Ether Diver - Music Journalism to Making Music - The Lorenzo's Music Podcast (Transcript)
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Tom Ray: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Lorenzo’s Music Podcast. I’m Tom and this is a show where I talk to musicians, people who create things for musicians and also with a skew on open source, Creative Commons and federated culture I will say. And that is the two of those are what the person here today I am talking to is about. That’s a horrible sentence, but you get where I’m going with it. Why don’t you introduce yourself to the people and tell them who you are and what it is you do.
Ether Diver: Yeah, thanks. okay. so you probably know me, if you know me at all, as Ether Diver. That’s sort of my nom de tune, artist name. my actual name is Corey. Corey Casciato, if you’re actually very curious. and yeah, I am a semi retired music journalist, musician and creator of things for musicians. Like you said, both. I do reviews of independent artists, of their independent releases, that are available on equitable platforms. So no Spotify, nothing. That’s somewhere where someone can give you money for your music even if you were offering it for free. That’s totally fine, I’ll still review that. And then I create things like sample packs and presets and stuff like that. And I also make music on my own.
Tom Ray: What are presets? What are presets? What’s that?
Ether Diver: That’s the one thing presets for a synthesizer. like, okay, like so I’ve released three or four. Okay, so I did about 100 for the hydro synth that I released. and they’re just sounds, you know, program sounds programmed for musicians to use. some people I love to create my own sounds. That’s actually a big part of what got me into music and what I get excited about. some people hate that part of it. For some people that’s like pulling teeth and I’m happy to share. I actually create more sounds than I could probably ever use. and sometimes I create sounds that just don’t really fit within my music too. But I still. They should have a home like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like I don’t. I might try and create a like a transcate sound, even though my music doesn’t, you know, that kind of big. That’s in trance. Big trance music, big, trance, just for the exercise of creating it. But I’m probably not going to use something like that or if I did I’d use it In a really weird way. But. So once I’ve created, it should have a home. And I just release those for people to. To use. You know, if you. So if you have a synthesizer that I have, you can download some sounds I made and use the sounds I made on your synthesizer.
Tom Ray: Are you talking for both physical and digital synthesizers?
Ether Diver: Okay.
Tom Ray: Okay. So it is also for physical ones.
Ether Diver: Yeah, yeah. So, Micro freak. you can see my Micro Freak over there. That’s one of my favorite scents. there’s. I don’t currently have any available for. Just because I switched where I was selling them and I took everything down from one side and I’m slowly moving it over to the other. And I haven’t put the micro Freak patches back up, but there’s gonna be. I’ll have about 100 micro freak patches. That’s probably the most popular scent I’ve released stuff for. I’ll have about 100 of those ready in the next few weeks, on my Kofi. Kofi page. I don’t know how you’re supposed to pronounce that.
Tom Ray: Yeah, I don’t know how you’re supposed to say it either.
Ether Diver: I’m the same. Yeah. but then I also have a bunch for, Pigments, which is a soft synth from Arturia, another Arturia synthesizer. And I have some for the hydro synth, like I said. And, then, it’s a bunch of sample packs as well, which, you know, that’s. And I. I intend to release more. I’m going to release some for the OP6, which is back there. That’ll also be. That’s. There’s digital and physical versions of that, and it’ll work with either. What else have I. Oh, yeah, I might release some. I might at some point release some for like, any synth that I have is. At least in theory, I would release some for. But it’s got to be worth the effort of putting it, packaging it up and putting it together for. Because if it’s something that’s too obscure, people, it’s no one’s. You know, I don’t get a ton of people downloading it. I’m a pretty niche artist. So it’s not like 5,000 people download my sample. Yes. Or whatever. I get like a dozen people to download them. So if I don’t think that in the synth presets, even fewer. Because everyone’s got a sampler, but not everyone has a specific synth. Right. So.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Ether Diver: All right.
Tom Ray: And then, first of all, where are you located in the world right now?
Ether Diver: Oh, yeah. So right these days I am in, Sacramento, California. I’m. Where am I from? I guess I was born in Wyoming and I’ve lived all over the country, but mostly, in Colorado. That’s I spent 28 years, 29 years in Colorado. And that’s where I had like my career as a music journalist. And did most of what I’ve done is in Colorado. I moved to California two years ago.
Tom Ray: Were you already a musician while you were doing the journalism?
Ether Diver: Yes, sort of.
Tom Ray: That didn’t sound confident.
Ether Diver: Yeah, well, I mean, I’ve been a musician since I was 19 years old. That’s when I started. Okay. But what. I have, I have severe adhd and I think I might possibly be autistic as well. Just based on diagnoses all my children have and the fact that it tends to be hereditary. I don’t have a diagnosis, but my children have all. Are some. All somewhere on the spectrum and it’s hereditary and my wife isn’t. So it’s probably came from me and my dad almost certainly is too. but I bring that up only because both ADHD people and autistic folk tend to have special interests, things that they just get obsessive about. Right. And music has always been one of mine. and so When I was 19, I was super gung ho about this. but then, and this is, I think the ADHD side, mine tend to rotate. Right. So like I was so gung ho from like 19 to 22 about doing music. And then something shifted in my life. partially. I wasn’t getting a lot of traction with the music I was making. I was having, you know, it was frustrating process. This was in the 90s too. It was a very different world then. Yeah. And so I moved on to other interests and. But that was always in the background. I never was, you know, as a musician. It’s funny, like, I was never not a musician. but there were times when it was such a small part of my life that I maybe only had one or two instruments even that I owned, you know, and it was just something I would tinker with every few months. Like I’d fire up. I. For a lot of years I just had reason. On my computer was my only instrument. It was like an old version, two and a half, 2.5. And every few months I’d fire it up and make a little loop or a little beat. Like I made a bunch of ringtones for myself. But when that was a thing people did, all my ringtones were custom. People were like, what the hell is that ringtone? Oh, it’s something I made. What do you think of that? stuff like that. Right. So. And that was during that period where I was, ah, a music journalist. And I did a bunch of pro audio stuff at the time. Like my, my boss found out I had a music studio in my house, which is more my roommates at the time. Like I have a production partner. Roommate, hetero, life partner. I mean I’m not hetero, but he is. that, it’s like my long term. We don’t, we don’t haven’t lived together for years, but we lived together for a lot of years as roommates and worked on a lot of music together. So it was his studio at the time, but I had access to it. And so my, you know, my boss found out and I did a bunch of pro audio work for him, editing clips and stuff like that for the paper that I worked for. So that kind of kept me in it. So I was always sort of doing music and I would show things, like little things I would do to the people I’d interview sometimes and be like, oh, hey, I mean, oh, you might appreciate this. Here’s this weird little experimental piece that I wrote, you know, a few months ago. And they’d be like, oh, yeah, that’s nice, you know, but it was definitely not. I wasn’t releasing music. I wasn’t making very much music. That’s why I’m like, yes, I was a musician during that time, but, you know, not like I am now. Do you know what I mean? It was, yeah, just a small little piece of who I was then.
