Over the past few years I’ve engaged myself in daily creative projects to keep my imagination active and my artistic practices challenged. Starting in 2008 when I took a Polaroid picture every day of the year, 2009’s daily field recordings, and onto other studio sound diaries. In 2016 I decided to try something I rarely work with or use in my art: words. The idea, on a daily basis, was to notice interesting words or phrases, or have them pop into my head, or having inspiration for a place manifested in a word. It was definitely challenging for me and I think the outcome was not only interesting but these words and phrases will surely make their way into my song titles, album titles and general creative pool. Below is a list, month by month, day by day, of the words I wrote in 12 small notebooks throughout 2016. I hope you enjoy reading through. Small insights into my days and perhaps inspiration for yours.

JANUARY
01: leaf
02: LINE DRAWING MOON
03: along the bank
04: resin
05: airports
06: on fallen ground
07: sustain
08: baby sky
09: SLOWN
10: grain
11: and the music echoed around the world
12: birds like spring
13: NOTHING..
14: looking north
15: westering sun
16: FADED MUSIC
17: another outside
18: memory, vapor
19: DUSK
20: ping
21: rusted oak
22: i lose who i am
23: snow loops
24: sky blue form
25: contrast/melt
26: TAPE
27: H I S S
28: southward, over the snow
29: small neighborhoods
30: cold sand
31: the glowing sea

FEBRUARY:
01: lowering sky
02: melt.
03: blurred trees
04: discrete
05: snow gradient
06: snow throwing
07: rivers, cities
08: world noise
09: FLUTTER
10: c a s s s e t t e
11: drift
12: mixed
13: sine select
14: negative
15: islands
16: somi
17: drawing
18: just like islands
19: thirteen
20: where has it all gone?
21: DRIP
22: soft birds
23: minist
24: young
25: VOID
26: RND
27: texture spread cloud
28: fallen tree
29: fractured beautiful

MARCH:
01: found objects
02: noise or light?
03: 303
04: soak
05 –
06: summer wind
07: blur
08: peep
09: night sounds
10: tap
11: –
12: uncovered spring
13: bark
14: –
15: emergency
16: –
17: no spring
18: negatives
19: FLOTATIONS
20: early aquamarine
21: cloud and spider
22: SALT
23: revision
24: low MOON
25 see-through
26: DEW
27: –
28: –
29: almost
30: cypress
31: –

APRIL:
01: clear fog
02: –
03: –
04: –
05: –
06: why do we have eyes?
07: please rain
08: learn
09: geometry
10: chronology and light
11: like feedback
12: shadow calling
13: autumn reverb spring
14: threshold
15: –
16: goodbyes
17: sky field
18: hiccups
19: print
20: tune
21: “except the sea”
22: one p.m.
23: the ephemerality of chalk
24: sprout
25: drawn circles
26: RIDE
27: density, diffusion
28: hush
29: the color of rocks
30: just that

MAY:
01: another chance to say goodbye
02: no religion
03: once among
04: overgrey
05: bells, sticks
06: frequency of the sky
07: spring grey
08: old shores
09: memory garden
10: emergency sine waves
11: color wheel
12: lilac
13: would you rather live in a world without music, or a world without color?
14: dust letters
15: hummingbird
16: moth/slip
17: coral
18: a new form of light
19: –
20: grass
21: a new alphabet
22: –
23: more blur more blur
24: 12 sky
25: bus
26: memory burn
27: letterform
28: unknowns
29: tough
30: days.
31: FEEDBACK FEEDBACK

JUNE:
01: these have been bad days
02: screaming sun
03: –
04: moving stars
05: –
06: mint
07: take it all for granted.
08: random butterflies
09: –
10: –
11: –
12: –
13: strong green
14: nothing will change
15: proportional
16: bellow
17: hummingbird
18: hummingbear
19: –
20: tape operation
21: violent/delicate
22: riverbed
23: air sill
24: taming the randomness of uncontrolled degradation
25:-
26: piano/piano
27: running in dead grasses
28: DUST JAZZ
29: i found a piano at the bottom of the sea
30: join/separate.

