Why music?

The question "why music?" is probably one of the most interesting questions you can ask a musician - especially to one who makes an underground genre of music. It's made even more interesting if their underground genre of choice is famously really hard to make. A musician in this position is somebody who has spent hundreds of hours learning and refining a craft that will likely never benefit them - at least in the ways that a typical person values. Why not make something more commercially viable or socially well known? Even most competitive video games make more "sense" as a hobby - it's likely you could meet someone in person that shares interest in it.

All of this is to say that most breakcore producers have very individual and complex reasons for making what they make and creating music in general. I am definitely no exception, so I'll talk about mine here!

Why not video games?

It may seem weird to start with this question, but this is the main hobby I would have had if music wasn't an option. My relationship with video games has always been kind of weird and unique - in the sense that I thought about and consumed a lot of media around them, but didn't play them for most of my life. I tried to play league a couple of times throughout my life, but never got into it. I played a little bit of CS:GO as a kid, but never touched a ranked game. I played Valorant during the public beta, but stopped shortly after the beta ended. The only video games I ever really got into were osu! and Realm of the Mad God, both free games that could run on the underpowered macbook air I had as a kid. These two games are the ones that I ended up devoting the most time to, and would have lasting impacts on my life.

Long story short though, I have never really had a proper PC for gaming, which made most video games inaccessible to me. Or at least, inaccessible enough to prevent me from making any habits around most of them. It's likely if I grew up with a PC that I would be grinding ranks in League or Valorant right now...

Why music?

Mostly because it's fun! It's always been an alternative to the few video games I have played. If I were to list out the order of my biggest hobbies throughout my life, it would be osu! -> guitar -> RotMG -> breakcore. There's something about the self-improvement grind (and trust me, it is a grind for me) that makes me feel very at home. In all of the songs I make I try to do something new - whether its new genre (Simple Complex with UKG, the trance part of Drowning Moon) or new techniques when it comes to break chopping specifically (stereo chops in hopesick, layering in cloudy saturday). Without some sort of unique milestone in my release, the song just feels pointless to me.

It's strange because - and this is a theme that carries over to a lot of my own expectations of my music - this is something that I never expect of anybody else. Many of the songs I love aren't necessarily doing anything super unique or novel, they just feel super good. Maybe this expectation I have for myself is because of the huge amount of new styles that I am planning on trying out. Jungle, Mashcore (reizoko style especially), Raggacore, Hardtek, Footwork, Hyperpop, Jazz (+breakcore), etc are all genres that I am going to explore - so why would I waste time making something I have already made when I could try something new?

Anyway, I hope that gives an idea of my approach and motivation to creating music - for me it's a process that is centered on self-improvement and exploration.

Why Breakcore?

Partially because it's whats feels at home for me! Breakcore was the first genre of music I ever "loved" when I found it at the age of 12 through osu! Making fast and intricate patterns out of breaks and percussion is a very natural process for me, and I vividly remember imagining break patterns when I was younger.

I also really love how diverse the genre is! Since the only real requirement is complex and chopped percussion, there are Breakcore songs with influence from jazz, dubstep, emo, punk, footwork, ambient, classical, wave, rave, and so much more. I really like this aspect of the genre, and it's why I have been able to completely immerse myself in it for the past few years. It has everything I need - an emotional side, a playful side, a depressive side, a naive side, etc!

Thanks so much for reading! There will be more posts soon <3

Yem