Blakk Dogg

     The release of the album “Distopiate” marks the end of a chapter in my progress as a musician and a creator. It serves as a sort of middle ground for me musically, with a lot of my darker lo-fi influences and style choices at play, but also a slight change in direction present in the form of house music and EDM. 

     I remember becoming very interested in electronic music the first time I heard the album “Dig Your Own Hole” by The Chemical Brothers. At the time, my musical diet mostly consisted of rock and jazz, and I was starting to slowly dip my feet into other styles and genres. So the first time I heard sounds like that, crafted without instruments, I was absolutely floored. I still wouldn't fully dive into electronic music in a big way for many years until I was out of high school and my need to explore every kind of music out there was at it's peak. That's when I looked into the big names of that era like Dedmau5 and Flume and Nero and Flux Pavilion and so on and so forth, and was launched head first into the big web of influences and collaborations that had occurred since the beginnings of electronic music and discovered artists like Aphex Twin and Venetian Snares that pushed the boundaries of what was possible with both software and hardware. 

     All of this to say that EDM has been a big part of my listening for a long time now, and that I would like to delve into creating more of it myself. That being said, I am still unsure as to whether that music will lend itself to the vibe and image I have created with the moniker Blakk Dogg. I think that it may very well end up becoming it's own thing and I would love to see what it becomes and how it helps me grow and develop as a musician. 

     That's not to say that I won't be releasing any more music as Blakk Dogg, actually far from it. In fact, Distopiate is also special in the sense that it marks my last instrumental release for the time being, as I will now focus all my efforts on completing some songs with lyrics and vocals (both rap and song) that I have had waiting in the wings for far too long, either due to lack of completion or dissatisfaction with the overall mix and sound. 

     It has been hard for me to put the perfectionist mentality aside when it comes to my own music, but ultimately very necessary, as I would never have even released what I have put out up to this point without just letting go of the little details that bother me about the things I have created. Realistically, nothing I create is going to be perfect. I am not a professional in any of the avenues in which I have wandered aimlessly over the years, but I am certainly not going to be recognized in any capacity if I don't put anything out there to be judged to some degree. 

     Letting go of that fear of judgement, the idea that people will point out the very flaws that I see in my own work, has been more and more important to me as I come into my own style and my own place in this world. I have been trying to focus more on embracing whatever idiosyncrasies happen along the way and developing something that, no matter how it is engineered or produced, remains one hundred percent authentically me. 

    So what do you have to look forward to in the coming days after Distopiate?

          - Two albums of full songs with lyrics and vocals
          - Another full album release with the John Muka Band
          - A new project focusing strictly on EDM

     Those are my goals and realities for the time being, so stay tuned to see what I come up with. 

Cheers,

Robert O.

     

     In the next few months I will be releasing some music, despite a lack of any definite fanfare surrounding it. I have come to a point in my life, not only as an artist but as a person, where I feel that there are things that I have been holding onto that no longer serve me and are not necessarily representative of the person that I have become. The Blakk Dogg moniker was developed in a time of great turmoil for me and it is highly indicative of the stress under which I had held myself for so long. I am not sure if I will ever drop the name, but I do feel an inevitable change approaching in the way I create music and the tonality and subject nature therein. 

     A few singles will trickle in, then a two full length projects; one instrumental and one vocal. There has been a lot of deliberation on my part about the production and, perhaps to an unnecessary degree, the engineering of these tunes that I have been sitting on for roughly a decade. In a world where streaming services and record labels make access to the highest quality of music available in an instant, it is almost like cutting off one's legs to release something that isn't up to the dauntingly high standards of a well established industry. Or at least, that is how it can seem to the independent artist with no budget and no formal education to speak of. 

     It is for that reason that I have held on to these songs for so long, in hopes that I could either learn enough about mixing and recording to bring these tracks to a level that I felt was adequate to compete with even the biggest names in the game, or that I could garner enough financial support to be able to afford engineering or recording with a professional studio. After clinging to what basically amounts to a fantasy for so long, at this juncture I am decidedly tired of trying to dress up something that is, at it's core, almost intentionally ugly, dirty, paranoid, obsessive, dark, etc. 

