Drum & Lace Field Notes 23
Finally new music & the privilege of time
Ciao amici,
Larry David would hate me for saying this but, happy new year everyone! Hope the year has been off to a good start for everyone, although the world events have certainly not made that easy. But I do have some delightful music news and the usual commentary to share with you today!
This year I celebrated the solstice by partaking in the ‘12 Magical Nights’, which entails writing down intentions and cutting them up into strips, folding them so you can’t see your writing & then burning one each night, starting on the night of the Winter Solstice. The last intention left is the wish to fulfill in the coming year, and mine sure didn’t disappoint : “Keep uplifting and supporting community”.
I’ve committed to being as radically positive and resilient as I can in 2026 because, let’s be honest, if not I literally don’t think I’d be able to cope. Granted it’s been 2 weeks into the new year, but if I’m able to keep this ‘no fucks left to give’ attitude (for things that aren't serving me) for the whole time I think I’ll be a much less stressed out person this year. One can only hope right?
I FINALLY have some very exciting music news! The first single from my upcoming EP, Terra, came out this week on ace London-based label Mesh. The single is called ‘Terra (Right Here Do This)’ and it’s a pretty catchy & fun electronic tune, if I do say so myself. It’s the first time I’m releasing something sung in my native (Italian) language and it’s quite a maximalist & jubilant way to introduce the EP, that will be out in the world on Friday March 13th. Here’s a little write-up I put together for some context about what to expect:
“Terra is a new body of work that was written with a strong connection to roots & belonging. This EP feels like my attempt at a folkloristic approach to electronic music- the fast paced rhythms and beats being juxtaposed with lyrics that feel connected to the ancient lands that I grew up in, in Florence (Italy). The use of Italian lyrics, my first time doing so, felt apropos for these poems dedicated to the earth that has shaped me, and are deeply connected to the nature that I’ve lived. Each track is connected to a story personal to me, but also hopes to serve as a wider and relatable metaphor of the (human) existence.”
I’m incredibly chuffed and honored to join the Mesh family after years of being a fan of their releases, truly feels great to have found such a wonderful home for this EP.
You can now also pre-order Terra EP on bandcamp (thanks in advance for your support!) and also available now is the beautiful nature-themed music video for ‘Terra (Right Here Do This)’ directed by Ben Bennett. Ben had the great idea of creating a series of endless zoom-ins and -outs to create a dynamic & compelling music video using only footage he shot in Epping Forest (on the outskirts of London). Extremely in love with the final visual touch we added to the video- yellow foreign-cinema-vibe subtitles and Fellini-esque titles. Watch below & show it some love <3
Getting to today’s ramblings- I always love the holiday slow-down as it finally allows some time for mental clarity. This break had me thinking about many different topics related to music and not, and the surprise extra time allowed my Aquarius mind to fall down random rabbit-holes. Never not adding them to my ever-growing list of random-topic conversation fodder: one of my favorites being discovering Argo floats and the amazing statistics it sends to oceanographers.
What I think I’d like share today are some thoughts I recently had on time as privilege. (I will preface this by emphasizing that I am very aware of the extremely privileged position I hold in this world.)
As I’ve been busy formulating what to do in terms of EP press & sharing mode, I’ve been following what has become routine for my releases at this point - ie trying to find opportunities to perform this new music live (or finding listening spaces) and sending out music to the list of websites/substacks that I admire for consideration. Without dwelling on the somewhat sad state of touring at the moment, especially when operating sans booking agent, it feels like there’s something playing against emerging and lower/mid-tier artists in conquering the next step - the lack of time.
What do I mean by that? This lack of time presents itself as the inability to fully promote your work, connect to your fanbase in meaningful ways (I swear I’ve nearly started a Patreon/discord so many times), create enough ‘content’ & text to accompany releases, plan shows/tours, rehearse & program said live shows, all the while handling the admin that goes with all of this. Lately to me it’s felt like this is merely impossible unless it’s the ONLY thing you do. Realistically, even if I had 10 solid hours daily to dedicate to these things, it would not feel like enough time. I’ve had plenty of people say to me “then find a team and get help”, which is a very astute observation. But pay for their time with what? Being an emerging artist or mid-tier artist does not pay enough to make a living in the majority of places in the world (or at least those that have any sort of ‘scene’) without at least one other form of income. Added on top of that, if you’re also a caretaker for someone you can consider your time to be even more precious.
