Ignore the pile

Sometimes there's a demon on my shoulder telling me there's no room for new music.

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Music is full. Sorry.

I know your amazing epic three-part album about the mating habits of ducks is almost ready, but there’s no more room. It’ll have to stay in your DAW forever.

Look, I’m sorry. I bet we all would have loved it and you would have been a superstar, but whatever space is not taken up by the more than 100 million songs already on streaming services or the 120,000 new songs being uploaded to streaming services every day is now consumed by AI-generated proto-music that has all the calories but none of the flavor.

ChatGPT says if you tried to listen to it all, it would probably take you some 114,000 years or so. More or less. 114,000 years ago, we’d be celebrating the invention of new ways of hitting rocks with rocks to get rocks we could use to do things. So that’s a long time.

Maybe you should start in on that before adding to it. Come back to me when you know song #49,453,231 by heart.

Also, there are no more new melodies either. Here’s a massive Reddit thread for Taylor Swift’s newest hit “The Fate of Ophelia” and all the other songs it sounds like. This might age me a bit, but when I heard it, my mind first went to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” and then to Chris Brown’s “Forever” (which will forever be stuck in my brain from those choreographed wedding videos of the late ‘00s).

In fact, upon closer inspection, “Forever” and “The Fate of Ophelia” are actually pretty similar. They both start on the fourth scale degree played over the IV chord, which repeats a few times before moving down to the third scale degree played over the I. The two deviate a bit more at the back of the phrase, but you get the point. I like that Taylor’s phrase ends on E, the 7th scale degree in F. It’s a nice little bit of tension.

Although if that’s the extent of originality we’re stuck with these days, then my point stands. Music is full.

Except that’s ludicrous.

Would you seriously be satisfied if there weren’t any more new music? If we packed it in as a species? If we just closed up shop and settled for what we already have for a few years?

No, that’s absurd.

I mean, I’m sure there’s some fantastic stuff out there I haven’t heard before, but I still get all excited on Fridays when I get to dig through a bunch of new stuff, often from artists I love. I love hearing what people are doing now, what ideas are stirring their spirits, what new creativity is spilling forth from them. New sounds, new combinations, new takes on familiar tropes.

I can easily think of a few albums from the past year or two that have become all-time faves. Jon Hopkins’ Ritual. Ólafur Arnalds & Talos A Dawning. Pianist and former drummer Laurie Torres’ Après Coup. (Fun fact: Laurie always used to try to take over from me on piano when we were in a band together during sound checks. Glad she found her way there.) Obongjayar’s Paradise Now was basically on repeat all summer. Those are just the first that come to mind.

Even today, this new album a place to be from Icelandic artist Rakel is making me feel all sorts of feels. Her vocals are warm and rich, plastered over a rotating evolution of textures from guitar to synth to strings. Give me more.

Obviously, we’re not done.

All the same, the quantity of music out there can feel like this spirit-crushing monster hanging out just on the edge of my vision at all times. When I go to publish something new, I have to climb a massive ladder up a stack of previously recorded material almost astronomically tall to drop my humble little leaflet on top, while the monster stands there laughing at me with its cruel cackle. Should it even bother to eat me? My puny contribution barely even registers.

The endless quantity of stuff out there is a truth I know to be real but don’t want to face. Why add to it?

Let’s talk about Lewis Taylor.

I had never heard of Lewis Taylor before a few weeks ago. Lewis Taylor is a British musician and multi-instrumentalist who released a few albums in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, before quitting the music industry with seemingly little success. His most popular album Lewis Taylor was released in 1996 and had a song that hit number 86 in the charts in the UK — but didn’t even get a release in the US. He had a series of battles with his label who wanted him to sound a certain way, self-released a few albums that sold poorly, and eventually retired with his first and last show in the US in 2006.

Except that’s not the whole story at all. The BBC called his 1996 self-titled album something that “everyone talked about but few bought,” and it’s clearly resounded with some. His fans included Elton John and David Bowie, among many others. His sound is unique and, dare I say, ahead of its time. It’s often called “neo-soul,” but it wanders into all sorts of genres and styles, with surprising chord changes, fuzzed out guitars, and elements of psychedelia.

I learned about Taylor from my friend Kiefer. I’m helping him run a course right now called 30 Days of Harmony, and we’re spending a whole week studying the chord progression of Taylor’s song “If I Lay Down With You.” It changes key center a few times, basically moving by a minor third each time, and lasts a very satisfying 17.5 measures, with three random 2 bar measures sprinkled in here and there. It might seem forced, but it works.