     These songs represent some of the darkest yet most creative times of my life, and now that they are far behind me it feels superfluous to try and make them approachable when I wouldn't ever re-approach that time in my life for any reason whatsoever. In a way, I believe that releasing these songs as they are in their raw, sometimes unfinished forms, that I will take part in a much needed catharsis and will finally be able to move on from those emotions that once carried so much weight in my heart, mind, and soul. 

     I don't expect those that are close to me that were not able to witness me go through these things to understand or even appreciate these sentiments. They will likely find my language and attitude within these songs to be reproachful and distasteful. And that is precisely why, in my opinion, I need to let them go and acknowledge the person that I had become and look forward to the person I am still becoming in spite of all that unscrupulous behavior. 

     So, long story short, I'm going to be putting out music again, at least for a little while. If you don't enjoy what I put out in these next few months then I hope that you can enjoy what I am able to create in the future. I'm honestly just happy to be a blip on anyone's radar at all.

Cheers,

Robert O

     A lot has changed since I started this website and this blog, and yet a lot of things remain largely unchanged. 

     I joined a band last year (John Muka Band) as a drummer, and as of me writing this we are set to perform our first live show at JackRabbits in March. Being a part of a band this size has been an absolute pleasure, and we are currently eleven members strong. The music has definite motion and a wealth of emotion behind it, and a story that truly speaks to me as a musician that has been relatively under the radar for so long now. The fact that John and Troy were able to assemble this kind of group with so much chemistry and talent after a decade of being in hiatus is nothing short of a monumental achievement to me, and the future continues to look bright for this group. A lot of work has been put into that project from all of its members and I am proud to be a part of it, but this has subsequently affected my output as an independent musician. 

     In addition to being a member of John Muka Band I recently started to pick up some gigs with a country rock outfit known as Banjo Brown and The Road Gators. Country music is definitely not in my wheelhouse as a creator or even a listener, but it has been a very enjoyable learning experience to absorb their setlist into my brain and try to duplicate what these tasteful drummers can do on a country record. It feels genuinely good to be a part of a live music scene again in whatever capacity I am allowed, and I wish to continue that trend as much as time allows this year. With roughly five or six gigs between the two bands in the months of February and March alone I am gearing up to have a year full of exciting performances with some wonderful people, and for that I am truly greatful. 

    However, there is a nagging voice in the back of my mind that is asking me some difficult questions: 
Are you going to have enough time to make your own music anymore? If you do complete the music you're working on will you even have the time and venues in which to perform it? Are your digital releases enough to garner any attention without a physical demonstration of your skills? 

     These questions are coming not from a place of fear I think, but from a curiosity as to what the future holds for me. I want to stay open to opportunities in music, and I think that the trajectory that I had originally intended for myself has been altered by events throughout the last year or two. 

     In 2020, some friends and I had a live rap cypher with a full rhythm section that we started as house parties where I was renting in Mandarin. Eventually the crowds got a little too big and a little too “lively” to be held in a place of residence that was shared with other people, so we had to move the events to a local kava cafe. I was starting to break into the hip-hop scene in Jacksonville a little bit at a time with my own music and the projects I was working on with others, doing shows with some of the performers that would show up to the cypher we hosted. Our little network of rappers and musicians was growing and gaining some traction, if only a modicum, and this continued for about a year or so. 

      Over time the attendance for the cypher started to fluctuate, and when it did garner a large attendance, it once again proved to be a little too large and too “lively” for a small cafe in a shopping plaza, and after the business opened a new location thirty minutes away from our home base and focused their musical bookings there, the cypher gradually fizzled out and came to a complete halt around 2021. In the years of 2022-2023 my attendance at performances in the local hip-hop scene also came to a grinding halt in a stupendous lack of momentum. I focused on continuing to jam as a rhythm section with the core members that started the cypher, focusing on making our own style of music that largely gravitated toward rock and experimental styles, but we never really picked up any vocalists to perform with us from that point forward and eventually that came to a halt as well. 

      By the end of 2024 I found myself alone again as a creator, having to pick up the pieces of all of the shattered projects of which I had once taken part. Some small solo instrumental releases were put out there with no real reception, and it was at that point that I was considering discontinuing any forays into the music world altogether. With the love and counsel of some close friends and family I continued to release some projects in order to get some closure on some things that I had left on the back burner and in 2025 I released two more solo instrumental projects as well as two collaborative instrumental efforts. 

