I.

I do this thing that annoys people. By the look on his face, I recently terrorized my fellow commuter by listening to music with open back headphones. Open back headphones have the propensity to “leak sound” to the outside world. In equal measure, sound leaks in. The sound gains context. You, as a walking, listening human being gain context in the context of other sounds.

 

I am convinced that noise-isolation headphones are symptomatic of a cultural atmosphere that encourages us to become inert. Someone wants us to be ashamed for our incontinence. Fortunately, I lack decorum.

 

I also think over-sharing has its own ethic.

 

II.

This brings me to another point: there is simply too much music to ever be experienced and appreciated.

 

Headphones are an extension of the body, an organ pulsing with equal fervor as my heart.

 

For the longest time, I could not sleep without music and in equal measure I could not sleep because of it. They say you will die young if you don’t get enough sleep.

 

I am running away and towards the unknown by riding a riff.

 

III.

I consider this reality and it brings me to a hellish contemplation of John Cage’s “as slow as possible” which at 639 years long, forces me to consider something like:

 

my lifespan in soundcloud tracks

50 years left = 26,280,000 mins left
(26,280,000/3) * 2 = 33.3 Conscious Years of Life
33.3 years = 17520000 Minutes
17520000 Minutes / 4 (est soundcloud track length)
= 4,380,000 soundcloud tracks
There are false buddhas with streaks of sadism, no doubt. Fortunately, someone helped me out.

IV.

Music isn’t just personal it’s also social.

 

Music needs to have a conversation outside of fandom and circulate into the air of our everyday lives.

 

Music presents me with a paradox: it is both casual and serious. It is the water upon which we buoy both our guiltiest pleasures and our heaviest heartbreaks. After all, a person who doesn’t really like music still has a favorite song.

V.

I think about the mix tape as a curatorial platform and not just a sonic one. You can put poems on a mix tape. You can put images on a mix tape. You can take the song titles and send a secret message. You can even insert some field records you took.

 

Music and sounds are as constant as the air we breathe. They also have the power to take that breath away.

 

I welcome the challenge of developing new vocabularies to talk about music. I am particularly curious about what certain sounds or songs make people think about and how they would express it.

 

Show me how sounds and music bring forth thought.
Send me your best playlists.
Send me a review you can’t publish because it’s too strange.
Show me how sounds and music forms intersect with politics.
Write a poem about a song you really hate.
Drown me in the songs of your moment.
Put together a sonic diary.
Review your own songs.
Each response to a sound or song makes a demand on form. I’d like to collect these forms and put them into a mix. All formats acceptable.

Send all music submissions to music@queenmobs.com

-Goro Ikeda-Iyeki