Tom Ray: I have a similar thing in the sense that I was always singers for bands, but. And I was a musician because I would be like, yes, I’m a singer in a band. But it was more. I would go places, tell people about how I was in a band, and looking back, I’m like, I don’t remember how we got shows or did anything but. But then later on, like I wasn’t doing anything except showing up. And they’d go, we wrote this song. And I’d go, okay. And I’d sing some lyrics over it. And then I’d leave and then they’d continue to work. And now it’s more along the lines of like, God, all the time I wasted. And probably could have propelled more during that time period, but it was just like, no, I’m a Musician. And I did it for five minutes today. So there you go. I did enough for this week. Now it’s like now every day I’m just like, oh, I’ll just be pondering it in my head and thinking. And then. Yeah, now I’m in the daw. Now I’m in the. Let’s use it now. Let’s figure out each instrument. So I get that. Very much so. Whereas I was always a musician, but also I wasn’t technically a creative musician until much later in life. And I think that’s kind of what you’re saying.
Ether Diver: Yeah, it is. Yeah. And I didn’t feel comfortable calling myself a musician for most of those years, honestly. You know, I would tell people, oh, I make music, you know. Oh, you’re a musician? I’m like. I’d be like, I’m kind of a noise artist, a sound artist.
Tom Ray: That’s what I was gonna ask. Yeah. Were you always doing synth stuff where synths always the.
Ether Diver: It was always that from the time I. When I started. So I got started because of, Can I talk about. Can I talk about experiences? Okay, yeah, I. When I was,
Tom Ray: You can’t talk about this. You could know.
Ether Diver: Yeah, I don’t know if your audience is gonna be like, well, this is a little. Shouldn’t be talking about this. When, I was 17 years old, so I was a music fanatic as a teenager. Just absolutely obsessed. Like, I was the guy in your friend group who had all the weird shit that you’d never heard of and was making mixtapes that was like, you know, one track, you know, and 15 tracks, you know.
Tom Ray: Oh, yeah.
Ether Diver: Wild. That was here. That was me in our friend group. Like, I started working when I was, like, 15 years old. like, any job I could find just to buy records. Like, my dad hated it. Like, it drove him. He’s like, you’re making all this money. You could be putting it away for college. And what are you buying? Records? What are you. You’re an idiot. You know, look, now, Dad, I have. Didn’t ever make any money, but I still have a lot of records. So. Yeah, but, who’s the fool? Yeah, who’s the fool now? but so I, got into. Around that time, I just read music magazines, like, religiously. Like, anything I could find. I lived in a nowhere town too, so it’s not like there was a music scene I could be part of. These music magazines were sort of my lifeline. This pre. Internet, obviously. So this is my lifeline. To the outside world. This is how I found out. And there was this article. So these two things converged about the same time when I was 17 or 18 years old, I think it was actually 18 years old. there was an article in the back of Rolling Stone about the then nascent. There was a chill out scene that was starting to happen adjacent to Rave. And like the Orb, Orb was probably. The Orb was probably the number one band that was getting coverage in the rock press at that point, as being part of that scene. And so Rolling Stone wrote this sort of, now I realize, somewhat pretty shallow, not very good article about it, but you know, for a guy living in Wyoming in 1993 or whatever, 1992, this is about. It’s like, you know, it’s like this window to this whole other world and they’re like, hey, these guys are making this weird music where they’ve just got like a four track and maybe a sampler and a synthesizer and they’re making this crazy music. without. They don’t really have any musical knowledge or musical talent and they’re doing this thing. And I was like, oh, I don’t have any musical knowledge or musical talent, but I mean, I have a bunch of musical knowledge but no talent. But not like the, not theory knowledge or whatever. Just like, I know a lot of bands and I know what’s cool. I was like, maybe I could do that. Right? and then right around the same time, I took some acid at Christmas with my girlfriend at the time, who later became.
Tom Ray: As One Does.
Ether Diver: Yes, as one Does. And. And my buddy came home with a guitar and a flanger pedal that he’d gotten for his. For Christmas, right? And he plugged it in while we’re tripping around the Christmas tree and he let me play with it and like, I don’t know how to play guitar. I had this article serving my mind, you know, and. But with the flanger pedal, like just hitting weird notes and running your finger up and down the strings, especially while you’re tripping your face off, sounds cool as hell, right? And so I was like, oh shit, this is exactly what they’re talking about. If I get some stuff like this, if I just build a junk shop of, you know, weird gear, like I can just make weird, crazy, fucked up outer space music without even knowing anything about music, right? Like just clash all these crazy sounds together and just make this weird music that I, because I was already into that kind of stuff. Like I, as a high school kid, and just out of high school, like, I was listening to Einstein, to Neubaten and, Robin Gristle and stuff like that, which at the time was. It wasn’t new at the time, but it was much newer. You know, it wasn’t quite. Hadn’t ascended to classic status like it has today. It was just.
