WELCOME TO THE HOME OF EMOMALLRAT
| I absolutely adore music, I have been making and listening to music for as long as I can remember. Admittedly the methods of doing both have changed drastically over my life but nonetheless its always been one of the main parts of me. Because of that I thought it'd be cute to have a lil blog section on here dedicated solely to music. That way I dont clog up any other area with the constant thoughts I have on stuff. I hope to collect all my thoughts related to music production, general creativity, and music I like to listen to in here. :3 |
I find it interesting just how much "good" music is out there. Maybe its my low standards but it feels like there is literally an endless stream of good bands or artists and it's awesome. I spend 5 minutes looking and I will find a person i've never heard about that makes cool shoegaze or some niche emo band only one guy cares about. I really enjoy how much music there is out there, I love just taking in what someone else creates. It's fun, I am glad the internet made music easier to access, I feel like it'd be much less fun to have to constantly go to a record shop and find the "popular" stuff.
WHAT I LISTENED TO
Sing by Slowdive, great song can't recommend Souvlaki enough
it's kinda cool being an artist, there's this looming thought that with enough work one day you could make a "masterpiece". I think the concept has been neglected over the years. As a person that studies a lot of paintings stickered with this label, it's a very promising notion. A piece of your body of work, considered to be the height of your career. Not in the sense of personal career status but rather in the way that means something to you and your peers. It denotes a work as something of importance, something that changed you or the world around you in some way. It isn't just another drop in the bucket of grand creations of humanity but it sticks out just a little more. It's great. It in a lot of ways feels like a celebration of the arts and the creative process. It gives you as an artist something to work toward. Whether specifically to reach this peak or just over time. It is a thing for you to create one day through nothing but hard work and effort on your part.
I think this promise of a potential “masterpiece” is what drives a lot of artists, myself included. It isn’t taken in name but that looming goal of making something beyond compare, something so grand, is alluring to anyone that dedicates themselves to an art form. Even if you aren’t vying for the word itself, subconsciously you’re always working towards that same point in your life and career. Sonya Hough once said “Anyone can create one great painting. But if you stop there, you miss your potential.” And it reflects the importance of working towards this goal. Anyone can sit down, get lucky, or just be naturally gifted and make something others consider a “masterpiece”. But to the artists and the creators, it’s the process that means the most. If we were all simply trying to make one great thing and then leave well there’d be no point in being here.
It feels like a promise from the artists of old, like an offer to us young and new artists. We work tirelessly on our craft, dedicating our time and effort. Pouring our life into our mediums, and one day we too may create a defining piece of art. I don’t create purely for the possibility of one day making something I consider a “masterpiece” but it is an intriguing light at the end of the tunnel. If nothing else through sheer will and desire alone I will reach those same heights one day. I too will have a brief moment of my life worthy of this footnote, displaying to the world my dedication to not only myself but the world of art. Years of work ultimately led to this point. It is a beautiful thought, I can’t wait to get there.
WHAT I LISTENED TO
Was listening to my own ep, BODY MOD. Bit egocentric but seemed fitting
Relistening to Machine Girl's Wlfgrl has really brought a lot of my energy I use to have around music back. Their music just envigorates me, makes me feel high energy and it is all super inspiring. The first time I heard Wlfgrl was a couple years back. While listening all I could do is sit there and take everything in. I was absolutely blown away by every song and every moment. I had never heard anything like it, sure its reminscient of different things but this was just ground shattering. Its like my eyes were opened and I saw the real world, my artifical self and life were gone and I finally could see what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. Since hearing it i've only wanted to experience that same feeling again but with my own creations. I don't really make similar music but Wlfgrl really was the genesis for my love of the intricacies of music. There are other bands and people that got me involved in music sooner but it was a life changing moment realizing all what music could be when hearing Wlfgrl for the first time. I hope I can make something as powerful and like just fucking good one day. Absolutely love Machine Girl and am so thankful I get to listen to such awesome music. Fuck yeah!!!
