efforts, starting in January, to try and secure support gigs - but so far with no success. Maybe another push of making myself a nuisance might pay off.

So, the situation now is this: I still feel shit, and I’m not especially enjoying being back in the UK. I have a better idea why this is - some of it is an inevitable consequence of returning from a residency in a busy country to a quotidian working life, some of it is putting myself under undue pressure to create art when I should probably give myself a few weeks off, and some of it is difficult emotional situations.

None of which is conducive to keeping a journal. And even when it has been, the contents of the journal entries are things haven’t been able to publish. I hope that explains the reasons for my silence, which is likely to continue for a little while longer.

Which means that starting now I’m taking a break from creating art for an indefinite period - probably a few weeks - with the exception of making an abrasive racket whenever I get the chance. Further, I’m not going to pressure myself to write the journal, or reviews, or anything else for my blogs unless I really can’t stop myself.

This may mean a few weeks of relative silence. It feels weird, but it’s for my own mental and physical wellbeing.