More and more rejection started to creep into my musical expression. Why was I still using ideas I knew from rock or rap or classical music? Could I come up with something of my own, beyond all that—or even entirely separate from it? I began removing the elements I’d been brought up to believe turned sound into music: song structure, key signatures and time signatures, traditional instrumentation and traditional recording processes. Actually, why not jettison notes and rhythms entirely?I was listening to ever more obscure experimental music. Musique concrète. Power electronics. Noise. Harsh washes of static, shrill metallic reverberations and low drones, spliced tape, mutated voices, the clicks and glitches of modified or dying electronic devices. In my own work I experimented with more abrasive tones and abnormal structures. Squelchy soundscapes made with obscure freeware. My untrained playing on a borrowed saxophone, shredded beyond recognition with editing and distortion. Half an hour of echoing pulse waves from a modified video game console, slowed down 800 percent and layered with radio static humming through guitar pedals. My creations became rough, sprawling masses of sound.I went down this path of rejection and abandonment, trying to find what was outside the music I knew, and I discovered a lot. The promise of a new musical language was tantalizing, but it never quite materialized. It started to feel like I was pushing against a wall. I realized that, as much as I enjoyed the thrill of discovery each time I found a new way to manipulate sound, my creations left me unsatisfied.

— Make Your Own Rules by Andrew Huang