Sonic Gardens: October '23



Inspiration has been slow to come this week. Tired, frustrated, feeling the weight of the world and the shifting energies that arise as the seasons, planets and weather transition. Yet, there is still music. Exciting, captivating, energizing even if not leading me to words for y’all to peruse. Alas I sat in my head long enough and to the document I arrive.


Funnily enough, and perhaps something that will prove to be a theme of these SG missives, I’m currently listening to an awful record. Why, do you ask? Well, I added it to my Apple music library at some point. There is an interesting power in sitting through an album. Perhaps it’s just me indulging my stubborn side? I know I will delete it immediately upon completion, but I will sit through it and reflect. What happened to hiphop? Am I just getting old? Is it my sobriety that makes me look upon this sleazy, intoxicated sound differently? If you are dying to know what album I’m talking about, hit me up.


I do my best to not dismiss modern rap. I accept that I am older and that my lack of substance intake is certainly something that can shape how my ears hear. It’s deeper than that though. I’ve shifted my mentality towards life. It’s not all dark and gloomy, even if that is what it sounded like above. There is a beauty to life that can’t be described, captured, or even written about. Hope. Even in these strange times.



I listened to the first Reflection Eternal album recently and was thrilled by memories and the hype of that era of rap. Its praise is certainly not unjust. Hi-Tek is a supremely skilled practitioner and Talib hadn’t lost his way (has anyone heard the latest collaboration with Madlib?). I wonder about that time often. These days it feels very awkward to speak of an “underground” scene. Is that a function of the internet? Do we give Run The Jewels the credit? Was there a more profound moment of collaboration and destruction of walls than El and Mike colliding, hearing T.I. on an El-P banger? I thought it at the time and still seem to view it as the turning point.


But what good does it really do? Who cares if you are underground or mainstream when there is really just one lane: Big tech. Do you play the game or not? Not all sounds are meant for the masses, to be commodified and neatly packaged. But the distribution today is so different. I fear what that looks like should Bandcamp crumble. Will something else arise? Will artists cease trusting and just do it via their own websites? Many of the most vital and new won’t have those resources. Why is patronage of the arts a lost societal trait?



On a brighter note, there was massive news out of the Brainfeeder camp this week: Austin Peralta’s Endless Planets is getting its first ever vinyl release! Seriously couldn’t have gotten better news that day. What does that say about me? A reissue of a modern Jazz masterpiece was the highlight of my day? Music is in my soul, I love this world of sounds, the webs, the upliftment, the power.


That’s the key to continuing to seek, to why I listen in full even when I’m unimpressed. You never know what you might miss. I can’t discard something without considering it first. Even if it’s just for one song, shit even one second, one note. As I’ve returned to collecting mp3’s I’ve taken to creating edits, chopping out pieces of songs I don’t like, keeping what I do. Is that blasphemy? Arrogance? Am I just co-opting the vision? Whatever, it’s for my personal library - I’ll listen to what I want.


Yes and no. I do listen a lot. But I wonder sometimes is it what I really want to be listening to? What would it be like to have the same rotation of albums that bring you joy and to return to them incessantly? Henry Rollins talks about his listening habits, referring to carbohydrate listening and protein listening. It always resonated with me. Of course I don’t have the luxury of his situation to be entrenched. Essentially he spends his weekdays digging into new to him sounds and his weekends are for the things he knows and loves, going to such an extreme that sometimes he listens to the same 7” for hours.



It’s all a journey I suppose and I’m on my own. I can find inspiration and ideas anywhere, but I have to find my own path. I’m happy with my listening habits, the sounds that cross my ears, new and old, random and selected. There is always motivation to have the newest, dopest cuts for my radio show, but really I just try to let the music do the selecting. I was asked recently by a fellow DJ if my show was always freestyled and after considering the question I had to say basically yes. I have a handful of songs in my head that I plan to play and a bag of wax with me, but once 1 o’clock has struck and I’m on the air, all plans are tossed aside and it’s about what speaks up.


To that end, and to continue another theme I hope maintains as I log more of these columns, I would like to share with you a piece from a recent show that really excited me. It wasn’t pre-planned, a couple of the songs present I hadn’t heard in months. At some points in this 14 minute collage there are four songs playing on top of each other. It starts and ends with some funky Jazz - new and old. It features a song from the Beatles, an ambient soundscape, some haunting billy woods vocals and something from Carlos Niño that was brand new to my ears. Download it and let me know what you think!



The beauty is for all of us to travel our own sonic trail. Hopefully that includes some discovery, some enjoyment, some soothing, some ecstatic and some loud sounds. Even if you are having an off week press play via whatever sound delivery system you prefer and drift away. There is magic being performed, created and released constantly - we truly are in an age of amazing manifestation. I wonder why that is?

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