An Interview with Terra Incognita

I ran across Terra Incognita’s work while partnering with him on the Neon Crisis Multiresource drop, in which he created the landscape immersion pieces for the lore that I and my co-author, Silas Crane, had worked on.

I was terribly impressed by his soundscape, and I wanted to learn more about who Terra was and how he became involved in blockchain. I hope you enjoy the interview.

• How do you feel Music NFTs will change the music industry?

I feel as if music NFTs and NFTs in general are quite misunderstood. Big price tags and horror stories are what are generally passed around, but it isn’t until you get inside the tent, so to speak, that you start to understand the potential and the game at play.

Yes, questionable artworks have changed hands for silly money, but it is not where I see potential within this space. What I see is the potential for artists and collectors to build and contribute to art communities. In my case, I am interested in music as an artist.

I feel that there can be a connection between artists and collectors that goes beyond just paying money and receiving an MP3 with a Jpeg attached to it.

Buying an NFT can be an investment in an artist and their community. There is the obvious correlation between the idea of collecting vinyl and collecting NFTs of artists you like.

I like that analogy, but I also like to go beyond it.

The idea that a music artist could potentially fund an album by selling the NFTs, then in turn, the collectors holding these NFTs can benefit in many ways—even receiving a cut of future resale revenue, is exciting.

The benefits could range from tickets to a show, a live stream, a community hangout, to bonus material not available anywhere else. So much of this can be airdropped now, connected online.

• What about RMRK’s tech specifically is interesting to you as an artist?

I think RMRK’s tech is very clever in that things that maybe look like singles before can be built into albums within a collector's own wallet.

If they buy an NFT, it can constantly be topped up with extra assets in real time. Artworks, bonus tracks, remixes, whatever. It essentially means an album can be built over a period of time, and the NFT collectors see it coming together in their wallet.

We are only scratching the surface of this, too.

There are a lot of novel ideas floating around about collaboration and composable NFTs, but the thing that stands out most for me is the smart contract idea.

I can work on something with someone like Leif, we can release it in the future, and we get our split on the tracks directly into our wallet. If someone remixes it, they get the their cut, too.

If collectors have invested in the project, they can also be written in to gain future revenue on resale royalty, or hopefully in the future of streaming royalties.

• Could you tell me about your background, especially in regards to the traditional markets?

I have been involved in music most of my life. Around 1997, I received my first set of turntables and started DJing, mostly making mixtapes for my friends as I was around 13 years old then.

By the age of 16, I picked up the guitar and started songwriting, becoming the singer in a band. I continued to write and perform right through into my 20s.

Over that period of time, I started to drift back towards electronic music through my interest in acts like the Prodigy and everything else that was crossing indie music with electronica at the time. This inspired me to start learning more about electronic music production.

After being made redundant from my day job at 26 years old, I decided to enroll in a Sound Production course at college full time, the one I actually teach now.

During this period, I found myself drawn back into club and rave culture in quite a big way. This totally developed my knowledge of electronic music and also involved me in DJing again.

I found myself leaving the band elements behind altogether and becoming an electronic music producer.

Over the years, I have worked under many different aliases producing and releasing Techno, House, and Ambient music. I have released some smaller labels without any massive successes. I have also self-released a lot of music and ran a label with some friends. Now I am now self-releasing under my own Terra Inc imprint.

• How you became a creator in Singular?

I started the Terra Incognita project at the beginning of 2020 when I found myself really inspired by the deeper elements of hypnotic rhythmical techno. I have loved the focus on rhythm and texture, creating atmospheres and worlds of sound.

The focus since then has been to keep on developing that sound and myself as an artist. Recently, I have taken some time away from releasing fresh material with a view to pushing my sound in a different direction.

I have grown tired of the loop based hypnotic techno and feel inspired from further afield. The newer material I am making is a shift away from the original Terra sound.

I fell into this space by accident. My good friend Leif Wyn and I were approached about doing the music for the sub0 conference last year. That music was received extremely well at the event.

Off the back of it, we learned a little about the potential of NFTs and we minted the mixes and dropped them on Singular. The rest is history, really.

Around the same time, we immersed ourselves in the Dotsama and NFT community on Twitter and started to interact with many like-minded individuals. That is how we found the rest of the folks within the collective. The potential of building a new audience where there could actually be a financial reward for our art was a main driving factor on making me want to stay once I had dipped my toes in Web 3’s water.

Only once you are waist deep do you realize the vastness of this whole thing and the potential it has.

It will be everyday life soon enough, which brings its own set of challenges.

We can all obsess about making the best of being here early, we scatter ourselves, spread ourselves too thin, and struggle to keep up. I have suffered from this myself.

I feel like the right approach is to surround yourself with the right people, invest your time and efforts into projects, and do the work you feel right about. Experiment, be nice, and see what happens. I am trying my best, anyway.

Terra Incognita Flowpage for all social links - https://flow.page/terraincognita

If you enjoyed this interview, KSM donations or NFTs can be sent to D8WrK1jsFy9zpFwFZStaDTmX32pMZVdwXTm5rt9LsRKBQrz