Forté #11
A few things that have inspired me lately and what I've been working on..
🍃 I’ve been listening to this beautiful piece by UK-based multidisciplinary artist Mathew Paul Jinks a lot since it was released. Mat’s sound is usually more rhythmic and modular synth-based but here’s a quiet moment of bliss from him. The perfectly controlled swells of crunchy feedback are especially potent—the whole track drips with beauty and very much seems to be inspired by Mat’s time living on a barge in Suffolk. The swells of the tide find their way neatly into his music. Mathew’s latest album Humber Trader ~ River Spells is available now on Bandcamp.
🍃 Shana P. Lohrey’s paintings are both moving and captivating and ooze with style and character. She’s so brilliant at capturing atmosphere and mood. Please, I urge you to check out the rest of her work. She recently moved to Japan where she’ll be studying Japanese folklore and I can’t wait to see what kind of work she’s up to whilst out there.
🍃 Something I found interesting: the American vocal pop band The Ink Spots had the same intro to a lot of their songs—making the band’s songs instantly recognizable if the radio DJ didn’t introduce them!
🍃 Check out this collection of pen plotter experiments made by Adam Fuhrer. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching pen plotter pieces coming to life.
🍃 Streaming is changing the sound of music. Basically, when a user listens to a song on a streaming platform these days, a ‘play’ for the artist is only registered after 30 seconds. A higher number of ‘plays’ obviously means more revenue for artists, so this has resulted in artists moving their choruses or hooks earlier in their songs to grab people’s attention in a bid to get them to listen past that 30-second threshold. Not only is this changing the way artists write the structure of their songs, but songs are becoming shorter to accommodate the algorithm in other ways. If people don’t listen to entire songs then these algorithms will supposedly judge you poorly and will recommend you to fewer people. Bad news for those ambient artists releasing 19-minute songs! Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.
🍃 I like to share quotes that make me think and this time it’s this beautiful collection of words from Arthur Koestler. Music is a good example of a place where language ends I think.
My new album Meditations is on YouTube today and will be on streaming services from next week (please listen past 30 seconds!). It’s an album that was inspired by the last 10 years of living in Japan as well as other cultures far removed from my own. For the release, I worked with Japanese incense maker BRANCH INCENSE to create a scent inspired by the music. You can purchase the incense and album bundle here.
Thank you for being here, let me know what’s inspiring you recently. Hitting subscribe is always welcome of course and please do share with someone who might enjoy.
SJF x