soon the sun stands still

2020 it would have been nice to play some gigs 

horsemouth tends to regard music making as an eccentric hobby/ bizarre psychological compulsion these days. he vastly prefers what he does  now to what he did back then (back when there was a record industry, back when there were 'deals' (allegedly)). 

he saw one gig this year (gwenifer raymond/ dr. turtle) and watched a few things on-line.(ok ok there was the mari lwyd and there was probably something down ar waterintobeer  horsemouth would have o check).

and  it will be good to be able to play gigs again (if that ever happens). 

this year musicians of bremen released one album and various EPs and singles, and horsemouth was pretty pleased with those but once again only a handful of people got to hear them. it's pretty much what it would have been - we would have perhaps played one gig in the summer to launch everything and horsemouth himself might have got in another solo gig to keep his hand in, a few more people might have received physical demo CDs of the album. but hey-ho. 

that said the people horsemouth knows who work in events, in record shops, in pubs and clubs have been pretty much decimated this year.

a friend knows gwenifer raymond's  mum and used to help engineer and produce her earlier punk type music at some cardiff music education project. she does that 'night-train to valhalla' style very well (but can she do an 'on the banks of the owchita'?)

like most musicians horsemouth guesses he's happy just to get to make the music (but then has no idea how to go about promoting it). horsemouth used to try and delegate that to other people (and now there's only him he's still like that). 

look at rob lawson and zali z krishna - there they are creating music and releasing it, writing and releasing books (and in Zali's case rendering (is that the right word?) 3D worlds and filming passing goods trains). 

in this they are ahead of horsemouth, he has not yet got his words off the screen and onto the printed page.

the music got free but it's an interesting variety of free - the musicians produce it for (nearly) free but there are still streaming companies, record companies etc all of whom barely pay. there's still a music industry (not that horsemouth ever troubled it in his earlier 'career' and not that he's going to trouble it now). horsemouth was glad to embrace myspace (and later soundcloud, mixcloud, youtube and bandcamp) as a way to get his music out past the gatekeepers and to the people. this was the main thing he wanted. 

horsemouth's model here is jacques attali's bruits published in english as noise: the political economy of music there's a lot here (as it will be read later on) about music as herald of the sharing economy . later attali will return and rearrange his thesis explicitly in the light of mp3 and the internet. but the first edition remains the more open and productive of readings. 

everyone can now do it and in a way horsemouth thinks everyone should. 

so anyway, 2020 it would have been nice to play some gigs.