1.3: Pure Sound with Rob Cunningham

Through high school, I got like, more into electronic music. I was incredibly into, like finding different points of innovation, finding new sounds all the time. That was always like very thrilling to me. Just scouring the world and like searching for these, these sounds that, that are just electrifying to me.

Yeah.

And finding joy. And that feeling like this changes everything and blows my mind. Just getting to that, that feeling.

Welcome to episode three of Untangling Ourselves, a podcast telling stories about how we change. This is a two part episode with Rob about finding and then losing and then finding again joy in music. How does a white kid in 1980s suburban Los Angeles go from throwing spit wads and blasting Run DMC in boombox wars with his siblings to the far reaches of experimental noise and classical to K pop? I wanted Rob to tell his story because it's surprising. It's about a passion for sound, about the feeling of fandom, about subcultures, and about the changing world of how we access music. This first episode follows his search for sound through rap and death metal in the 1980s-90s, goth, industrial and noise, to 2000s experimental and classical. We talk about the search for sounds that blow your mind and change everything, about archiving and about joy. We needed a whole second episode to cover K Pop, so that follow up episode will come out on Friday. Rob blogs about music gems under the name the Aquamarine Lair. I'll put that link in the show notes. Speaking of which, the show notes are

incredibly rich with this episode.

Since we didn't put music in the episode, we'll have so many links and playlists for you for all these music genres.

So, so please check those out today. I'm here with Rob, who happens to be my husband.

Hello.

Hi. So first of all, do you want to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your journey with music?

All right. What do I say when I introduce myself? I mean, I don't know. I'm your husband. Let's see. Music has been extremely important to me. I think, you know, one of my earliest memories in my life is when Michael Jackson Thriller came on MTV in our house and I was just like, oh my God. And just stood there and watched it. Gosh, where do I even start with that question? I mean, yeah, I've been through a lot of different kinds of music and generally less pop music. I mean, just to give a very fast summary, I mean, I, I was. The first genre that I got into was rap and, and I was in the 80s, so it was, it was that style of rap that existed back then.

And when you were very young or something.

When I was six, I got into Run DMC and seven, I got into Beastie Boys, right? And those are the first two tapes that I bought. I had a lot of older folks. I had older siblings and step siblings and cousins. I had a lot of osmosis. Like I don't think a four year old would usually like an oldest child. Four year old would have been watching MTV in 1984, you know. But MTV was on because I was in a house with older kids. You're saying, like I got into it a little earlier and I went towards the gangster rap when that became a thing like NWA and Eazy and those people. And I also got into like Public Enemy who sing about like black power and all this stuff. And I really had like no idea what they were talking about. I just thought it sounded really cool. I liked how the beats were really big. It was very rhythmic vocals, obviously that, that really got me. And with like the gangster rap stuff, I just like the fact that they were swearing a lot. And that was. That made my 10 year old brain like very happy. I mean I was a, I was a like quote bad kid and you know, didn't do well with authority and didn't find school very interesting. So I didn't pay attention and thought it would be more fun to like throw spit wads and do whatever and found my way towards being in the social group that was considered like the bad kids. So hearing adults or you know, people that were of an age that I would look up to say fuck the police was also a very thrilling thing to hear because it's like, oh, you can say that. And I think that's, that's another theme that I was thinking about when you were asking me about. This is like liberation was a part of my musical interests for a long time. Like you can be liberated to just say whatever you want. And then from rap I went to metal and it was like, you can make noise with your guitars and you can get heavier. You can make it like heavier and heavier and heavier until it's. It just sounds like complete noise and blast beats and you can sing about Satan and gore and death and all these crazy things. And then that was around the time that alternative music became a big thing. And of course that was another kind of way of feeling liberated. I don't need to follow this kind of masculine, raucous trajectory. I can think about like alternative lifestyles and alternative ways of being and. And that opened up towards like punk and goth and industrial styles. Of music that did their own things in different ways. And so that was. That was something that really kind of motivated me through high school. And then I found electronic music that was like via industrial. I found the idea of electronic music. And I think also like a moment that I remember being very transformational for me was opening up like the Nine Inch Nails CD booklet. And it said they always had like such, such and such band is. And then they would list all the members inside the CDs and it was like 9ish nails is Trent Reznor. That was it. And I was like, whoa, like you can just do that. You can just make some sound. One person can just do whatever they want. And that is music. You don't have to be like, this person does drums and this person does guitar and this person sings or whatever. Kind of like this whole different way of doing it. And that led me off into like a new rabbit hole of electronic producers who kind of did whatever they want with sound and made sounds that were kind of unprecedented in the 90s and were really interesting.

