MyOneManBand in its latest incarnation revolves around a very specific paradigm, as always the music is all live and all created by myself, from a blank canvas and in real-time in front of the audience. What is new is that each performance is now also written and arranged there and then, on the spot, using a technique I have called “instinct composition”.
The only premeditation that I allow myself before a show is in the selection of speech samples that will underpin the thematic variance of the individual songs along with a predisposition to a certain selection of instruments and therefore an abridged palette of sounds, although this in itself is more often then not dictated by setup-time and available transportation of my equipment then any real auditory process of elimination.
The benefits of this new method of playing for me are many-fold. For one, after years of playing very regularly and often to the same audience, I can now present something that is in constant flux and is therefore always as exciting to me as it s to them..its like every night is the first night of a new release...and that really is very exciting. Next there is the fact that I am now constantly trying to better my last performance. There is now no plateau which also sits well with my ideas for where my music may sit within the commercial and creative worlds...I now have no “final product” to worry about...just an ever changing body of work that can stay currant whilst also being supported artifactually by the free media such as bootleg videos and recordings.
I have grown up listening to all sorts of music..it was my desire to reconcile my love for both Damien Rice and Four Tet that got me into this whole looping thing...but I feel I am still only at the beginnings of finding what my musical voice is capable of.
...“if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”...
Said some splendid bugger, and I tend to agree, so I have begun to develop the narrative of my found-sound speech samples to both illuminate many of the wonderful things I hear everyday whilst also trying to turn the dispensers of hates very words against them.
I hope my music works as both an accompaniment to good and a repost to evil.
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