“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
Rick Rubin
As I mentioned in my last post, it wasn’t until the age of around 24 that I became personally convinced that I could make music of any quality. Thanks to my first graduate job working as CD Editor for Future Music magazine, I was able to ‘collect’ some free music software along the way. A Windows PC and some borrowed synths enabled me to start producing digital music that fundamentally changed me, and the course of my life. The featured track in this post is Ad Infinitum, a Mangomad track I wrote whilst living in Bristol.
I remember this so fondly as it’s the first time I truly experienced ‘The Flow’. Putting the parts down for this felt like I was channeling something outside of me. I was tapping into the universal pool of ideas, and the feeling that they didn’t come from within was both profound and potent. The fulcrum of the piece is a lovely guitar solo from my good mate and not-so-famous Guitar God, Sean Halliday. He nailed the vibe and helped add a perfect Prog Rock aesthetic to my parts.
It took quite a while to get there though, so let’s rewind a bit…
Back to 1991
I was 17 and an unabashed synth-pop fan. The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, New Order, Depeche Mode and of course, the Godfathers. Kraftwerk. I listened to their music religiously and had wild fantasies about a new-romantic styled career behind a bank of synths on Top of the Pops. At this time, I was suddenly presented with a matured insurance policy my parents took out for me as a young child, for the princely sum of £750.
The first thing I did with the money was buy a second hand analogue synthesiser: The Roland JX-3P, complete with the PG-200 programmer, which allowed proper knob-tweaking! I saw it advertised in the ‘For Sale’ section of the local newspaper. It was love at first sight. I handed over £275 without bartering (in the intervening years, I’ve still never mastered this dark art).
So, for starters, I learned how to play the Blue Monday bassline and shortly afterwards I bought a Boss DR550 Dr. Rhythm drum machine, where I learned to program the kick drum sequence to accompany the classic bassline. I happily played my bassline along with it…for a couple of weeks. The sticking point being I couldn’t record anything! I had no understanding of MIDI technology and no sequencer and mixer (I didn’t even know I needed both!) which could enable me to combine the drum machine with the synth to make merry music.
This was 1991. There was no internet or YouTube. I didn’t even know where to start. As a setup, it soon became a deeply frustrating bag of tricks that couldn’t do what I wanted or imagined. I didn’t even know how to write a tune or song at this point. All I knew is that I wanted it to work. I just felt way out of my depth. My reverence for music-makers heightened at this point. I became more in awe of how the music I loved was created.
Eventually I decided to sell this classic synth (a huge regret - the synth can be had on eBay for 3 times the price I paid for it in 1991!) and replaced it with a digital FM (Frequency Modulation) synth, the Yamaha YS200. This keyboard had an on-board 8 track sequencer and a palette of mildly uninspiring digital presets that never lived up to the JX-3P. However, I did learn to sequence parts and created my first full tracks, which included an instrumental cover version of Kraftwerk’s The Model. I meticulously reproduced as many of the parts from the original as I could by ear. This involved lots of skipping and rewinding of the CD. My version had an inferior, harsher digital FM quality, but hey, cover versions are the musician’s playground and in many cases form the basis of understanding musical structure for the aspiring pop star. The sounds may have been piss-poor, but at last I was learning.
The Times, They Are A-Changing
By now I was at Uni in Aberdeen and it was clear that the synth pop carousel was coming to a grinding halt. It was pretty uncool at this point (unlike today) and the 80s glory years were replaced by a combination of rave culture and indie, mashed up imperfectly, but beautifully in the form of the Madchester scene. Spearheaded by The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, amongst many others and paving the way for Brit-Pop and Oasis mania of the mid to late nineties.
At this point, Uni life and all the ‘social’ excesses that came with it took my musical life in an entirely different direction. I remember one night listening to The Shamen’s Re:Evolution with Terence McKenna talking about the power of psychedelics, whilst myself being high and having an almost out-of-body experience. Synth pop made way for a more psychedelic and introspective musical experience that reached out to the collective unconscious spirit, made manifest in rave culture. One love indeed.
From West End Girls to Dirty Numb Angel Boy
So, my enlightenment, like many others, began at university. However, for me it was being introduced to new music and finding euphoria in these discoveries. From classic electronic albums like the Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Leftfield’s Leftism to the burgeoning Trip-Hop scene emanating from a heavily scented, smokey cloud in Bristol, fuelled by the likes of Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead.
It takes a while for new influences to sink in and it would take until the turn of the century until I really found my artistic voice. All the influences, from synth-pop riffs to acid house, indie, dub and electro all melded into the Mangomad sound that weaved its way through the music I made.
The Birth of the Artist
The feeling whilst creating Ad Infinitum is what fuelled me to make my album, Electrotherapy. It was probably the most arduous creative endeavour of my life, as despite most of my personal life descending into chaos, I held firm and found a way to get it done. It may be one of my proudest achievements.
Tapping into the flow for the first time was one of the most memorable experiences in my lifetime. In this state, most of the parts usually come very quickly, with the teeth of the work usually gleaming brightly. The production, however, was another matter. I spent too long on it for minimal gains. I would have loved to have worked with a great engineer on the piece, but a lack of budget made that a pipe dream never realised.
Now, however, I’m able to look back on that piece with a love and fondness that still gives me the motivation to keep creating. Flow states are different for me now. Filming and editing is not quite as flowing as playing notes on a keyboard or sampler pads, but I still experience it when I work out how a film will ‘flow’. The art of arranging in a linear sequence is a shared metephor between digital music and digital video. What I learned in music production helped me enormously to translate those skills to video editing.
At their core, both are concerned with eliciting emotional responses in a viewer or listener and finding ways to tell stories, either visually or aurally, verbally or otherwise. For me, the transition seemed natural.
That first experience of the flow was enough to propel me to keep creating through any means I could. Sometimes, only hanging on by a splintered fingernail. I know from hearing others’ stories that there is a common feeling is that ‘it’ chose them and not the other way around.
When I look back, that’s how I feel.
Electrotherapy is available on all major streaming platforms. Last month on Spotify it had a gargantuan 6 monthly listeners, which isn’t bad for a 20 yr old album, lost to the world of marketing and fanbases. It’s around the same size as my audience on Substack. Give it a listen if you’d like be part of a clique nobody really knows about. Sooo underground, dahling!
Who is this for?
I’ve been contemplating this week what the point is of writing these posts. It’s a tiny audience (thank you those who are reading already!) and sometimes I feel a little silly for writing to a few people. There are some wonderful writers on Substack and I have a long way to go in honing my skills. The pervading feeling that status is directly linked to how many people have ‘smashed the like button’ is a toxic thought, best ignored. At least, that’s what I’m consciously doing.
I realise I’m kind of compelled to write at the minute and I’m going to keep going with this for the forseeable future. If any of what I say, or my own insights resonate or gives someone motivation to keep going with their own life pursuits, then I’ll be a happy soul with my lot.