Raised in virtual silence, freedom brought the joy of noise, and unto thee I present my noodlings.
Somehow, in my 47 years thus far, I’ve managed to successfully interweave a pretty successful and ‘serious’ scientific career with extended periods of unabashed hedonism. Stints living in London, San-Francisco, Berlin and Dublin, with work taking me further afield, I’ve been exposed to vast amounts of remarkable sounds and music, much of which I eagerly collected on vinyl.
I’ve spun records in clubs and parties around Europe and the US, and I had a radio show for a while. However I quickly tired of the pretentiousness, the sycophancy and morons who insist on using the prefix ‘DJ’, grown men bitch-fighting over who gets to play the next record. You are playing other people’s music FFS, don’t pretend otherwise.
Withdrawing completely from the nonsense, I spent the next 10 years working my balls off for a major multinational. Then I had my burnout. Three years later, I’ve re-discovered inklings of faith in humanity, and I’ve started my own scientific consultancy. Working from home, I kept a loner disposition, fiddling and making little projects to keep me busy while I plot my next big adventure.
I’ve retained my interest in sound – not just in a musical form, but as an emotional experience in itself. Messing with synthesizers really floats my boat. These days I don’t feel compelled to listen to music. Rather, I dial-up some ambience and go from there. I have a small stash of recordings, but I am still sucking-up knowledge and improving. To the extent that I am confident of soon releasing a selection of my late-night sonic adventures.
My view of music is that it should be played in the moment, involving listeners and providing some meaning. Ultimately, my goal is to to be able to eek-out my ideas live to an audience and, ya’know, try something unique and interesting. For the beauty in it.
This blog came about as I needed a personal online repository for interesting links, and a place to jot ideas for future implementation.
I’ve been spurred to continue by some nice e-mails from friendly strangers, so I’m happy for anyone to dip into my journeys.
I love the relative anonymity of the web, and please forgive me for indulging. It allows me to keep separation between the day job and my main love. My pseudonym, stimresp, is derived from stimulus-response, a little project I have running.
And that, dear Friend, is my story. Badly written it may be, but it is an earnest attempt to document and share my own learning process and experiences.
What else is there?
