I will return back to Prague with hand luggage filled with inexpensive Chinese microphones, made in the 2010s. They will be used for recording the overdubs for my Prague band's forthcoming homerecorded album.
I'll also bring an old Kaoss Pad KP2, because I suspect it may come in useful for more experimental ventures.
The stuff that is still sitting in enormous boxes in my Prague apartment hallway (because it's too difficult to open with only one arm) includes the following:
Rokit KRK 8 (pair)
The rationale behind this is to reclaim some form of creative practice, that is beyond the little I occasionally noodle at on Logic after a day at work. I want to really commit to a routine of making and refining things. To be present with my thoughts regarding music. What music is, how to approach it in novel ways, to find means of expression through sound that goes beyond the mundane. The interactions I've had with you and Simon over the last two years have brought this issue to the surface of my mind: the time you ditched synthesis completely to read Nietzsche (or was it Plato?) being one particular example of how one can change course with regards one's influences, actively shaking up the established routines in search of some new way of working.
It is interesting the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. Stories which we then tell others, in the hope that they will believe us. I think for a long time I considered myself a 'professional musician and producer', which was sometimes true, but also 'frequently unemployed' may have also applied - something I was at pains to leave out of the story I told people about myself.
It doesn't always have to be negative, either. Recently, I realised that rather than being a 'lapsed creative' - someone who used to do creative, artistic things but that had somehow become sidetracked by work - I was in fact a 'teacher'... someting I wasn't entiely comfortable admitting until the last year or so. The history, geography and literature delivery at Duhovka finally feels valid in its own right, rather than being classified as some compromised deal I have made with capitalism, in order to be able to afford my rent.
And it is relentlessly creative: real-time improvisation and manifestation of intellectual material in linguistic - and, you guessed it - worksheet form, with a live audience (Kvinta B, for example) providing an unpredictable and constantly evolving landscape for learning... which is far more engaging and satisfying than any concert. The audience participates in the event, because they are the learners and therefore play an active role - rather than the passive one concert goers adopt at gigs.
The big 'but' remains, though: despite the frequent joy of teaching (and finally appreciating it), the story I tell myself about myself still contains traces of a creative longing that goes beyond the snap, crackle and pop of the classroom. And this is something I am fighting through treacle to honour.
Like many, I self-sabotage my own output by giving myself excuses: "I can't mix because I don't have monitors," or "I can't record because I don't have microphones," or "I can't edit this evening because I've eaten too much pasta and want to fall alseep to The White Lotus,". All of these excuses are pathetic: things can be mixed on cheap wired earbuds, samples can be captured on crunchy mono feeds from smartphones, and pasta hangovers are perfect for powering through the night on an editing marathon. However, to fully remove such thoughts, I have gone ahead and purchased monitors anyway. There can be no more excuses.
The looper and mixer, combined with the Kaoss Pad brought from Portrush, are more for the sort of live jam / ambient experiments you have introduced me to through Retrospektiva, Noise Kitchen Open Jam and the Library performances. I need to find fresh new ways of entering into this world of texture and ambience. It is especially necessary given the very mainstream and MOR nature of my Prague band, which makes music I enjoy playing - but wouldn't choose to listen to myself. I am a closeted avant-garde artist, living the fake life of a melodic singer in an anthemic rock band. That is the story I tell myself. But is it true? Time to find out: and so to Thomann to spend a month's salary on things that will help me remove all doubt. Perhaps in time I'll discover that both realities are true, and will just have to live with it.
You mention music you're listening to. I seem to have settled on late-night BBC Radio 3 stuff for now: weird classical and orchestral pieces. This stuff seems to transcend the usual 'here is a beat now here is another layer of something on top' composition that occurs in so much music. Thanks for the Scriabin recommendation, I'm listening now.
I'm beginning to wonder if recorded music should embrace the values of conceptual art more than the cold, predictable stacking of Logic stems. Final mixes should be committed to tape and buried in the ground. Smoke should be blown over the tape heads during mastering (like Lee Scratch Perry did). Things need to be put through spaces and re-recorded multiple times to create new, composite atmospheres. Everything should be in mono. AI should then be used to make a glitchy, incorrect stereo extraction, before putting it back into mono again. Maybe I'm being too conceptual and pretentious. When I ran the half-marathon, I listened to so much Modeselektor that just making four-to-the-floor dance music would be equally acceptable!