     It was earlier in 2025 that I had gotten onto BandMix and connected with Troy and started rehearsing with him and John Muka and forming the lineup that would now be considered the full band. Slowly but surely my own creative output started to dwindle as I focused more heavily on being a worthwhile addition to someone else's creative ventures, but I still felt some sense of ownership in my contributions that soothed my need for creative satisfaction. 

      So that brings us to the present with only one solo rap release on the backburner that will likely be my first and last solo rap album featuring one very patient producer as the main collaborator. Other than that there is only one instrumental collaboration featuring another very patient guitarist from Gainesville, and the rest will simply be my own software maladies being dragged into the light to wriggle under the microscope of listeners far too used to high-end production value to be willing to sit through the stumbling efforts of a neophyte. 

     Which brings me back to my trajectory as a musician and how I must view these changes from a lens of gratitude and acceptance rather than grief and misfortune. For now, I may not be able to focus on my own creative output, but I am still thriving as a musician and have been presented with better opportunities than I have had in almost a decade of doing this. Things may not look the way I wanted them to five years ago and they may not look the way I want them to five years from now, but the less I focus on the way I want things to be and the more I live in the present, the more I truly believe I will find happiness in where I am at any given moment. And who knows, maybe those dreams I have will still come true, but in a different way than I could have ever expected. 

Here's to the now, because it's all we have.

Cheers,

Robert O.

     Across the projects I have been a part of and the ones I have released under my own moniker, I have submitted close to one hundred works to ASCAP and the ACE Music Repertory. As much as this should feel like an accomplishment, it ultimately feels banal and underwhelming, at least from a personal standpoint. The sum of the streams that have collected on these pieces of music amounts to little more than a pittance, and the hard work that was put into these releases feels like a monumental waste in the face of the veritable tsunami of music both real and artificial that floods music platforms every waking moment. 

     Don't get me wrong, this isn't a chance for me to complain about how underappreciated I am as an artist. The reality is that even those closest to me don't recognize me as such, they simply know me as who I am: A friend, a brother, a son, a colleague, etc. I am more a human being in that sense than I am some kind of commodity to be exploited, and in that way I have a type of freedom that I would imagine those in the spotlight may objectively miss having. 

     The whole point of it anyway, as I have addressed previously, is to simply express myself in the medium that I find I have been given the most incredible gift, and I hold that very close to my heart. I just wonder sometimes if the disconnect between what makes something popular and what makes something truly noteworthy is a gap that I will never be able to surmount within this lifetime. This is a query that plagues most of my waking moments, and even my subconscious mind at times, it seems. 

     The desire to be exhilarating, to be cherished, to be illuminating, are things that I believe most artists willingly indulge to an extent. At what point does that desire turn into a singular motivator, as opposed to the desire to simply create something that represents your humanity in all of its painfully beautiful splendor? To become an entertainer as opposed to an innovator by way of necessity, that is a path that many have chosen because it puts bread on the table. At what point do I stop focusing on being me and start focusing on making money? Do I ever? 

    A part of me believes that if I have had the ability in me to sell myself to that degree then I would have done it by now, relinquishing my creative freedom for fiscal stability and whatever amount of public notoriety that brings. But the other part of me believes that if I had ever truly wanted that then I wouldn't have been born with the perception that I have and the depth of love for the truly experimental and indulgent sides of music. Jazz, avant-garde, these are the starving artists almost by definition. That lack of accessibility to a common denominator will always be the thorn in the side of those seeking to create something truly beautiful while still being able to eat by the end of the day. 

     I just don't know how long I can continue to starve myself for the sake of art and accept that as my fate and embrace it with some kind of stoic dignity, with the very marginal possibility of becoming a posthumous success the only redemption of a meager existence spent toiling over creative embellishment to satisfy my own soul. 

     Allow me to step down from this soapbox for now and continue to do what I do best. Regardless of whether or not you or anyone else notices. 

     This is the section of the website where I opine about how I have been spinning my wheels for the past decade and struggling to find my place in an industry where nobodies get nowhere fast and capital is perhaps even more important than the art one wields as a means of persuasion. 

     Finding my style has been much less difficult and painstaking than finding the time to promote myself to the uncaring and attention deficit masses of the modern world. Content is the name of the game and I am truly trying to scour the depths of my imagination for creative ways to use either my music or the personality behind it to facilitate some kind of comeuppance. 

