The Inner Turntable
The Music Goes Around My Head. Bringing order to my musical journey with a new column.
The best music doesn’t leave us when the record stops playing.
It’s found a home, locked inside our memory, ready for a spin on that record player we take with us everywhere: The Inner Turntable.
It’s a strange record player. Sometimes it knows what we need to hear better than we do. But this isn’t surrendering to the music, this is assimilation; our mind knows what it has in its hands. It holds a truth that bears repeating and with each repetition, our understanding is not only deepened, our desire to create is awakened.
What is music?
At its most basic, it’s sounds arranged in time. Yet this doesn’t come close to capturing either the physical or metaphysical way in which music fills our lives.
It’s said that the first song we ever hear is our mother’s heart beat and perhaps that is one of our soul’s favourite tunes. It harmonises with our own heart in a way that is no longer separate. When my cat crawls onto me and I can hear her purrs and heartbeat, it is its own kind of music.
As I sit in the garden and listen to the birds, it’s easy to imagine that music is older than humanity itself. Without the knowledge of a complex vocabulary, they use melody, harmony and rhythm to communicate.
Yet in a 19th century workshop, Thomas Edison was about to irrevocably change our relationship with music; by making a recording of it.
It changes how we listen to music. It changes how we think about music. It changes how we make music.
We know what music is, like we know what water is. Without it, a thirst rises within us. Yet, when is it fit to drink and at what point do we drown?
There are no absolutes, there are only changes. Forever changes. This is what I write about. Not music for music’s sake, but how life is shaped by it.
What and why do I write?
The why bit is easy enough. Thinking never stops and writing is organising those thoughts. Creation, of music in particular, regardless of how free spirited and improvised it might be, requires a minimum of organisation. I forever will be the guaranteed audience of one.
The what lives within the changes. Every song is separate. Every song is connected. Yet none of this would make sense without recorded music. Music can’t be fully evoked by description, only by listening.
I spend much of my time in a small timber shack on a mountain in remote Tasmania. There a no cool clubs. No giant arenas. Just a guitar in the corner, a turntable and a shelf crammed with records. And just like the weather, every day brings change.
It changes how I listen to music.
I’m not the most organised person, but when it comes to writing, that’s no excuse. So The Inner Turntable will collect my trains of thought into a series of Series:
LISTENING:
Some of my writing comes for the experience of listening to music, even if it’s inside my head.
Haunted by the Inner Turntable
There is a connection between music and place. A song can transport us back to a place and time. Being in a place, or the time day, can get a song loaded onto the inner turntable. I’ve also stopped taking my headphones with me wherever I go, letting the inner turntable do the work. Less listening, more hearing. Some of my writing is born out of my frustration with the current digital landscape of music, in particular, streaming services.
Stuck on the Inner Turntable
There is a connection between music and our emotional state. Sometimes, that one song stuck in our head is enough to express that.
Trilogies
Sometimes a group of albums come together to tell a bigger story. About the artist. About the world. About ourselves. Each trilogy chooses three albums that belong together. They may or may not be by the same artist, yet they have a thematic connection that makes them worth considering collectively. David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy is perhaps the most obvious. It could be Nick Drake, who only recorded three albums during his lifetime.
Each trilogy is usually accompanied by a Stuck on the Inner Turntable essay which touches on a track that’s connected to the trilogy. There’s also a personal essay that reflects more directly on my personal experiences. For example, when Mull of Kintyre was stuck on the inner turntable I wrote about where bagpipes fitted into my musical life.
WRITING:
What is music? I write directly about music itself. While I touch on what I listen too, I also consider the part music plays in society from both a cultural and a commercial point of view. Music can change society and society returns the favour, shaping music through its own wants and needs.
Thoughts on Recorded Music.
The impact of recorded music on how we experience music is deep and complex. From the part it plays in shaping our emotional and intellectual landscape, to its role as one of the most consumed art forms on the planet. Even within the last fifty years we’ve seen massive changes in how music is consumed. This effects the music itself in both visible and invisible ways.
PLAYING:
I play music myself and this manifests itself in two ways:
Songs.
I write them. I play them. I record them. I then release them in exactly the same way that I would an essay, with images, lyrics, recording and where possible, videos.
Hybrid Arts.
Recently I’ve begun making spoken word recording of my short stories and poems. Often these are backed with music, atmospherics and sound effects. I also create videos that incorporate my artworks to accompany them. The aim is to create a hybrid art form that includes many different elements.
A Brief Note on Genre
My first music is rock music. Beatles. Stones. Dylan and Hendrix. Classic, prog, punk and new wave from the sixties through to more recent times.
Next, electronic music. Ambient, electro and techno. Aphex Twin, Orbital, FSOL, The Orb and more.
After that, it’s an open field. Folk, jazz, blues, R&B, classical, pop, trad pop as well as plenty from the non-English speaking world.
The Inner Turntable: The Genesis of this (Sub) Publication
Now that I’m on two writing platforms, Substack and Medium, I would like the content to be the same on both. I’ve tried a few strategies so far. None of them have really worked. Substack is a newish enterprise for me, so the other thing I want to do is to introduce my music writing to the people here. This is what to expect.
I also understand that many people who are interested in my music writing are not interested in my more surreal writing adventures. I want those people to be able to interact with my music writing without concerning themselves with talking cardboard boxes or the satirical misadventures of Cucumber Man.
The Inner Turntable thus becomes a new publication on Medium, a new sub-publication in my End of the World Arts publication on Substack and a column in my monthly newsletter, The Red Telephone. I’ll shortly be creating index pages for all of these Series.
Why the Change?
I’ve already touched on one, but there are others:
Organisation. One creative process, two locations. Trying to do anything else has been unwieldy and inefficient.
Branding & Marketing. The Inner Turntable becomes the masthead of my music writing. Whether I’m promoting my work via email, social media or IRL, there should be a single message that leads to the same content at the two locations. Which leads to the next point.
Time Management. Online writing is hard and I am getting old. We need to get the most out of the time we put in. Repeating effort that has nothing new to say is a waste of time.
Ease of Navigation. Things are hard enough to find online as it is. With over 400 articles published on Medium, it can feel like some of my work has vanished into the abyss. Sometimes I find it hard enough to find it myself. This is not a good reader experience and needs to be addressed.
Music Only Focus. Many of my readers are only interested in the music. My other writing, the fiction is particular, is a distraction. This new publication will allow people to just follow my music writing.
My music writing on Medium has been many years in the making, but this is the beginning of my musical journey on Substack. If you want to find all my Inner Turntable writings, there is now a link at the top of The End of the World Arts homepage.
Thanks for reading.
I remember reading some of your album reviews on Medium. Will happily read more.
This probably makes me sound old, but I have a hard time finding new music that I like these days. I think that's less a comment on the quality of music being made these days, but more on the discovery process. My Spotify recommendations are very unreliable.
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