Flux Pavilion announces that he’s giving up social media, says, “My music is what defines me”
Flux Pavilion has evidently been feeling the pressure of maintaining an active social media presence; the bass music talent announced over the weekend that he’s decided to take a break from all the statuses, posts, tweets, photos & videos and announced that he will be on a hiatus for a while.
In a statement ironically on Facebook, the dubstep producer outlined his feelings:
Flux (born Joshua Steele) followed up the post with a more thorough, thoughtful explanation the next day saying;
Im sure im gonna get asked about this so i would like to refine my statement a little more. Giving up is a strong term to use, i dont want anyone to think I dont care about all of you music lovers out there. Social media is great, and has been incredibly important not just for my career but electronic music in general, it has given us our own world to build however we like, freedom to express ourselves and share our ideas and art with each other. Its a powerful thing. I was showing a friend a vine that i had created and out of the corner of my eye I saw the top comment ‘Your Vines Suck’ . . . and i thought “yeah, i guess it does . . . but i never intended for it to not suck” it was just a funny thing that i thought of bored in a backstage cabin in the middle of Finland. It made me think about what makes me who i am, and that has always been my music. My music is what defines me and that’s all I want ‘Flux Pavilion’ to be. I was once told ‘you are only ever as good as your last song’, which in itself is quite a damning statement, but i think there is a truth in the fact that my output as a musician is how i choose to present myself, i want to dedicate my mental space to making sure that my music is the best that it can be. ‘You are only as good as your last vine’ is an echo’ing thought of a world that i dont want to live in. So im taking a little break from it all to plug my guitar in and jam my merry fingers away and hopefully create something that im proud of. If you want to define me from my last post, then i guess this is a good one to end on for a little while.
It’s certainly hard not to sympathize with the 24-year-old DJ/producer. For artists, social media’s constant interaction is a double-edged sword; it offers increased interaction but at the expense of heightened accountability and scrutiny.
For artists like Dillon Francis or Carnage, creating meme-driven YouTube videos or Twitter hashtags come naturally; for other, perhaps more introspective artists, the 24-hour cycle of updating fans can take a toll. Flux Pavilion is no doubt in the latter camp. He made sure to address his fans — the Twitter and Facebook users who send him messages of encouragement and praise rather than scrutiny — so as not to alienate the fan base that buys his music and attends his shows.
Even as Flux Pavilion begins his social media hiatus, there’s still plenty of new material on the way. He recently premiered the video for his Childish Gambino collaboration “Do Or Die,” and announced that a remix EP for the track will debut on July 23 (and is available for pre-order now)
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