| “I tried to do my own thing but the trouble with your own thing is you end up on your own” |
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| The Beta Band, “Simple” | |
I have had a passion for music since I was about 15 years old, rummaging through import CDs in my local, suburban record shop (yes, kids, a shop specialising in selling plastic discs containing recorded music; it’s a quaint thing, I know).
These are some of the things I believe in: Pharoah Sanders, lovers rock, Prefab Sprout, Laura Nyro, modern soul, Robert Wyatt, Nina Simone, doo wop, Moondog, dub, showtunes, latin, and the hardcore continuum. Starting to re-engage with hip-hop again. EPMD, Marley Marl, that kind of thing.
Together with Gareth Jones (Twin Cities) I make music under the name Analog Jones. We have had stuff released on Flogsta Danshall, Mukatsuku Records, and Burntprogress.
I occasionally put up little re-edits and remixes of things on Soundcloud.
I have written about various aspects of music, small and large, in blogs, newspapers and other publications – including a lot of more recent musings on the materiality of mp3s and other carrier technologies. For a long while, I was a contributor to (now-defunct) online music mag absorb.org, and I ran an online Swedish music mag, Dig magazine. I have also contributed sporadically to some mp3 blogs.
On a side note, I believe that the last popular musical styles to be politically relevant – in terms of constituting an “alternative” or “rebellion” to Western consumer culture – were rave and grunge in the early nineties. The nineties saw these styles being rapidly subsumed into the general marketing of music as a fashion accessory. Being “alternative” is to be a consumer, and often the “mainstream” consumers are equally hedonistic or dissolute. The main difference lies in which goods are consumed. Since then, youth culture and its popular music forms have been more about mastering certain rather established stylistic formulas; more like “established” musical genres like jazz, classical music and so on. More than anything else, it seems to be about aptitude, conspicuous consumption and re-use, learning to “master” certain styles that are then combined in new ways. I therefore believe that nowadays, most popular music is a conserving practice. But something new, unexpected, will always crop up beyond the horizon…
