I remember standing at the station waiting for the 7.10am train to London. The tannoy announced its imminent arrival and I stood to my feet, reaching instinctively for my bag before realising something strange. Rather than one bag, I had several. All of them were different sizes and variations; tattered brown suitcases on their last legs leaned over plastic carry on cases with bright zips and padlocks. There must have been ten heaped in a pile about my feet. I looked up to see the train arriving and panic began to bubble as I understood that all of them were mine and there was no way of carrying all this stuff onboard. To make matters worse, I discovered that I wasn’t wearing any shoes and as the train squealed its way into the station and the platform clattered with purposeful feet, I began to desperately pull items from suitcases to find some footwear in a futile attempt to convince myself that catching this train was still an option. By now, you’ve probably realised that this is a dream and thankfully so did I. So as the train inevitably pulled away, I dragged myself out of my subconscious station somnambulism back into the real world between my bed sheets, grateful for 6am drizzle outside my windows and not a London Northwestern in sight. Just a dream. Probably the 11pm leftover Quattro Formaggio pizza raid. But the feeling didn’t fade as I made coffee and ploughed on with my day. The imagery stuck with me. And I knew why.
Let’s talk about stuff. In the western world, stuff is probably our greatest achievement, only matched by the advertising tactics that convince us we don’t have enough of it. Everyone loves stuff. We live for it. Our culture is buoyed by maintaining a perpetual dissatisfaction that only more stuff can apparently rectify. Still unsatisfied with life? Don’t feel like people are noticing you? It’s because you don’t have enough stuff. Jill has more stuff than you and look how happy and popular Jill is. Be more like Jill. Buy more stuff.
For those of you reading this who aren’t musically inclined, let me tell you: nowhere is the battle for stuff more prevalent than in the vulnerable ambitions of musicians and artists. The cargo ship is set to capsize in calm seas with the sheer volume of materialistic musical possibilities, all of which offer the golden key to future doors of success. Your mix sounds weak? You need this plugin. Your fans aren’t listening? You need this pedal. Your music isn’t signed? You probably need to upgrade your outboard compressor. As someone who has fallen foul of the, in my defence, stellar marketing campaigns of major music dealers over the years, I can tell you now, the difference was negligible, the fans didn’t notice and Decca still haven’t come knocking.
This is all, hopefully, not revolutionary news to many of us. All this materialism feels good but deep down we probably know we’re being duped. Stuff doesn’t satisfy and inevitably won’t provide the quick fixes in life we’re looking for. The problem is the subtlety of it all. We think we’re free when actually we’re still carrying way too much luggage onto the platform. This was my problem. I wasn’t a hoarder or particularly materially motivated and yet I suddenly knew that getting to my destination was still being hindered by the stuff I had, not helped by it. I was pretty sure the dream was a God prompt. I was in danger of missing the train. Simplicity was calling. I needed to edit.
And I did. And I’m still doing it. We’re not minimalists in our house by any stretch of the imagination but we’re definitely on the journey towards being essentialists. Buying less, reusing more, first name terms with the charity shop staff, it’s all happening. It’s truly liberating and way more challenging than I have time to blog about here. But interestingly, it was also in the areas of art and music that I began to notice a more than coincidental crossover. There was, it transpired, something truly creative about having less.
Acclaimed film director Orson Welles is quoted as saying “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation.” Let’s let that sink in. Limitation has a positive, if not essential, impact upon your artistic output.
I think this applies to stuff. And I’ve noticed it has implications for music creation too. More on that later.
But let’s start with stuff. I have a synthesiser in my studio. It has more sounds and sonic options than I will ever exhaust and even if I do, I can load several more sound library gigabytes to keep me menu diving for another 50 years. It’s practically endless. Amazing right? Well oddly enough, no. I don’t find it very inspiring to work with if I’m being honest. I can create a sound that I like, but what if we did this on Oscillator 1? And changed the wave table on Oscillator 3? And how about that modulation curve? What reverb shall I use? I have 20 waiting to go. There’s a built in sampler, you haven’t used that yet. Maybe you should? Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed and bored. I’ll just use a preset. Ok, here’s several thousand to choose from.
