Us playing through "Biscuits and Booze"

We are a group of individuals who wish to celebrate the, although some may say academic, move from modernity to post-modernity through the medium of sound, (primarily), and vision. What this means is that we have neglected – leaving it to prove its usefulness – the rigid framework associated with professionalism and have embraced amateurism.

The plight of “music” has always been its use as a commodity, which has meant that it has been contaminated by people associated with the soulless pursuit of money; this has led to the idea that “music” can be categorised, both as to quality and in styles. (Of course, the use of the word music is problematic, as indicated by the scare-quotes, but we can’t get too introspective).

This interface between music and money has meant that an industry has developed that is intent on objectifying music in order that it can understand-it, “bottle-it” and sell-it; it is the understanding of music that is the most problematic, and the most essential; in order to “bottle” anything it needs to be brought into the world of Things.

Understanding music as a Thing has led to a paradigm based on the following routine: isolate – take the music out of context; prune / embellish – take away or add what is understood to be unnecessary or needed; group – categorise; test / evaluate – use categorised people (known as The Audience) to assess whether the music fits the category; re-evaluate – this is based on monetary success or the availability of a perceived market.

The objectification and commoditisation of music is found implicate in the realm of professionalism, and has led to an industry run by professionals for professionals, which means that the pursuit of money has marginalised originality, which is impossible to categorise, and emphasised a formulaic approach to music making – ‘What you need to do is …..’ (the end of this sentence is usually about “…making-it”.)

What is needed is abandonment of the professionalism meta-narrative and a celebration of music-making, which involves the acknowledgement that music-making is a subjective pursuit, (this also applies to music-appreciation), which means that there is no answer to it – no right or wrong; this has been proven again and again, yet the Music Industry still attempts to duplicate rather than innovate.

It is amateurism that facilitates innovation because it does not suffer external evaluation – there is nothing that the musician who is doing-it-for-the-love-of-it can be told; allowing external evaluation implies that someone knows better than you, and the amateur knows they don’t!

For this reason The Improvement are a band who are proud to call themselves amateurs because we believe that originality resides with us, and every musician who sees music as transcendent.

NB: At no point am I arguing that making money from music is wrong, or that bands who are successful can’t be original, I am saying that the pursuit of money is, on the whole, incompatible with originality.