Through 2014 — or, generally since Napster brought about a new hobby into my life — I’ve been scouring the internet for that right piece of music esoterica sink itself into my ear drums. The hunt is typically worth the stalk, shot and sting. But all about the hunt. That build up. Aside from beguiling the notion of thinking like someone else, as music is a non-visual art and entirely based in the internal listener (to begin). In August, Billboard.com interviewed the reclusive-ish timbre-warp producer, SOPHIE and one answer in particular stood out to me.
Billboard.com: What genre do you coin yourself?
SOPHIE: Advertising
Then, you throw yourself into the thickly piled layers of grinded chocolate (daily, I’m sure), and find the mostly everything in here is 100% FREE, for the most part. And forget copyright and sound infringement too, fuck. Some of the most recent opinion we’ve received about the Chocolate Grinder section involves writers (sub- and/or consciously) pointing to a feedback loop — by way of ICTs — of capitalism is[n’t] the most interesting place to be. If you’ve been closely following our coverage on limited-edition sale items labels infrequently produce, BOUGHT these products, and dabbled in their potential recycled rarity, chances are you began dabbling in the odds of weighing your interest versus monetary growth.
Unless you on that Wu-Tang level of under-lock-and-key museum pieces, you gotta either make your own synthesized sound or fuck with it legally, using trademarked packaged sounds, that are half the time given away for free, or hyper-deflated to multiples files per the cent. Although this sort of exactly what should happen in life, contradictory to faux coincidence, a recent pal of mine introduced to me his project LossLess Beats (find letter of intent HERE, including artist homepage), which is exclusively bought samples/beats/sounds, and used to create marketable sounding music for commercials, radio, in-store adverts, cell phone ringers, etc. Like, real-deal/legit music to be purchased by [anonymous] for their [property-bought usage] via website Beats1.com.
When people ask me what kind of music like listen to, I tell them, “Anything not played on television” and psychedelic, “Generally, when the musician is consciously trying to take the listener off-guard.” People say it’s inevitable for one person to change everything, yeah? Then follow LossLess Beats’ lead here into something much more progressive. Now, LossLess Beats isn’t exactly SOPHIE, but he does deploy some very well articulated jingles with weirdly pitched harmonies and diversely paired instruments. Brilliantly, almost in the way where someone says something breathtakingly poignant in passing. Even admittedly, “[LossLess Beats was an] attempt and intention to create music that I could market. But then, almost instantly, I began just making music that I really liked, and stopped caring how marketable it was. Sometimes I make sales, more often, I don’t. But I ended up with a body of work that I’m stoked about.” And if anything from his playlist on Beats1.com (as well as SoundClick, fiverr, and Guru) this were to cross my ears’ path one day in TJ Maxx (as I’m totally a Maxxinisto), I’d jam, yeah.
The point I’m trying to make is I really hate the typical shit I hear walking around on the daily. Especially in commercials. Thus, the more we trudge through copyrighted material to sample OR make this material to copyright and sell, we’ll finally find a change in our typical sense of what advertisements flood our consciousnesses, daily. Specifically if they catch us off guard and draw upon a more experimental and avant distinction, like LossLess Beats. Click on the link below and just playlist through all his tracks.
• LossLess Beats: http://www.beats1.com/player-html5/lossless
More about: LossLess Beats