Choice paralysis is the term and as creatives, it can be crushing. When there are too many options, there’s always the possibility that the sound around the corner is better than the one you’re using. I’m no Luddite; I LOVE the possibilities that we enjoy in modern music production (with the uneasy exception of blossoming AI influences…) but all this endless choice can, if not managed, conspire to remove the joy of building something beautiful. Maybe some people enjoy this process of sonic Forth Bridge painting. Not me.
Welles has a point. Less options equals more art. Not only is choice paralysis negated, decision making aided and productivity streamlined, we are also forced to think our way out of creative corners with original solutions. Happily this means we’ll potentially stumble over something interesting that we haven’t found before. The likelihood is we’ll find inspiration within our limits, new sounds from solving new problems. Mostly because we have to.
And yet there is this great lie that is fed to us is that without endless kit, you’re not really an artist. And then when you buy said endless kit, you’re not really an artist unless you upgrade the endless kit. Those digital converters will make all the difference. That tube mic will make you sound like a fifties icon. It probably won’t. The truth is being stretched. It’s mostly just money, time and disappointing shortcuts across muddy fields. I’m not advocating using rubbish tools when proper equipment is needed, don’t misunderstand me. There are of course advantages in having decent, expensive gear that sounds good and performs well. But ultimately, what really matters is the sound you’re carrying, not necessarily the bag you’re carrying it with.
Listeners go misty eyed over vintage recordings of Ella Fitzgerald or Yehudi Menuhin where the studios had one microphone, in one room, in a very good position with an astonishing talent on the end. At the other end of the spectrum, early Detroit Techno and House pioneers took cheap Roland drum machines, rejected by the musical community of the day, and forged revolutionary musical hammers on these humble tools that are still thumping in the underground raves today. And recently, Damon Albarn came clean about using GarageBand to record parts of the latest Blur album and shared with an incredulous Zane Lowe that the main riff for a Gorillaz track was the ‘Rock One’ preset from the humble Omnichord. (Clint Eastwood for anyone who didn’t see the viral clip of Zane losing it…) There are countless examples. The point is this: limitation is no barrier to exceptional creativity. And this is great news for all of us.
And I notice that limitation can also have a deeply positive impact on the music we make. We don’t have time for a deep dive into a vastly complex subject of taste, tone and musical nuance but when I consider the devastating pain of Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor, so simple a child could play it, or the mesmerising minimalism of Steve Reich or the viscerally raw wanderings of Thelonius Monk, I’m reminded that sometimes, less is most certainly more. Let’s not get into a debate about John Cage’s 4.33, the point is that deliberate restriction, whether by instrument, score or structure can be the very vehicle needed to convey the most poignant message. As Debussy said, music is the space between the notes. Emptiness, space, discipline, restriction, is crucial.
And so editing has become a friend. In a world of stuff, it’s a dirty word. The antithesis of western society. Simplicity is resistance, it’s protest; a rally against the confusion of consumerism. It’s far deeper than just aesthetic, or even for that matter ascetic, minimalism. It’s a heart attitude to prioritise the necessary over the noise, the simple over the surplus. And in a world of excess, I’m convinced it’s a route to freedom. I’m grateful that a lifestyle decision spilled over, almost unconsciously, into my latest musical project; just me at a piano with a few inexpensive microphones, the birds outside and room to breathe within the music. It’s limited, edited, raw and I can safely say, the most enjoyable and satisfying project I’ve ever completed. It was not easy; limitation doesn’t always translate into comfort and the work was gruelling and long. But not having the extra baggage this time meant I definitely caught the train. You can listen to the journey here:
“Full Circle” is out now on all streaming platforms and Bandcamp
MONAKI 
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