2013...
As a year is now closed, with it a chapter of Guilty Ghosts closes along with it.
I put out TRESPASSER this year, a short collection of song - and song ideas - that I'm proud of. I made the best that I could with the tools I have available to me - dragging and dropping drum sounds, eq'ing layer upon layers of guitar noodling, beefing up countless mixes and trying to do so quickly as I could as an experiment. I was able to gain more listeners this year in doing so. That in itself is a gift nowadays and getting harder and harder to do, as there are more and more of us, creating in our homes and using the web as a great big PR machine and jukebox. But with internet based music culture, and "the state of the music industry" dominating and forcing change on this art form and how you and I receive it, I am feeling some hesitation with what that kind of freedom allows. The playing field has leveled like the fallout after a drone... songs are now being heard first (and sold) through advertising over product, and technology is making dreams easier and easier to fulfill. And for some reason we're still more keen on being trapped in the gaze of our monitors, binging and purging art made by people at an accelerated rate, reading their tweets serving a cult of personality, taking us farther and farther from the music.
I'm a culprit too.
Perhaps this is unintentionally ironic. Here I am, still using these models to proclaim an identity.
Perhaps as a reaction, I spent this year collecting ideas, images, and sounds privately. It's been a pleasure discovering new music and attempting to get closer to the sounds that have come to define my tastes and musical instincts. That's why I think 4 of my 10 favorite records released this year are reissues (Azusa Plane, Bark Psychosis, the Durutti Column, My Bloody Valentine reissues). New Guilty Ghosts sounds will reflect this as much as they will reject it.
I am confident and excited about what will happen in the new year and with my forthcoming album THE WITNESS, I hope to bring a new awareness to these ideas and reflect more on the joy of creating/being/doing/thinking/sharing the best sounds and product possible, rather than on the pressure of getting it heard.
I still hold the connection between listener/musician to be the most sacred thing of all and the thing that pushes me to create music for minute moments. I consider this to be the central defining trait about my music and I hope to preserve it in 2013.
