news, ideas, photos, posters, updates regarding my music

My Bandcamp: Antraeus Voltage

just between you and I...

photos from gigs & open mics

Bacup Folk Club, Stacksteads, 26 Jan 2015

photo by Alan Hough

some posters from gigs

{i was attempting to do one gig a year until my throat injury occurred. might have to skip 2015!}

2012

2013

image credit: space astronaut Illustration by nichole lillian ryan

2014

by

Antraeus de Herschia

13 February 2015

Not being able to play well enough to learn countless covers I see as an advantage for creating something original. My songs, for me, are more art than music. I would love to be able to do that but I'm not a real musician and have to accept my limitations. So, yeah, I think it's an advantage in that sense but it kind of ends there. I am not suggesting that people with more technical ability are necessarily less capable of creating original songs. Ultimately, I dig the opportunity to create something new and disctinctive. That is why it doesn't bother me that I'm no guitarist.

So, I have said many times over the past couple of decades (since writing books I suppose) that I hate art! That’s no judgement on what other people wish to do and appreciate (and I tended to be overindependent, underemotional and all-or-nothing there for a while!). I just find most of it tedious and superfluous personally. But then that is because it is mostly some abstract and surrealist art that inspires me and which I too liked to produce on occasion myself. I have mellowed somewhat now I guess. I could not see the point in reproducing portraits or landscapes when photography can do a much better job. I love photography.

OK, so now that’s out of the way, I feel much the same about music which is why I mostly listen to goth music as I find it deliciously different and combines velvety uniqueness with silky depth and sensitivity.  For me, it’s often both subtly hypnotic and powerful enough to reach my core. ‘Darkwave’ (electronic goth) is what I enjoy most these days. Idk, who can explain way they like a certain type of music more than others? Unlike art, however, I have eclectic tastes where music is concerned. I prefer to dance to funky black music and even some R&B (which I’m always embarrassed to confess)! Yeah! Ow! Actually, I wish I could do the charleston because 20s-style swing is what really gets me going (and of course we are fortunate to have the electro-swing revival today). I like a lot of 80s New Wave music and modern electronica. I still enjoy listening to some heavy rock I was into during my teens and there are various pop and dance tunes I like. And some jazz, blues, classical, acoustic, punk, reggae and even rap music I dig (I say ‘even’ because I used to just hate it whereas now I mostly hate it but have found some that I like).

There isn’t much ‘world music’ that I like but, while I enjoyed exploring classical music for some years, I find it tiresome in the main these days and find that part of me gravitating towards Spanish guitar which can be sublimely beautiful and passionate. Some of the Russian and Eastern European people I’ve known over the years have been put out, shall we say, that I can’t appreciate classical music the way they do. To them, liking modern Western music means I hate no taste. In London, I met people from various parts of the world who preferred to listen to pretty much any world music but I always felt that was an identity issue, a statement or result of feeling alienated in a foreign culture as well as a sense of solidarity with other immigrants. I used to listen to Chinese music sometimes because I was passionate about ancient Chinese culture but even that faded eventually. So I can see how an affinity with certain cultures can also result in appreciating the music they produce.

I was such a prolific songwriter throughout my 20s that I hardly listened to music at all. I just wrote and then enjoyed the buzz of playing new songs for months on end. Being an introvert, essentially, I had no real desire or compunction to perform and did so sparingly. I also didn’t have the bread or opportunity to do much with what I wrote.

I like folk music even less than I like hip-hop and have found myself in conflict with a few folk musicians who have scoffed at the simplicity of my songs, not to mention my lack of musical knowledge and dexterity! In fact, the majority of musicians I’ve met in my time have been unbearably egotistical which is one of the reasons I enjoy going over to Bacup Folk Club where no one is really like that. I found that the Fox & Goose in Hebden is the opposite and I’d eventually had enough of the musical snobbery I encountered there. How dare I rain on their parade with my charmingly simplistic and melodic songs! Cleverness and complexity alone can create soulless music as I see it. Anyway, it is a matter of taste of course but, since moving to Yorkshire, I have realised that music written purely from the soul is threatening to these people. I mean, one may have little or no musical ability at all yet the soul can manifest magic! The same applies to art. Beyond our human egos the potential for creation is a universal gift.

