A few years ago, someone asked me why I release music under so many pseudonyms. I told her that each name reflects a particular style, principle or character (in both senses of that word) behind or within the music. For example, Dicklyn Fut is irreverent punk-pop, Colin Ambulance is a distinct personality, Kleinabermein was initially my fulfilling a fantasy of being in a German art-band but became an ongoing exercise in what I call "pre-musical" compositions (reflecting the impulses behind the neural filter through which music emerges), Japanese Mother/Son Movie is sort of like Kleinabermein but with the emphasis on the sorts of vocal stylings used and with quasi-conventional song structures, and so forth.
Those entities have more than one release attributed to them. Kleinabermein has been ongoing, with hiatuses, for the past nine years, and the others have gotten a "trilogy" to their names. Stevitch – noise for the sake thereof – has four. There are still others, which got only one release, according to the purposes they'd served, despite some stylistic overlap. (Most "artists" on any record label do tend to have some stylistic overlap, if not saminess, so what the heck.) Usually, I leave the entities where their purposes seem to have petered-out, and I let the releases be as long or brief as they seem to warrant. Most recently, I have done this Panaroma thing, with three sets over the past year's time, after which I feel that I've learned and expressed as much as I can within its focused genre. As with all but Kleinabermein, it's a matter of "been there, had fun, what's next?"
The whole idea is the interdependent processes of artistic and personal growth. Some peers of mine had gotten famous for doing certain things, and now, in order to retain their careers in music, they have to keep doing pretty much the same thing, though inevitably mellowed-with-age. It's a little sad to be stuck with maintaining the iconic persona fixed at the moment when one was flashed upon the public's psyche, rockin' the look of a younger, iconic self; crankin' the same machine to yield product from time-worn dies and molds. Even those who'd fought for, and won, "total artistic control" have succumbed to the constraints of "what sells" and keeps their artisanal bread buttered. I certainly don't have to worry about that, since I produce decidedly-uncommercial music, but I also don't let people rein me in with what they want me to be for their sake. Art – my art – is too important to me to even try to assign it acceptable parameters, though, despite my steadfast principle to never censor myself, I deplore being limited by my own lazy adherence to precedents and conventions. I feel as though I'm being too polite to my present company by not interrupting what they're saying in order to call attention to the gunmen who'd just walked in the door. At least I try not to keep hoeing the same row, before it becomes a rut.