Working definition
Speculative Music names a practice in which a recording does not have to begin from a finished song, stable score or fixed division between writing and sound. Lyrics, movement, found material, improvised structure and collaborator-generated sounds can be combined first and understood afterward.
Notebook procedure
M.M.T. (Pre-Kingdom Come) gives the clearest early procedural statement: “apophenic procedures” were followed, with lyrics selected from the nearest notebook and draped over the track. That description is unusually useful because it explains why phrases can appear in prose before they appear as lyrics without either version being merely a draft of the other.
Open outcomes
Palaver Twist xx later states the larger ambition directly: artist and audience dissolve into collaboration, layered records are built with players and “sound-shapers,” and recordings need not have definite outcomes. The record is conceived less as a sealed object than as a structure that can continue to admit interpretation and rearrangement.
Movement as input
The 2022 “world_puzzle” release note shows the method in physical form: MZM brought prepared sounds while JQD answered them with dragging, shoving and piercing movements; harmony was found around those actions. This anticipates the later use of movement, walking and attention protocols elsewhere in the corpus.
Relation to EGOTERRORISM
EGOTERRORISM prints “speculative music” on its cover and then formalizes incompletion through Infinite Playing and ERRORISM. The term therefore connects early recording practice to a mature public theory of unfinished and revisable work.
Relation to musical genealogies
Speculative Music is where the genre genealogies become procedure. Jazz-like improvisatory permission, hip-hop-like producer/editor logic, spoken-word delivery and rock-song compression can all be used without demanding that the result identify as any one of those genres. Genre as Toolkit explains the distinction; Producer Logic / Collage follows the notebook-over-track and text-informs-sound procedures.