JULY:
01:tapes taps barely
02:-
03: leaf frame
04: crickets
05: first cicada
06: goodbye language
07: more than time displays
08: bell call
09: borrowed grasses
10: fragment
11: adventure
12: wisp
13: chromatic
14: air like water
15: laboratory.
16: a bright green light
17: –
18: a wooden sun
19: a halo kind of space
20: –
21: fern shadows
22: ray
23: studio B
24: diving
25: sails
26: mourning doves and day moon
27: desaturation
28: fenne
29: –
30: box
31: narrow road

AUGUST:
01: forage
02: the pale —— ?
03: denoise cut cut
04: orange wood
05: westward northward
06: nostalgia
07: mosquito din
08: loon haunt
09: no music, all music
10: windbound
11: disturbance
12: boats and tears
13: north/east
14: fragrance
15: field debris
16: my own little hurricane
17: duskt
18: 00706
19: –
20: june
21: eat the moon
22: the small things
23: the lost see
24: somewhere over the labrador sea
25: walking on the sea again
26: greens greens grey
27: ljos
28: ice + ash
29: too blue
30: takk/farewell
31: green of trees

SEPTEMBER:
01: drift/acclimate
02: –
03: a hole in the ocean
04: coming up for air
05: brackish
06: seashine
07: the world was still in color
08: waterfront
09: 909
10:  spool
11: 7.2
12: –
13: –
14: –
15: –
16: fade high
17: bell bell
18: whirlpool
19: flat space
20: –
21: –
22: felt
23: born
24: –
25: listening to an endless road
26: change
27: raindrop
28: the moss ground
29: celestial
30: a new punk

OCTOBER:
01: we are nowhere, we are everything
02: everything monochrome
03: frail
04: puddle
05: time, peak
06: shadow oak
07: granular horizon
08: fold
09: sleep garden
10: where there is discord.
11: sand soot dust
12:  corrugated field
13: 24 seconds
14: half motion, half light
15: cloud slicing
16: spire
17: float, flange, fly
18: gorgeous
19: 70
20: –
21: the end of autumn
22: goodbye leaves
23: ?
24: loud music falling downward
25: bluster
26: –
27: –
28: –
29: –
30: coast reeds
31: none of this is simple

NOVEMBER:
01: the blind lead
02: for evening sun
03: chorus
04: 10:73
05: visual noise
06: reading water
07: –
08: edges
09: (a page full of scribbles)
10: washed out
11: –
12: drawn black
13: dry twisting
14: fourth
15: color in the absence of light
16: leaf shadows
17: –
18: underbrush
19: –
20: –
21: slide
22: small destroyer
23: snow tones
24: beacon
25: –
26: leaf dusting
27: december
28: grown
29: small mellow
30: plastic forest

DECEMBER:
01: –
02: bitter
03: fallen
04: the acoustics of fire
05: star
06: from the pacific clouds
07: –
08: suddenly for a second
09: mooon
10: felt
11: tine and reed
12: grains of wood
13: far cried
14: find a way to dissolve
15: sea and smoke
16: –
17: soft collisions
18: follow from the east
19: air + ice
20: fly
21: quantize nature
22: –
23: spaces, spaces
24: sketchy/fleeting
25: song/glass
26: moss findings
27: a city awakes from no rest
28: dust
29: sea light
30: esmerelda
31 thirtyfourthousand

Some of my favorite and most-listened-to music of 2016.
Of particular note was re-discovering the track “Piano” on Talk Talk’s Missing Pieces album, essentially a Mark Hollis solo piano work. Stunning.

(in no particular order)

The Humble Bee Morning Music
This Mortal Coil Dust & Guitars
Bon Iver 22, A Million
Amiina Kurr
Daniel Lanois Goodbye To Language
The National High Violet
Solo Andata In The Lens
Federico Durand Jardin De Invierno
Haux The Bluest Sage
Gareth Dickson Orwell Court
Mark Hollis s/t
Talk Talk Missing Pieces (see note above)
Perfume Genius Put Your Back N 2 It
Sigur Ros Valtari

Was interviewed by Stray Landings who put together a well-written article, I think!

BETWEEN TWO POINTS / 12K IN FOCUS
Featuring such artists as Ryuichi Sakamoto and Marsen Jules, 12k have released covered wide ground across over 100 records. Yet despite the longevity of the project, 12k never seem to run out of steam. To the contrary, records such as Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer’s Twinesound as fresh and challenging as anything from their near 20 year existence. As part of our ‘In Focus’ series, looking at some of our favorite labels, we got the chance to speak to label head Taylor Deupree about the ethos and foundations of 12k.

