Lately, I've been dealing with a horrible bout of imposter syndrome in my personal and music making life. I've been dealing with this pretty much my entire adult life, but the past couple of weeks has really caught up with me to the point where I've really considered throwing all my music gear in the trash and giving up completely. Not a great place for me to be in and its been a struggle to write anything new (both musically and on Steemit) because I feel like inherently what I make isn't very good. I don't quite know how to break out of it (though I've got at least some ideas which might be a good sign of me working though this). I'm thinking of writing a longer post on it at some point, but I realize that anything I might write is more of an attempt to work though my own issues regarding it rather than provide some relief to others and then it creates this shitty vicious cycle where I worry that even expressing that I'm going through this is perceived as some attempt to garner sympathy with seems desperate. Almost like expressing an insecurity is like an attempt to get compliments in some cynical way. Yeah, that's where I'm at on it.
So I'm expressing that right now because this is the easiest place to really express it. I'm desperate to finish something, but pretty sure that I'm not making anything worth listening to.
So, how does it relate to this track today? Well, it has to do a lot with the artists involved and the theme of the whole composition. Four Tet is someone I look at with great envy. For someone as prolific as him, he has such an amateurish approach to music making that it almost angers me that he consistently puts out great music using minimal tools and oddball gear. Seriously, you should see his setup for his last album. Just a laptop and speakers. No gear lust. Not piece of magic equipment that made the whole thing come together. Just a dedicated sense of experimentalism and focus to finish what he makes. It's blows my mind how much he does with so little.
The same can be said for Burial who notoriously uses Soundforge to make his music. For those who don't understand it, he uses a tool widely regarded as being amateurish to compose some of the most gripping and emotive electronic music out there. The type of music that shaped an entire generation of producers. The fact that these two together (apparently they went to the same college) managed to entice the likes of Thom Yorke who is one of the closest people to being a musical god in my eyes into doing a track is inspiring. It makes me want to rethink my whole approach to music just to get back in touch with that 20 year old in me that just made music because he enjoyed making it again. Hopefully I'll work through this before I have another existential crisis. I just needed to get all of that out there today. Either way, enjoy this slice of ego humbling music that I've been enjoying today.