Deep Voices: Discovering Deryck Sterne
Plus a bonus three hour mix of 100% non-depressing music
Deep Voices #54 on Spotify
Deep Voices #54 on Apple Music
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This week’s playlist features music from Poison Girl Friend, Palmistry, Cindytalk, Princess Diana of Wales, and a highlight from Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s spooky Candyman score.
But I’ve written about one largely unknown artist on the playlist, Dereyck Sterne, whose songs I hope you’ll take the time to explore. I included his song “Above Depression” on the playlist, and I also recommend “Good to Know You Care.,” along with “Polished Signets.,” which will absolutely be on my playlist of the best 100 songs of 2021. Coming soon! Scroll to the end for the bonus playlist I made for Dusen Dusen.
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I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time listening to and thinking about Sterne’s music in the past few weeks. I discovered Sterne fairly randomly, listening through a playlist of newly uploaded ambient music. His music’s weird tinniness, his disinterest in curtailing a song’s length at anything south of seven minutes, his habit of using photos of himself for the cover art...everything appealed to me.
Sterne’s music seems unmistakably sad to me. Meandering digital compositions with static undertones and melancholic piano, his songs have an uncanny feeling, expressive but robotic, like Hal from 2000 noodling away on a keyboard after a hard day at work. He has an expansive catalog, and you can track his progress as a composer. Earlier tracks are undergirded by a crunchy sense of doom; newer are cleaner, less hopeless and more inquisitive. He’s added drums, for a surprising bit a bombast. But in all eras, synthesizers sweep mournfully across the plane, digitized trumpets cry out in pain. The depth of feeling is bottomless.
Despite the music being instrumental, Sterne’s song titles appear to affirm his dolefulness: “Did You Ever Care?,” “Tiresome Intrusions,” “Why Hurt Your Friends?,” “Lost Chances.” The titles that turn towards the light never quite embrace joy, instead referencing efforts to surmount misery, often through faith. That’s the relationship to pleasure in music I most often respond to—it being at arm's length.
Despite a robust Reverb Nation page, little information about Sterne’s life is available online. He is a retired post officer and a member of a London Seventh Day Adventist Male Voice Choir. Other than that, no dice in finding out about his interests and background. I was curious how he composed and performed, and whether or not he was as sad as I thought his music made him seem. So I decided to ask.
I emailed Sterne, who wrote me back quickly to say he would respond to questions. He answered a few of them, but he was largely elusive, and credited God with his musical creations. “From childhood I have been Blessed with music,” he said. “I believe it to be a Blessing from God Almighty. Do not ask me to explain this in detail.” But he did clarify, in a tone that suggested that he was flabbergasted by the question, that he was not sad at all. “I am certainly not a sad person. I do not believe that my music conveys sadness,” he wrote. “I simply reproduce on music score sheets the music imparted to me at specific times. [his song] “‘Above Depression’ is most certainly not sad music. The title directs listeners to God Almighty Who is seated above all forms of depression that exists.”
I’m not sure I’m buying it. People who aren’t depressed don’t think much about conquering it. But that may be me seeing a black hole in a Rorschach test when everyone else sees the sun.
The other day I listened to the choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp being interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Tharp was discussing how music changed the reception to her performances. Dance a dance to a sad song and the audience will find the dance sad. Change the music to something peppy but do the same dance, and the audience will find the dance uplifting. But what makes a song depressing? How do you know? If Sterne titled his songs with happiness in mind, would they sound different? Did I, with a tendency to bend towards gloom, hoodwink myself into thinking I’d found a kindred spirit in sorrow?
In his response to one my questions, Sterne revealed that he uses the computer program Sibelius to compose and perform his music. Sibelius is largely used by composers, a way to have a score performed by a digital orchestra to get a feel for what it might be like performed by a human one. Preferring this scratch take to the real thing is as if I preferred the dress rehearsal to the finished performance. The uncanniness I was so attracted to in Sterne’s compositions may have just been a side effect, a limitation, not a feature.
One of the questions I asked Sterne was about his influences and contemporaries. I wanted to get a better sense of where he thought of himself in an overarching musical cannon. I got the feeling he wasn’t listening to, say Oneohtrix Point Never, and trying to replicate his iciness, even if the music shared similar qualities. Sterne didn’t respond, though he promised he would and apologized for the delay. A month later, I haven’t heard from him. Last week, he released another new song.
Bonus playlist: For Thanksgiving, I made a mix for Dusen Dusen, the bright and wonderful clothing and home goods label. Ellen Van Dusen, the label’s founder and designer, was an early supporter of Deep Voices and I wanted to make a mix that reflected her omnivorous love of color. With some guidance from Ellen on tone, the resulting three hours of music is more cheerful than your typical Deep Voices, but likely still as weird. A good mix! No pun intended.