“There was a fairly decisive point that started the ball rolling”, he begins. “In 1996 I had a contract for an album with Silent Records in California who never fulfilled their end of the deal and didn’t release the album. Taking a look at the landscape of labels at the time I was frustrated at the lack of artist-run labels that really focused on the quality of the whole experience rather than on trends. I was working at a label at the time as well (Instinct Records, as their art director) so I had some knowledge of the basics of how to run, and not to run, a label. So really it all fell into place then and I decided to release the CD that was supposed to come out on Silent by myself.. and 12k was born. I often think of what my career would look like today if Silent had released that album and 12k was never started. Funny how these little moments, circumstances, snap-decisions, can really change the course of your entire life. Fascinating. As frustrated as I was with labels and the whole music business at that time, it was a blessing in disguise. I wanted to do a label right, at least my vision of what was “right.” For better or worse, I wanted to take the whole process into my own hands.”

Despite an expansive base of releases, 12k are also known for their precise aesthetic. On their website, the style is described as “a precisely-outlined, yet deeply emotional concoction of the technological and the organic.” This makes sense in the context of the electro-acoustic genre, of which 12k are champions. “12k’s music has always revolved around technology”, Deupree explains. “Whether it was early experiments in post-techno or microsound to current hybrids of electronic and acoustic music. Technology has always been centre stage and many of our artists rely on it to do what they do. I’ve always been attracted to and wanted to be an artist, but am not a very good one unless I have technology to help me along…

“So, because of this, technology always played a role in my life and supporting role in my creative endeavours. Fast forward to more recent years and I begin to feel that technology has taken over our lives too much, thus my desire to start down-playing the technological in my work. Combine this with my life-long love of nature and landscapes and the two become this hybrid of the technologic and organic. The organic provides a humanness, a roughness, and imperfection to the technology, and the technology brings the natural out of context and helps redefine it.”

On their website, you can find a list 12 principles upon which the label was founded. These could be read as an almost Biblical list of commandments, yet the label could never be described as dogmatic. The last of the 12 is “everything will change”, which Deupree describes as the “most important of all”. Deupree clarifies; “while I do feel there is a strong mission behind 12k it’s also important to realise that nothing is sacred, that everything will change, and that there’s no point in trying to guess the future. You have to realise that your ideas are fluid, that just because something is interesting and important to you now it doesn’t mean it will be ten years from now.”

Perhaps most intriguing of the 12 principles is number 8: “Never try to innovate”. It can often seem as if this is the precise opposite of what musicians are regularly told to do. Innovation, we are told, is the foundation of creativity. But Deupree’s sentiments are more expressionist than futurist in this regard. “Innovation is the wrong motivation for musicians. If innovation is your prime motivation, you will be more concerned about public reception (after all, it is the public who will ultimately determine whether you have “innovated” or not) than you will be of self-expression. Self-expression should be an artist’s primary reason for creating art. Be true to yourself and create something personal. Innovation may happen, or it may not. Innovation should be a happy byproduct, not a motivator.”

Although their music is worlds apart, the resistance to innovation is reminiscent of the ethos of Terre Thaemlitz aka DJ Sprinkles. For Thaemlitz, originality is inextricably linked to individuality and privatisation of one’s creative labour. According to Thaemlitz, we should rather be aiming to reference pre-existing historical material, and hence highlight that which is common amongst us. However, Deupree’s thoughts differ in their conclusions about this. “It’s not good to be stuck in the past” he continues. “Certainly these references can’t help but pop up, and for sure paying respect to those who came before us is valid and important, but to do nothing but redo what has already been done isn’t going down the right path either.

“I don’t believe that early pioneers of electronic music, or any form of music, sat down to their instrument and said “OK, today I am going to innovate!” More realistically they came across a new tool that may or may not have been intended for music and set out to explore its possibilities. They were driven by exploration not innovation. “Innovation” to me sounds like you are looking for some reward, trying to impress an audience. It’s not genuine. Explore and you may end up innovating and it comes as an accidental bonus and certainly your explorations would deserve some form of praise, but don’t let that praise be your primary motivating factor.”