Kiefer says he learned about Taylor from the soul performer Lalah Hathaway, who cited it as an influence. In other words, this is one of those guys who the artists you admire most talk about when you’re not around (similar to Hermeto Pascoal who I wrote about recently).

You know who else was influenced by Lewis Taylor? The late great D’Angelo, who passed away this week after producing three of the best albums of the modern era. D’Angelo was the closest thing to an auteur we have today. And D’Angelo credited Taylor as an influence, and even invited him to be part of the Voodoo recording sessions apparently (it didn’t work out for scheduling reasons).

Imagine quitting music because you weren’t having the success you wanted, but a class of 80 people are spending a week studying your music in-depth 30 years later — and one of the most innovative and popular musicians of all-time cites you as an influence.

Ignore the pile.

And that’s the thing about music: It’s not and never will be about numbers. Sure, numbers may be indicators of something. They may facilitate the business side of things. But music is about connection, between one person and another, between one person and many, between whole communities and more.

Sure, the pile exists, but it’s over there and it doesn’t matter to you except as something to dig around in from time to time. The vinyl records, cassettes, and digital libraries may make a daunting heap when looked at together, but the music itself only exists in the moment it’s heard — those moments of reverie, sadness, joy, and wonder that someone experiences while they’re listening to it.

When it’s playing, it’s the only thing that matters, and it belongs entirely to whoever hears it. The rest is just cheap plastic (or binary) containers.

This week has seen an outpouring of people talking about what D’Angelo’s music means to them. His music and performances are stunning. Whenever one of the greats passes away, it offers a poignant moment to reflect on all that person’s music has meant to us, all the moments it was there for, all the connections it facilitated.

For me, I remember the first time I really listened to “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” It was in high school, and I was deep into jam band music, the more solos the better. We would jam above the garage at my friend’s house and then listen to music in his bedroom for hours — self-serious teenage musicians feeling like we were the first ones ever to do it.

But although I’d heard that song before, I’d never listened to it until my buddy made me. The stylish falsetto and sauntering beat. The hint at this deep world of soul music I would grow to develop such a massive relationship with. It was something else, and opened countless doors for me (my musical foundations as a child were light, mostly The Beatles, Beach Boys, Queen, and the soundtrack to Les Misérables). Hearing it today takes me right back there, to that time of questing and discovery and expanding horizons. I wonder what that friend of mine is up to today, and what he thinks about when he listens to D’Angelo.

Focus on the connection

We can’t all be a D’Angelo. In fact, there is no other D’Angelo than him — he was one of a kind, and we’re so lucky to have had some precious time with him (and the glorious music).

But these sorts of moments of connection are possible for anyone. I remember playing a show in Seattle once where someone in the audience came up to me afterward to tell me they’d found our Sontag Shogun record in a shop in Seoul, South Korea, while traveling and bought it on a whim. It came to have great meaning for them — they couldn’t believe it when they saw that we were playing a show locally. What a gift to be part of that person’s life in ways I can’t really know or fathom.

In other words, you never know when your music may touch someone deeply or echo out in ways more powerful than we could imagine. It certainly happened to Lewis Taylor.

So keep dropping your humble leaflets. To your parents and siblings. To your family. To your micro-community of pesca-futurists on Discord. Whatever it is. The pile doesn’t matter — the space for music occupies another dimension, where there’s always room for more (even if the streaming model might not make it feel that way).

Tell us how it feels. Ignore the pile. Let the music keep coming.

All the best,
Ian

PS. I’ve loved moving over to Substack, but somehow it feels more high pressure than before. If you’re enjoying these, I’d deeply appreciate a like or a comment or whatever. I always love hearing from you, and even more so now that I’m still figuring out this new platform. Thanks for following!

—
Ian Temple
Founder, Soundfly
soundfly.com
ian@soundfly.com

Four Interesting Things

1. RIP D’Angelo. One of the greats. Here’s what I’ve been watching recently.

2. Escaping Flatland by Henrik Karlsson is one of my favorite Substacks I started following recently. Here’s one that I enjoyed:

   Modular life, meaningful work

3. Austin Kleon is always worth a read. Today’s is maybe a little gloomy, but life is short and to be lived accordingly.

   Overheard on the Titanic

4. New music I’m listening to today: Rakel’s a place to be, Lea Bertucci’s The Oracle, Electric Litany’s Desires, Tame Impala’s Deadbeat.

5. My friend Jacob turned me onto Aubrey Whitfield’s FabFilter C2 Compression presets pack, which I’ve been using and really appreciating! Sharing in case anyone else is a FabFilter C2 user and wants compression presets to work with. A bit of a gamechanger for me.