Hindsight is 20-20, as they say, and I’d be lying if I say I don’t often grieve the extra time I had before becoming a parent and I do often envy those who seemingly have the time to fully dedicate themselves to their art - for me that feels like the biggest form of privilege.
Of course this ‘privilege of time’ is inextricably tied into financial privilege. The Guardian last year posted an article literally called “Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK, leading artists warn” and as costs of living are going up everywhere I’d be surprised if there was to be any improvement in imminent years.
From my own experience (once again from a place of undoubted financial & Eurocentric privilege) I find myself constantly going over ‘what if’ scenarios from my own early adult life. I was lucky to attend university and then follow up with a masters experience in the United States, lived as a foreign student. As an international student, you have to be in school full time to stay in the country while being allowed to work something like 15 hours a week on campus. In my case, the only way to survive (and for a few years literally off of Dunkin Donuts and bagels) was to work essentially full time (under the table, oops) to afford this. Ultimately, my schedule for the first 10 years of existing in the US was being in class all day and then working in an Italian restaurant 5 nights a week. Why am I tell you this? Because I remember already then thinking about time as the greatest form of privilege, and that if I’d ‘had the time’ to get started on things earlier with my own musical career, that I’d be further along.
The point I’d like to drive home with all this though is that although this idea of ‘time as privilege’ isn’t anything new (remember the annoying “"You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce" discourse, uhh), it certainly has been amplified by the relentless rhythms at which artists are expected to operate nowadays, churning out releases and promotional roll-outs at factory assembly-line speed.
Not adhering to the insane pressure to succeed and generate brings forth a whole slew of fears- the fear of becoming obsolete as a third of daily music uploads to DSPs are AI slop tracks, while on socials someone new seemingly ‘goes viral’ everyday. The fear inflicted by age-ism, particularly for women. The fear of entering that sort of mid career music plateau where you’re no longer the exciting new & fresh upcoming artist, but you haven’t ‘made it’ big enough to be on Pitchfork end of year lists and commanding 1000 cap rooms. I hope I’m not the only one that has these feelings, in fact, I truly feel like a lot of you reading will relate to this. Just like we were never meant to be inundated with the world, we weren’t built to market ourselves in this way.
That said, what do we do at this point to try to make this all more sustainable? How do we allow ourselves more time to create, share & establish longer-lasting platforms for our careers? I have no answers, obviously, but I think it’s important to have these conversations often because artists are experiencing burn out like never before. A few artists I know have also mentioned that this relentlessness in the music industry has then caused the opposite - they completely freeze and feel unable to share and commit to releasing their art.
In an attempt to be super positive to close off this topic I’ll say - as artists what we can do is remember to give ourselves some grace. Forcing ourselves to produce art that isn’t authentic does nothing but further feed into the capitalism hamster wheel we’ve all convinced ourselves matters over our forms of expression.
To round this long-ass post up, here are two interesting posts I came across on instagram this week:
The first being this guys’s hot take, in which he essentially argues that we should revert back to a time when you had to pay for all music in an effort for people to spend more time with music that they’ve actually spent money on while incentivizing discovery. He continues to say that if being an artists went back to being ‘harder’, then it would dissuade those looking for quick fame and virality from entering the conversation. Although it’s a pretty extreme stance, I do agree with chunk of it although the democratization of music has been essential to create more diverse musical worlds. I’d recommend also reading some of the comments on the post as he definitely stirred something up.
The second post is perhaps the most useful & helpful thing I read on socials this week. Shared by fellow artist Laura Escude, she’s shares lessons she’s learned in her 20+ year career, and some of these slides resonated soooo deeply. The one I really needed to read this week was: “I thought being on the road automatically meant growth. It didn’t.”.
My final thought is this - if somehow we reverted back to living in caves with no electricity, internet & modern comforts, would you still write and create music for yourself? Hopefully the answer is yes.
Sending everyone love & light as always, especially as tomorrow (Monday January 19th) is ‘Blue Monday’. If you need some tunes to kick off the week, here’s a playlist I made for Mesh’s Mix Series.
Infinite thanks for reading & for your support!
Xoxo
D & L
