Many frustrations come with being an accomplished boundary-defying musical artist such as myself. But the biggest might be people trying to fit me into that unbearably restrictive box known as “genre.” This is why I now feel the need to go on the record finally and insist that nobody try to attach that kind of reductive label to my music. The only exception is if it happens to be one of the subgenres I’ve deemed would give me clout to be associated with.
Years ago, a roommate introducing me to her boyfriend told him that I make “electronic music.” Because for some reason, if you make music exclusively on a laptop with Ableton, people decide that you’re trying to be Skrillex. But then, a few weeks later, this guy whose blog I submitted it to referred to it as “deconstructed club.” and “electropunk.” Once I found out what that meant, I was all in!
Or how about when I started toying with prepared guitars and banjos tuned to Drop C, and my dad said in the yearly letter that I was making “folk rock.” Yeah, Dad. I’m sure The Lumineers would love to have me open for them. I get that he might be a little out of the loop when it comes to music, but if someone who bought my album on Bandcamp recognized it as “post-new weird America,” why can’t everyone else?
But no matter how hard you try to make something impossible to categorize, somehow, someone always comes through to put it in a dull, drab box inside of a shiny, exciting box. A few weeks ago, I released a tape consisting solely of degraded recordings of my carbon monoxide detector battery dying. A now-former friend called it “minimalism.” Meanwhile, someone I now recognize as a true friend rightfully labeled it as “post-minimalism.”
Now, you may be wondering, what makes one genre “cool” and another “not cool”? And, if I were to elaborate, you might reply by arguing that my system is rooted in an unhealthy fear of being grouped in a perceived conformist way yet still longing for community acceptance and validation on some level.
Well, that’s your problem, not mine.