So part of the reason you moved into electronic and noise was the liberation of just being able to do it on your own. You don't have to conform to these like rock standards.

Yeah, yeah. Just being even more non conformist than rock was capable of being. And I think so besides this kind of like liberation and non conformity type of direction, I have always been very fascinated by sound. And I just like interesting sounds and just hearing like new things all the time. And that that was another kind of path that I was going down. So.

So did you feel at the time like your interest in sound? It sounds like the two main things were sound and liberation. And I'm curious if you felt at the time like you had a community around that like you ever had people who understood what you were looking for or maybe you weren't even aware yourself of what you were looking for.

But I think that, yeah, I did. And there's another element that I haven't really talked about, which is subcultures. That's another kind of approach towards music. Like when I was thinking of when I was talking about like pop fandom, singing, like three different modes of music fandom that I sort of am aware of or think about is sort of subcultures, just interest in sound and fandom, I guess.

Okay, so that's interesting. So you're distinguishing subcultures and groups of people who are into a certain genre from like fandom where you're like, I love this band.

Yeah, that's to me a different thing. I mean they can be overlapping and related but. And so I did the first two for most of my life or I did, yeah, interest in sounds. And then as a teenager I moved into like also the subculture and started from the like punk alternative fashion sense and like finding my people with that way like in my teenagerhood. I don't know exactly if I have a way to describe it, but the way we, we saw it was not like this person is elevated on a plane above us. It's like this is a person who has done something cool. And I like that, but I don't worship them. Or at least I claim not to.

I mean it's part of the culture not to worship. And this is kind of your electronic and goth and noise era.

This would be like more like the goth. And I was never really a punk per se, but I was sort of like around punks and things that I was into were really punk, punk related and industrial was sort of this way. And I didn't, I didn't get like really into the electronic music wave scene. That was always like sort of to the side of, of what I was into. I was aware of it and that that scene has a like a whole background and ethos to it. And then as you. As I got more further into like further underground noise and experimental. There isn't really like a subculture that I have ever been physically a part of because people who are into that are so like few and far between and it doesn't have like a fashion or other elements of. Of subculture as much. So that's more like the people that just really seek out very out there music and are really weird stuff. They find each other on the Internet. Like that's where I found other people who were into that. Like I've known, I mean I've known people here and there that I've gone to shows with. But it gets more like when you go to those shows you see just like the people who wear jeans and T shirts and stuff. Like the people who are just like, I don't care about looking a certain way.

And is there a kind of purism, purist thinking about the sound?

Probably yeah, there is definitely. Like some people are like, I'm above all that. I'm not a goth, I'm not this type of person. I'm. I'm none of that. I'm just a person who has like a pure interest in music or sound. And then people will. You will also get people who have super eclectic taste and then get very elitist about that. I. I like a little bit of every single thing, and I don't like, limit myself. I. And like, it loops back around to like, you know, like Nine Inch Nails was this huge industrial band in the 90s. And then if you got more into industrial, it became uncool to like Nine Inch Nails because they were like the gateway to industrial. And it's like you would be, oh, I only like the stuff that came before, or I like the stuff that disregards those. The things that Trent Reznor did. And. And then you go further and there's like the even more elitist people who are like, all the formulaic industrial is bad, and Trent Reznor is one who actually did innovative things, so he's better and blah, blah, blah. And you can just like go around and around or whatever trying to figure out what is the. The more ultimately more elitist than thou thing to say. I think some of those people that, as I moved from like a high school kid to a college kid, I moved away from some of the. Some of the folks like Trent Reznor and some goth bands and stuff that were like, very overt with their emotions and people get. Would get really wrapped up in the performer because that. That seemed, I guess, artificial to me. Or I. I thought just music, just pure music would be like, better or something.

