"Nighttime Budget" by Nathan Wade

As I've noted before, the role of a reviewer, or at least their scope is evolving.

Whereas upon a time there were distinct releases such as singles or EPs or albums, artefacts one could touch & hold (what one would call hard copies now though the expression would once have been baffling), nowadays the situation is more blurry.

Music appears  online & all can be played in much the same way, but depending on the platform or route you take, it might have the status of anything from a commercial release via the biggest of corporations to something constructed & put online in the same bedroom. Hence some are there to try to earn their creator a crust (or given streaming income, a crumb), others just to test the waters & gain a response. Most of the music I review in ‘Hot Music Live' falls into the former category, not least because it's easier to spot, but a fair amount (including tracks on the ‘Hot Music Live Presents' compilations originally appeared on Soundcloud, YouTube or similar.

Hence I needed to check the status of "Nighttime Budget" (which you can find at https://audio.com/nathan-wade/audio/nathan-wade-nighttime-budget) with Nathan Wade who made it. Broadly we can categorise it as "not a single really but at any rate a new piece of original music just as deserving of exploration".

The joy about having such complete control over your own music leaves wide open options free from interference from others. Hence although this track is a keyboard centred instrumental, he is considering adding vocals & guitar. That sounded to me as if he considered that the track was unfinished, but that isn't the case as far as his being happy for this review to be written: which leaves us the pleasant possibility of talking about it again in an altered state.

Nathan is well known for his membership of punk band Creaking Twitch (in which he deploys those guitars & vocals) but this is not just a side project exploring another aspect of his musical interest ("I've always had an interest in electronic sound and sampling, ranging from 80s synth classics to 2000s hip-hop and then drum and bass of more modern times, particularly with bands like Prodigy and Pendulum that sort of blend that electronic sounds with alternative music/heavy rock/metal"). He is also flexible enough to play this sort of material live by himself (he's played "Nighttime Budget" at CovSauce) but managed (when drummer Izzy couldn't make it) to do so in the context of a Creaking Twitch gig: which presumably surprised their audience.

It's hard to describe instrumental music (at least I always feel slightly uncomfortable when I have no lyrical cues for suggesting "what it's about") and I'm not sure the music is meant to directly evoke what many people se as evening moods: it's too perky compared with the sultry approach which spring to mind. However that doesn't really mean anything does it? The music stands or falls on its own merits & its "meaning" is probably something further removed from the sort of lounge jazzy cliché of other night based instrumentals.

If anything, the sound is quite retro (in electronic terms) which reflects both what I quoted from Nathan above and what we went on to tell me. I was particularly taken with his honest admission "…that I've found making electronic music to be boring and tedious. Using various different types of software and DAWs on my laptop- feeling as inspired as making an Excel spreadsheet…". Hats off to him for saying what needed saying. How many of us have waded through tracks with all the charisma of a spreadsheet?

So why did he change his mind? Back to the artist: "That was until I came across the Novation Circuit Tracks! I saw Tom Simkins perform with one and it inspired me to purchase my own. It's a beautiful piece of kit, 4 drum tracks, 2 synth tracks and 2 tracks for external midi instruments if you wish. Capable of making as many 16 step loops as you like, with lots of in built instruments but loads of scope for your own samples and customisation and filtering on the fly. It feels like playing an actual musical instrument rather than making a spreadsheet. It started out as "just for fun" but I'd really like to mix it into more stuff that I do."

You see now why I wanted to share what he was doing with you? IT has in many ways empowered independent creators & freed them from the constraints and costs associated with making release-quality tracks. However this does not automatically equate to a similar quality of imagination. Recently, I've been contending with having people approach me to review AI generated content: you'll hopefully be pleased that I've declined. However Nathan very articulately shares how his initial scepticism has evolved into showing him how to use these tools to create music as meaningful as he would with a guitar & which he considers on a par with that created by Creaking Twitch in terms of authenticity.