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MIKKEL METAL

I guess all artists want to try something new from time to time - to stray away from the usual patterns and go somewhere else. And, at least in principle, the listener or viewer will display a positive attitude towards this. Yes - artistic change and development is a good thing.

However, the reality is a little more complicated than that. Very often fans of, say a specific musical act, are very conservative. They've locked onto a specific way they want their artist to sound like, and don't always welcome the change. And then again change isn't always good. Sometimes it just smells too much of "trying to do something different - just to do something different". And moreover when an artist sits down and consciously decides to do something new, the result just might not be that good. Often there's a very good reason why people have built their name around a certain sound or a certain expression.

So what is the conclusion? Fans: Give your favourite artist some space to experiment. Artist: Go ahead and experiment, but remember to remain a hard judge on yourself and don't fall in love with the new, just because it's new. This is slightly too educational and perhaps also not very controversial, but still worth repeating.

In the world of electronic music there's an awful lot of labeling going on. And labels come in very handy for some rough categorization in a world with an ever growing pool of electronic music. But very often, people are a bit sloppy and imprecise. As a frequent user of many websites about electronic music I often raise my eyebrows. "This is deep house?" Well, not the way I understand it. But luckily you can always hear for yourself since there's audio all over the web nowadays.

Knowing that there might be disagreement about the definitions, I still would wish that people were just a little more precise in their labeling of different kinds of electronic music. Speaking for myself, it only took a few releases into my career in electronic music before I was put in the box saying, "dub-techno". And I've kinda never been able to escape it. I guess I'm ok with this, even though I've made lots of tracks that aren't dub-techno to me (but sure there have always been, and still is, a firm core of dub-techno in my releases).

Much more than throwing around labels and references, I prefer when somebody listens carefully and tries to describe what's going on in the music. I love a reviewer that really manages to tell to me what he or she hears.

Finally a few words about the track presented here. It's called "Totemo". I made it in 2009 and added some final elements in June 2010. It came into being as an attempt to have fun and do things just a little differently. I made some new sounds with my little hand-held recorder. You'll hear children's musical instruments, my voice doing just random stuff, domestic samples and more. I also tried to make a different rhythmic structure than normal.

In the end, I guess it's not that difficult to hear that I made this track (assuming of course you are famiilar with my productions). I'm afraid the melodies and overall aesthetics reveal me. But hey - nothing wrong with that. I just hope somebody out there will enjoy it.

mikkel metal - process part 219 (totemo) by modyfier