Okay, so you moved a little bit away from goth and that did have some of those elements of fandom, because, like, earlier you were talking about the distinction between fandom and subcultures, and goth had some of the elements of like, performance and Persona and being a fan of a certain performer.

Yeah, but I would still. To me, there's still a distinction. Subcultures is kind of like, you take this whole identity that many people are part of and use that to connect with others. And I think it was. I think subcultures are less prominent in the world now because of the way that we consume media. Back back in my day, in the, you know, whatever in the 90s and before, you would hear the mainstream music no matter what, you would, like, hear music everywhere. And people talk a lot about how, like, that's not how it is anymore. Like, Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world and there are still like, people who have never heard Taylor Swift because they just don't tune into Taylor Swift. And, you know, it was very different. Like, I heard mainstream music on the radio all the time. I heard it while I worked. I heard it in people's cars, blah, blah, blah. It was on MTV and I think, like, the formation of subcultures in, like, the 80s and the 90s was a part of how people, like, staked out their identity in this world where we were, like, all awash in the same media. Certain. Certain of us were like, no, I reject that. I'm not a person that just listens to whatever someone puts on the radio for me. I listen to this really specific thing. I, like, find my people by signaling that I am one of those people. And, you know, that's sort of how you, like, how some of us who weren't inclined to the more normal stu survived the monoculture world of the 80s and 90s.

Yeah. When you couldn't just type in on the search bar the kind of music you were into and join a group

all of a sudden or. Yeah. And just find it. Find music and stream it. I mean, like, the availability of music is a whole. Whole other, like, huge topic. You know, you had to acquire physical things in order to listen to music. 80s and 90s and it was scarce. Meeting, like, cool people who had access to cool music was like a very. I mean, you valued the friendship and connection, but, like, you literally had to do that if you were a person like me who was always looking for something new. Literally being connected to people would literally get you to new stuff. And it was the only way to do that, or one of the only ways.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going on, like, tangents and stuff, but I think about how it's very foundational to me to see cities as the place where you find cool stuff. And that, in some sense comes from that sort of, like, physical reality that I grew up. That, like, there were a lot of experiences and, like, things that you just had to physically go to a city to even, like, experience that at all.

Yeah.

I had to go to Amoeba Records in order to get the music that I was looking for because it literally couldn't be found anywhere else. Through high school, I got, like, more into electronic music. I was incredibly into, like, finding different points of innovation, finding new sounds all the time. That was always, like, very thrilling to me. Just scouring the world and, like, searching for these. These sounds that. That are just electrifying to me.

Yeah.

And finding joy in that feeling. Like, this changes everything and blows my mind. Just getting to that. That feeling.

Yeah. And it was really about the feeling. It's not just about the music as a pure innovation or something new. It's that. It's that what it does for you. That it.

Yeah. I think I saw Myself as someone who was valuing innovation in and of itself or valuing that, like avant garde and newness and maybe like the theory behind that. But a big part of it, or maybe even like the most foundational thing for me was, was just that feeling of the world opening up and feeling like my mind is blown and. And I've discovered something that gives me a new. A new way to. To feel, a new way to be and a new way to feel joy. And that. That's maybe not a way that I would have expressed that, you know, 20 years ago, but.

Yeah, so that was kind of like the underlying goal maybe that you see when you're looking back, but it was within this framework of the subculture and the innovation and. And pushing the envelope of the music.

Yeah.

Looking for that new sound. Yeah.

Through that time period, which was like the early 2000s, I felt like things got to feel more static for me and like I wasn't getting those. Those highs that I was looking for through that same process of searching for new music. I was at KCSB and I had a lot of fun doing a radio show, but I got kind of burnt out on it.

And some of your sources for community around music were petering out. You said the listserv serves were kind of petering out at that time.

