Speculativism

Also known as Peter-David Smith, Cyborg Jazz and Various Female Artists. Imagine sound art as a landscape. Music is one location in that landscape. Speculativism explores the neighbouring locations on that landscape, next to music, around music, near or far in relation to music. All the tracks are an art which has some relation to music but not necessarily conforming to any of the rules usually imposed upon music. Here you will find noise, comedy, Dada, experimentation and satire. Speculativism is Peter-David Smith, a UK-based artist. In the 1960s he went to a rotten, cheap nasty comprehensive school where they didn't allow the kids to touch musical instruments (in order to prevent breakage) and where they didn't teach music (in order to prevent kids from forming rock and roll bands) - thus creating a situation where Peter-David was forced to the path of autodidacticism and a strange relationship with music, soundart and noise. BIOG: I went to a really rotten school which would not allow us to touch musical instruments in case we broke them. This was in the 1960s and the teacher was paranoid about artists like The Who and Jimi Hendrix smashing their instruments on stage. She thought we were all vandals and morons. Consequently I grew up without the opportunity to find out whether I had any aptitude for music or not. After a while I began making noises with found objects, then with a guitar, plastic recorder and drumsticks. Eventually I began using computer effects. This year I got an electric guitar for the first time in my life and am having a whale of time incorporating the sound into my 2010 tracks. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford the other instruments I like, such as the saxophone etc. In the meantime I have to make do with playing midi instruments on my qwerty keyboard. As an adult with a substandard education I had a massive inferiority complex, but then I passed the entrance test for Mensa and got a bit more confidence, which enabled me to re-enter full time education as a mature student and work toward a degree in Fine Art. After graduating from University I began making video and audio art for the web, under a Creative Commons licence. I still refer to my audio work as "non-music" even though I've begun to use musical concepts such as "keys", "chords" and "beats per minute". This is because my approach to the work is not a musician's approach but more of a painting and collage making with sounds. It may be a subjective thing but I feel that not being music "as such" gives me more freedom to create unusual forms within sound, dischords and arhythmic structures etc. I also switch back and forth pretty fluidly between serious ideas and comedic ones. Some keywords which go with the sort of thing I'm doing are: fluxus, pataphysics, dada, surrealism, prog, fusion, third wave, non-music Main influences: Dada, Fluxus, Surrealism, Ivor Cutler, Delia Derbyshire, Herbie Hancock, film soundtracks, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman, Pink Floyd, Sid Barrett, The Bonzo Dog Band, Spike Jones, Danny Kaye, The Beatles, The Mighty Boosh, The Goons, Samuel Beckett, Public Image Limited, Jack Kerouac, Gill Scott Heron, The Incredible String Band, David Bowie, Michael Moorcock and Hawkwind. All tracks may be freely downloaded and are under Creative Commons 3.0 (Attribution; No derivitives; Non-commercial use only.) with the exception of the cover versions which have no copyright and are not intended to in any way infringe the copyright of the original versions. http://www.art-moving-on.blogspot.com/ http://speculativism.bandcamp.com/ http://www.youtube.com/speculativism For tagging: Speculativism is 'weird' and 'subversive' as well as 'experimental'. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.