I want to preface this by saying that this is a reflection, and not intended as a prescription. My avoiding certain ideas and approaches is fueled by an evolving experience, and the way I project it.

Lately I feel myself becoming disillusioned by the way music is sometimes dismissed. In particular when abstractions overshadow the raw experience of sound. Music can invite discussion of culture, genre, theory, and our personal biases, but when things like this dictate the experience, I can't help but feel like something vital is lost.

Take a band like Muse; a band I was especially fond of in my early teens. For me, I think they're a band that reflects this. I have always felt that their music, like so much I loved growing up, carries a sense of aggrandisement. I believe though that it's an awareness of abstractions surrounding the music which gives that perception, and when you are young, you have less of an awareness of these abstractions. Rather than aggrandising, it j

I wanted to shed some light on some behind-the-scenes stuff pertaining to the recent gig for Stimulacrum @ The Bee's Mouth, and also touch on some of the struggles I've been having with regard to gigging and my health.

The set was performed on a pair of Elektron synthesizers - a Monomachine and a Machinedrum UW, with custom firmware (X.01A and X.10), a MegaCMD with MCL 4.51, an Arturia Minilab 3, and a 3x3 MIDI merge device (U6 MIDI pro) to route everything. It was mixed with a Mackie Mix8 and recorded with a Zoom H4N Pro recorder from the tape output.

The routing was essentially:

1. MD in -> MCL out 1
2. MD out -> MCL in 1
3. MnM in -> U6 out 1
4. MnM out -> U6 in 1
5. MCL in 2 -> U6 out 2
6. MCL out 2 -> U6 in 2
7. MiniLab out -> U6 in 3

The MIDI merge routing was something like:

1. In 1 ->