Tezos

Clouds of Abundance for teia.cafe | 16 - Ape See, Ape Do

Creator

tz1ZVzMVj6EjRoDNFMCguG7nGdqmD7aau9kS

Description

People involved with the NFT stuff I do probably know what I'm trying to imply here. If you've been reading/listening to the previous tracks it shouldn't be too hard to figure out, really. 🤣 -- "Clouds of Abundance" is a proof-of-concept "album" that was created to kick start teia.cafe's new playlist and commissions smart contract features on the blockchain. It is a music album, a NFT (a collection of), a business model and prototype technology all at the same time. The commissions contract I worked on directly in the last 2 years but arguably was in my mind for over 10 years - which was actually the last time I did a "proper" recording on the grand piano. The title came from Kyle Gann's idea of "generous music" - where the music itself gives the listener an "abundance" of ideas so that they can take something back with them even after the experience is over. The hope is that both the music - and the smart contracts that puts this mentality into an actional form - will lead to the "abundance mentality" - which I would say is needed badly in the world right now. It *has* been a while, so you can kind of hear me trying to "remember" a lot of the musical ideas I worked on back when I was performing regularly - my style of playing rooted in Minimalism, form and variations, key modulations, my influences from Béla Bartók's Mikrocosmos, music phasing (which I've written academic articles about in the past), and so on. If I had to explain what my music is in one sentence, it would be - kind of like a one-person Steve Reich, with some of the pattern redundancies removed. (Explained more in detail in "Brute Force Hacking".) The album itself is a mix of traditional styles with the more contemporary approach of Minimalist and Post-Minimalist styles. All of my recordings (even my electronic music) are improvised, live and unedited - I keep some sessions and discard others, but the sessions themselves are always untampered with for transparency and authenticity's sake. The idea here is to reflect the world "as is", at least when it comes to how I approach recordings like these. The sessions you hear here in the album is exactly in the order it was recorded as well. teia.cafe's name is a homage to the TEIA community on the Tezos blockchain - which is arguably the first, and only true arts movement that emerged organically out of the chaos of the crypto and NFT craze of 20-22'. The community originally started from the digital arts movement and platform, Hic et Nunc, which eventually evolved into the first non-profit, artist-owned DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), run solely by the democratic will of the artists themselves. It's a first of its kind and I'm hoping that it will stay relevant and active for years to come - finally, a way for artists to self-organize and support each other - not only culturally, but economically as well. That was always the dream of crypto, NFTs, DAOs, and the blockchain itself, wasn't it?