Tom Ray: Right.
Ether Diver: Yeah, there’s some weird. From a day.
Tom Ray: No, I was into the whole wax trax scene and everything around that time.
Ether Diver: That was my blood. Yes.
Tom Ray: By the way, did you notice when you went like this, a big thumbs up. Okay.
Ether Diver: You saw thumbs up?
Tom Ray: Yeah, I was just like. You were talking about doing acid, and then I saw a thumbs up emoji pop up on the screen and I’m like, what the hell just happened?
Ether Diver: I guess it’s some gestural thing, right?
Tom Ray: Yeah, it must be. I just tried to do it and it didn’t do it anyway.
Ether Diver: Yeah. Okay.
Tom Ray: So, but I was gonna say too, when you were talking about the, the chill scene, because around that time period, one of my favorite albums, and it’s actually very hard to find in its original or in its original form is the KLF Chill out album. If you’re familiar with that one.
Ether Diver: I think I have that cassette
Tom Ray: Oh, you do? Okay, well, that’s.
Ether Diver: I think so. Yeah.
Tom Ray: Because they have. No. Because they have so much unapproved.
Ether Diver: And sampling.
Tom Ray: When it was found out. Yeah, like sampling and all that kind of stuff. They, they released a new version of it, but it’s garbage because they
Ether Diver: took out all the samples. Right.
Tom Ray: Anyway, going into that. Okay, so you were. You were doing that flange pedal and all that stuff. Now moving forward up to, like, let’s talk about, say, your recent, album, called Mechanics, of Mysticism. Okay, there we go. So now leading up to that, like, you’ve released that album in the past year, I think.
Ether Diver: Yeah, almost exactly a year ago is in May of 2025. So.
Tom Ray: So what is the process going, from going from doing acid at Christmas in a flange pedal to that album there? Like, what now? What is your process like?
Ether Diver: So it was definitely. I mean, the whole thing was from there to here all the way is quite a process. I’ll try and compress it as much as possible because we could probably fill a whole hour with this. But. Yeah, so, you know, at that time, I built my first studio in the early 90s, which was very primitive by today’s standards. Just a couple of synthesizers, the worst mixer you’ve ever seen, and just recording into a cassette Deck. Okay, that’s it, that’s what I had, I did, you know, probably an album’s worth of stuff on that before I sort of hit a wall in my life. You know, I ended up getting divorced for the first time. and my life just got kind of too chaotic and whatever for me to continue with it. That was like my first real break from it. Blah, blah, blah. Okay. So I went like I said lightly into music here and there over the years. I did stent of DJing. When I was super into the rave scene in the arts, like into the 90s and into the mid aughts. I was like everyone who I fell hard into the rave scene. I, I was the guy who, I almost became a promoter actually. and that sort of lead into my music journalism career. That was a direction I appreciated the rave scene.
Tom Ray: But that was when I started to get out of it. I started from the techno and then it started to go to rave and house music and then it was just like that for about a year and then I moved on. I went with that whole thing.
Ether Diver: Yeah, yeah. And I might, if it might have been the same for me, but because, so I got married at 19 years old, had a kid right away. I have a child who’s, she’s 33 or she’ll be 33 in a few months. and so while I was navigating all this stuff, I, I was also a young father and trying to make a living and this and that. And so when I got divorced it was kind of like I had a second adolescence. And so I didn’t do much while I was married. I didn’t go to a lot of shows. I didn’t, you know, but while once I was divorced, you know, all of a sudden now my kid is with my wife at least some of the time. And I’m just a free agent now. I’m just a 25 year old guy. Who for the first time in his life really can do whatever he wants and go wherever he wants. That’s when I got into the rave scene. So I was a little older than your average raver, but I went hard on it because it was my first like big scene that I was a huge part of. and so for like five years I just was like every weekend I was out, at a rave or a club and then, and multiple weeknights, even clubbing and I just really, really, really got into the culture, love house music, became a DJ and then like I said, started doing a little I was mostly flirting with music writing. I wasn’t really doing a lot of it, but I was talking to people about it. I had this idea that I would maybe start some. Cause I was like, boy, no. 1. There’s. We have this great house music scene in our city in Denver, and no one writes about it. Like, we have, like, three different papers that cover the music scene, and no one’s writing about our fucking dance music scene. What is going on? and around that time, I was working in tech. I decided, fuck this. I don’t want to do this anymore. Oh, my God. Sorry. Am I allowed to curse, too? I didn’t even ask. First of all, you can cut it out.
Tom Ray: Way too late for that to ask that.
Ether Diver: Okay. Okay.
Tom Ray: And no, it’s perfectly fine.
Ether Diver: It’s fine. Okay, good deal. I’m sure I’ve already cursed a bunch of times. That’s what I’m saying.
Ether Diver: I’m very Vulgar.
Tom Ray: After the 12th time, you’re like, wait,
Ether Diver: yeah, can I do that? Yeah. Got into. I went back to college is what I did. I quit my tech job and went to college, and for journalism, and just became a journalist. Okay. And my first job, my editor at one of those papers I was talking about found out I like dance music, like, within a week of me starting there and was like, you’re the guy. He’s right. We haven’t covered it. And the reason why is because we don’t fucking have anyone to cover it. So if you’ll do it, you’re the guy. So I just became the dance music guy for a fairly major paper in Denver for, like.