Yeah, like, I wasn't as successful as I hoped at forging connections with people through music. Some of my connections were petering out and, like, my connections on the Internet were starting to. I think the Internet was changing and I wasn't. I wasn't adapting. So that was part of it. Like, I was on Usenet doing news groups through the 90s. I mean, that's a whole kind of aspect of my story through high school that. That I haven't really talked about, but, like, getting on, just getting online and sort of like getting connected to people who can tell me about things that people in my high school aren't talking about was like, very huge for me in the 90s.

And it also. It gave you a sense of a place to express some of what music does for you. Right. Like, you. Yeah, you could write about sound. You were mostly writing about sound, I'm. I'm guessing.

Yeah, I would write it. I don't know. What was I writing about? Like, just all kinds of stuff. I mean, I was a teenager and the things that people do on the Internet, a lot of time, even still is argue. So there was a lot of arguing about whatever definitions I did always get into. Like, what is the definition of industrial music? Or like, what is the history of it, who came before who, who did what, who did what, when, who is connected to who. And getting into these like, lineages. And also just like sharing. I wrote music reviews, so just like sharing my like, mind. Mind equals blown moments with these new CDs that I was getting writing reviews, concerts.

Can you think of a couple CDs just in case other people listening are into this?

Nurse with Wound was a huge one. Like, they just approach sound from like a completely open perspective. And do what with it. I was into Japanese noise, like Mersbough and OB and Incapacitants and all this stuff like that. And also getting into like, electronic music like Autecher and Aphex Twin. I mean, there's a lot. There's a ton of folks I could, okay, probably name drop, but I was on. I was mostly on like, the industrial and noise music news groups and some related email lists.

So this was a kind of like. I'm thinking about your story in terms of. There's Michael Jackson's Thriller and there's rap.

There's a lot between there and there. Yeah.

Which was really mind blowing and also liberatory for you and gave you this whole culture. And. And I'm also thinking about your story in terms of when you were a child and a teenager. The clothing and the visuals were very important to you, right?

Yeah.

Even though as you got older that kind of dropped off, at least in terms of what. How you analyzed your. Your approach to music. And then you're. You use net years and the noise and. And so then you're getting into college and you're not quite finding that mind blowing.

Yeah, I mean, I did for a while, but then towards. I mean, I was in college for a while too, and towards the end of it, it was like, not quite doing that. It wasn't. It wasn't yielding the result anymore. And I got to this point where, like, when you've gone to the complete and total avant garde and noise and experimental and it's like people can do literally whatever they want and you've heard all that and it's kind of like, where do you go from there? Like, once you've completely liberated yourself in a sonic fashion from any constraint and done whatever you wanted, then you can keep doing that over and over again, but it doesn't quite feel as. As liberatory. And of course, it wasn't only that. I mean, I also liked the sound and there were like, just things that. That I. Other things I enjoyed about it that I could still enjoy. But it wasn't hitting that same. Hitting me the same way.

And a quote that I remember from this time period is my kids will

never be able to shock me with

their music because I've gone as far as you can go in terms of shocking and innovative.

I mean, I also, before that was like into, you know, death metal and all this stuff where they sing about gore and crazy scenarios and Satan and whatever and a, you know, the gangster rap where they say the F word 81 times in a song. Like when I was 10, I counted that.

So I guess, I mean, this is. This is a sidetrack from the story, but have your kids shocked you with their music?

I wouldn't say they shocked me, no. No, they are into cool stuff. They've both gotten into interesting things and they've gotten. They both gotten into things that I'm not quite into, which is cool. That's what you should do.

Yeah, they're into funk and the other one's into Vocaloid. And I guess you would say goth,

like pokey, weird stuff.

Yeah, we're still learning. Yeah.

Maybe I can't describe it. It doesn't shock me, but I can't describe it, which is cool. Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah, our one younger child playing a YouTube short of the same, like 30 seconds of a funk beat for an entire, like two hour drive was interesting. I don't know if I would say it shocked me, but it was, it was, it was an experience. Yeah.

Okay. So you, you kind of push the envelope and the envelope is in shreds and you're trying to figure out how to find this feeling. Maybe you don't know that at the time.

I don't know if I'm even trying to figure it out. Yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm sort of like, I don't know what I'm doing, but.

