Praxis # 4

Anyone who has heard the music of Derek Bailey will hear his influence in my recent recordings. I first came across Bailey because a friend heard one of my recordings and suggested I check him out. I could see why. I was in a process unlearning what had become a stifling way to make music, in part at least due to the endless possibilities yet constaining structures of computer based music production. I’d become passively reliant on the sonic possibilities of plugins, while unwilling to invest in the process of art making with sound - needless to say it didn’t suit me. So, I rejected the computer and now regard it as a political tool of conformity. I slowly began to figure out what making sound would be like without one. I remember the moment when I walked into my studio and within minutes could be playing with sound in an experimental and free way. It felt completely liberating. Throughout this process I was also letting go of and considering new concepts of time. After a frustrating and giftless phase of trying to sync drum machines and synths using midi, I realised it was possible to make music without everything being ‘in time’ and that this also helped to undo the mechanistic experience of time we are so accustomed with. (See my previous post for more detail https://www.mycocreative.co/a-suspension-of-time/).

Don Cherry says it best:

we can be in tune with time,
we can be a slave to time
or we can be in total aspiration trying to catch time
there must a forth way: to flow with time

Bailey's music and his involvement in free improvisation can be seen as a challenge to the commodification of music. His approach resisted the commercialisation and standardisation that often accompany mainstream musical genres, aligning with anti-capitalist sentiments. Free improvisation, as championed by Bailey, is inherently non-hierarchical. It challenges traditional musical structures and authority, promoting a democratic and egalitarian approach to music-making. This aligns with radical political ideals that seek to dismantle established power structures. Here’s a video of Bailey with Evan Parker...

This has been a personal journey of questioning and finding a process that felt true to my values and ideas about what art is and what I need as an individual navigating this world, exploring what it means to be a human, while experiencing the symptoms of capitalist and industrial economic systems - burnout and emotional overwhelm. I've sought to establish a practice that serves me and compliments my busy work life. There’s currently little social aspect of my practice, other than the odd meet up or collaboration and I think that just speaks to my limited time. I frequently want to change that but find it very difficult to find space and time.

This year, in particular I have recorded and released my recordings almost as they happened on Bandcamp without too much thought, other than preparing artwork. I’m interested in ways we can reconnect art and life. I don’t see them as being separate and so avoid the fanfare of it being anything other than a document of my aesthetic experience. For these more recent recordings, the different guitar notes and phrases are like incoming, unpredictable field recordings rather than music being played in time. I'm really intrigued as to why these things seem to work together even though they're not in time and instead the unpredictability, the space and silence and then the clash of notes satisfies me.

In all this i wonder where I can enact my fullest human existence? in what space can i be autonomous and creatively free? and how can this impact the rest of my life and in what ways can this have any positive impact beyond the personal?


‘'Praxis' is a series of reflections based on practical art that I’ve made. The idea is to make clearer connections between what I make and what I think, bringing them closer together through critical thinking and research to underpin my practice with theory and visa versa.