My Week

Well, as a freaky starter, I was surprised to see that my blog has had exactly none other than 21 views since I last looked... I knew that number was special.

Anyway, for a while now I've actually been wondering over what to write as a blog entry. I've found in comparison to tweeting, which I could do daily, blogging requires something more substantial. My ideas for what would be interesting writing come in small bursts, not exactly a stream of consciousness. Either way, I've come to the conclusion that my week has brought up a fair few topics that could be discussed.

So as a whole... my week has been quite quiet, and a bit of a learning curve. A lot of music has been catching my ear at the moment, the best being an artist called Burial. For those who don't know, Burial was sort of a precursor to the dubstep sound, which was coming together around 2005 and sounded nothing like what people call that "wub wub wub" music now. I don't want to go on associating him with dubstep, however, because that's not the point, this man's tunes are genius. They all have a withdrawn, solitary feel to them, unusual rhythms, and a collection of dark sounds which fade in and out of one another... as such, you know you're listening to something close to house music, but there's so much progression going on around your ears repetition doesn't even come to mind.

But what interested me even more, however, was when I found out more about him. For a start, Burial has actually kept his identity a complete mystery. He has only had one interview throughout his time in the limelight, and in it he even admitted that he'd sat in the same room as his friends whilst his tunes played, keeping it a complete secret that they were his! The whole interview was an interesting read, I thought, and can be seen here http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/oct/26/urban.

So it made me wonder, due to soon releasing music myself (and also having released some before), what really goes through an artist's mind. Burial's philosophies are unique, a debatable theory that the best things should be kept in silence... and a part of me agrees. Over the years, I found that the best music was stuff I tracked down myself, rather than being shoved in my face. But then again, there's no reason to keep our talents secret, or hold back that bursting feeling to admit that it was us who made something. All in all, reading about him was inspirational.

Even more interestingly, after some digging around, my friend found out that Burial actually makes his beats in an unusual way... he chooses to take sound effects, such as bullets hitting a wall in Metal Gear Solid, or Silent Hill, and puts these together to make a rhythm. Close attention to detail, eh? This tune is one example of many:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLIb4RSFK00

On a different note, an interesting thought came up this week. Among many irritating things about the internet, one is the classic line that many kids seemed to use in some kind of fad a few years ago and even now, the classic "I'm unique and happy with who I am, don't label me" line. Annoyingly, the funny thing is that the people who said/say this very often have never had any problems with people labelling them at all. Well... to be honest this irritates the hell out of me! When there are people really being judged out there, who don't conform to any kind of trend, the ones who do still say that just because everyone else does. Quite ironic, really, as though not everyone likes what they conform to, they've probably never been "labelled" for it or are just flat-out asking to be labelled. And even if someone did, they wouldn't actually give a damn. The silly things that get said on the internet!

That's all for now... to give you breathing space.

GEORGE.