So I kind of want to summarize. There's kind of this lull in your music fandom things. You had grad school before that where you went off to New York City and you want to talk about that a little bit?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah, but like the early 2000s, I'm like, wrapping up college. And that time period was sort of a lull in my previous, like, approach to finding music. Some of my communities online were sort of dying down. Like the Usenet and some, like, forums and stuff that I was into were going less active and I didn't really know where to look, partly because I wasn't really sure, like, what was like a framework for what I was into anymore. Like, it had gotten so disparate, all these different things that I was into, and it wasn't summarized. There wasn't an easy way to summarize it and an easy way for me to like find a community around it. And I was like getting different interests. Like you mentioned that I was in a gamelan ensemble, so I was just like, oh, that sounds like a cool thing to check out. And that was fun. And so I went off to grad school and I went to New York and like, I bought a laptop and an ipod and really just like literally shelves my CDs in my mom's garage. And that was for almost 10 years or more than 10 years. I really like lost touch with my music collection or I didn't have it very organized after that because I literally just took however much music would fit on my ipod, which was probably like a third of my CDs that I owned, and just threw them on my ipod. And I had very little time to like, get interested in music or engage with it the way that I had before. And I was in grad school, like, really overwhelmed. I was in New York City. Like, there was probably tons going on that I could have been checking out or getting involved in at the time, but I. I just didn't like, have the right presence of mind to think about that. And I was just kind of like checking out whatever was on my ipod, which was my old music, and I would walk down to the library and like, grab a bunch of classical CDs that I had never heard of. And like, I found a Langer mode, which is like my all time favorite pianist that I still listen to all the time.

And it wasn't true that you were totally out of touch with New York City. Like, maybe not subcultures, but you were going to classical concerts and stuff.

Yeah, I would go to concerts sometimes and engage with the urban planning and the history of New York and all that stuff. Yeah, I was really focused on school and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life for a career and all that. So I was. Yeah, my head was in a different place for music mostly, other than listening to it while I read papers in the library all the time. So just skipping forward, I wasn't very much engaged. I did do the KDBS run, which was really fun and like got me back into it while I was in a time period of being unemployed.

And KDBS in Davis is a really special radio station.

It's really cool college radio. Yeah, the library was several times the size of the KCSB library. It was cool to be involved with. They also put on shows. So I, like, as part of my volunteering, I took tickets at shows and heard all these random underground bands. It was like another high point in my music life to be involved in KD's. Like, it didn't quite get me back to where I was in age 4 to 22 or so. It didn't, like, get me to. I still felt like I was carefully mapping out the world of music and not, like, hitting upon things where I'm just, like, electrified and my hair is standing up and I'm having fun all day. But I was still, like, finding cool and interesting things and developed some sense of community while I was there. That all kind of shifted as we. I moved over to the Bay Area. And then shortly after that, we had kids and our lives got very different and a lot busier with kids and. And stuff. So I couldn't continue with KCSB from the Bay Area. I'm sorry. Kdbs.

Yeah.

And so. All right, that kind of gets me through, like, the 2010s. I'm still. I. I didn't like, really have a thing during that time other than, like, I'm. I'm a. I'm parenting and I'm working and getting, you know, keeping this family alive and sometimes going on cool trips and cool hikes and stuff. But, like, yeah, I sort of, like, lacked that. That separate thing for myself.

Yeah.

And like, music never, like, lost its importance, but it sort of fell to the background of being like, this is all this stuff that I used to be into or that I am into still, but in kind of like a. More of like a legacy of being into it.

And it's not making you feel alive in the moment.

And working, working. Life has. Has been its own huge set of challenges and ups and downs in my life. But prior to 2020, it was a long commute. It was like an interesting sort of time just getting to the music part because I had long periods of time in the car to listen to stuff. And I listened to my entire digital music collection while I had that job. I also finally, after more than 10 years since I, like, switched over from CDs to laptop computer MP3, I brought my entire CD collection and like, sat there and compared my collection to my. My digital collection. And while I'm at my job, I would sit on YouTube and it's like, well, I never listened to enough Sonic Youth when I was a kid. Even though they're very important in music history. So I listened to everything by Sonic Youth on YouTube or other bands like that that I needed to catch up on and developing, you know, like finding this and that here and there. But yeah, it was, it was still like. It was like this archivist project that was like a semi, semi job, semi hobby I'm doing. I like, have a methodology to like, run through like every genre and every important artists that I've ever heard of.

