1 - SOUND ROCK
Say it to yourself: I am a Sound Rocker. I make Sound Rock.
Sound Rock is as of now a meaningless descriptor. It holds no associations, other than it is a system of organized sound.
SOUND ROCK IS:
an ethos,
a way of looking at art,
an answer to questions you don't feel like answering,
nameless, shapeless,
a kind of freedom,
an oxymoron,
just an idea I had.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT: being "cool," being "uncool," having "no influences."
THIS IS ABOUT: the things we love.
We are not a sum of the things we love, but they do constitute a lot of us.
A sound rocker firmly believes that everything you love belongs to you.
Be as influenced by the way your friends talk about paintings, the way you and your enemies find a way to avoid each other in plain sight at parties, the things you eat, the order you put your clothes on, the way your teeth feel against your cheek, your favorite movies, your least favorite movies, and the way your eyes defocus when you get tired as you are by the music you love.
Music is not the only thing, but a means of conveying everything.
Genre descriptors only exist to limit and divide the modes of creation and to make you sell yourself in specific ways.
Self prescription is the lowering of oneself into the oubliette of past works.
Why be a "shoegaze band" when you could make Sound Rock? Why make "emo" when you could make what is meaningful to you? Why exist at "the intersection between hyperpop and cloud rap" when you can simply let these things flow through you and be filtered through the multitude that you are?
THIS IS ABOUT: The Song, and what it wants from you.
It's more meaningful to be experiential than experimental.
2 - EMPTY SIGNIFIERS = LIBERTY.
Sound Rock is simply my preferred nomenclature. Sound Pop, Sound Music, Sound Rap, Post-Sound, Free Sound, Sound Punk, etc. all signify the same thing (nothing).
Make up genres, call yourself things that don't exist, lie about your influences while letting them shine through in the work. "Sound Rock" is just words.
Your only genre should be your name, and even then this may be too limiting.
We must subdivide until nothing is legible.
Genres are not meaningless, that is the problem. There are no rules we should obey but the rule of “what sounds good is good.”
Genres that signify historical moments should be especially vilified in modern contexts.
“Proto-punk,” “post-punk;” if “punk” is an eternal state of being, why must it be adjoined with time-based constraints (each with their own baggage)?
Long live adjectives. We don't wish to erase ways of talking about music, but genres should only live on in the vestige of adjectives; "noisy," "glammy," "proggy," "twee." Talk about “trap hi hats” and “surf guitars” and “jungle breaks” and “motown bass” in ways that don’t condemn the music that contains them to a narrow frame of relation.
It is better to be described as being like something than to be diagnosed AS something.
Sound Rock is not "hypnagogic pop," because we are not dreaming. We are awake, relaying the dream.
"Authenticity" and "Retrophilia" are reactionary impulses we only bring out on special occasions, like Christmas decorations or novelty New Years glasses. Nothing about the past is better than now, the past is our toolbox.
What does it even mean to be a "noise musician?"
THIS IS NOT ABOUT: defying genres.
THIS IS ABOUT: ignoring and obfuscating them.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT: music listening.
THIS IS ABOUT: music making.
Let other people categorize you. That's not your problem.
Make life harder for journalists and playlist curators. They deserve it.
3 - SOUND THEOLOGY OR THEOLOGICALLY SOUND?
The mere knowledge of "outsider art" precludes one from making it. We are all speaking the same language.
A sound rocker understands that all music coexists in the same invisible space, it all has no image and no rigidity.
A sound rocker understands that "pop music" exists in the world of forms and is for us to harness.
A sound rocker is never afraid of melody or harmonic simplicity. We all want to transcend this gray earth and sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
A good tambourine line goes a long way.
A sound rocker understands that preset rhythms, common chord changes and cliche phrases are a marker of lasting divine power and truth.
A sound rocker observes that sometimes things are popular because of the forces of capital, but also that sometimes things are popular because they vibrate with a certain resonance through popular consciousness (meaning: ALL OF US).
A sound rocker views nostalgia as an amusement and an inspiration, not a purpose. Pastiche is used to get somewhere not closer to the past, but CLOSER TO GOD.
A sound rocker knows that the fact that changing between two arbitrary vibrations can reduce one to tears is proof of something bigger than all of us, however you want to call it.
A sound rocker understands that The Song is alive, it wants to be conveyed in a certain way, and it is their duty to actualize it.
A sound rocker knows that any instrument can play the melody in your head, and any tone is viable in its right context. No two timbres or (genre-associated) textures can clash except in an interesting way when they are combined with good intentions.
The structured should allow room for improvisation and the improvised should allow room for structure.
A sound rocker knows that The Song can contain nothing and everything, and in this way The Song is God.
4 - WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.
(Shakespeare did not write tragedies or comedies, he wrote Sound Plays.)
Words are either the most important thing or another way to weaponize cliche (good!)
A sound rocker is always honest, unless lying would be more truthful.
A sound rocker's work has an ethos, a mission, a conceptual framework, something to say (no matter how banal) that has nothing to do with sonic qualities.
The most valuable statements are those that are unequivocally true in the author's mind at the time of writing. Time cannot change their intensity.
Art is made compelling when one can sense an urgency behind its creation. A sound rocker makes music because they feel they will die if they don't, and believes in their work enough to know it is worth making and being heard.
Lyrics exist between poetry and prose and transcend both when they are “bent to melody.” Make of that what you will.
The personal is the universal. The specific is the shared.
There is a perverse joy in revealing too much, giving the game away. The sound rocker is prepared to be seen naked.
"Never In Excess," sayeth the Oracle at Delphi, but such inscriptions are just suggestions.
Nothing can ever be "too cute" or "too brutal," "too naive" or "tasteless," if it is deeply felt.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT: "autofiction," "life as art" (though it is certainly congruent!)
5- ALWAYS BE RECORDING!!!!! RECORD EVERYTHING!!!!!
The "Sound Sound" denotes nothing (this means everything).
Home recording is preferred if only for immediacy, and immediacy is preferred if only for its truthfulness.
If you are making a record, write and record until the record tells you it is over, and then record even more.
The best thing you can use to make music is what is available to you.
Never limit to one kind of recording. Computers are beautiful and tape is beautiful, listen to the song and it will tell you what it wants to be contained on (and it never really truly has to be contained on anything! Bounce back and forth 4ever). Never ignore the potentials of whatever recording medium is used, push everything to its limit.
Modern music software means that anyone can do incredible things with almost nothing. This is to be celebrated.
Ask for help.
Some things want to be recorded with Neumanns, some things want to be audio ripped from camcorder videos. These things can exist together in the same song.
As many live performances should be filmed and recorded as possible. Documentation is a gift for the future.
The Song is the Thing. You are not writing it, you are exhuming it. Never forget that.
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early sound rockers: Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Bo Diddley, Rivers Cuomo, Blue Gene Tyranny, Wesley Willis, Adam Green, Yoni Wolf, Tori Kudo, Robert Pollard, Lil B, Joe Meek, Brian Eno, William Onyeabor, Julian Koster, The Space Lady, Kevin Barnes
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This is not the only way to do things, this is just an option of a way to look at music making. The most important thing is that Sound Rock is about not limiting yourself. Listen to your heart, close your eyes, follow blindly into beautiful new territories, always feel deeply about what you do and believe in your work. We love music because it is us and we are it. None of this is to be taken as gospel, and I would never tell anyone how to do their work. I’m just some person, and I want to express what I feel deeply in words that can be understood.
There are currently three projects on Bandcamp tagged with "sound rock." I can only hope it means to them what it means to me.
Alex Walton
9/11/2023
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