Tom Ray: That’s what I was gonna ask. Like, was it a zine or was it an actual publication? Okay.
Ether Diver: Yeah, it’s the Westward. It’s the. It’s just called Westward. It’s the, the alt weekly in Denver, Colorado. It’s, part of the Voice. Media change. So Village Voice is probably the most famous one in the chain. But, yeah, yeah, that’s. That’s. I wrote for the Denver equivalent of the Village Voice is what I was writing for.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Ether Diver: And then I was also wrote for the A.V. club, which you probably heard of. That’s the Onion’s Like, it used to be the Onion. They’re not really associated.
Tom Ray: Yeah, no, the Onion actually started here is where the Onion. I’m in Madison.
Ether Diver: Yeah. So you know all about it then. Yeah. So I was, Heck, you probably know some of my co workers from that era. I not know them personally, but at Least you’ve read, like, Ben Munson and some of the RO for AV Club at that time. Yeah. Right. Like, those are my. My colleagues or whatever. So, yeah. Yeah, I wrote. I worked for them for two years. and then I went back to, When I got laid off from that, I went back to Westward and did, like, three more years there, although I wasn’t at that point doing music. So, yeah, I was a journalist for, like, 10 years. Okay. And then, retired from that to kind of pursue some other things I had going on. Things that are not interesting at all. They’re just, like, life things. Boring things. Yeah. and I got kind of out of sorts. I, didn’t realize it at the time. I realized now I’m only very effective as a person and happy as a person if I have something, a creative project that I can pour myself into. So when I retired from writing and I wasn’t doing music, and I was just kind of living my life and being a guy, and I had. I got depressed and sort of started spiraling and went through a pretty dark period, actually. I had some other shit going on. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t doing something creative. I was having some familial tensions. It doesn’t really matter a lot. A lot of tough stuff in my life, and I didn’t have anything going on. So I was in therapy, and I realized, like, oh, I need a project. I need something to do, like, that’ll pull me out of this funk, and then I can work on these other things in my life. And so I was like, all right, you know what? I’ve been flirting with music on and off my whole freaking life. I’ve yet to produce anything I’m actually proud of that I want to show people. Not that I’m like, oh, I made this. Is it any good? What do you think? But, like, something. I’m like, this. I made this. It’s good. I don’t care if you like it or not. and so I was like, all right. You know, I’m. At the time, I was 46. I was like, you know, I’m approaching 50. Like, if I’m gonna do this, like, seems like now’s the time. Like, I have the time. I have a little bit of money and space in my life that I can. I can do this. So I was like, I’m gonna spend a year. I did a, Jonathan Colton did this song, A Week project, famously. I don’t know if you know who that is. Yeah, he did this, that song, a week project. And I’m sure he wasn’t the first to do it. He was the first I heard of. And I had interviewed him and we talked about that, and I thought, well, that’s a really good format, I think, to both drive your craft forward and also just to see, do I have it? Do I have any juice at all? Like, after a year, if you’ve produced 52 pieces and they’re all ass, maybe you need a different hobby. Right? Like, if you’re not happy with them, just forget any sort of outside. But just like, you know, 52 pieces, you’re like, yeah, none of this is any good then.
Tom Ray: I get that. But it’s. It’s not like, producing music is. This is. This is like, even with the, This goes for like, the draw. The Drawvember or whatever the hell the. The things are, like, where they go do stuff within a month or do this this quickly. I get that. To make people motivated, to get them inspired, to get them to it. But also the fact too is it’s like, I do worry that when a lot of people do that and they see no progress or no build in, like, people appreciating what they’re doing, that it can be detrimental to what they do.
Ether Diver: It can’t.
Tom Ray: Because it’s hard to. It’s hard to make quality products that fast sometimes too. So I’m just saying that, like, that’s with those. It’s like I’ve always wanted to participate in the rpm, the, the write a song throughout February, thing. But also at the same time, it’s like, I could do that, but I could also focus on writing something that really means something to me rather than churning out something every single day, you know? So it’s a weird. That’s always been a weird, point for me too. I see the benefit of.
Ether Diver: Have merits. Yeah. Both have merits, for sure.
Tom Ray: Yeah. Because some people, they will procrastinate if they’re not given a deadline.
Ether Diver: And that’s me. That’s me. And that’s why I was like, look, that’s the thing is, over this, all these years, I produced a lot of unfinished pieces. Yeah. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of them. and a small handful. Less than a dozen. Or maybe let’s just be generous and say it’s. It’s 20. 20 finished pieces over almost 20 years. Right. And I was just like, yeah, okay. Like. And I hadn’t really made a lot of progress. Right. Like, any progress I would make, I would squander by going off and doing something else for five years in between. And so I was just like, all right, I’m just gonna see. I don’t mean to cast it in the light of, like, well, if I don’t. If I’m not happy with the results, I’ll never make music again. It was just like, I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve never come up with anything that was meaningful to me. Let’s see if I. If I really focus on it for a year and really pour myself into it for a year, let’s see where I’m at at the end of that year, and then we’ll make a determination if this is something useful for my time. And it was. Went gangbusters the first six months. I produced a lot of interesting noise. Okay. And that’s sort of. I do come from a noise soundscape, right. You know, a, sample delic, you know, construction, not a music theory. Like, I’m just come from hammering noises together into interesting shapes. Right. But, I started to learn theory as part of that. I’d always wanted to learn theory. I’d found it really inscrutable as, ah, you know, trying to learn it from books and magazines in the 90s. It’s a whole different story than trying to learn it in 2019 when where you’ve got 500 different YouTubers explaining it in a bunch of different ways. You just find one that jives with where you’re at and works at a pace that you’re comfortable with, and you learn what you can learn. And so about six months in, I produced a piece of music that’s actually. It’s. You can listen to it. It’s on my band camp. It’s, the, these Damn Birds ep, and it’s actually called these Damn Birds. And it was the first thing I produced that I was like, this is music, and I like it. I think it’s all right. I think it’s like. I don’t think it’s like, home run, like, best piece of music I’ve ever
Tom Ray: heard, but it was something.
