Summer vacation is over and I’m back!
I’ve been away for the last few months recharging my batteries. It takes a lot of work producing a show like solipsistic NATION and, quite frankly, I had hit the wall. Constantly listening to new music, reading music blogs, posting on social media—I just don’t think it was healthy for me to be doing that nearly every free moment of each and every day.
Let me expand on that a little bit. It’s not just that I was listening to too much music, I was listening to too much bad music. People send me a lot of free music to review for the show and because people were kind enough to send me their music I felt obligated to listen to it. All of it. Unfortunately, statistically speaking, a lot of it is terrible. It’s just the way it is. And I have to listen to a lot of it to find the good stuff, the stuff I feature on solipsistic NATION.
I don’t mind mediocre music because at least with mediocre music is not terrible, it’s just mediocre. But bad music wounds me. And it makes me angry. You might be thinking to yourself, hey, it’s just music—get a grip. That’s true, but music, good music, is important to me. You don’t produce over 300 shows of electronic music unless it is important to you. And so bad music infuriates me because not only is it wasting my time but it feels like a physical assault. Presumably the people who make bad music have heard good music. Why not emulate the good rather than subject us with their shit?
I can’t do it any more. It’s just exhausting. So I’m changing my policy. I’ll give the bad music 30 or 60 seconds of my time but if it’s clearly not getting any better I’m just going to skip past that track like everyone else in the world does.
I’ve spent the last few months actively not listening to music and slowly letting my soul heal. I’ve kept my social media and blog reading to a bare minimum, gathering my strength. But now I’m tanned, I’m rested, and I’m ready to take on the world!
I want to thank you for listening and your continued support. I’ve got a lot of big plans for solipsistic NATION and I’ll need your help. We’ll talk about that more on next week’s show but in the meantime, if you’d like to help support solipsistic NATION, tell a friend about the show. Tweet about solipsistic NATION on Twitter. Flatter us of Flattr or purchase a solipsistic NATION t-shirt.
Now let’s get to what’s important—great electronic music!
Today on solipsistic NATION we’ll also hear a special live in-studio performance by wAgAwAgA. We also talk to wAgAwAgA about launching his own record label, Cooking Up Records; his growth as an artist from album to album; and traveling the world for the field recordings he features on those albums.
Robbie Martin from Record Label Records first turned me onto wAgAwAgA with the release of wAgAwAgA’s Midnight Sampler album on Robbie’s label (check out our showcase of Record Label Records here). wAgAwAgA’s album was lush, dub-heavy and dense with the sounds of nature and world music. In fact, Midnight Sampler made my list of one of the top 10 albums for 2012. wAgAwAgA has since moved in new directions and his music has become more restrained, kind of minimal, really. But all those elements that I love in his music is still there, which you’ll hear on today’s live set. I think you’re really going to dig it!
Join us again next week when we’ll showcase Tripswitch‘s label, Section Records (check out Tripswitch’s live set here). I think. I’m still getting my ducks in a row.
See you then!