2011 is dawning and with that we celebrate not only a year of
Gravity Halo, but the launch of our newest endeavor along with it - the
Rotation(s) project.
We profile and introduce a lot of independent electronic musicians on the Gravity Halo blog, but we never delve much deeper than simply listening to and enjoying their music and being that this type of creative expression is a bit more obscure than what most people are familiar with, the end product you hear is only part of the story. Considering that electronic musicians typically work alone in the confines of their own personal studios, most people rarely get a chance to learn what really goes into making the tunes they hear. And then there's the fact that most of this music is instrumental in nature, leaving the listener with very few opportunities to really understand what a particular musician's motivations, inspirations and fixations are and what defines them as an artist.
The Rotation(s) project is mostly about pulling back the curtain of obscurity and shining a light on the diverse variety of people that create this music and the diverse methods they employ to do so. When you really stop to think about it, this incredibly disjointed, but somehow strangely cohesive "culture" of independent musicians working in relative seclusion from one another is a pretty unique phenomenon. There isn't much of a pay off for the people engaged in it...riches and fame aren't really on the table - even the superstars of electronic music are small fish on the world's stage, many of them maintaining day jobs to support themselves. There's no "rock star complex" going on, as most of them don't so much as even release pictures of themselves, let alone perform live in front of an audience.
So why
do they do it then? That's a complex question that we're hoping to investigate with this project. We're giving these artists 100% freedom to document themselves for one month each and give the world a little peek into their creative lives. They'll post pictures of their setups, make tutorial videos, post tracks in progress, detail their individual processes, perform live web-sets...whatever they want to do, basically. Each month the blog will be run by a different producer and they will contribute whatever it is that strikes their fancy.
So, whether you're a producer yourself, someone interested in becoming one or simply a fan of the music, be sure to bookmark the Rotation(s) site, add it to your feeds and pass it around to your friends because it could be some mindblowingly brilliant shit...or it could be a total train wreck. Either way, you're going to want to watch it go down when the site officially launches on January 1st with our first featured artist.
Who will that be, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait and see!
Any artists wishing to take part in the project can submit an entry form
here. We're currently accepting applications for the first 6 months of 2011.