Ether Diver: This is actually.
Tom Ray: Yeah, like, I created. You’re like, wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. This isn’t just me going, well, that seems neat. This was you going, oh, crap, wait, no, I like that. I want to listen to it again. Yeah, okay.
Ether Diver: And it was constructed with. With basic music theory stuff, but it’s got an actual chord progression, and it’s all in key, and everything’s orchestrated and arranged in a way that’s supposed to make sense. And I’ve learned a lot since then. But, yeah. And I was like, wow, okay, maybe I am gonna do this. And shortly after that, I came up with this name, Ether Diver. At the time, I was just. Each track I would give a name and then I make up a band name for it as well. Made up like 50 band names over the course of the year. I came up with the name Ether Diver for a track called, Ether Diver, which is also on my bandcamp. Okay. and I came up for the name of the track and I was like, oh, that’s a great name. I should use. Maybe I should just use that as my artist name. And so I. I did. I adopted it. And then I came up with this whole story about what that means. And get this drawing of the spaceship. That’s the Ether Diver and this. All this stuff. yeah. And started releasing albums. And then that built up. This is actually answering your question. That slowly over the years from 2019 to 2025, built up to the release of Mechanics and Mysticism, which is as of today, my magnum opus. That’s like. It’s as good as anything. It really is the fully the best expression of where I’m at and what I’m capable of as a musician today. I certainly. I was just writing on Blue sky the other day. It’s. It’s put me a little bit at odd in a weird place because I don’t know where to go next. Exactly. I’m actually just figuring that out now. Exclusive for you if you want to hear it. yes, but, ah. Because I just was like, okay, well, I’ve done that. And that took me two years. I recorded that album over the course of two years. And the longest I’d ever spent on an album before that was about five months. okay. So, I actually am a big fan of the, Because, again, because I’m a procrastinator at heart and I. I’ve learned about myself over the years. I learned this as a journalist, actually. If you give me very strict deadlines, like, like, you’re gonna lose your job if you don’t make the deadline. Right. Like, strict deadlines.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Ether Diver: We can’t go to press with a hole where your story is supposed to be. So if you don’t turn it in, there will be hell to pay. Right? Yeah, yeah. It did that for 10 years and just learned like, yeah, man, I can crank if you tell me when you need it. And like, make sure I understand. It’s important that it’s got to be done. There’s no, like, there’s no wiggle room here. I’ll do it. I’ll just produce it to work. but if you give me an infinite amount of time and. Oh, it’s fine. Do you need a little more time? Give you a little more time, Right. I’ll use it. I’ll use whatever time you give me. so I set very strict deadlines for myself. One piece a week, every week. That’s during that year. And I just. And I’m good at. I’m also. That’s the other thing is I realize, I believe personally all motivation is self motivation. Like when someone is telling you, I’ll cut your throat if you don’t turn. Turn the story in on time, you can just walk away. Right? They’re not really going to cut your throat. You just walk away. I’m not gonna. I’m not doing this anymore. Screw you, man.
Tom Ray: Real fast.
Ether Diver: Yeah. so, you know, it’s the point being, right, like you always are self motivating yourself if you’re answering to someone else, like really it’s because you don’t want to disappoint them. You don’t want to face the consequence. But it’s always self motivation. I know there’s some. We could get into a whole debate on that, but that’s how I look at it. So once I realize that I can just set a deadline for myself. And as long as I’m strict with myself, I’ll meet the deadline. So most of my albums were produced, in a month. And then I gave myself five months for the one previous to this, which supposed to be three, but I let it expand a bit because I just needed the extra time. And then this one was also supposed to be three months and it expanded to two years because I just was not making progress. I was not happy with where I was. And I said, you know what? I’ve been doing this for a while now. I’ve been real happy with the results that I’m getting. My gut’s telling me these need more time. Yeah, I trust myself now. Yeah, I trust myself and the process now enough, to know because I care about this music, I’m going to finish these pieces. I’m not gonna abandon them like I have in the past. So I’m gonna give myself the time. It took two years, which is an insane amount of time to me. But I did it. And, you know, I think the results paid off. I definitely think it’s by Far the best thing I’ve done. It’s not even. It’s head and shoulders above the next best thing. It’s almost so much so that I’m. That thing where you’re like, they listen to this and they’re like, wow, that’s pretty good. What else should I check out? And you’re like, maybe nothing. Maybe wait till I release something new.
Tom Ray: That’s. Well, that’s the downfall of every musician. You never. Well, no, it could go either way. There are people who release albums that are told total garbage after their previous album, which was the one that made them. Yeah, okay. I was going to say each album you’re always going to think is better than the last, but that’s not necessarily true, so I’m not going to speculate. Yeah, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. No preference of choice, for sure. And also, there’s a lot of songs on that album, so, the one that you put out. So there’s that. Yeah, it’s a good amount of songs. I want to say it’s like 15.
Ether Diver: No, it’s 12, I think. I think it’s 12. Yeah. Here, I can pull it up. Actually. It’s. Oh, that’s wrong.
Tom Ray: Yeah. And the artwork on it, too, while you’re looking that up. You had somebody else do the artwork for that.
