Premise

So much science fiction relies on "What if?"

When we think "science fiction", or at least when I think about it, my mind gravitates towards literary or visual media. It makes sense, we had books before movies. But even with sci-fi music, they're often listed as accompaniments — like The Matrix and Hackers soundtracks, to name two marketable ones — and not so much standalone works with a story to tell. Outside of vocals, cinematics are painted when both eyes are closed.

Observation: there's a curious shortage of prog rock fused with techno music altho synths are prominently found in both, but it'd be the ultimate breeding of CHANGE + REPETITION. The DYNAMIC and STATIC. I'd be up for such an instrumental concept album that tells a gripping tale. (Maybe I'll have to make such a thing, you know what they say about "If you want it done right…" according to your own vision.)

So, back to "What if?" This is part of why I'm so enchanted by time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes, and soforth. It's why a natural fraction of my aim with the musical Dream Journal is to bring such notions into sonic dimensions, and over time, to develop those themes of what music might've been made if trends were different. If certain fads extended into longer-term continuities. Less combinatorial minds may cringe, but not those who consider the possibilities!

WHAT IF a music style relegated to oblivion in one universe became the clubbers' compilation special in another? WHAT IF more dubstep was in quintuplets instead of triplets? WHAT IF odd meters were so very ordinary and 4/4 was bizarre? HOW ABOUT the Stateside Electronica "Revolution" having soundly succeeded, as judged by the media? WHAT IF Philip K. Dick had published The Owl In Daylight, was living into a ripe old age, contented to see it become a bible to aspiring producers, much as how Tofflers' The Third Wave served its purpose for techno rebels? And instead of such segregation, ghettoization between IDM and Top 40, WHAT IF our anatomy had evolved differently so that the two coexisted more harmoniously in people's playlist? And WHAT ABOUT a universe where the RIAA doesn't exist, where misconceptions of sampling were debunked in the 1950s? (There's a knockout punch for ya!)

In the mid-90s, I proudly declared punk and disco (to paint a broad stroke, at one 70s-ish time considered abominable, an ideological incompatibility) would get married. I wish I could've found more people at the time who felt the same way, because I never grow weary of sharing my interest with likeminded souls, and some electro house realizes that dream, many years later.

Another thing: I want more anthem trance to not just have gorgeous riff programming, but classical structures and wild solos (psytrance has been fulfilling some of those). Combine the quantized with the swing, the locked grooves with the noodly fingering. Much as the costumes in Dune, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and so many other great sci-fi stories are an amalgamation of historical strains we know today (which it turns out, have an incredibly diverse weave of influences — Newton was right about giants' shoulders), I feel that should be manifested in music more. Not subconsciously or hinted at, nor rudely shouted in your face, but like all good marketing, its message of WHAT ACTION TO TAKE is unmistakable.

Then, "What if?" becomes "What now?" and that is both earnestly endearing and dangerously provocative to me.