State of the Aggregate
The Natural Aggregate has taken a back seat in recent times. The evidence for the decline is clear, with the last release a single assembled from a shortfilm OST in September 2015, and the only other follow-up to the May 2014 EP being a contribution to the Red.Soul remix EP in December of the same year.
Although these two satellite releases, which equate to a mere three tracks, do take the opportunity to express some different ideas that came since the EP, nothing has come close to becoming a holistic, coherent body of work.
I began the process of producing the 10,000 Little PopstarsEP four years ago. And in the time since its release, I’ve felt the pathetic obligation to release music fall away and in its place, has emerge out-and-out guilt at not following-up this EP effectively.
I’ve thought a lot about where this vacuum has come from. It’s possible to blame commitments to other projects or my work, however I feel these explanations are limp. I would have felt the need to address this if it were pressing enough. It was this thought that completed the circle for me; as I didn’t have anything significant to express, I expressed nothing.
10,000 Little Popstars, although conceived as a university project, did communicate a message that was important to me. It concerned my environment at that time, the peers I collaborated with and the academic setting I worked within. It was an opportunity to leap out of the sideman status that is home to many bass players and say ‘this is what I sound like’.
Having left university and entered the real world of work, I have learned a great deal about my character and I have never ceased to be a student. I feel equipped to re-enter the fray and produce a new body of work, with a new set of ideas that are important to me.
In this blog, I will be cataloguing highlights in any research I carry out and I will be transparent about my journey through the ideas that will inform the writing and production of this work. I endeavour to post as frequently as possible, however I would recommend checking in with me on Facebook orTwitter to learn more about what’s going on.
Yours naturally, Martin