Since my last post was kind of a lil snippet on my thoughts regarding a musical album I thought this was a fitting discussion topic. I personally love talking about and sharing music, whether it be into the grand webosphere or to some friends it just feels nice to discuss good music. There is just something really nice feeling about word puking about some music you LOVE. That being said, I fucking hate the growing trend in music discussion where people apply nonsense scores to music or decide to be highly critical just to be critical. I am all for hearing about some music you enjoy but I really don't care if you think some album "is a 7". It means nothing and its such a stupid way to diminish any value that music had. Even if its the almighty high number it still feels pointless. Just articulate your points and stop trying to shove art into these tiny score boxes cause you saw some dude on youtube do it. I also dislike when people choose to only really be negative about music, or seem to be like overly critical just to be critical. Most music has some interesting or special quality and I find it hard to believe you seriously sit down to listen to entire albums just to be mean about how "bad" it is. I just wish more people were positive and like contributing to actual music discussion because this manufactured discourse and obsession with hating everything is so boring. I really couldn't care less about what is and isn't bad. If something is boring sure I get it but I feel like there's very few pieces of music out there that need to be listened to entirely to grasp they're boring. It's obviously not a new problem but I feel like its getting more popular with this recent trend in "music fans". Whatever pff, I just hope some guy doesn't decide to make a video on my music and give it like a 1. A 0 im fine with but a 1 is just like a slap in the arbitrary face.
WHAT I LISTENED TO
The Entirety of Zach Hill's FACE TAT for a third time today
Face Tat is a badass album, Zach Hill is a genius and I greatly enjoy his music. One of my favorite things about this album is how it kind of stears away from his other projects while still maintaing similar qualities. It's not hard to hear some Hella and Death Grips (even though this was before DG officially came to be). It just has a lot of those neat Zach Hill qualities but like in a more distilled and special way. It is also interesting to kind of experience what Zach was making right before Death Grips. I really enjoy the heavy use of drums, in general I find Zachs drumming interesting. I really enjoy the electric feeling of it, not just the energy but the sound. I can't tell if its the kind of tinny sound of Zachs vocals in a lot of songs or the kind of static but whatever it is it's great. It feels like it'd be agonizing but it just works so well and is highly enjoyable. Favorite song off the album is probably Total Recall but everything on here goes hard. If you've never listened to this but enjoy any of the other things Zach has made I highly recommend giving Face Tat and the rest of his solo discography a try. It is all fantastic.
Unrelated to the album itself but connected, I first heard this album right around the time I started making music. It really changed my perspective on what everything could be, it kind of opened my eyes to just how harsh and expressive you could make something without having to fit into the standard idea of a song. When I first found it I would sit around for hours picking apart each song and trying to rationalize what all was going on. It was just all so fascinating and still is!! I have a soft spot for this album because it really changed my life in a way haha. At least in the sense that it made me into a fan of noise and just going balls to the wall. Love this album so much.
For the last couple of months I've really creatively been in a rut. I had made some of my best music in the summer of 2021 and was on a roll until one day it just stopped. It was jarring, going from making things I was proud of to everything I created sounding like garbage was rough. I would spend most of my days just banging my head against the wall trying to get something to work and it simply never would. Slowly but surely I made some stuff that felt passable but creatively I was just at a complete stop. Until recently that barrier just seemed impossible to climb. No matter how much time I spent trying to make music it always felt like I was simply regressing. A lot of it came down to mentality and how I was approaching my work. Before I would make something just to make it, I would put hours of my time into something that just felt fun because I was experimenting and growing. But, once I hit that point where my music finally felt like idk, like I hit a reasonable point to stop and admire how far I had come, I just could never get back into the rhythm. I continued to try and return to where I was before rather than move forward like I had been doing forever.
This is a hard realization to come to, I am finding it difficult to find my footing again as an artist. Before the process was so simple, I would sit down and just create. If it sounded good I'd keep working on it. If it sounded bad I'd shelve it. The big difference between now and then however was I didn't have a frame of what was "good". I knew of music I liked, I knew of things i've done before that was "good". But, I absolutely did not know what a good version of my music sounded like. As a result it was easy to just make something and keep going with the idea. It didn't feel like I had some standard or bar to reach it just felt like I could keep trying to do whatever it was I felt like doing. Now it feels like I have a bare minimum to reach, if the melody I write doesn't sound better than the last one I made what's the point? If the sound doesn't evoke the same level of emotion as before then why bother? It has quickly become apparent that I just can't reach these new bars.
I really don't know where i'm going with all this. I guess I'm just meandering through my thoughts and trying to rationalize them. Maybe I'm looking for an answer, idk how it'll get to me but it's cathartic to bleed out the issue. I know what I have to do, just go back to how I made music and art before. Approach it simply from a point of passion rather than this new broken mindset. I have slowly been making progress. These last few days I broke through a barrier I never thought I would. I've been able to just throw more ideas at the wall and then look at them and say "hey that's pretty nice, let's work on it" so that's cool. Creating art is simultaneously such a headache and so much fun.
Gyoza - Sandhog
I thought it'd be cool to include the song(s) I was listening to while I wrote this, think ill do that from now on :3
