Electronic Musing

Lucid Dreaming

I’d file this under Inspiring Interviews, but this is more. Lovely, thoughtful intro with some background on electronic music and lucid dreams, followed by some words from Sir Richard on the topic.

The process of creating music electronically could be seen as a correlative of dreaming. The musician creates a mosaic out of sonic fragments, but the mosaic exists in more than two dimensions: sampled snatches of music are snippets of other people’s experience; location and environmental recordings hold personal memories, sense-impressions, emotional associations. All these are recombined and arranged in the mixing desk, in the dub (and here we might as well consult the dictionary definition of ‘dub’: “an alternative soundtrack, esp in a different language”).

The secret, for musicians as for lucid dreamers, is in trying to find a balance point between when to control and when to let go: does becoming too aware of what you’re doing dispel the magic? “The grade changes,” says Richard James. “You’ll be on another planet, thinking, What made me get myself here? And those are the best ones, when they’re in the middle. More interesting, because it’s really unexpected. But when you’re totally in control it’s usually more boring, because nothing really moves around, you don’t get all this weird shit going on. It’s quite like being awake, and that’s not all that interesting.”

http://www.aphextwin.nu/learn/98336584377199.shtml