Creastruction

Anamnesis Track 5

ANAMNESIS

In philosophy, anamnesis (/ˌænæmˈniːsɪs/; Ancient Greek: ἀνάμνησις) is a concept in Plato’s epistemological and psychological theory that he develops in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo and alludes to in his Phaedrus. The idea is that humans possess innate knowledge (perhaps acquired before birth) and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge from within.

In 2003–2004, I made my first record with 1 SM57 mic, a small three-piece drum kit, an acoustic and electric guitar, an Access Virus analog synth, and Ableton 2. The nine tracks each represent the stages of Consciousness, as proposed by Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber’s work. Here’s a quick overview story. Each of my next nine posts will be dedicated to telling the story and meaning of each track-stage. Enjoy!

CREASTRUCTION

With stage 5, we have the birth of Enlightenment thinking focused on Reason, Logic, and rationality. Like all of the first six stages, this is another visceral refutation of the stage prior, with the “Light of Reason” blowing empirical holes in the gilded armor of God and His Books. Creastruction represents the most confounding dishonesty yet, with the synthesis of Creation and Destruction, the dualistic hallmark of this stage. Born out of stage five, we have the Rennaisance, the Age of Reason, and eventually the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the United States and other Western democracies. Agreed upon lines of division are also a hallmark of this stage, with a deficient tendency towards reductionism, drawing so-called lines between nation-states, categorizations, and methodologies. Like the rest of the first six stages, Creastruction really only works — and is True — if everyone is in agreement that this is the one and only form of Truth.

The sword of the Scientific Method led to more innovation and creative breakthroughs than any time in human history while simultaneously beginning the process of the destruction of our natural resources with the pillaging of raw materials to fuel the ever-hungry, tail-eating monster of Productivity. Science giveth and science taketh away.

In honor of the mechanical innovation of the explosive stage, for the first time, I decided to make the song not by playing it on instruments but by sampling instruments and chopping them up into beats. I wanted to create a more machine-like feel, yet still without using any sequencing. Also, I chose a very front-and-center “this is a synthesizer” sound for the melody to double down on the more ridged styling effect.

The sample “Let’s go to the forest to get some wood” was taken from my roommate Meredith’s field recordings from her trips to Ghana in Africa. It’s a little girl she was interviewing, and the meaning found in this simple line was all too profound for the track concept, and I gleefully chopped it to pieces and cut it over the beat. The initial drum loop is still played on the kit, but then I really went to town fucking them up on the linear Ableton timeline. I’d never used samples like this and am still proud of the experiment results.

I adore the double-time beat built towards the return of the bassline at 1:03 is one of my favorite moments on the whole record. The melody that follows is a real earworm, despite it being built from cutting up the synth and not really played out on the keys. I created the double-time effect by recording the first section onto a D8 DAT machine, then recording back into Ableton while holding the fast forward button. I absolutely love this sound, it's so unique, and I consider it “mine,” though that DAT machine is long since broken, so I sadly can’t create the effect anymore.

Nothing defines Creastruction than a useless DAT machine sitting on a shelf in my studio…