The Swan, No. 17’ by Hilma af Klint

“You can’t step into the same story twice – or maybe it’s that stories, books, art can’t step into the same person twice,” – Ali Smith

Throughout my time as a producer, my studio setup has stayed consistently modest—just a laptop, a midi keyboard, and headphones. I’ve never been the type of person to collect gear or stay updated on the latest bits of tech. Not that I’m against that kind of thought; I actually love hearing tales of people’s quests for the rare synths or drum machines that transformed their lives. It’s just not the way I move. This may be because my musical roots were formed in the acoustic world, or perhaps there’s a hint of poverty mindset in there too, a “make it work with what you have” hangover from my upbringing, making me slower to embrace the new.

Now, this is not to say that my production work has happened with no evolution. Occasionally, I will stumble upon software or a plugin that makes itself a permanent part of my creative process. But when I think about ‘studio survival’, my mind doesn’t go to the gear around me. For me this is more a question of, “What is it that gives me permission to play?” or “What keeps me curious or challenges me?” and in the studio, the answers to these questions for me lie, not in the tools but rather the environment I create.

I spend about 90% of my music-making time simply listening. So, it’s crucial that the atmosphere around me doesn’t disrupt the flow during these moments of stillness, and I have found that having something nice to look at can be very helpful in this.

Enter ‘The Swan, No. 17’.

Whenever I step into Hilma af Klint’s paintings, especially ‘The Swan’ series, it feels different each time. I find them almost dizzying, they exude a perpetual motion and feeling of transformation, yet at the same time they hold a very satisfying balance—a dynamic stillness. Which, interestingly, is probably an accurate way to describe my creative process.

Hilma af Klint’s work is fascinating; she created a significant portion of it for a theosophy group she belonged to, viewing her art as a spiritual act. She described her process this way, “The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.” We could describe this as an intense ‘flow-state’, a pure focus on the outward reaching to something beyond. Also, in saying this, it seems that she recognised that even as the creator, she could be an obstacle to herself, and in order to touch whatever it was she was searching for, space had to be created.

While my music isn’t spiritual in the same way as Klint’s art, that reaching out is fundamental in my work. Everytime this is obscured either by my environment or even myself, my time in the studio is dead time. In these instances, I find ‘The Swan, No. 17’ to be super encouraging, it teaches me, or rather, gives me permission to step out of my own way allowing my music to speak honestly and authentically.