12k furthermore describe themselves as “anti-design”, another term which designates the label as an antithesis to much of the prevailing music industry norms. “When I talk about “anti-design” I’m talking about a graphic representation in as pure a form as possible”, Deupree writes. “Graphic design is about communication, and I feel the most successful design gets its point across the most directly, while retaining a sense of aesthetics and taste. I don’t think anyone can claim that 12k’s design is full of drama, decoration or excess fluff. So many design trends have come and gone that utilise certain flares that pin it to a particular style or time. While this can often be impossible to avoid, I try to avoid these types of traps with 12k (whether I’m successful or not is another story). Simple typography over unadorned backgrounds and photography/images that conveys a message to the buyer and listener… this is as pure as I’ve been able to boil down the design aesthetic to convey what needs to be conveyed. I don’t feel that any of these beliefs hinder me from making this “symbiotic” connection between the music and the artwork. In fact, I feel it strengthens it. There is no excess decoration or distraction to get in the way.”

The latest release on the label was Twine, a collaboration LP between Deupree himself and Marcus Fischer. The album uses magnetic tape loops as its primary focus, creating an eery and solitary sound. “After doing some initial experiments and recordings we decided that we wanted to push ourselves somewhere differently, not to just settle on the previous methods” Deupree says. “We started exploring recordings on Marcus’ reel-to-reel tape machines and during a tired late night, a loop on one was just playing in the background as we hung out and talked. The sound of this lone, mono loop really intrigued us and we knew we had something to go on. One strong characteristic of Twine is that it all came together very quickly, we had the album recorded in two or three days. This has happened in the past in some of my projects, and I always feel like the best work is sometimes the work that gets completed very quickly, almost in a stream of inspiration. Work that is laboured over for months can often be refined very nicely but also risks being stressed over too much, or over-refined. There is a spontaneous and natural quality to Twine that draws on the energy of not being over-thought. These times when the music just flows, without too much thought or stress can be when the most magic happens.”

The experiments with format do not seem to ending anytime soon either. “I’ve been working on a new solo album for about a year, the follow up to my last, Faint” Deupree tells me. “It’s being created using a very specific means of production with a pretty limited palette of instruments. Mostly electric piano and glockenspiel, with a little DX-7 and some other synths thrown in.”

This is what makes 12k a success. It’s a label that has coupled a continued openness to exploration with years of establishing its structural and ideological foundations. As a result, an album of such scope as Twine can be written in just a few days. At it’s core, 12k seem to make a minimalist expression that is ultimately at odds with the hyperactive bustle and information-saturation afforded by the modern world. Deupree expands; “my interest in minimalism definitely spawned from living in New York City and desiring a more calmed and focused lifestyle. It played out (and still does) in my music, design, home life and general aesthetics of living. It’s so easy to get caught up in the over-saturation. Personally, I feel minimalism is more important than ever, but I’m not sure many share the same belief as the desire for more and louder constantly prevails. It can be difficult to try to sell quiet, beatless music. It certainly doesn’t get the attention that loud music does. Volume sells.” Yet Deupree remains resilient: “but, what can I do? Hopefully open the ears of a few listeners and offer them a bit of respite from our overloaded society.”

The BoilerRoom UK interviewed myself and Ryuichi Sakamoto in reference to our performance at St. Johns in London last year which BoilerRoom live streamed.

“You can’t separate silence and sound” – Ryuichi Sakamoto

Read the interview in full here:
http://boilerroom.tv/you-cant-separate-silence-and-sound-sakamoto-deupree-speak/

I’m very honored to be a part of this global field recording project put together by Janek Schaefer, called Foundscape.

http://www.foundsoundscape.com

an excerpt of info:
“Foundsoundscape was inspired by the very first Digital Radio station in the UK, that simply played a recording of a rural location. Radio you could just leave running to add a peaceful ambience to your environment indoors. It heralded a new media paradigm, as digital broadcasting offered more capacity than requred for the first time, and that space needed filling. At the same time on TV, Channel 4 was broadcasting Big Brother live 24hours, and at night I loved to tune-in my analogue TV sets all over the house, and the shed, so I could hear the housemates gently sleeping as I worked through the night. Since then infomercials, and gambling TV have taken over, and I greatly miss that sense of real-time space, that does not demand your attention. This then just quietly underscores your environment, by creating new ones from others.”