The Utopian Dream

I'd always thought it was some sort of fantasy, a world of peace without religion or money. Take away the two greatest evils of our society and there would be no poverty, war, greed or any of the other crap that dominates the world. The idea itself seems too good to be true. Surely the greatest Utopia imaginable.

Last night i watched Zeitgeist: Addendum, the sequel to the excellent documentary Zeitgeist: The Movie, both can be viewed here. While the first installment is a compelling film based largely around conspiracy theories, the new one shows how messed up the monetary system is and how a world without money is not only preferable but actually possible.

Technology rules our world, technology can be anything created by mankind to make our lives easier, whether that be a humble bicycle or a jet plane, a pen and paper or a computer, a catapult or an atom bomb. As technology advances, the need for humans in the workplace diminishes, the corporations always eager for increased profits can make more money by cutting staff and replacing them with machines. But it stands to reason that as jobs are cut there will be less workers earning money to spend on the things that these machines are now making.

So how could a money free society actually work? Well, i cant even begin to explain it anywhere near as well as the film does so i would suggest watching it, but to put it simply, in a world without money people would no longer be slaves to the financial system. People would not have to do crap jobs because the machines could do it, no-one would be losing out because there would be nothing to lose.

Given the freedom to live our lives as we choose, would we not all want to work together to make our world better, to improve our societies and our collective knowledge. Remember that in our capitalist society, we are forced to look out for ourselves first, after work we have little time or effort to worry about the community or those less fortunate than ourselves. The fact that the only way to help in our world is by donating our time or our money makes the proposition seem quite unappealing, but if money was no issue and our time was not wasted trying to just make ends meet then surely many of us would want to help.

Putting it like this it still seems like a fantasy, every aspect of our capitalist society is based around greed, power and corruption, that anything else seems impossible. Maybe it is, the power of money (and religion) is so huge that its hard to even imagine how a Utopia like i have just described could come to exist.

The Venus Project could be the answer, it could be the great hope for world peace and a better way of life. Of course, it needs support, ironically much of that support is financial but that is the way of the world right now, and it needs time but surely its worth it.

If you haven't already, please check out both Zeitgeist movies and try to think about the world differently to the way we have become accustomed to thinking. Then ask yourself "what can i do?".

Genres And Categories

Whenever i talk about my music, i'm forever being asked to define it in some sort of narrow bracket. I guess everyone likes to categorize things, especially where music is concerned.

In my case though i generally think its not that easy, i'm sure it has something to do with my own perception of my music and the fact that i genuinely don't want to fit into any category but i really dont think that my music fits into one. Sure, i can call it Electronica, aside from being a slightly pretentious sounding American term it probably fits my style better than anything else through simply being vague. Breakbeat is another label that kinda fits my stuff but in many ways this kinda implies that its like all the other Breakbeat/Nu Skool Breakz stuff that forms a well-defined genre in itself these days. For my third category here on MySpace i have struggled to choose between Industrial, IDM and Experimental yet none of these fit perfectly as i think they all suggest different things (and for some reason MySpace wont let me change it anyway). Other sites i have found ask for just one or two genres, which makes it even more difficult for me.

Of course i understand why these labels have to be here, it makes it a lot easier to find something if you narrow your search down to criteria such as genre, the internet is a very big place. But in day to day life it kind of annoys me the way i have to try to explain my sound instead of being able to say something simple like "i make dubstep". No disrespect to those that make music to fit one genre, but that idea just bores me now.

This whole thing with genres and categories happens everywhere in life. Kids express their "individuality" by dressing the same as their peers and idols then call themselves Emos or Chavs or whatever they wanna be known as. TV, film and literature again have categories, yet its the films or books that aren't so easy to define which (in my opinion at least) stand out from all the generic crap. Not to forget all the other categories people are (usually) born into like class, race, religion etc.

It seems that no matter how different or individual people like to perceive themselves as being, we all have a tendency to want to belong, to want some sort of order in our lives. Liking one particular genre of music over another helps us to create an identity for ourselves, its gives us a common interest with other people of similar tastes, it helps us decide the sort of clubs we want to go to or the forums we visit online, it helps us to predict whether we like an artist based on whether they make music that fits a genre we like. The problem is that it creates a sort of exclusion for anything else that doesnt fit. And that makes it harder to break away ourselves so we end up sticking to one thing.

The conclusion i've come to in myself is to be more open-minded in my tastes and to be less restricted in the music i make. I know i'm not alone in thinking like this, there are many others like me, its just there really isn't a simple label for people like us.

Its been a while....

I haven't really posted anything for a while, except of course to mention the release of Prelude which you should download if you haven't already. Its not that i have become any less opinionated of late cos i haven't, its just really been a matter of finding the time to sit down and have a bit of rant about the world or the weather!

For what its worth i've been quite busy. Promoting this EP has taken up a lot of my spare time and i'm still trying to get some new material together. Actually this is all a bit of a learning curve for me. Simply sticking some tunes up on the various sites is clearly not enough and directing people to them is not as easy as i'd hope. I guess i make this all more difficult for myself by trying to be a little different in the music i make. Avoiding genres makes it hard to define my tunes in anything but the vaguest of ways, it also makes it harder to find a specific audience. But it seems that i've had some good feedback which always helps.

Well, theres not really a lot more for me to say right now so i will finish by saying thanks to everyone that has downloaded Prelude, i sincerely hope that you enjoy it. I'll be back posting more of my own thoughts about stuff very soon.