“I hear a piece of music, and out of nowhere I’m surprised by an unexpected change of tuning, key, or rhythm. This variation might shake my ear out of its unfeeling slumber, a numbness brought on by what were all-too-predictable changes in the music at hand. Now I get the feeling that the piece is… Continue reading

“In the real world of acoustic instruments, every note and drum stroke is unique. Thus we seek to avoid the bland impression of repeated sounds that never change. It is worthwhile to take the trouble to articulate a unique identity for each object by creative editing and processing. This includes stamping each sound with a unique… Continue reading

“If the Nineties were defined by the loop (the ‘good’ infinity of the seamlessly looped breakbeat, Goldie’s ‘Timeless’), then the twenty-first century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a timetrap. This frustrated, angular time–and the enjoyment of… Continue reading

“Sometimes listening to music is more about listening to your own ways of listening, hearing your own ways of hearing. Wondering what you’re hearing. And sometimes you need time to do it, and that’s when the anxiety sets in. Everyone around you says that listening is time-wasting, but you have to remind yourself that listening… Continue reading

“There’s little actual logic in good writing. There’s a current of thoughts and ideas and observations. Some may be linked by evidence. One point may substantiate or corroborate another. But what passes for logic or argument is usually little more than a succession of ideas Connected mostly by proximity and analogy. Writing doesn’t prove anything.… Continue reading

“Hit with your body, and hit with your spirit, and hit from the Void with your hands, accelerating strongly.” Miyamoto Musashi, The Book Of Five Rings (c. 1645) Continue reading

“This book is…an inquiry undertaken in order to systematically ‘feel out’ the presence of my subject matter as it brushes against the consciousness…I will reconstruct the ghostly voices I hear while walking on Scarp in an attempt to relate my own story to theirs, to locate my own voice and sensations in the ones that… Continue reading

“What makes random access important, in a creative setting, is being able to grab chunks or tiny fragments of music to copy, paste, cut, fix, tune, move, and modify. Writing a book or even an email is now, almost, unthinkable without being able to move, modify, and fix things. Manipulative power has become integral to… Continue reading