Changing Everything A Little Bit
Shout Out To What Is Done
Mark Rushton’s Interpolation in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
This email is brought to you by the Mark Rushton Gallery, for printed and original artworks. License my music, sound fx, and illustrations at Pond 5 for your creative project. I’m on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services.
This week’s topics:
2025 First Quarter Music Roundup
Changing Everything A Little Bit
Tame Impala - Borderline (slowed to the perfection / reeverb / best part)
2025 First Quarter Music Roundup
Here’s what I’ve released so far in 2025:
Mark Rushton - Stop Updating - 7 track album of mostly-lengthy space electronica and haunting ambient tracks. (January 7)
Rushton - Ghost Belvedere - single - driving, rhythmic electronic industrial with a slight retro vibe. (January 7)
Tanpura Express - Moon Salag Valari - 10 track album of tabla rhythms and tanpura drones in a variety of Salag Valari taals (beat cycles) and processed with electronics. (January 14)
Tanpura Express - Imperial Psychedelic - 10 track album of tabla + electronics with mystical soundscaping. I had planned to release this in mid-2024, but it got delayed due to spending the second half of 2024 cleaning up my music publishing business after going independent. (February 10)
Rushton - Breaks Haze - 10 track album of beats and breaks from a variety of vintage drum machines that are processed through a haze of electronics. (February 10)
Samesed - Rhythmic Views - 10 track album of electronically processed Equatorial beats and polyrhythms. Samesed also releases vintage drum machine and glitchy drum machine tracks. (February 17)
Cannabis Unanimous - Chat Garbage - 10 track album of instrumental slow beats from vintage drum machines that have been electronically processed. This is entirely geared towards fans of “April 20th”, “slow beats”, and “chopped ‘n skrewed” rhythms. (March 4)
Saag Paneer - Shankara - 10 track album of drones in the raag shankara taal that have been electronically processed with soundscaping. (April 7)
Aleodeology - Wellness and Mindfulness - 7 track album. 6 of the 7 are almost 20 minutes and are geared towards unguided meditations. This is electronic soundscaping that doesn’t change much throughout the duration of the music. (April 7)
75 tracks. That’s kind of a crazy release schedule, but I had a backlog of recordings ready. There’s a lot more in the vault.
I made all the artwork from photos I took that were slightly processed and/or printed with a thermal ribbon printer and inked in my style.
I don’t promote the music in a conventional way. I don’t play live. Other than here on Substack, I really don’t do anything on social media. I think social media promotion is a waste of time. My focus is on pitching playlist curators, sending it to college and independent radio stations and their genre-specific shows, pitching it to sync libraries and agents, putting it in stock music libraries, and building my own curated public playlists. The process I’ve developed is working for me.
It’s fun to be a “working artist” at my age, and to have the ability to distribute and license my recordings easily and at little expense, and to incorporate my artwork into the covers.
A lot of artists get hung up on the popularity contest. I read their frustration all the time. Or they’re always striving for creating The Perfect Object. I’m just not built that way. I’m more of a “first thought = best thought” artist. Make the thing and move on.
Changing Everything A Little Bit
Recently, on Substack Notes, I saw a picture that a girl drew. A self-portrait.
It was good. To put it “out there” is always a risk. But the comments were positive. I thought I could add a little something to it.
I have this occasional habit of taking photos and drawings by others on Substack and transforming them. It did that with Psalms 56 Barbershop and a Van Gogh drawing.
Yes, I also transform my own self-portraits, and pictures I took. But it’s exhausting coming up with original source material, so I kinda “borrow”.
It’s not like I’m selling anything. I’m just kinda remixing it for fun, and with respect. I liked the art enough to spend some time with it and turn it into something else.
Tame Impala - Borderline (slowed to the perfection / reeverb / best part)
I liked the original version of this song in 2019, which is no longer on streaming services. Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) pulled it after messing around with the song and adding additional bass and reissuing it in early 2020. The new version took me a while to get used to, but it’s great, too.
“Borderline” was not a hit on the Billboard Hot 100, but has managed to get over a billion streams on all services.
Recently, I happened upon a bunch of “slowed” and “slowed to perfection” variations. I’ve always liked alterations. I was a fan of “Chopped ‘n Skewed” rap like DJ Skrew a long time ago.
This “slowed to perfection” is just a minor change. It’s only slightly slowed down. Extra reverb added, but not too much. And the “best part” is used.
This little snippet is excellent. It could be looped for hours.