28/12/2019

20/20 Vision

carbinax
Blog

I thought I was being really smart when I commented to Mrs. Carbinax that 2020 vision was the perfect analogy for how I felt musically, as we head into the year 2020, until She brutally informed me it wasn’t a new analogy and everyone was using it.

It seems strange to be here…….in 2020
I remember watching Tomorrows World when I was a kid, and we were told we would all have our own personal jetpack, have a flying car, and go on vacation to Mars, by the year 2000, and now here we are on the cusp of 2020, and it doesn’t feel futuristic, even though I sit here surrounded by technology.
I feel this very technology attempting to usurp and become a substitute for organic processes, particularly in regards to music software, and how accessible some music software has become, in order to lure just about anybody, with no real serious musical aspirations beyond pressing a few buttons and have an emergent A.I. auto-compose and auto-master a basic arrangement.

We’ve all seen people in supermarkets being replaced with self-service checkouts, and telesales people being replaced with automated interactive machines which are crude now, but will no doubt become more advanced.
These things were done to cut costs.
You don’t have to pay a machine a wage. They don’t get hangovers and pull a “sickie”. They are consistent, and can be tailored to be exactingly efficient, as per your specific requirements.

The scary thing is that A.I. composed music will eventually be used to score movies, games etc……for all the same reasons, and Art is under threat from individuals whose chief concern is profit, not the preservation of the amazing tapestry of humanity and it’s rich culture of expression in all it’s myriad forms.

These concerns underlie the beginning of 2020 for me.
Machines relegate us to the sidelines in many areas such as computation, strength etc….and, like the scene in Matrix Revolutions, we need some machines, and can work “with” them, but they must never be allowed to replace us, and they can never “out-human” a human, or “out-soul” the soul.

 


I feel more clear-headed about my music than at any time since I first started due to a lot of pennies dropping and getting more revelation into some mysteries that eluded me. 
I’m more enthusiastic than at any time, because I finally think I know what I’m doing, and recently realised I was working on at least 80 tracks simultaneously.
All of this combined with the confidence gained from 3 appearances on vinyl last year and airplay on BBC radio by the awesome Mary Anne Hobbs, are a great platform to launch what I hope, will be some of my most engaging music yet. 

2019 was a relatively quiet year in terms of releases, with Above and Beyond released by Touched at the very beginning of the year, and Imagineer in May. I would usually release an album in the 2nd half, but this year I took time out to dedicate more time to learning, so in 2020, I’ll be hitting the ground running.

I have 3 albums nearing completion. Im working on all of them at the same time. I won’t release them all at once as I’m wary of swamping people with too much material at once, but just know that there is new material, and LOTS of it, coming in 2020, with a new album in the first few months of the year, and I can’t wait to share it !!