This blog entry is an exploration of my relationship with music and some trends that have emerged through my life; and the possibility of it all being part of one big scheme, as we are all part of the human collective mind.
It all started with this:
Back in the 90's, I was an avid SNES gamer. I was also gifted with some creativity, so when Mario Paint came out I was soon all over its animation and music-making capacities. Soon I was making little jingles, animations to go with them and pretty much spending hours doodling away. This started an ongoing interest in music making through sequencing programs, which led me to my all time favorite FL Studio (called Fruity Loops back then). I made a few terrible songs that I showed off to my friends, most of which would say "cool, dude" without a hint of enthusiasm.
Then in 1999 I left my home town of Puebla, Mexico to create a new life for myself in the United States; I was 19 years old. Austin, Texas was my first destination. There are a few good memorable stories from this time, one of which includes me waking up after a drunken blackout surrounded by police cars and a cop checking my pulse; and my friend next to me telling the cops that he'll take care of me and I'll be alright. Another story is about hitching a ride from a complete stranger in the rain, after which the stranger offered me money so he could blow me. Yeah.
In any case, during this time I spent a lot of hours working at my own musical creations in Fruity Loops. Most of my songs were original content, and at this point I had already started adding real guitar samples to my songs and so many ideas and enthusiasm for the craft, although not enough talent to make the songs noteworthy. Around this time, I also started making my own versions of old NES classics; especially from Megaman and Ninja Gaiden. It has to be noted that I didn't know of anybody else, or had ever heard anybody else do this. To me this was something that I just did for myself, as the Nintendo midis were not "spiffy" enough - and through Fruity Loops I could change the instruments, add cooler drum beats, and overall spiff up the songs to my taste. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge and engineering skills was always an obstacle for me; to the extreme that my first songs were MANUALLY TRANSCRIBED from listening to midi files note by note. I still have a notepad somewhere where I'm writing down by hand each and every single note to create the sequence. Now I just import the midi file straight into Fruity Loops and all that work is done for me.
The only other artist in my area of knowledge that was doing something similar was Atom and His Package - he was a huge inspiration for me to make 'home-made' punk with sequencers and guitars. (Now I know that MiniBosses was started around 1999 - but unfortunately I never heard about them until the late 2000s, another reason for me to believe that this was all starting around the same time) The name for my project was "Munch-Up"; honestly, inspired by the name of the fan-service friendly anime "Burn-Up" and a thing for 'eating' beats. That was the simple logic behind the name. Many of my early "Munch-Up" art was a throwback to pixel art; again, it was rare that anybody did pixel art to be 'hip' and 'retro' during this time - if anything, it was barely starting and I unfortunately was not able to enjoy this kind of art by anybody else. If it existed, I didn't know about it. Here are some old school Munch Up goodies:
A great song that was originally all sampler instruments, which I added a guitar solo a few years later, probably the best example of early Munch Up music and my later guitar additions:
Next, are 2 songs that became my first 2 original songs with lyrics, as well as a more metallic edge I wanted in the sound. I didn't want to necessarily make 'pretty' music. Before the internet went crazy for cats, I wrote "PxSxOxBxC" (Protective Spirit of Black Cat) and "Neko-Bot" (Neko means 'cat' in Japanese). To commemorate this worship of all things cat, here is an animated gif I made circa 2002 and the 2 songs for your enjoynment:
PxSxOxBxC
Protective Spirit of Black Cat!
It will live next to my soul
Majestic Velvet Coat
Shimmering with lights
With a proud, elegant face.
Infinitely deep green eyes
Resting on a brightly colored pillow
It will bring peace to my soul
Protects me from aggressive jealousy
Neko-Bot
Fucked up, backwards-ass culture
Pretty packaged all the time
To sell your fucking lies and bullshit
Plastified Humanity
Brightly Colored Stupidity
Robotized depletion of the human soul
Nothing matters, its a matter of mass consumption
x2
I came here all the way to see you smile
But there was no one inside that face
Just a face hiding the fluorescent light
..dormant.. ..sleeping..
