sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Electronic Music Page 1 of 9

New Progressive House/Deep House Jondi & Spesh Album

Just a quick post here to announce a new album: Jondi & Spesh – REFLECTIONS

This is my sixth full-length electronic album with my longest-term collaborator and one of my closest friends, DJ Spesh. Way back in the day we hopped on a young genre called “progressive house” and rode it a long way.

Spesh and I had a long moment of fame in the late nineties and early 2000’s when we were hosting the most popular electronic dance music party in San Francisco (Qoöl at 111 Minna), touring the world in support of our releases on Spundae Records and our own label Loöq, getting voted among the Top 10 DJ’s in San Francisco by the Nitevibe poll, getting ranked as one of the top albums of the year in Muzik Magazine (right next to Madonna), licensing music to prime time broadcast shows (CSI), and composing music for the most popular dance game of that time (Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution). I can’t really ask for any more musical success or fame than all of that, but Spesh and I–all these years later–still enjoy making music together and sharing it with the world.

It’s all gravy at this point. Gravy I hope your ears enjoy! Available on Beatport, Spotify, Apple Music, and most other music streaming services and stores. We’re also on Instagram.

#3 on Beatport, Work Update, Succeeding Like Water

Music

The new Momu release “Music Gets Me By” is charting on Beatport, currently #3 in Breakbeat releases and #9 on both the Melodic House and Tech House releases charts, while the various mixes have all broken into the Top 100 track charts for their respective genres. A great “big room” remix from our friend Jonathan Ojeda (artist name alias_j) is leading the charge in terms of sales.

It’s a blast to have any musical project get some traction, and the fact that this one is a collaboration with my good friends makes it that much sweeter. We’re this old, and still making electronic dance music, and some people still like the sounds we’re making? Amazing…I feel nothing but gratitude.

Check out the release, and if you like it, a purchase on Beatport would help us keep moving up the charts. It will also be available on Spotify, Apple Music, and everywhere else next Friday.

Writing

After the recent acceptance of a novella to a magazine that I greatly admire (which I will announce as soon as the release date is set), I feel motivated to write more novellas. I’ve decided to write the sequel to my yet-to-be-published novel “Saint Arcology” (currently out for submission) as a set of three standalone novellas which can be read in any order, including either before or after the first book in the series.

How will this work in terms of eventually negotiating first publication rights? I have no idea, but I’m following my writing energy, and that’s where it’s leading me right now. I will probably need an agent at some point to advise me on such contractual issues, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Which leads into the point below…

Succeed Like Water

With each year of my life I become more aware of the reality that unknown, unexpected factors will always continue to surprise me and have an outsized influence on my life. Some will feel catastrophic (illnesses, market downturns, mental health issues) and others fabulous (new friendships, financial windfalls, lucky breaks). For me the best strategy is always to navigate life according to my core values (kindness, creativity, strong relationships, etc.) and try to achieve the things I want without getting too attached to outcomes which are unpredictable and often out of my control, partially or completely.

But even while taking a step back from the pursuit of goals at any cost, I like the idea of flowing towards my ideal outcomes. Water changes its shape and form to continue in a particular direction. Water rushes or seeps in, flows in tiny rivulets or great channels, changes its form to steam or ice depending on energetic conditions. So how can I emulate water, in terms of progressing towards my goals?

  • Follow my creative energy
  • Say yes to opportunities and collaborations where I feel a spark or connection (flow in the direction of gravity)
  • Show up to events (explore channels)
  • Don’t eliminate options because they don’t fit my preconceived plan

In summary, be willing to follow multiple convoluted paths, as long as they head in the general direction of where I want to be. Which is preferable to being stuck in a traffic jam on a straight road.

Two Small Pieces of Good News

The world is burning in a thousand ways, but making and appreciating art is what keeps me sane and sometimes even happy. I have two things to share in that area, one related to music, the other to fiction writing.

First, my new two-track release with Spesh is out today on Beatport, Organic Broccoli Florets and Your Ice. I’m so pleased with the way this release came out. With both tracks, we tried for a smooth, silky, hypnotic feel. Initial feedback from our promo pool has been excellent, and Beatport is featuring the release in its Hype Picks section. Hope you enjoy, if melodic house is your cup of tea.

Secondly, a novella I’ve been working on for months was just accepted for publication. Contract pending, so I’ll hold off on the details, but I’m elated with the home this story has found. So something on the release schedule for 2023.

Personally, life has been quiet, very little drama, which is just how I like it. Had a great time with Kia and a good friend at the Exploratorium After Dark last night, which was the biggest night out in awhile.

I hope that your own life is just how you like it, and that you’re doing what you can to put out one or more of the planet’s many fires.

