Chapter 3.1: New sound / Translucent Chaos - Chaos -
- Clover Z
- Apr 30, 2024
- 5 min read
New sound
I want to try doing live performances. I want to express the sounds in my head in front of people. When I first started a band, that was my sole purpose for making music.
The brilliance of those times was filled with things that couldn't be understood, things that didn't reach everything. I'm not in a place beyond that now—nothing like that. I'm still oscillating between things I managed to grasp and things I couldn't. It hasn't changed since then.
The moment when I played the acoustic guitar and saw colors in the rusty strings. The thunderous sound released from the electric guitar's strings, which lacked the tactile sensation far more than the acoustic guitar, causing me to fear being electrocuted. My own singing voice, so weak and lacking in personality.
Back then, within me, where the boundary between ideal and reality had not yet been created, everything was always laid bare. I became obsessed with music with a desire I had never felt before, to find a road I had never taken, a path I had never seen.
No matter how much I searched for the "unseen path" in my everyday life, the most irregular thing I did was maybe visiting a slightly different coffee shop. Apart from music, the only time I feel that sensation is when I fervently search for unseen landscapes through the viewfinder in a foreign country.
A solitary castle standing in the wilderness, a translucent lake hidden within a dense forest, a brick town illuminated in orange. If I go beyond that hill, if I turn that corner, I might see an even more beautiful scene. When I see it, how will my heart change? Driven by faint expectations, I walk without a destination, and when I come across a sight, my heart is intensely shaken, and I instinctively capture it with a shutter.
That's why when I traveled to Vladivostok in Russia, I ended up walking back from the Tokarevsky Lighthouse on the seashore in complete darkness, relying only on the light from my phone (to be precise, I didn't have the courage to take a taxi in the darkness).
And in Fiskars Village in Finland, I exceeded the bus's departure time to return to Helsinki where my accommodation was, leading me to hitchhike for the first and last time in my life.
"I saw you a few hours ago." A local woman who went to pick up her elementary school son called out to me as I was walking on the endlessly dark forest road. She said she saw me both on the way there and on the way back.
The daylight hours in Europe during this season of budding greenery are bewitching. I wonder how this scenery will change when it gets a little darker. The transition of the landscape unfolding before me immobilizes me more than whether I can go back now or not.
On the way back, before I knew it, my legs were heavier than lead, and when I returned to the hotel, I couldn't move from the bed and felt like a lifeless corpse. Even though there shouldn't be a specific destination, my travels, where I seek something to the extreme, may transcend jet lag and become one of my creative activities.
In music production, I don't have a clear reason like "I want to create this kind of song" and I start from a blank state. I keep walking in the darkness without knowing the destination, repeatedly opening and closing the doors that stand in front of me.
Is the destination visible or not?
Even in interviews, the inside of my head is still unclear. That's why I value the sensation of "difference" that I can see. Within the reflexes that my brain rejects, everything I desire should be there.
Not like this.
Not with this sound.
I already know this path.
As someone who doesn't have many things they like, I constantly open doors that I groped my way to, only to be disappointed and say, "I ended up back here again."
"Originality" and "monotony" are closely intertwined, making it tricky. Nevertheless, I find myself pursuing favorite sounds and melodies more than having a variety. When I was captivated by music, during those late-night hours when I randomly put many of my favorite songs on a cassette, the sounds I loved were always colorful but seemed to be one.
Even if I like something, I can't bring myself to retrace the steps of a familiar landscape or a path I've already taken, so I keep opening numerous doors while struggling. Although I have one thing I'm seeking, I arrive at a place, feel disappointed, and then seek further.
Is it similar to the illusion that when you keep taking photos from the airport to the city, then to a more distant city after boarding a different plane, the destination ends up being the same? Or is it similar to seeing a friend who struggles in relationships, saying, "After all the hardship you went through, you're dating someone similar again?" No, maybe it's different.
When I play any position on the guitar, I somehow feel like I've seen the scenery before, which is probably due to the sense of familiarity that comes from creating music for 20 years. Within that, I am searching for something that feels "new" and satisfies myself with a sense of "newness" that is neither completely new nor old.
However, the more I articulate what I'm trying to create, the stronger my self-doubt becomes. Creating something new isn't easy, right? It's not easy to take a familiar path. If that's the case, what is it that hinders my destination? I still don't know.
I don't have a grand dream of wanting to do something that no one else has done, nor do I aspire to be a pioneer of anything. I've been called "progressive" before, but I don't particularly like music with extremely intense structures.
"Not this sound." "Not this sound." "Not this sound." "This sound might be it." I repeat the process of opening and closing these doors, and when I line them up, I realize that a complete song has been created. The continuous friction becomes both the place I'm seeking and the essence of music itself, creating a strange sensation.
Since it takes so much effort to create a single song, when making an album, I end up opening an enormous number of doors.
"Wait a moment. I just came up with a great phrase."
Sometimes I can't help but feel envious of those people who have music rain down on them in those ordinary moments. Perhaps those people are called "geniuses".
But unfortunately, beautiful phrases, cool sounds, and lovely words don't suddenly descend upon me from the heavens. I have given up on looking up at the sky with expectations. So, I dig deep into my consciousness, leaving no margin, and sometimes reach a state where I think, "I can never create another song." That state becomes the finished form, even though it feels far from completion as long as the devil of margin, who insists, "Hey, there must be something left in your mind." keeps pushing me.
For some reason, the focus is firm in that place covered by endless, unseen mist. My music always starts from zero and ends back at zero.
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