Thursday 20 October 2011

The Music?

Have you notice that finding music these days can be a real time consumer? Those hedonistic days of hanging out in a record shop with a fresh batch of white labels and endless high quality records seem like a far and distant dream. I have to admit that searching for new music in 2011 doesn't exactly fill me with the same kind of excitement. The level of quality control that vinyl had cannot be matched in today's free for all, with producing and releasing open to literally everyone. On one hand it is great that producing is available for more people to try, music IS for everyone, but I think some where along the line people forgot about the quality control. It's great that so many people clearly have a passion for their music, be it making it or buying, but I do find the market flooded with tracks that really wouldn't have ever made it on to vinyl. And it is for this reason that I can really struggle to find one decent track some days .... More often than not, it would be quicker to write some new music in the studio than trawl through a gazillion poorly produced loops.


Download stores can be tiresome, with recommendations in a slight sub genre of their own which tends not be the sound you're into. It feels like the person doing them is just going for the things that they are into, rather than coming from a business point of view and offering up a broader range. The top 100 charts are something I stay away from altogether, you don't want to be playing identikit sets to everyone else in the world do you? So ruling out those two obvious mediums of tune hunting, what I'm left with is trawling through lots of stuff and hoping that I will randomly fall upon something that really floats my boat. If you think about it and take away the recommendations, charts and suggested new releases it is actually pretty damn difficult to come across all the other new stuff that isn't staring you in the face! How do you come across it all? Time, luck or not at all?


The way I tackle my search for music, which might sound a little obvious(!) is with my ears. By that I mean I don't go for the really blatant producers, who's big at the time, who's sitting at number one or the biggest labels etc. In fact my collection of music is made up of so many different names and labels that every time I shop I discover a new one, or two, or three. This takes a real dedication to clicking on and listening to names you don't know and a lot of other sub genres. I've never really been about following trend, or sticking with one label. I enjoy digging deep and discovering things that not everyone is playing. So with tune hunting on the mind, I'm off to give my ears a good work out, fingers crossed it will be a successful day.