How My Relationship with Making Music Has Changed

First of all, to get it out of the way, I have a new release with Spesh out on Beatport. The release includes two new melodic house/progressive house tracks, “Starfall” and “Sixes and Fours”. I’m really proud of both of them, and also of how Spesh and I collaborated to make both tracks the absolute best they could be. We had an unusual number of opportunities to test early versions with big sound systems in front of actual people dancing on a dance floor.

But that’s not what this post is about.

When I first started making electronic music, I was fascinated by the process. This was well before YouTube, and I didn’t yet have a community of fellow music makers. It was just me in my shared dorm room with a first gen Mac and a Roland D-70 keyboard. Eventually I added a drum machine, an EMAX II sampler, a DAT recorder, and a few other pieces of gear. The first track I ever signed to a label, “1-900”, was made with that bare bones setup.

Eventually I started collaborating with Spesh, and later Mark Musselman (as Jondi & Spesh and Momu, respectively). I’ve recounted my musical history elsewhere, so I won’t get into it here. Suffice to say we wrote, signed, and released hundreds of tracks on dozens of labels, including our own label Loöq Records. We toured the world, had some minor hits, and gained a fair bit of notoriety.

The main feeling I had during the early part of my music career was a strong desire for respect and recognition from my peers. Above all else, I wanted to feel artistically relevant.

But at some point I realized that chasing relevance (or trying to hold onto it) was an unwinnable game. I wrote about the topic in 2013, but my thoughts have evolved since then. The desire for artistic respect, though it might seem more noble than the desire for money, power, or fame, is essentially the same. It’s a thirst that can never be fully quenched, no matter the degree or number of your accolades. There will always be somebody who dismisses you, disses you, or simply doesn’t know who you are.

A recent interview with Roger Waters illustrates my point. Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) is concerned about the fact that no reporters from any Toronto newspaper were assigned to review his concert. Waters asks the question in a slightly conspiratorial context, but it’s not hard to see that he’s salty about it. He’s concerned with his own artistic relevance, and puts down The Weeknd in the process.

If Roger Waters doesn’t have full confidence in his own relevance, who can?

The answer is nobody, of course. All artists, no matter how much we boast, strut, and preen (or humble-brag, in the case of most writers), are plagued by doubt. Maybe not all the time, but definitely some of those times when we’re out of the spotlight, between promotion cycles, between gigs, creatively blocked, etc.

What’s the emotional solution? Focus on the work, focus on the mission/purpose, try to enjoy your own creative process, try to keep learning and getting better, help others improve. Like anything that involves tremendous amounts of uncertainty, focus on the things you can control.

With music especially, I’m getting better at this. I’m back where I started, fascinated with the process of making sounds with synthesizers and computers. But now with the added benefits of collaborators, a community of fellow producers, a record label, a distributor, and all the skilled producers on YouTube teaching me new things.

I’m not saying that I no longer care about artistic success and respect. Of course I do. I’m not some enlightened being who has conquered desire. But I’ve learned to put those insatiable desires in context, and not give them so much emotional weight. Those feelings are farther away, and no longer drive my artistic process as much as they used to.

Beat Week!

Last week I worked full-time on music production, something I hadn’t done in years. I called it “Beat Week.”

I’m between novels, and with the next one still simmering in my subconscious, it felt like a good time to briefly switch up my creative focus. I decided to take a break from my client work as well, and told everyone I was going on vacation. A vacation to my music studio!

Before I fully committed to writing novels (around 2008), music production was my main creative activity. Making beats frequently took up the majority of my waking hours. My friends and I had a really good run in the late nineties and 2000’s promoting dance music events and releasing tracks on our label. Our videos played on MTV, we wrote music for commercials and videogames (including Dance Dance Revolution), and we toured around the US and Europe to DJ at dance clubs. But the best part for me was always making music with friends, or working alone in my studio, late at night with my headphones, bobbing my head in the dark.

That lifestyle came to a natural end, a combination of getting older, having a kid, our parties making less money, and everyone’s priorities shifting. We kept making music together, and the record label continued to release tracks, but we accepted that our “full-on” music crew days were over. There were other things to do in life, and the music industry was changing rapidly before our eyes. New musicians were coming up through SoundCloud, Spotify, Bandcamp, and YouTube, with or without a record label. Our fifteen minutes of music fame was up, and we were pretty much okay with that. We’d kept the same party (Qoöl at 111 Minna) going for fifteen years, an epic run.

All this to say that I hadn’t really experienced music immersion in a long time. So I was curious what it would be like to dedicate an entire work week to making beats. Here’s what I experienced.

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