Rusty and I discussed making the record all at once; with twenty "canvases" (song files on Rusty's noisy laptop) on which we daub and sprinkle sound colours at first randomly (guitar note at 3.12 on this song, at 1.47 on the next, and so on). Then, by selective erasure and re-recording, we'd shape each song into a more defined entity, taking it away from randomness, towards something with its own themes and identity. I like that idea; composition by erasure! The randomness would still be crucial, though; the record would find itself, slowly, because of the accidents, even while moving away from them. Accidents would slowly gel into stories that couldn't have existed without them. It would be like the famous monkey with the typewriter trying to write Shakespeare, but with Shakespeare himself on hand to work the nonsense into sense with constant edits, interventions, and revisions. With any luck, the tug-o-war between nonsense and sense, mess and intention, would be a productive one. Because pure mess and pure intention are, in themselves, boring.

I like this way of working, though a typical pitfall is: instead of a bunch of pieces, one can end up with one piece that has many parts - one can fool oneself into thinking the've accomplished much more work than they really have. In the case of visual arts, this can make for a very coherent-looking show... so coherent in fact that it just falls flat. I've gravitated towards this in the presentation of my own work, and typically respond to this in other shows. I'm beginning to re-assess this tendency.

What about other shows that are collections of very disparate pieces? There are very few that I can remember responding positively to. The summer show at David Zwirner is one that stands out in my mind, perhaps because it didn't throw in the kitchen sink. And in terms of my music listening, I've enjoyed compilations more than albums by individual acts, the TOUCH samplers for example, though that may be because I'm less critical of the aural than I am of the visual.