Here are a few more elaborated, more fusion, less 'midi' creations, as I actually wanted Munch Up to be more punk/metal than chip:
Munch Up "Xezqual" (Xezqual later on went to become the name for my latest music project)
Next are 2 songs that I can honestly say give me the credit to say that I was "Seapunk" before the term was even created. Last Sunday I found out about this term reading an article in the New York Times! I figures it must be pretty relevant if it made it there... Now, before you call me the the ultimate hipster, let's think about this for a second. Seapunk is a term that was coined by someone that apparently had a dream about having barnacles instead of 'studs' in their punk jacket. Whoever this person was, was huge in the twitter/tumblr-sphere and has spawned hundreds of animated gifs featuring dolphins, and really cheesy 90's CG. All things aqua from the 90s are worshipped, as well as ying-yang symbols and so on and so on. There is even a little bit of rave culture in there too. Most of the people that are into this seem to be teenage girls; which create a persona for being heavy psychedelic drug users and just overall 'out-there'. Here are a few notable examples... The crazy youth of today.. lol:
Now, around 2005 I was playing with the idea that nature could be brutal in its beauty too. Why did all punk songs have to be about being angry against the machine? No one ever sang about the beauty of dolphins, or sea-lions. So I wrote a few songs dedicated to sea-life; and even started a whole new project called Nematocyst (it's the organ that Jellyfish use to inject venom into their prey) that was completely dedicated to the sea. Now, Tumblr is full of animated Gifs about jellyfish and how trippy they are. 7 Years ago I had already written songs about this, around 2007 made a neon animated gif off Jellyfish I filmed at the San Diego aquarium. After you listen to these songs, read the lyrics to Swift, and look at the art, tell me if there was some Seapunk in there or not. Probably not the 'seapunk' that is more Sponge-Bob than substance of today, but in the sense that it was a marriage of subculture music and the sea.
"Swift"
There is no way to comprehend
There is just so much to be amazed
The energy that flows in this place
There is no end, except the one you're fabricating!
Why do you want to take away my place?
Why do you want to consume our lives?
Why are you so careless and arrogant!?
Swift... like the waves in the ocean
Swift... like the ripples in the water
Swift... like the wind blowing in front of me
... Swift ...
("Swift" is my absolute, most favorite song I did for Munch Up)
After Munch Up and Nematocyst, the working life had already sucked me in, and much of the passion and creativity that I had to make this kind of music had been sort of 'partitioned' into my video-game art and other interests. I created the experimental synth project called Xezqual (MySpace) . I have since abandoned it and have lost much interest in pursuing this; as it had always been some kind of self-entertainment I did to get stoned and drunk to. The proliferation of indie-hipster music done with synthesizers, and the modern era of retro/chip-tune worship makes me feel very demotivated to partake in any of this, as I have no energy to try to be cool, trendy or capitalize off any subculture - Also, I am more of a video-game artist than a musician and I need to pay bills. None of my music has ever been released officially and not one single mp3 has ever been made to be for sale. There are no pictures of me looking all cool and slick with Nintendo controllers and dark frame glasses, nor there will ever be. I have a special place in my heart for many NES songs but the craze was over for me many years ago. I am 30 years old and am more comfortable knowing that the faceless, fractal and cold sounds of Psy-Trance are there to please my earbuds with the entheogenic frequencies that are in it if I need to listen to electronic sounds. I listen to mostly death metal, punk rock and psy-trance; as nostalgic modern chip tune music seems to me more of a novelty than a serious proposition. I've also learned to embrace other forms of music, get out of my 'triad' of insanity for a while; seriously enjoying the prog-metal sounds of Zombi, the political tribal beats of Fela Kuti, and all kinds of other artists; as well as enjoying all the classics like Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, etc.
I am a believer that humanity does share that which Carl Jung called the "collective subconscious" ; the idea that many ideas and creativity can reside at the same time but in different places - some kind of psychic internet of humanity. You might think you have a new idea, but maybe you are only "downloading" information from this pool of thought, without knowing it. Or maybe, you are creating valuable ideas and finding creative solutions, those which get "uploaded" without you ever realizing. Joseph Campbell analyzed this phenomenon in his "Myth" books, studying how certain patterns, ideas about 'dragons' and other symbols emerged in human culture that was never in touch with one another around the same time. After my own anaylisis of the music I wanted to create, the notes I wanted to hit with Munch Up, Nematocyst and Xezqual; I am convinced that I was part of a collective movement without knowing it. I do have a desire to keep making music, but for me it has always been about doing what's in your heart. I might decide to make a psy-trance song, or a crust punk song with synthesizers in it; it doesn't matter to me if it fits the needs of particular sub-cultures or genres as long as I'm doing what comes out of my soul naturally.
I find the current trends interesting though, there is a part of me that really likes these new offshoots and animated-gif subcultures, but now I feel more like the old parent that just chuckles, than the excited kid that goes "awesome!". I still devote my entire self and energy to creative endeavors, they have only taken other shapes, and I am constantly aiming to 'upload' and 'download' all kinds of awesomeness from the collective mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment