We’re finally close enough to releasing last days last days that it’s time for us to start revealing our secret plans.

And they may surprise you. (And we’ll tell you about them very, very soon.)

But to understand the weird things we’re about to do, it might help to understand Why We Do What We Do.

(We’ve been doing this stuff for over a decade – but we felt it might be important to finally restate our intentions clearly – once and for all. )

Backstory:  

Both kirk and wendy were classically trained musicians.

We both went to prestigious music schools.

And we both hated our musical education with an absolute passion.

What we experienced was a cookie-cutter approach to music – a way of thinking about music that was totally foreign to the organic creation & performance of music as we both felt it. You were required to work within one particular genre only. A particular instrument was designed to be used in only one type of music. Maintain the status quo. Don’t push the envelope.

Bullshit.

After a few years of this crap, we left the world of music behind us, thinking that making music really wasn’t supposed to be a part of our lives…

… but then upon re-meeting each other decades later, we fell back into making music almost instantly – this time with a renewed vigor. It wasn’t that we wanted to make music with each other – we had to make music with each other…

And this time around, it was going to be Different.

We were going to do what we wanted to do: not what was socially acceptable, not what was culturally expected – and we were not going to do it in the same way as anyone else. We wanted the music that came from us to be a living thing – even if it ended up looking like the baby from “It’s Alive.” (What the hell. It had cute claws.)

This time out, there was going to be No Bullshit Allowed. And we would do it outside the standard music ecosystem.

The another cultural landslide 7 + 7 Philosophy

First, we created seven rules for how we’d make music:

1) The Music Must Always Comes First. We serve the music – the music doesn’t serve us. When we walk into the studio, whatever comes out, comes out. We plan nothing – not themes, not lyrics, nothing. It comes together on its own, by itself – and that’s what it is. Which leads to the second rule:

2) Music is a journey, and never a destination. We don’t know what it will sound like until we get there. No boundaries. No genre. Just music. We will not be pigeon-holed.

3) We will never think about what we make. We will just do it.

4) No egos. That crap just gets in the way of making music and connecting with anyone who would like to hear our music. This translates into acl being a lower case band, with no last names – just kirk & wendy – and no band pictures. (Besides, MzKitty’s own oversized ego would never allow that. And yes, our manager is a cat. A very mean-ass Cat.)

5) If we’ve done it before, we won’t do it again. (That would be boring.) And that’s why all of our songs sound so different from each other – because every song must be different. If a new song we’re working on starts sounding like something else we’ve done, we throw it out. (We have a large musical graveyard.)

6) Music is a gift to be shared (it saved our lives, literally), so we will always give away the music we make For Free. The sole exception to this rule would be music commissioned & created for a specific purpose (what the hell, that way we could buy more stuff to make more music) – but even then, a lot of the time we’ll give that music away, too.

7) Most Importantly: We Refuse To Take Ourselves Seriously. We don’t make art. We make music. And music should be fun – and when it stops being fun, we’ll stop. Period.

 

That “stopping” part in that last rule got us thinking. We’re married – and crazy in love with each other – so we decided to make seven more rules: these would be operational rules with built-in self-destruct mechanisms to protect what we treasured most – each other:

 

1) If it starts to screw up our marriage, We Stop.

2) If it starts to feel like an obligation, We Stop.

3) It must always be fun; even if we’re creating some totally dark & gloomy work,  it must always be fun to create. If we no longer have fun creating, We Stop.

4) If by some astronomically fat chance we became successful at making music to the point it would require us to build an organization to maintain it, We Stop.

5) In fact, if we can’t do it by ourselves, We Stop. (The only exceptions to this rule are in areas we truly, truly suck at – like art & websites – because let’s face it… we suck at art, and we really suck at web design.)

6) Our music must always be honest and from the heart. If we hear a cash register starting to sneak its way into a piece of music, we throw the piece out. If all we hear are cash registers, We Stop Entirely.

7) Once we release our music, our goal is to connect with each individual listener as an Individual. To encourage them to create. To encourage them to grow. To encourage them to think. To give them hope. If we can’t do that, We Stop.

We’ve lived by these rules for over 10 years now – and we’re not going to stop.

So why is it important that we’re telling you these rules?

These aren’t just the rules we live by.

These are our promises to You.

You are not a Wallet. You are not a Consumer. You are not a “fan,” or a part of our “fanbase.” We refuse to buy into that leftover 20th Century horseshit thinking.

You are Our Listener – and Our Friend. You Are An Individual – and you deserve to be treated as such.

We are truly honored and humbled that you’ve chosen to listen to us.

 

This is how we do things.

And we keep our promises.

And we thank you for reading this.

your friends,

kirk & wendy – aka acl, aka @anothercultand, aka another cultural landslide

 

P.S. Next up: the secret plans revealed! (Ooooooo. Secrets!)

P.P.S. as usual, mzkitty sez hi