I mean, it sounds like the part of you that was on Usenet talking about Lineages, you also felt this duty kind of to be comprehensive in your understanding of the music, of your legacy music. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's another aspect of this idea of you finding something you. You really want to do in your life, which is, it's not just the music. It's also this, like, archiving and organizing and really broad overview of your music that you're passionate about, and then also really in depth about specific songs. Like, it goes all directions in terms of. It's not just going to shows or just popping on a CD for you. It's a lot of things.

Yeah, I'm. I do have like an archivist mentality and I don't know what the analogy is, but, like, I like to spread my net everywhere. Like for I think, years or decades of my life, I have thought of myself as sort of scouring like the entire world to find these like, gems that exist in different places. You know, maybe there's some. Some amazing jazz that I've never heard before, so I'll try to listen to like all of jazz to try to find that thing. Or maybe there's some like, Finnish avant garde pianist who has like, done something that would completely change my life if I just found that thing.

And so you're like always looking for that Thriller again?

Yeah, I'm always looking for. For Thriller. Or just that moment where you're like, this is something that completely shifts or maybe doesn't completely, but shifts at least a little bit. What I think is possible in the world and how to experience joy through sound in a new way and just feeling. But I can also get very systematic about it. And being very systematic about your hobbies doesn't always. Isn't always like a very joyful way to pursue your hobby. Like, okay, I need to just. Well, like, I. I DJ'd at KDBS for a while and it's like they have like 60, 000 CDs or records in their library and I'd be Like, oh my God, I need to, like. And listen to every single one of them, because what if the thing is somewhere?

So as you're talking, it's so interesting to me because I feel like since I've known you, you spent 20 years doing that, except you entirely ruled out pop music. And, you know, K pop barely existed on your radar. And so you were doing this, like, really thorough search through, like, I don't know what you would call it. New classical and experimental and noise and.

Okay. Yeah. And then we get to the K pop part, but we'll get. We'll circle towards it eventually. So 2020.

And this whole time that we're talking about all these, like, 20, 30 years, pop music is around you, it's on the radio, but it's never been something that you're archiving, exploring.

Yeah. I wasn't like a historian of pop music very much.

No, only just like, 80s music.

Yeah. I got into 80s music. I talked about, like, the. On Star 98.7, we would have, like, totally 80s Friday nights, and my friends and I would drive around and blast the 80s music. And we thought it was so cool. And that was. That still felt like, somewhat subcultural because it's not Today's music, it's 80s music. And there was starting to already be a thing to like, dress 80s as sort of like an ironic hipster thing.

Yeah.

Among people that I was around in high school, you know, referencing back to that was. Was interesting and cool and, you know, and in my mind, like, there was good pop music and then kind of all went to shit. And that's. That's like a typical elitist way to. To think about a lot of things. Like, oh, it was. It was good.

Yeah. I mean, I remember a lot of that sort of commentary, and it was. But it was pretty dark when you would make those comments. Like, there's no good music. It's all over.

Yeah. I've had. I had moments where I just. Just thought, like, music is done. Like, everything has been done and like, the only thing left to do is just like, do what has been done over again, just for kicks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is. Which is. Which is kind of dark.

Yeah, yeah. But there are, like, two parts of this, which is. There is an elitist aspect of it, and there is a genuine thing that I actually do still today. Like, 80s pop music, more than 90s pop music, like, it just hit me differently and it did different things. I don't necessarily like it more than 2000s pop music, especially from Korea, but

yeah, we'll talk about that. So the other little blip in terms of pop music entering your radar is the Taylor Swift concert special that I

have not been completely averse to pop music in my life. And first of all, there's these, you know, the 80s stuff. I can talk about other points where it sort of peaks in. Like my friends and I went to see the Spice girls movie in 1997 or whenever that came out and it was, we thought it was just like very ironic and silly or whatever. But, you know, I'm sure we actually enjoyed it.