In the meantime, I have been reacquainting myself with my early songs and realise why I have idealised them for several years. As I was telling a friend, it’s because I was quite imaginative back then and words poured out of me, songs that had to be created, that created themselves too really. I had no idea what I was doing and could hardly even play the guitar (still can’t really – I mean I’m very limited as to what I can play). On some level, I was looking to David Bowie and Roy Harper as reference points for songwriting but it was so subconscious that the impulse to express something unique from within the depths of my being, to manifest some magic, remained the driving force. I have always worked this way but, over the years, I have become more conscious and aware as well as more mellow and dull which has dried up my artistic inspiration for the most part. I have moved on, regrettably. I was always an artist first and I still don’t refer to myself as a musician or a writer because I don’t consider myself to be much good at either form of expression! All I have is my creativity and depth. And my formative years were spent locked away in my room drawing (no not literally ‘locked’ as I had to explain to someone once).

I’d love to be able to play the guitar much better. I’d love to learn Spanish guitar! And violin and saxophone. Not gonna happen. No time (or money). It’s kind of a shame yet I am reminded that it’s my lack of musical knowledge that has enabled me to retain a degree of originality which is what is most precious to me personally. And, like, I just wish my music was more insane, more unique, more weird, more discordant – more gothic, really. But, while such an aspiration is helpful, I just don’t seem to have it in me to go off the rails. Would I have happily sacrificed my mind for a chance to write songs like Syd Barrett? No. Haha. It feels like I have been slowly grieving for that exhilarating purity and spontaneity I lost years ago. That’s where it’s at for me personally despite my dedication to spiritual growth which that part of me continues to resist. Because, on the outside, in the world of appearances humans are so attached (and addicted) to, well, the Tao is bland and characterless. Surrendering and letting go of form is OK up to a point but I’m not losing my music again for anything or anyone even if that was not my life path and the cosmos has tried to steer me back onto the original course. That’s where I draw the line and I will never back down as I regret ever starting these books, and losing the greatest source of joy in my life, however valuable they may be to the world as the masses slowly awaken.

Over the years, I have observed that, however technically proficient they may be, musicians who are adept at learning other people’s songs often possess that ability instead of being able to create original material or else they may lose that potential in the process of entraining themselves so well in the other direction. Obviously, it would be ridiculous to suggest that this applies to all talented musicians since some are so gifted in both fields. When people go out locally to see some live music they generally want to hear songs with which they are familiar.

There are degrees of originality in that the whole song can be distinctive or it may shamelessly mimic a style with no intention of birthing something unique, yet it may still be markedly different from other songs written in the same style. A song may draw upon more than one style for inspiration. A song is put together instinctively yet filtered by the songwriter’s standards of unique expression as well as quality. I have my own standards of originality. If a song is too bland, too samey, too much like other songs out there I am likely to bin it. It has to be as organic as possible. Kind of like it could only possibly come through me, no one else. Not that I was ever consciously doing this in years past because I was just doing it, just creating something out of the resources bursting out of me, bursting insistently and compellingly into flower.

That does not necessarily mean I will not enjoy listening to songs if they genuinely convey something of the songwriter’s soul, thoughts and experiences, musically and lyrically. If it’s organic and it came through you then I celebrate that and I want to look through that window into your soul – at least once – no matter how it my reflect another style. If it’s good, it’s good! If it’s not so good, I’m not obliged to like it or pretend to like it! I might like one or some of your songs and not others. I may not enjoy all that you write and I accept that we are different, that we have different things to share and different approaches to creating songs.

I wouldn’t even listen to my own songs at home because that is not the kind of thing I enjoy on a regular basis. But I do rate my own independent style and eccentric blossoms for their beauty, hue and perfume, the more intense the better. Let’s just say that’s what I’m into and, sure, I will be excited if any or even every song that you play and have written has something special and unusual to offer that touches my soul and engages me profoundly. I am not easily roused. It’s vibrational. I feel very deeply and simply do not respond unless there is a potency that penetrates to my core. I’m not interested in mental fodder and clever techniques as ends in themselves. I would rather to one chord and three words repeated passionately or soulfully but coming from a place beyond the rational mind, rising up from the depths. But, if I’m not passionate about your music, don’t take it personally as it is a matter of taste, of what one is into and likes to hear. We all appreciate different things so never take offence if someone isn’t quite into the same thing as you. Don’t take it as criticism.

I wish I was a better musician so I could make my songs richer and more sophisticated and improve the listening experience (providing I didn’t lose their distinct sound in the process). But I’m just a philosopher and humble artist who has written songs that are expressions of my soul yet lacking in musical aptitude. Each of us has our forte and songwriting may or not be your first love. Perhaps you are better at playing along with and enhancing songs as a musician. For myself, it’s all I can do.