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abortive downtempo 8

by sonja berlin-jones

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abortive downtempo 8 27:55
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SUNDAY 6th JANUARY

Can't say I am crazy about this one. But it does have its good point. It resolutely ploughs the same furrow for 28 minutes. It's like the final track on Cluster's Curiosum - one of my benchmarks of genius-standard calibration etc. Just as it takes guts to be gentle and kind - so it takes guts to be this quiet & easy-listening for so long.

Tragically it pulls out one of the ambient cliches - a running-water background - always sure to drive my more elderly listeners to the loo before the 28 minutes are up. But at least you will be confident that you're not missing a good bit.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

In the world of "experimental music" everything seems to have got trapped into one of about five different corners - everything is either noise or drone or stupidity and it is all always very boring. Sometimes after a day hard at the experimental coal-face I come up to the surface and listen to a bit of easy listening and realise that it's the tune-makers who are really trying to do something original.

If you copy someone else's tune you get sued. But if you make the same boring droning noises as millions of others have made for decades, you get a book written about you by Simon Reynolds. I am about ready for a big change of direction. This track was almost a harsh noise thingy. I am in the mood to explode. But first you must lull your audience.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

The plan is that my pieces will get quieter and quieter for the next few days. I might even just do the same piece over and over - each time quieter than before. Then after my experimental masterpiece of a completely silent album - tadah a monstrous harsh noise ear-holocaust.. It'll be like Dylan picking up the electric guitar.

This piece is playing right now and I am growing very fond of it - like I always do - like an old pet gets to be a bit of a nuisance shitting everywhere and being sick and then one day the vet says she's got three more weeks to live and your heart breaks a bit and the cat just wants to lie in a quiet part of the house undisturbed and you come to her often and gently stroke her fur back to its youthful neatness.

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You can say this piece is too quiet - I think I might say it myself - but the house is very quiet and I am straining to hear everything that is happening inside the music - it's the only time I ever do actually listen. Today I had an exciting musical proposition - which is always nice - especially if it comes from a stranger - someone getting in touch because they like your music and not out of friendship or anything musically meaningless.

Details to follow. But it's all going to be okay. I've only been at this music malarky for a few months and yes, Pitchfork haven't contacted me about an interview yet - but I do really feel that one day your dear old Sonja will be a bit of a household name in one or two households outside of this household and you will be proud to say that you were my very first fan - and for quite a long while, my only one.

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Yes this is an okay piece of music - but you'd need to know I am capable before you could admit it had happened - and no one has that confidence yet - ideally the thing to do is kill myself or walk out into a river like Virginia Woolf or Jeff Buckley - you'd need to hear other people say it before you could dare repeat it - and there are so few good people leading us - in Britain right now, absolutely no one.

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released January 6, 2013

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sonja berlin-jones Southampton, UK

katharinebeastman.bandcamp.com

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