Loafy by Mentufacturer's Zed Sessions

Like every electronic musician today, I have a bunch of sketches cluttering up my hard-drive.

Many of these tracks have been worked on. And organized into collections of tunes that seem to fit well together and complement each other. They effectively make up EPs or short albums of music that I thoroughly enjoy listening to as a whole.

I'm proud of this music. While often based on experiments or exercises, I think these tunes fully represent where I'm at on my musical journey. They say something that I want to say. They have melodies and ideas that I fully want people to hear.

And yet, at the same time, I haven't quite been able to "finish" them. Sometimes they lack a crucial extra element. More often I just haven't had the time or energy to do the full development or add the final touches. Or been able to properly mix / master them to my own satisfaction. Sometimes it's just that I don't even have a name or "theme" I can associate with the track. Or it doesn't quite seem to fit the identity I want to present.

In the past I have put such music out as Mentufacturer. My main account contains "mixtapes" of tracks I didn't feel were entirely as polished as the tracks on the "real albums". (Though it's a gray area. The Go Easy Mixtape (mentufacturer.bandcamp.com/album/the-go-easy-mixtape) was a pretty crude mixtape. But it's still one of my favourite "real albums")

The thing is, though, as I keep practising and developing as a musician, the rate at which I produce these "almost finished" tracks is outpacing my ability to work on and finish them. The last album of 9 tracks took 18 months to get to a state I was ready to release it. During that time I knocked out about 30 more pieces that I really like and want to do something with. And that's on top of the 5 other albums and 6 other EPs I already have sketches for in the pipeline.

And of course, I'm becoming more ambitious and "fussy" as to when a track is really ready. I want every release to embody my growth as a composer. To explore new territory. And witness new skills.

Which is all very well, but given that, clearly a lot of these new nice-to-listen-to ideas are NEVER going to make it to such a level that I want release them. Something has got to give.

Hence Zed Sessions, which I think of as a kind of safety valve. Or place where I can pull back from the criteria of "finishedness" I've set myself for official Mentufacturer releases. And where I can just put these EPs out for anyone who wants to hear them.

I may, one day, get around to redoing and really "finishing" them. And they'll end up on another release. But in the meantime, they live here.

And given they are explicitly unfinished, if you are a musician who likes my stuff and you want to use one as a beat to rap on, or the basis of a song, or ask me to rework something into the soundtrack of a film or game, then get in touch. I'm open to collaboration and learning, and if I feel there's some affinity between what you're doing and what I want to do, let's work something out.

Zed Sessions is a secondary collection of music from the romantic melodic experimental electronic musician Mentufacturer (https://mentufacturer.bandcamp.com)

Zed Sessions are sketches that are "almost finished". Not quite polished enough for a main release. But I love listening to them, and hope you will too.

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