Like, looking back, you probably were really into the presentation and the Persona.

Yeah, I mean, I probably thought things like, about it were really cool.

That's so funny because I have the same story about Spice Girls, but it's a different.

Did your friends go see that? No, no, no.

My sisters listened to it and I was very invested in not being cool at all. I was very closed off and not willing to have cultural expression.

Yeah.

And my sisters were into it and I vividly remember enjoying it and then pushing that down, being like, no, this is not me. I mean, a totally different context. But yeah, yeah.

And at other points in times it peaks through. Like in 2018, I. I got really into the Taylor Swift concert that was on Netflix. Like they had it as a feature on the front page. And I was kind of like, oh, I'll check this out. I've never, I don't know that I've ever heard Taylor Swift. I keep hearing that name. I thought maybe our kid who is super into Vocaloid and well, now they are out there folk.

They weren't back there.

They weren't back then. But I thought, oh, my kid might get into this someday. As a, as a parent, I should know what this is or whatever. And also it's just this big cool looking banner on the front of Netflix, so what the hell? And then I started watching it and I was like, wow, this is awesome. And I went from being like, oh, I wonder if my kid will be into this day, to being like, I need to get my kid into this so that I have an excuse to go to this concert.

Yeah, you're like, not quite ready to, you know, go to a concert or buy a CD for yourself just because it's fun.

Yeah, yeah. And I didn't, you know, I didn't go all full swifty or get really into Taylor Swift at the time, but I sort of like dabbled in that. And one of the issues with it or sort of things that I, that I was not, not like, fully grasping at the time was this idea of, like, an audio visual presentation being kind of the way to get into music. Like, in my sort of pure musical mindset, that would be kind of an impure way to get into music. So watching a concert video, like, is not the way to get into music. You have to, like, listen to it. Listening to Taylor Swift, like, without the concert video didn't quite have that same effect on me at the time. So, yeah, I kind of. I didn't. Didn't, like, fully go into that. And the fandom aspect of it was not something that I totally related with.

Yeah, you were never doing the, like, puzzles or the backstory of the artist kind of thing. Yeah, that's part of that.

People who get into Taylor Swift, it's not all about, like, just. Just the music. It's. There's this whole, like, Persona that she has. There's a way that she relates with fans, like, outside of just her music. And there is her stage presence, concerts and so on that are, like, a big part of it.

Yeah, you were looking for this pure sound that would blow your mind or bring you joy. And I feel like it's only in the last seven years since this one you're talking about that you've recognized how important that visual spatial immersion is for you.

Yeah, yeah. It was just. I. I just think of that. That Taylor Swift thing as, like, kind of a prequel to my fandom, because it was sort of this. This different way of approaching music that was peeking through to me. But I didn't, like. I didn't keep following that pathway at the time. And as part of that, when I was. When I was watching that movie, I also went over to the Taylor Swift subreddit and they had, like, a whole live thread because the movie had just come out on Netflix. And that was also, like, a striking thing. It just felt like this really cool sense of community there. Like, everyone was, like, very positive and. And just sort of, like, cheering on their person. It's like a whole different, like, thing to do with music. Like, just sort of being a fan and being happy about that and not. Not always feeling the need to, like, critically evaluate everything in the same way.

And you had been talking before, too, about in really experimental music subcultures. It's almost like the listeners and the musician are leveled. Everyone is trying to innovate, and the musician is not someone it's not. It doesn't matter who they are. Almost in Small Vultures.

Very. It's very. I call it like a flat. A flattening out of the difference between, like, the fans and the musicians. And it's a lot more participatory, which I think is also cool in a different way, because it's like the. It questions and discards a lot of the preconceptions of, like, the barriers to entry to being a musician and the barriers to entry to producing music in a certain way, like having the production values. There's a lot of DIY aesthetics, so there is this feeling like anyone in the audience could just, like, pick up something that makes noise and be up on the stage instead of in the audience.

I'm trying to think about how hierarchy would make for a more friendly environment. I mean, that's. That is counterintuitive.

That is odd thing to say.

