I don't make rock or pop or jazz or blues. I make listening music. The songs are mini-movies to be watched.
They unfold. They extend. They open. I don't know if I write great melodies or structures or lyrics. My music
is about creating texture and ambience; evoking subtle moods and transient emotional qualities. The transitions
in the music, from one section to the next, seek to evoke neuro-chemical transitions as they happen in the brain.

The music is constructed of a mix of familiar 'organic' sounds (ie orchestral and other physical instruments) as well
as unfamiliar (yet familiar; as in Freud's definition of the uncanny) washes of noise, bursts of color, speckles of space
dust. I am more indebted to Debussy than to Led Zeppelin. This kind of musical framework has its pop antecedents
in people like Prince and George Clinton, as well as Brian Wilson, the Beatles and Roger Waters. It is also informed
by the textural approach of modern electronic artists from Kraftwerk to Matthew Herbert.

Vincent van Gogh is another tremendous influence. This is in terms of his single-minded focus on the work (despite
the lack of contemporary approval); but more importantly, I am influenced by the content of his work. Van Gogh was
not trying to recreate reality as we see it literally. He re-created the subtle dimensions of experiential feeling as they seep
down into our emotional, spiritual and existential cores. This is where it really goes on. The signified...not the signifier.
Not out here. And not in the intellect.

My art is neither cute nor clever. This would distract from its true intent. It is intentionally rough-hewn and almost
disintegrating in places. It is a collage work. A fabric of layered sounds that rub up against each other with almost
quantum randomness.

The ultimate goal of the music is to create an alchemy in which the music is not heard by the listener, but seen.

-Todd Amodeo

Click here to return to the homepage