• An article about excellence. “Excellence is mundane. Excellence is accomplished through the sound of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time. While these actions are ‘qualitatively different’ from those of performers at other levels, these differences are neither unmanageable nor, taken one step at a time, Continue reading

• Amazon’s AWS DeepComposer demonstration. The video is worth watching, if only to hear how abysmal the music is. • An article on the art of Vija Celmins (someone who has inspired me to work in layers). “Up close, you see that every swell, curl, and cranny has been given its individual due. There are Continue reading

• An essay about being a polymath. “The real master has no tools at all, only a limitless capacity to improvise with what is to hand. The more fields of knowledge you cover, the greater your resources for improvisation.” • A discussion about the human senses. “It’s always the combination of many experiences that are Continue reading

• An essay on digital distraction. “The problem of concentration is recursive. Any strategy for sidestepping distraction calls for strategies on sidestepping distraction.”  • An article on Sublime Frequencies’ world music recordings. “The label Sublime Frequencies…was initially a response to the reigning approach of ethnomusicology, which they perceived as prizing a kind of detached, academic Continue reading

• An article on “chill” music playlists on Spotify. “These days, to describe someone as “chill” is to propose that they’re slightly apathetic, but in a delightfully easygoing way. The rise of chill as an aspirational state suggests that perhaps the best thing to feel is not much at all…Spotify presently classifies chill as a Continue reading

• An article on forgetting. “Forgetting is a dynamic ability, crucial to memory retrieval, mental stability and maintaining one’s sense of identity. That’s because remembering is a dynamic process. At a biochemical level, memories are not pulled from the shelf like stored videos but pieced together — reconstructed — by the brain.” • A review of Continue reading

• An article about writing. “Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.” • An article about artistry and asceticism. “If it is fact that a kind of excess often accompanies the making of art, then there’s another kind of excess — less cinematic, for sure — that seems closer to the point: Artists, even Continue reading

• A review of a set of new Autechre recordings. “It’s the visceral sound of machines powering down then quickly lurching back into motion. It’s that sense of perpetual rhythmic collapse, the feeling that entire songs are slipping out from under your feet. It’s gorgeous and terrifying and awe-inspiring and incomprehensible and frequently even funky—but Continue reading

• An interview with Jon Hopkins. “With the program I use now, Ableton, it’s quite easy to imagine how one sound could lead to the birth of another. On the track ‘Feel First Life’, I have a synth sound that gradually morphs into a choral sound. That idea of a 15-part choir appearing out of the fabric Continue reading