Ether Diver: My wife did the artwork on that.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Ether Diver: All right. Yeah, she is, So she is. My wife is a biologist. She’s a scientist by trade. So she’s definitely not an artist first and foremost, but, she’s always kind of dabbled in art. And I am a firm believer that, ah, you got to do something, you got to make something. You know what I mean? It doesn’t have to be like, anything. yeah, 12 songs. it doesn’t have to be like, you can whittle matchsticks or build ships in a bottle. It doesn’t have to be something that people call art, for sure. Because I think all those things, if you whittle matchsticks, you’re making art for building ships. And that’s art. Of course that’s art.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Ether Diver: It’s weird to say that’s not art. It’s not capital A art. It doesn’t get put in museums. People aren’t going, like, make high level commentary about it, but it’s a creative thing that you’re. You’re making. And that’s art as far as I’m concerned. And I think everyone should have some sort of artistic expression, whatever it is, you know, because it’s healthy. It’s Good for the soul. but, yeah, so she started. She’s always done a little bit of this and that. She doesn’t. Didn’t until maybe the last 10 years. I don’t think she considered herself an artist, but she’s kind of come around to this view. Like, I tell her, you make art, you’re an artist. Right? I mean, what is there? So, anyway, she started doing these drawings a couple years ago. and, I was, like, the trippy ones in particular, like, the one that she did for this cover. I saw what she was doing, and I was like, oh, would you be interested in doing a cover for me? Because this next album I’m coming up with, like, it’s about mystic experience and. And, the occult and psychedelia and whatever, and, like, a cover like this would really fit. And she’s like, yeah, sure. I. And I think she. She did that in, like, an hour. And it’s incredible. It’s gotten nice. So many nice comments. Like, people really seem to like it. I love it. I think it’s fantastic. Yeah, it blew me. And I didn’t know what to expect when I asked for it either. She was just like, yeah, I’ll get you something. And then she came back, like, an hour later. She’s like, will this work? And I was like, holy. Yeah, that’s great. Nice. Yeah, I do, like, 50. 50. I make about half of my own covers, and the other half I’ve commissioned from different artists. I like to work with artists that I know.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Ether Diver: personally, from my real life. my spaceship was designed by a guy I used to work with at a magazine that I helped run.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Ether Diver: Another album cover has done.
Tom Ray: That’s kind of like your logo and your icon, right?
Ether Diver: Yep. Another album, cover, the one with the tentacles, ah, was done by a guy I’ve known since I was, like, 19 years old. Like, you know, like, my entire life. Okay. I hired him to do that one, you know, so every other one, I’ll either I’ll hire someone or get someone that I know to do it. and then the ones between, I. I do collage art and, photo illustrations, which is the kind of style of art that I do and actually do covers for other people, too. I just did one for, an artist last month, actually. Okay. It’s up on Ample on Bandcamp. the album is called Thesis and Statement. the artist’s name was. Oh, God, I’m blanking on his name. It’s J.J. something. I can Send you a link if you’re interested.
Tom Ray: But yeah, yeah, no, I’d like to check that out. And the, the other reason I brought you here today, and I think this is how I actually heard about you.
Ether Diver: And the funny thing about me this way, I think.
Tom Ray: Yeah. And it. I was going to ask you how this came about, but pretty much within the first couple of seconds of you introducing yourself, I’m like, oh, that’s why he does it.
Ether Diver: Yeah.
Tom Ray: And it is your project called Other People’s Music. And on your site you basically have people submit their songs. And I saw this on Mastodon. You were doing a call out for another round of it, and you review other people’s music. Tell me about how this got started and just, tell me about the project in general.
Ether Diver: So before I. I have been doing other people’s music in one form or another for, six years. I think I started it around 2020, might have been 2021. So either five or six years, I’ve only been properly doing it, like as the blog called Other People’s Music for. It’ll be two years in April.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Ether Diver: I hit my two year anniversary in April, so real, real soon, like three weeks from now, or two weeks from now. But, I got started because when I was, So I started doing the music real seriously in 2019. around after that year when I started to, I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to show anyone this. This is for me, right? I’m going to make this music for me. And. But then, you know, I was like, I think this may be all right. I think this is pretty good and I want to show some people. So I started putting it out there and I found it’s really hard to get people to listen to it. like, yes, it’s. It’s like pulling teeth getting someone to listen to your music.
Tom Ray: You mean, people don’t instantly give you thousands of dollars every time you release
Ether Diver: So you’re lucky if you get a dozen listens, you know, just by throwing it out there, to someone. so I started exploring different ways to listen. And it occurred to me pretty early on that other people. It occurred to me pretty early on that I was doing the same thing that was frustrating me. I would throw something out there, I’d be like, hey, someone listen to this. Please, someone tell me what you think, like on Reddit or whatever, Twitter, back in the day. And like, one or two people would maybe respond, you know, and be like, yeah, it’s all right. Pretty good, right? You know, and then nothing. Just crickets. And, you know, you’d look at your streams and see that two people got halfway through it. And then you’re like, great, okay, right. What am I even doing here? and so I started being like, hey, maybe let’s try, listen for. Listen. Right? I’ll listen to yours, you listen to mine. I started doing this on Reddit. I was a. I was a mod for years in the R synthesizers. Reddit, which is, the biggest, synth Reddit on, you know, we had, like, when I left, we had over 300,000, maybe even half a million, subscribers to that subreddit. I. I quit when Reddit got like, all corporate and weird. I was like, I’m not working for free for, you know, when it felt like a community. I’m willing to put in free labor into a community. Yeah, Fediverse, whatever. Other people’s music. It’s what I’m trying to do. But I’m not working for a corporation for free. If you’re going to monetize what I’m doing and not pay me some of that money, you can get. so I quit when that happened. but at the time, I was a mod there, and I started there a thread, a weekly thread. The thread already existed, but it was a ghost town. Like, three people would post in it every week and get zero responses. it was a listen to my stuff thread, right? And so I was like, I’m going to take this over and I’m going to turn it into something. So I took it over and I was, I made rules. I said, if you submit, you got to listen. M. You got to listen to at least one other track and, and give them feedback, because that’s what this is for. It only works if you do both sides. And so. And I would just police it. If you submitted. You had one hour after you submitted to listen to someone else’s track and respond. and then to make sure that everyone got covered, because I couldn’t say, well, no, I wasn’t going to assign stuff. I was gonna say, well, this guy hasn’t had a listen yet, so you go listen to him. M. You know, I wasn’t gonna. That’s insane. That wouldn’t have worked at all. But so I was like, I will make sure that everyone gets one listen, because I will listen to them and I will write about them and I’ll make sure everyone gets a quality listen. Because I am a former professional music journalist, and so I’m not just gonna go, yeah, good, sounds good. Mm. I’m gonna tell you what’s good about it. I’m gonna take five minutes to figure out what’s working about your track. And because it’s all strangers, I’m not gonna get into what you fucked up or what I would do differently. I’m just gonna tell you what I think works. I’m gonna note one or two things that I think works about your song. And so I would just do that every week. I was doing like 20 a week. because it got popular once people started actually responding. Right. People were like, oh shit, you can get someone to listen to your music in here. So every week I would do like 20 of them.
