Stop, collaborate and listen

I make music

Or made music.

Or tried to make music at least.

Working mostly from loop and sample based software I tend to be drawn to the same sort of sound for my own output, time and time again, and having completed work on the debut album, feeling like I have encapsulated a point on my life, I would now like to move on and live more life.  differently.

I've tried action-packed team-ups before, primarily handling a few remixes of other artists, either through mutual respect or competitions, but when I considered the release of Anubis Horror, I also wanted to deliver some 'singles packages' to release alongside it.

Having moved in creative circles, I have crossed paths with plenty of talented people, many from Enfield itself, and so I reached out to a small bundle of people that I thought might be interested in either remixing an existing track of mine or creating something brand new from accapella spoken word poetry.  They were told that they had free reign to do whatever they liked, it didn't mind how much or how little remained of the original version, I was only looking forward to hearing a brand new interpretation of something I had a hand in creating, hearing something that had come from more than just me.

The end result.... just one remix came back, fully formed for inclusion on the Teenaging single, and I had to draft myself in to remix my own work, cutting, pasting, twisting and distorting my own poetry... and unsurprisingly they sound just like something I would produce.

But now here we go again, bored of searching the same job roles and vacancies on Gumtree I instead started looking for an opportunity to write songs with others

the opportunities were slim, but I made contact... and one chance came back wonderful and gleaming.

Since then we have conversed over email, shared a brief man-date in the centre of londinium to get to know each other and cross-reference ideas, and this week I have made a proper start on fleshing out some rough tracks that have been sent over to me.

It is still early yet, and who knows what may happen next, inspiration and ideals are elusive beasts, but I've got a good feeling about what is coming next.

a thoroughly modern CV

I dislike job hunting.

It goes against everything I believe in.

Working for a living is certainly reasonable enough (in some circumstances), but being forced to distill all your skills and all your experiences in just 2 sides of A4 paper seems utterly ridiculous.... and that doesn't even leave any room for any of your personality.

So I'm left pondering how best to sell myself?

Do you go with the standard old 'team-player, hard-working, blah-blah-blah' intro/personal statement that you've had drummed into you is how a CV should open? because surely everyone else has been told the same thing about starting out that way and surely nearly every CV that drops onto a recruiters desk must lay out their initial wares in exactly the same old fashioned way...

And if you don't appear different from anybody else, how will anyone know that you are different from anyone else?

on the subject of old fashioned tho... what if the recruiter is old fashioned and wants you to stick to the same old format, play by the rules and perform exactly as expected, let us not forget that some people don't like change, and some of the people that don't like change may well be the people recruiting that wouldn't understand the concept of the post-modern self-referential CV that I had in mind...

ah, but what about LinkedIn?!? the presumably professional version of a social network.

I struggle with that too.... perhaps career-focused progression would fall in line with the way it projects itself, certainly I can see the advantages of having a full profile to browse that hasn't needed to be quit so cherry-picked in order to save space on paper, but what about poor souls like me that are still trying to find their way, where differing job sectors and careers are catching my eye, the old rule was to tailor your cover letter and CV for each job you apply for, but doesn't the modern principles of LinkedIn suddenly decide to go against that, along with every other recruitment site that would like you to upload a CV

So in brief, I need to choose who I am, to sell myself to people, when I don't know what they expect me to be....

modern job-hunting sucks.