The Danger Of Knowing What Works

Experience is supposed to make creative work easier. After more than three decades of making music, I know considerably more about getting from an initial idea to a finished record than I did when I started … but lately I’ve become interested in the possibility that knowing what works can also become a limitation.

Towards the end of last year I made an Elite Force track called Burning. I still think it’s a really good record - it bangs, it works on a dancefloor and it sits naturally within the music I’ve made under that name. What bothered me was realising that I could probably have made it at almost any point during the previous twenty years.

Working on my forthcoming Reverie album this year has involved deliberately changing some of those familiar production instincts: fewer sounds, less layering, more space, and allowing tracks to develop without deciding too early what they are supposed to become. The result has been a process that feels exploratory again.

That experience became the starting point for a new essay about creative instinct, accumulated knowledge, and the strange point at which expertise can begin turning into a set of guardrails.

I don’t want to abandon the musical vocabulary I’ve spent a lifetime developing. I just want to remain capable of surprising myself with it.

The full essay, The Danger Of Knowing What Works, is now on Substack.