Tom Ray: Well, being able to reference a review is actually even bigger than going, oh, look at all the streams I got. Like actually having a response is a big deal.
Ether Diver: Yeah. And people really appreciated it. I mean I got, you know, it went from, ah, people just tell me all the time, it’s so great that you’re doing this. It’s so nice of you to do this. I really appreciate the time you took. And I was like, well that’s nice. And people, you know, I was like, I could probably, When I quit Reddit, I wanted to keep doing it. So I was doing it on Twitter and on asked it on, you know, when I was still on both, just in the threads. It’s just someone, I would say, you know, someone to post a song and I would go listen to it and respond and just leave them a review underneath it. Like two or three line reviews. A little shorter than what I currently do for other people’s music. Right. But not much. Yeah, just what it would fit in a tweet, you know. so I’m asking on 500 characters on Twitter, I think it was 420 or whatever at the time because Elon’s right. and that, you know, people liked it. And so I was like, oh, I should collect these. I should probably have a home for them. Maybe formalize this into a thing. And so I decided to. I had this blog that I created for or this website I’d created from a music project. It wasn’t really doing much, you know, it was just like, here’s my music and here’s my link to my socials. You know, just kind of a generic artist website. I was like, why can just slap a blog on there and I’ll just do it and I’ll make it clear that’s not my music. It’s other people’s music. I’ll just call it other people’s music. Right. So that was the name. I’m a musician. I’m reviewing other people’s music. Here it is. And, you know, when I first started, I was like, I’ll just do whatever I get that week. So some weeks I had seven. Some weeks I had four. Some weeks I had, like one week, I did nine. And then I was like, well, if I’m gonna do this every week, I should just pick a number, do that every week. And then I’ll have a backlog, obviously, but I’ll just. That way I’ll always make sure I have some and it’ll be consistent. So I pretty quickly settled on five. Five a week. and yeah, that was two years ago. And, just continue to pick up in popularity and, you know, people seem to appreciate it. I’m actually getting, I get paid a little, little bit for it now just by donations only. I don’t do advertising. I don’t. Everything is free for everyone. It’s free for the artists. I do not believe in charging for reviews. I don’t think that’s actually a review. That’s something else. Yeah, it’s a paid critique.
Tom Ray: I don’t know that Submit Hub is what that is.
Ether Diver: Yeah, that model is weird to me. And I’m not trying to talk about anyone that does it. I have a friend who does it. So, like, a close, close friend who does it. The actual.
Tom Ray: The actual site and setup of, Submit Hub is what I have a problem with.
Ether Diver: I mean, it feels very weird and dirty to me. I don’t want anything to do with it.
Tom Ray: Yeah, I mean, getting paid to write reviews. Yes, Perfectly fine. Setting up an entire system that paywalls you, even submitting stuff. Go to hell.
Ether Diver: Yeah, it’s. Right. And it’s weird when you’re paying someone directly for a review, you’re. It’s the same issue you have on YouTubers where they’re like, I’m totally independent. Yes. They sent me this hardware. I get to say whatever I want. They don’t have any influence. Okay, that’s technically true, but you and I both know, and so does the guy doing the review, that if he savages that piece of gear, if he’s like, this is fucking garbage, man. It is trash. Throw it away. They are. That company is never going to work with him again. Of course they’re going to blacklist him instantly. He has to say, even if it is Actual trash. He has to say, oh, here’s a use case. You could be really happy if you do this with it. And it’s the same thing when you’re paying someone to write. They’re like, look, this guy’s going to release more songs. If I tell him he’s a fucking genius and blow smoke up his ass and say he’s the next Barry Manilow, he’s way more likely to give me $5 to review his next song than if I’m like, you are ass and you should stop, Barry, man.
Tom Ray: So is what cinches that argument. I like the fact that that was your reference point.
Ether Diver: That’s nice. Yeah.
Tom Ray: the. So now, with this, review, I just really, when I saw that, that’s why I followed you, I was like, that’s really cool you’re doing that. Like, I, I appreciated someone just going like, no, I’m. You weren’t even like, going, listen to my music. You were just like, going. Doing another round of it. That’s super cool. Now, for people who are just hearing this, who are checking out the interview, like, where could they go sign up for a thing like that?
