haven't you stopped listening to music yet? (in which horsemouth re-invents himself as a cottage industry)

this is true for horsemouth.

he listens to a lot less music than he used to. 

he hasn’t got a record player set up (and hasn’t for about 15 years), he has a CD player now (but he hadn’t for the last 3 years).

basically any music he listens to he does it on laptop.

and pretty much all of that he listens to on youtube.

if there’s music on BBC4, sky arts or glastonbury he doesn’t watch it (very little of it interests him).

similarly with the movies he watches 

he doesn’t have any subscriptions - he hunts things out on youtube/ daily motion etc. he doesn’t have a functioning DVD player anymore. the DVDs sit in boxes. a large bag waits to go out to the charity shop. 

and he plays a lot less than he used to too…

horsemouth supposes the optimum moment was when everyone had a CD burner on their computer and access to a printer. they could record, master and then release their own CDs of music - physical product! 

here horsemouth is thinking of the two CDs of music by members of the communal endeavour that horsemouth and howard compiled and released using the above technology.  

but roughly at that point MP3s happened and the entire of the recording industry took a dive into the toilet. 

it's not that the recording industry wasn't shit and didn't have to be routed around anyway but it was nice that it was there as something that could be sold out to. it was good that there was something that would promote you (in exchange for a large cut of any putative profits). 

there were exceptions. there were good record companies  - look at strata east.

of course horsemouth can't say he wasn't warned. he'd read jacques attali's noise: the political economy of music with its adorno derived argument that the sheer overproduction and stockpiling of recorded sound would eventually kill its ability to speak to us and lead to a fetish for the live, the improvised.

attali would later claim, in a substantial rewrite, the era of MP3 and napster as a confirmation of his theories - but the match between his theory and events are much more equivocal than he presents them.

so here it is! the chance for horsemouth to re-invent himself as a cottage industry

he is accumulating his musical instruments at his mum's and then all he has to do is find a way of recording himself (and releasing himself and advertising and promoting himself). 

once upon a time horsemouth made music - he should do so again. 

though why he should go back to making music when people aren't listening to it is another matter. 

at the end of the day horsemouth just wants to be allowed to make things. how much success they experience in the world is very much a secondary issue to him. if he gets the pleasure of making that's the main thing. 

horsemouth is back in the wen

he's taken two guitars and a rucksack of clothes up to his brother's and they have been loaded into the car for transportation up to herefordshire. he then came back and ate a falafel wrap (they made the flatbread in front of him too - that was a first). 

now he's sitting around waiting for a meeting of the communal endeavour. (possibly his last)

when he's done with the meeting he'll go and get a beer. (unless it has utterly soured his mood, in which case he'll just sit and fume). 

ok he's lying here with a beer. 

tomorrow (by which horsemouth now means today) he's off round howard's to see how the solo album is progressing. 

ok a little rain early morning. horsemouth will nip round the corner for some breakfast and then be off to howards.