“Well I’ll tell you very frankly that this whole ‘new age’ business is very distasteful to me. I don’t like being even considered in that category and I have almost no respect for it at all. To me it’s a kind of arrogant philosophical point of view where music has a metaphysical or biological function.… Continue reading

“Taking his bearings from cybernetics, Eno works through interventions rather than utterly spontaneous creations. The variety he finds through systems music came from the system, after all. And therein lies the key–one takes steps to outwit oneself, whether with an oblique strategy or a pattern (or system) with which to generate sounds. That is, one… Continue reading

“Knowledge has to be laid down in the brain in overlapping and criss-crossed layers. You need the underlay before you can have the carpet and then—then you can abandon the analogy because it’s completely unsustainable. Everything has gradually to become a kind of sediment in the brain, its ocean floor—a place so dark and mysterious… Continue reading

“I like styling with something that’s really intricate and complex, sound‑wise. Like dragging a whole finished song into a granular synth. So, you’re starting from a point of real intricacy and trying to find order in it, as opposed to coming from a pure sine wave and trying to add intricacies. I like going the other way around more.” – Fred… Continue reading

“To not work in a linear way when making a track. It’s better to just start somewhere and explore from there, don’t try and write a song from start to finish, make it random. And also don’t be afraid to get theoretical when making music, especially electronic music. There is a lot to be found… Continue reading

“I want to promote a description of creativity as a process of attunement to the material environment, not an isolated or inward journey further into one’s thoughts or mind or soul. In this sense, the description I want to promote is one driven by a critical curiosity rather than a thing called inspiration…which I know… Continue reading

“Piano first, generally. Though maybe a small rhythm element may be put in place to spark the harmonic gateway that the piano provides. Then starts the long process of embellishing it, or orchestrating it. I say orchestrating, as I like to think of the synth elements that I add as orchestrations.” Neil Cowley, Headphone Commute Continue reading

“Because their devices dinged them a few times a minute, their minds were reshaped to the jittery, needy psyche that ruled the digital realm. In a few short decades they’d transformed proud and free animals—humans—and made them into endlessly acquiescent dots on screens. How many people live in a state of aggressive truth-seeking?” Dave Eggers,… Continue reading

“Knowledge is subtractive, not additive—what we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).” “By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you;… Continue reading

“When I was working as a pop music critic, I tried not to think too much about quality—at least not directly. My belief, then as now, was that there was no useful difference between loving a song and considering it good, or between not liking one and considering it bad. (If it is possible for… Continue reading