Like many a brave soul before me, I figured it’s time to start a blog. I never really planned to do that on this site, which I felt was best left as a fairly minimal showcase of my work with some contact details and links for those who were interested in hiring me as a composer or listening to my music. That’s still primarily what this whole thing is obviously about. Recently though, I have felt like ‘acting so damn mysterious’ (to quote Jessie J) isn’t necessarily my bag. I do have opinions, thoughts and feelings about pretty much anything, and while I’m likely to keep most of those to myself, I’d quite like to share some of my thoughts about music, art, culture, life and anything else that seems relevant and not too polarising.
What inspired me to start this blog at this moment in time? Firstly, a general weariness with the increasing centralisation of the Internet to several apps and websites whose algorithms call the shots on what we see or don’t see. Disentangling the “winner-takes-all” nature of our current tech is a collective challenge for society; in the meantime I decided it’d be nice to have a nerdy little online retreat from all that which a few people discover now and then (welcome to you if so!). A blog that exists purely in its own space and doesn’t jump in the algorithmic boxing ring. Hardly an original concept.
The other big thing that’s inspired me to get writing again is the continuing encroachment of AI text-on-demand services such as ChatGPT. I’ve dabbled in copywriting as one of my many sidegigs over the course of my freelancing career and it’s not an exaggeration to say the work in that realm has dried up. I think it will return with a vengeance in future when corporations and startups realise that regurgitating each other’s thinkpieces isn’t going to result in a particularly attentive readership, but at the moment I kind of miss it! As the owner of my music and website, I’m hardly going to make myself redundant in favour of AI, so I can continue with this writing gig forever, I guess.
Well that’s a sort of opening mission statement from which I’ll doubtlessly drift massively off course over time. The other probable outcome is that I’ll lack the discipline to update the blog at all.
Anyway, greetings, and here’s something I released recently: