90 Seconds

Archive for the ‘Heg's Weird Wisdom’ Category

Chillwave/Dreambeat/Glo-fi is a fantastic genre. At this point it seems almost impossible to categorize anything now. When people ask me what kind of music 90 Seconds makes I am at a loss to give them an answer. I’m like, “Well, it’s like folksy, quasi-ambient, new wave, instrumental hip hop.” They just nod. Brooklyn based music aficionado Jakub Alexander, A&R for the Ghostly International label just calls it, “low melodic electronic stuffs” One person described this genre (or the mash-up of genres) unmemorable. It’s funny what becomes memorable. Even now there are people who have never listened to the Beatles, The Who or The Rolling Stones. There are a number who never heard The Police, The Cars or Duran Duran. There are even a few who never listened to Pearl Jam, Nirvana or The Smashing Pumpkins. These songs that are coming out are going to be their songs by their bands. These tracks will give congruity and continuity to their narrative. And I am okay with that. I envy the kid who will get all sentimental listening to Highway of Endless Dreams by M83. Maybe that same kid listens to The Dark Party remix of Napping Captain by Jogger while looking out the window of an RV on a road trip with his grandparents and he never forgets it. To me, that kid is lucky.

One of the most difficult things about being an unpaid producer is the balance between life, work, and music. When music is more than a hobby but less than a job it sits in a part of life where things can often collect dust. It doesn’t take much to derail me from making new music, or *gasp* working on old stuff. Something as simple as a computer problem can keep me away for months. And the worst part is that even after the problem is fixed it takes a long time to get back to a place where music takes a high priority because usually in the interim something else has taken its spot, and now the two are in competition. I suppose the point of this is that the time adds up, and projects like 90 Seconds can take actual decades in the making. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are an instant gratification junkie, or need regular accolades and feedback. We literally have hundreds of songs, most of which have never been heard outside of Carolyn and myself. I wonder if other bands are the same way. If so there could be potentially thousands of unheard songs by groups I love just sitting out there collecting dust in some hard drive. Sometimes you see artists release collections of b-sides and alternate takes along with the unpublished tracks that didn’t make the cut. Sometimes this kind of stuff has to be released posthumously, like that new Michael Jackson track “This Is It,” or all that old 2Pac stuff. Sometimes an artist will release their stuff as a side-project instead of trying to fit it into an already existing identity. The members of Tortoise all have interesting side-projects like that. Isotope 217 and Brokeback are both very good in their own right. Sometimes the side project becomes bigger than the original group like how Richard Dorfmeister has released more albums as Tosca than he did with Kruder & Dorfmeister. I suppose all artists need to find the sufficient motivation to get past the inertia of life. We are no different.