Our articles about the LA-based pop band “Lights Over Paris” have attracted a lot of attention. Read the articles below to see why.
Style, black boxes, and a new project
“The most important thing in life is style. That is the style of one’s existence the characteristic mode of one’s actions is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing. The point is this happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content. And underscores the primacy of style. It is content or rather the consciousness of content that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us to move us it is style that makes us care.”
— Tom Robbins (Another Roadside Attraction)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but we (all of us) function solely through stereotypes. Bear with me:
Imagine driving in a car. The vast majority of us don’t have any real idea how a combustion engine works, or the inner mechanisms triggered when you turn the steering wheel. Fortunately, we don’t have to – we press the gas pedal and the car moves forward. It’s (most of the time) a wonderfully functional black box. Like a car, the myriad moving parts of any ‘thing’ (your endocrine system, photosynthesis, Yanni – anything) are complex and co-dependent. We grasp these things by stereotyping them – dumbing them down into a form we can comprehend. It’s a survival mechanism that allows our brains to process the least possible amount of information to get the most relevant output. It’s pretty cool (except, of course, when dickheads use it to discriminate).
Like it or not, this is particularly relevant to artists. Your audience defines, brands, and remembers you based on the strength of your style. The Beach Boys have surf rock – Mark Rothko has color fields – Wes Anderson has his nouveau formalism. Their style is their calling card, and their audience immediately identify their work before their name is attached to it.
I’m a fan of music – all kinds. From Radiohead to Messiaen to Garth Brooks (seriously – I put on ‘Ropin’ The Wind‘ the other day and was mildly horrified that I knew every. damn. word.). My musical output over the past few years has reflected my taste – my last record had folk, metal, reggae, and country. And while I think I’ve developed a good lyrical voice, I clearly haven’t yet settled on a single musical medium to work within. It’s something that I think would improve the cohesion of my longer format work, and make my material easier to market. So, as my next full length is starting to take shape, it’s something I want to address now.
Play to your strengths
I could write an entire metal record. It would be fun – I’d bite the heads off of some doves and pop some fake blood packets. But it would only be a genre study – I would be on the outside, looking in. I’ve got to start with what I’m good at and work from there. So – off of my two previous LPs, here’s a collection of what I think my best, and most musically consistent tracks are – kind of a ‘best of Echo Bloom – the formative years’.
They have a lot in common – all are acoustic, two are arranged in two part harmony with harmonica, and all have a similar lyrical feel (more impressionistic, and painterly). The musical style suits both my voice and my guitar skills. The lyrical style is consistent with something I admire about my favorite songs. They manage to be specific, yet still provide a space for the audience to personalize the experience.
Previously I’ve worked in more of an additive fashion, slowly building songs over a period of several months. One thing I thought might give this project a more consistent feel was to iterate off a centralized corpus – the thinking being that all further iterations will retain an imprint of the initial influence, giving giving the final work a shared cohesion (maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t). I’ve been doing automatic writing and recording exercises off and on for about 6 months – I’ll share with you the top music fragments this week and then next week when I’m off in the wilds of Montana, hopefully my writing fragments will automagically appear Wednesday morning.
SO. Here are the rough demos that have risen to the top (seriously – these are like pre-demo cocktail napkin doodles). These pieces all seem to fit together melodically, and I’m pretty confident they will sit together in a similar harmonic landscape.
Thoughts about the process or the content welcome!
Comments
My favorites of the new content are “Soldier” and the open tuning instrumental track. Really the gems of the litter there for me.
Anyway, all I can say about your ideas on process is AGREED! Do that new record already
I think you’re discussion on Style is pretty on point. I would add that having style is definitely a defining factor to people’s creations and allowing them to be more recognizable. The examples you mentioned (Beach Boys, Wes Anderson) have a level of honesty to their style too. All the style in the world won’t help dishonest work. I think Jackson Pollock was probably one of the more visible artists to struggle with this.