Warm Sunrise Streams
Soundtrack New Age Ambient Fusion
Your dreams are now a reality. You can now listen to the latest Washed Memoir track “Warm Sunrise” on the streaming service of your choice. Or, you can hit play here:
When releasing music on streaming services, you need to indicate a genre and a sub-genre. I was at a bit of a loss when assigning a genre to this track. At first, I settled on “Soundtrack” with the sub-genre “Ambient”. However, after hearing from the service I use for mastering and distribution, I learned that Apple Music doesn’t accept “Soundtrack” as a genre unless it is an officially synced soundtrack. It is a soundtrack to my short sci-fi story, but I guess that’s not good enough for Steve Jobs? Fine. Now it is classified as “New Age,” sub-genre: “Ambient”.
Perhaps my music is headed in this direction and one might ask: what happened? Miter used to be so cutting edge but now they are clearly entering their mid-career new age namaste phase. How far off the deep-end is this going to go? I, for one, am interested in following along to see if this newsletter is cataloguing a spiritual journey or a decent into madness or maybe both? Subscribe to find out!
Humans have a natural predilection for categorization. It helps us understand the world and it relates to our basic cognitive abilities. However, our need to categorize can be harmful and can lead to obsession bereft of meaning or purpose. Categorize what you need to, but let’s not frame the meaning of art as a function of genre. I have a natural aversion to categories. I don’t think many people want to be pinned down or placed in a box—though there is constant social pressure to fit ideas, people, places, etc. into arrangements that allow us to make sense of the world. This is another example of human duality: we need to put things in boxes but we don’t want to be placed in them.
While Spotify has its downsides, the algorithms are really interesting for music discovery. My Spotify algorithm is starting to trend New Age, and I’m enjoying it. For example, I love this track from Ashra, and I wouldn’t have gotten there without the algorithm suggesting Woo after playing New Wave and other Miter tracks.
To double down on my anti-genre stance, my next track will be categorized as rock and/or roll. It’s interesting that much of what I’m working on lately is more rock/indie oriented than the mix of electronic sub-genres that I thought I was producing (even though I wasn’t quite sure what those sub-genres were). Not being wedded to a sound or genre is freeing and ultimately, I think everyone’s just trying to make jazz. My next track is near completion, but beyond that, I’m much less sure about the musical direction of Washed Memoir. There are a number of possibilities and I’m excited to share more with you over the long-run.
Also, I am appreciating Substack as a platform more and more. I’ve just signed-up for two paid subscriptions to publications that I’ve really enjoyed. Here’s a couple of recommended posts:
To Xfinity and Beyond,
RS