Ether Diver: Yeah. So if you go to my website, it’s etherdiver.com, it’s super easy to find. I’m real good at finding unique phrases that are both relatively memorable and, but also somehow no one’s ever come up with them before. And to be fair, ether diver means actual nothing, but it’s memorable. Right? But yeah, you go to e threediver.com. it’s all right there, right on the front page. There’s a submission guidelines link across the top menu. Mm. I’ll run you through it real quick. It’s super simple. it is community based, so you have to be part of the community. So you can follow me on Blue sky or Mastodon. you can follow the blog via RSS or via subscription. Like an email subscription. All of those count. Okay. I ask that you, as part. Being part of that community, that you check out at least a few other ones. a few issues. I don’t police it. I couldn’t. There’s no way. It would be insane what you’re saying. It’s. It’s encouraged. I would even say it’s. It’s required, but I don’t check. I just trust you. Right? You’re saying, just don’t be a dick. I trust you. Go. Go be a dick. Go. Go check out, you know, read. I, you know, specifically, I say, look, read every Single entry in the issue or the episode that you come out in. Right. It’s only four other ones and there are 100m 10 words each. It will literally take you five minutes to read them. Okay. And if any of that looks interesting to you, click on the music and listen to a track or two. That’s all I’m asking. Really? Yeah. Okay. And then maybe you do that for it. If you find it useful, do that for a couple. You know, if you really find it useful, subscribe and just read it every week. That’d be great. It would be amazing, you know, but not required. I, you know, like I say, you could subscribe to the blog. That’s one way to follow me. I just want you to be involved. That’s all I’m really asking. Right, right. and then you have to be. The artist themselves has to request it. Not a friend of the artist, not a record label. this comes down the friend. So part of that is that some people actually don’t want to be reviewed. They want their music to be out there, but they don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason being reviewed. I know it’s a minority, but I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. if someone doesn’t like me or like my vibe or like my takes on things, maybe they don’t want a review by me. And so I don’t want a friend of theirs saying, oh, this guy’s great, he’ll fucking give you, yeah, I’m gonna submit your music. It’s gotta be by the artist himself. And then also with bands that are big enough to be on labels. I don’t, it’s. It feels a little. I don’t want to work for labels for free. I don’t want to do free promo for people that can afford to pay for promo is what it boils down to. If you are a small band, I don’t care if you’re on a label or not. That’s totally fine. Even if you’re on Polydor. If you’re on Polydor, but you’re willing as someone in the band to come reach out to me on, Blue sky or whatever and say, yeah, sure, my band’s on Polydor, but I like what you do. Can you review me? I’ll still do it. It’s not like I have a limit for how big you are. The limit is if you’re still small enough for someone in the band to reach out directly. Yeah, you’re small enough that you’re still doing at least some of your own promo, then you’re small enough to work with me, right? That’s all I ask to reach out directly if Barry wants to reach out. Barry, if you’re out there, you want me to review a release that you have coming out, you have to reach out yourself. But I’ll do it. you know, Barry, Natalie can really be like, on. When you verify on Reddit, he’ll be like, hi, Corey. this is me. And he’ll hold it up, and I’ll be like, okay, Barry wants a review. I’m giving it to him. And then. Yeah, and that’s basically it. and you have to be on a. You have to be on an equitable platform. I. I will not go on. It has to be both equitable and something that people can, You can’t make people sign up or sign in or whatever to listen to it. It just has to be. Any person has to be able to click and listen for free without signing into anything. And then if they like it, they have to have some method to contact you or pay you. Mm. So, directly. Right. so Spotify, all that shit’s out. No Apple Music, no Spotify, no Deezer, Qobuz, any. I know you can buy stuff on Qobuz but you have to sign up to check their shit out. So I’m just not messing with that. Bandcamp amp wall merlot, self hosted. soundcloud and soundcloud and YouTube are the two that I’m like. But people use them for promo, right. And it is possible to do them for free and not make people sign in. So they still. Even though I’m a little sketchy about them, they barely count. But they do still count. Yeah. and if there’s something else, if you’re on something else and you’re not sure, just reach out and ask me. I’m pretty. I’ll work with you. We’ll figure something out.
Tom Ray: All right. And then before we, before we go today, is there anything you have coming up or anything you’re working on that you want to tell?
Ether Diver: Right. I promised you an exclusive, and here it is, kind of. I bring that up. Yeah. so I’ve been struggling with what to do next, and I realized, that I don’t. I’ve been getting more and more into playing synthesizers and, less and less into sequencing, programming or whatever. I mean, I still do lots of sequencing, programming, whatever, but, And so I decided that I want to do. I’m doing I’m launching a side project. It’s already the. It’s called Synthesizer mystic, that’s the name of it. and it’s going to be, live, live plate synthesizers. it releases probably fairly common. Like once I get it going, I’m probably gonna do like a release a month. I might do it like subscription only or something like that. It’ll really only be for people who are already like fans. People who are already like interested in what I’m doing and whatever I think, I’m sure it’ll pick up everything that I’ve done that I’m like, oh, no one will be interested in. This has always picked up its own weird share of fans. So, I should have more faith, I guess, that at least some people will be interested in what I’m doing. But it’s really a way for me to explore getting more into playing. I want to play live at some point. I’ve never done that. And this is it’s way for me to practice doing that and produce a body of work that when people are like, yeah. Because sometimes people ask me, well, this is cool, but can you play it live? And I’m always like, maybe I could figure something out. I don’t know. That’s a good question. So I’m going to figure that out what exactly I can do live. I working on releases now. there’s already a band camp site for it, although there’s nothing there yet. Just a little icon that I made. and yeah, so first release will probably come out, I’m guessing within a month. But you know, I always say that and then everything takes me longer than I think it’s going to. but that’ll be my next thing that I’ll be releasing is this. But it sounds like you have a project.
Tom Ray: Yeah, thanks. I’m gonna have to, keep an eye out for that. That’s really cool.
Ether Diver: I was posting all over Mastodon and Blue Sky. You won’t be able to miss it.
Tom Ray: If you’re following us, then we follow each other. So I, you know, I’ll of course keep an eye out for it. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been fantastic.
Ether Diver: Thank you.