I'm thinking about the judgment. So if everyone can create music, then which music should you listen to? It becomes very discerning. Like, this is worth my time. This is not worth my time. This is good. This is not good. But if you're cheering somebody on as, like, yay, you made another album, we love it. There's nothing. Any. You're not judging each other as fans, maybe. I'm. I'm just sort of exploring how this is possible.

If you have thoughts about it, it's interesting. I mean, I would say it's not necessarily inherently a better way to do things. It's. I think plenty of people in a more DIY culture get very genuine joy out of being in that and that it can be very good. I think that, like, a pathway to go down that I went down for a while was that the only. The thing that matters is whether you are doing something new and innovative and whether you're doing something that matters. And so it's more like, judgmental towards the art that is being created itself. And for me, personally, I kind of like, got. Got what I could get out of that and felt like I had, like, reached a dead end. But so I think there. There can be aspects of it that get elitist, like this. These people are just, like, rehashing ideas. They aren't doing something new. And there can be, like, an element of it, of feeling like you're listening to it because. Or you're participating in this culture because it's important, not necessarily because you just get a whole bunch of joy out of doing that. So that's the part that can make it less. Less appealing, I guess.

Yeah.

And like, the pop music is this whole different thing where it's very produced and staged and it needs to have, like, this whole army of people behind it that like, put on the show in a certain way. Like a very. I don't know, like a. Like it's a big production and it can't be done. At least like the kind that I, you know, big, big pop music. There's like bedroom pop or whatever. But the. The big stuff is produced in a way that. That needs to have. Have like a whole production team behind it. So it can't. And that's something that I was not like, very open to. Like, I thought, like, it's kind of funny because I also. Throughout a lot of my later adulthood, I was really into stuff like classical music, which also has that element of being pretty elitist and also being like a big production. Like, you need. You need a lot of people who have practiced a lot and you need like a really specific type of venue to put it on. So that's a whole other thing kind of to think about.

And. But classical is like. I mean, I feel like when you were looking. When you were into classical, you were looking for that sound and it's such a. That sound is. There's so much to explore there.

So, yeah, it was for me, like, definitely finding new or new to me or just kind of electrifying ways that sounds can be created. And recognizing talent of people that. That can play these kind of incredibly difficult pieces was also part of that. Yeah, I think the sound exploration was probably. And is probably the biggest thing that I get out of following classical music.

I mean, when I think back to Elaine Grimaud, I know she's good, like, and the sound is amazing. She also has a Persona for sure. Yeah, I mean, she, like, rescues wolves. She's very dramatic. She has this kind of natural slash dramatic performance which now that I'm looking on, it doesn't feel 100% different than some of the K pop that you've.

Yeah, it's not pursued. It's not a completely different thing. Like, yeah, I think there's. There's something there. I think it. People. There are some musicians in classical that have more of a Persona like that. And maybe it's not like coincidental that I got really into a lankamode who. Who is marketed that way. And I think, yeah, probably gives people cover to just be like, oh, I just like this pretty piano music. But there's. There's more to it.

I mean, why would you even need the COVID Like, when you question comes down to just that, like, purism or just. I don't know. It's really interesting to me how You've evolved to, like, embrace the visual as being something that matters in the experience.

Yeah. And another part of my, like, alternate history is that I originally came to music via mtv. Like having those. Those music videos and. And seeing it on tv, I think was. Was important to me initially. And then I, for 30 years or so went more towards just a, like, pure music direction. Partly I just got into stuff that just wasn't on mtv, so. But also it was like. It was just like this exploration of sound that I felt was more. More of a pure thing.

I mean, in a way, it feels very Western philosophy to even try to separate these things out as, you know, like, the best sound can't be, like, you can't judge the best sound and have your judgment clouded by the visual, you know?

Yeah. And you have. And in types of electronic music that I was into, like IDM and. And drum and bass and break horror and stuff like that, a lot of times, like, they will. You don't even know what the people look like. There's never a picture of them. They might not even put their names on the release. And the album has like, some sort of geometric thing on the COVID And then like song titles that are just gibberish. Like, you don't even get a song title, really. You just get sound and it's.

So we've really, really deleted the visual. We've deleted the language.

We're just doing just pure sound.

Yeah, yeah.