why the live set is canceled
There’s no real conspiracy or injustice to be found in my explanation below, but people have bought tickets because my name was advertised on them, and those people deserve an explanation, if not an avenue to receive refunds for the very few who may not be interested in the festival otherwise.
I can’t do things the easy way.
This isn’t a brag, it’s a demon.
Most popular electronic musicians, particularly in the festival circuit, have a DJ setup backlined (meaning it’s already on the stage being shared among them). I’d argue that 2/3rds of people who would want to see me perform at a popular electronic music festival don’t care if I’m holding instruments or preparing something special for that particular set. And that’s fine! It’s a music festival, not the competition at the end of Whiplash.
But I can’t do it. I never could. It’s not prestige. No part of me is delusional enough to think that this inconvenient standard makes me a more entertaining performer than, say, Skrillex. I’m not. My shows aren’t nearly as much fun, and I’m jealous of other artists who can bring good vibes as a profession and share them with thousands of people.
I can’t do that. My shows are me bringing a personal creative bubble somewhere else and never once looking at the audience. Here’s an absurd overview of my last show at this particular festival. My stress is nothing short of masochistic.
“Then why do you play shows?” you ask.
I kinda don’t.
I used to tour 4-6 months out of a calendar year. As of today, I haven’t performed in nearly 5 years.
I had resigned to the idea that if the right small tour came along with seated theaters that allowed both soft and abrasive music to be performed on a wide variety of instruments, I’d get back to it. But this was already an insurmountable challenge before COVID while I enjoyed the benefit of being represented by one of the largest booking agencies in the world.
From another completely fair perspective that I empathize with:
Why would a promoter or venue deal with my specific artistic needs when they could book an artist who will DJ on backline gear and draw an equal-size, if not larger audience?
So this isn’t worth complaining about!
If I’m not challenged or happy playing shows, and if I could technically make more money working in my lab, then it’s better to wait for the very seldom event where all the stars align.
the surveillance gig
In my last 2 years of research, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and a whole lot more equipment related to both government and retail surveillance.
The obvious facial recognition, gate-analysis, and emotion and threat detection cameras, of course. But let’s tack on bluetooth and cellular data visualizers, infrared cameras, time-of-flight real time 3D scanners, and autonomous thermal imaging.
All of this, coupled in collaboration with the incredibly prolific and talented Torin Blankensmith, and happening in Minnesota, a part of the country that was just quite literally invaded by their own government, was a powerful idea and audiovisual statement. Instead of practicing the same guitar riffs I’ve been playing for 20 years, Torin and I would create an audio-interactive visual system that wasn’t about the music, but about the data emitting from audience. This could show them, quite literally, what data their own government and retailers gathered about them on their way to festival without their consent.
The point wasn’t to faithfully perform my music on live instruments or bring a fun vibe. The goal was to make people uneasy, and the folks who run the Infrasound Music Festival were 100% on board with my vision.
[yes, “Infrasound”. It’s a festival that has been happening for over a decade, and the name originally referenced bass music, not the acoustic phenomenon I’m obsessed with]
a month-long dial tone
I formally agreed to join the festival lineup in February, and there has not been a single day since then that I didn’t spend some time working on this ambitious set. Additionally, between the need for additional computers, video mixers, controllers, adapters, cameras, and software licenses, I have already spent more than I was being paid to perform. Hotel rooms have been booked, contracts have been signed, staff has been hired, various press coverage has been confirmed, and schedules have been cleared.
But here’s the thing:
We don’t know the resolution of the screen.
We don’t know how far away the video control booth is from the stage.
We don’t even know if we’re delivering a feed over HDMI, SDI, or a proprietary ethernet protocol.
A lot of emails and follow-ups have been sent asking for this and other vital information for this particular idea to be possible, and we’ve not received so much as a response since the line-up was announced. I told myself that today, with a little over 2 weeks until the set takes place, would be the day I canceled it if we had not received any correspondence from the festival.
Since a small team of people have been holding their lives in limbo for a while now, it would be incredibly unfair for me to keep them involved with the best case scenario being cramming a month’s work into a few days before having their name associated with a compromised audiovisual performance.
This is kinda on me
I’m extremely bummed about this. At the risk of sounding dramatic, my music is the abstract core of my existence. It’s my therapy to myself.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the reason I don’t participate in the music-economy much these days is because I hate putting the medium in which I express my feelings in a position to be controlled or appraised by others. Let downs like this throw me into an irrational place that I can’t explain.
But I can’t think of a music festival where I didn’t have to fight the entire time over each and every technical detail to be able to play the set I intended to play. This idea of mine is great if you remove the context of the chaotic organization of an electronic music festival. It was extremely ambitious, naive, and maybe even entitled to expect this massive event being orchestrated to roll out a red carpet for my techno-anarchist statement.
I’m realizing that this post may sound like I’m wine-drunk and being hard on myself. But I think I need to abide by the “fool me twice, shame on me” ideology in order to not make this project an enormous waste of time and money.
Maybe there is a festival or venue that’ll be as ambitious about it as I am.
Or it could potentially live in a gallery, or even as pop-up street art as part of something more collaborative. It can live somewhere. I just don’t know where yet.
But I do know that it’s impossible to pull off for this festival without even knowing the specs of the system we’d be feeding it into, obviously.
if you bought tickets…
At any music festival, I’m a cog in a large set of gears. I truly do not believe that this cancellation will affect the value of the average attendee’s experience.
I do realize that there are a few people who have not only bought tickets just for my performance, but travel accommodations to Minnesota for it.
If this is you and you have trouble obtaining a refund, reach out via the contact section and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Additionally, please share this post with others attending the festival who may be disappointed or surprised by this.
I suspect that this news will result in the festival finally getting back to me, and while a “live” performance isn’t technically feasible at this point, it’s possible that the contract can be amended for a DJ set or something with no additional technical requirements.
Me testing out my diabolical plan to shoot millions of infrared dots at the audience to 3D scan them in real time
A sketch of my setup the last time I played this festival :x
A team of 5 people carrying my gear on a stage designed for a DJ
Different isolated audio frequencies changing variables real-time point cloud fractal
Every party needs modified Flock Safety cameras to tell people every detail computer-vision is logging about them
What electronic musician doesn’t deploy autonomous thermal drones while performing these days?