     So starting this blog was a part of that. A way for people to actually hear my voice and the way I feel about the state of things, either musically or socially. I have heard that folks are more attracted to a project if they feel like they have had some part in its development or have witnessed a shred of the humanity behind it. And that may be even more important for a musician like myself where the art in question is decidedly opaque and abstract, and often lacks a very crystal clear and concrete human element to it that is unquestionable in its authenticity. 

     And the idea of being a brand just sounds so disgustingly corporate to me that I get uneasy trying to tie myself to something as ephemeral as a trend. Even the idea of a logo for merchandising escapes me at the moment, and not for lack of attempts in various sketchbooks. Nothing seems to stick that truly represents the complexity and emotional depth of the artist hard at work at manifesting an interior vision into a physical reality. 

     So what is the vision? Many of you reading this (if anyone reads anymore) are probably wondering what the moniker Blakk Dogg even means. In mythology and literature (particularly the Yorkshire Barghest) it is a symbol of death and misfortune, a huge beast with glowing eyes seen as a harbinger of an undesirable fate. In my usage here, it is more relative to the Winston Churchill usage as a descriptor of depression, a foreboding feeling of one's past catching up to them like a hungry animal stalking its prey. 

     This is the main reason why my musical output for many years has been so recognizably dark and dissonant. This has extended beyond the beats that I make on my own, influenced by hours of indulging in sacrilegious and violent rap artists and gloomy and abstract lo-fi hip-hop producers, and has leaked into the projects on which I felt brave enough to record vocals. On Parchment, Tutone-Sotirios, and the only single to my namesake Blakk Dogg that has vocals, “Smoke,” are all born out of my love of rap and hip-hop and the culture behind it, and the depth of human expression that can be found within that culture, especially when it comes to human suffering and desire. 

     I don't know if I will ever give up wanting to rap. I often feel out of place in that genre, which is why my output has slowed to a screeching halt as of late. I have projects that I have been holding onto because I feel that they aren't good enough to match up to the standards that are present in that particular genre, a world that is fed by a dangerous dogma and undeniable greed and malevolence. A quirked up white boy from the suburbs gets immediately lumped in with a Hobo Johnson, a Macklemore, etc. For me to even consider adding to the oversaturated market of bleeding heart poets placing their innermost fears and their questionable morals into the spotlight seems incredibly superfluous, regardless of the level of authenticity with which it is delivered.

     And so I guess that the uncertainty with which I take every unmeasured step further into this exploration of purported futility has also been a big part of the music that I make. That fear both behind me and in front of me is what propels me. In that way, I believe that I have the potential for greatness, as long as I do not let that fear consume me entirely like a hungry black dog. 

     If you are still reading this, I implore you to join me on this journey, to give me your thoughts and your blessings as often as you can spare them, for they truly do keep me going in spite of my many efforts to self-sabotage. I hope that you find these little stuttering rhythmic nightmares that I create are worthy of sharing with others going through similar struggles in their lives, even as a faint soundtrack in place of a memorable centerpiece. I hope that no matter how dubious you find my integrity or how unscrupulous you find my exploits in both my past and my future, that you find it in your heart to recognize the humanity within those fragile and desperate moments, and remember that we are all equally capable of great good and great harm. 

    Here's to making the best of every moment and always moving forward, never letting that black dog catch up with us.

     Cheers,

     Robert O.

Things have started to crystallize in an unexpected way, and my hope is that this trend continues. 

For a long time now I have wanted this project and many others to succeed more than I have wanted anything else. It is a yearning so intense that I feel it may have clouded my vision, leading me to miss some things that have been right in front of me the entire time. I have learned to curb this yearning into something more of a nonchalant wish, the idea that what will be will be and that nothing is going to make it happen any faster no matter how much I struggle with it. 

So, this blog, this website, all of it is one small step toward the end. Therefore, it is a huge step in the journey I am taking between here and there, and something I will cherish and remember for the duration of my adventure. I have been making music for a long time, and holding most of it back because I did not believe it was perfect enough to bring into the light. But this journey, much like its narrator, is totally imperfect and to deprive the audience of those crucial steps that make the main character more human is to write a story that doesn't really move anyone, and ultimately doesn't go anywhere. 

Here's to beginning in the middle, and filling in the steps.