The purpose of this blog is to write my thoughts on the music that I listen to. While I like reading reviews for music and get that dumb feeling of validation from seeing music that you like get a high score, the reviews I read are often too philosophical and don't describe the feeling of listening to music adequately. Maybe that's just my fault for only reading music reviews from so many outlets, but I don't find many that I think are written well. The ones that I do find that are written well, however, fall into the same trap that I find many YouTube creators fall into: talking in really highfalutin terms that don't really convey the experience of listening to music.
The inspiration for writing about this comes from another outlet of writing that I like and respect: Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It's rarely music related as it is a PC gaming publication, but I like their approach to reviews and their general writings. They're rooted in the experiences of the writer as the experience the video game. This makes for a more interesting way of writing and reading because it frames the experience of their gameplaying in their own histories and personalities. Sure there are technical and mechanical ciritques, but it makes for a more personal read where they are able to connect more emotional dots beyond just a purely analytical review. It's this subjective experience that they convey which makes their writing more interesting and engaging. Too often critiques seem to try to be objective about a form which is largely an expression of the subjective. This isn't to say that there isn't a place for the kind of critiques that end in a 0-10 scale or two thumbs up, but I don't ever really read a review for music that encompasses emotion - those are often left up to editorials.
In this blog, I want to record my own personal experience of listening to music, my own personality, and how that intersects with the intent of the artist. Maybe it aligns? Maybe it gives me a completely different experience from what the artist has set out. I think music allows for this large array of interpretation more than film and literature that is shared with video games. A large part of why the writing at RPS works is because video games allow for emergent storylines that are completely separate from the intended storyline that developers lay out, and sometimes these are the most memorable or important parts of the experience. Far more than what is prescribed by the code in the game. Music offers this kind of experience too, especially if the music is instrumental because you are only guided by the aural landscape and your own imagination. That's not to discount the mission of video game developers or musicians, as often there is a very clear objective to their art, but this kind of emergent experience is something special to these art forms. This is in contrast to films and literature where often the stories are carefully premeditated to deliver a certain experience. Of course, this can also be up to interpretation too as every person can take away a different message (or is purposely created in a way to encourage this), there is still often a objective that the creator was aiming for. With music, often I feel like the experience is crafted and the message is around the edges.
This will be dedicated to those experiences and feelings that happen at the margins of its existence.
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