The desire to challenge and be challenged drives the music that I write. That is the principal I build my music upon. As I listen to music today, be it popular, metal, eclectic, it is losing something that makes music absorbing and involved. Every few years there will be a release that recalls those feelings, but it is far and few between. No more boundaries are being pushed. People fail to appreciate the truly outstanding, becuase overwhelming amounts of mediocre are being shoveled on top of it. It upsets me. And people have become complacent with accepting the state of today's music. Today's "The" bands, godawful retro-rock wannabes, image obsessed and shamelessly shallow "emo" rock. It's all starting to meld together into one giant wad of shit that has gained so much momentum, we may be powerless to stop it.
So I try to challenge that. Not on a very open level for the sake of sounding like a complete asshole. But on a level that challenges the basic principles of acceptable mediums. I try to challenge the formula behind it. I try to meld styles that don't necessarily belong near each other. I want to challenge what may be "theoretically" acceptable, do away with it, yet still try to make it sound good to the ear. I think I've become so jaded with most of today's music, that it has become difficult not to feel this way. I get bored with structure. I get bored with convention. It doesn't excite me. I've taken in so much from the bands I have grown up admiring, idolizing, and completely emulating. And it has shown me that it is very okay to try and challenge the standard. To create and anti-standard if you will. Not on a punk "fuck everything" level. But on a level that respects my inspirations and admirations. Bands like Tool, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum, Meshuggah, even artists like Bjork and Fiona Apple. They push against. It's that kind of strange, imaginative, and completely absorbed art that has me beyond compelled to push it further.
I don't think I necessarily even do it conciously anymore. It's just something that feels good to me and sounds good to me. And I'm proud of this work. Hopefully, someday people will listen in a bigger format. But til then, this website is pretty much the only soap box I have.
So just enjoy what I present to you. May you find as much enjoyment in listening to it as I have had writing it.
