 |
 |
|
 |
 |
| Up 'til now |
| I started playing music and writing it in a band that eventually, in its final form, was known as confirh. I played bass. We played metal that virged on hardcore and it was very fun to write music like that. Back, then in 1999, I was only interested in metal, bands like Machine Head, Korn (I stress that this was only their first 2 albums, although that may make no difference to some) and Tool. My interest in electronic music came later in about 2001. It was in this year that a couple of my friends became majorly interested in industrial bands like Wumpscut and VAC. Although I didn't I wasn't into them to quite the same extent, I was influenced by them. Of greater influence was another band another friend had let me in on, known as Coil. I became interested in them and others such as Aphex Twin, Mouse on Mars, Plaid and Cex. And I didn't stop liking the stuff of my earlier teens, although admittedly I didn't listen to them quite so often. My first attempts at making music by sequencer were on a friends computer. He had a copy of Pro Tools and I sat down and played around with it. I'm not sure whether that stuff still exists, but it was pretty weird. So, I suppose (hope) it set a trend. When I got hold of my own software, originally a piece of freeware called Jazzware, I was trying to write stuff that I hadn't heard before but still to make it sound good. My first attempts were the products of late nights and a great mass of film and TV audio samples. Some of the tracks were atmospheric electronic pieces others had entire narratives constructed out of the conversations of film and TV. 5 of these went onto a a CDr which I sent off to 6 places that I can't remember. I only got one response from one record company (snigger all you want, I just wanted to see what they'd say) and that was let down. But, an inspirational let down. From there I got hold of some more sophisticated software and after several months of writing tracks that were really all about exploring how to get an idea from my head to the speakers, I began writing tracks that would eventually be put on the Midwife for Black nights EP. One of these started out as a collaboration with a German experimentalist who calls himself Helm. However, due to prolonged silence on both our parts (I was lazy, I believe he broke his arm), two tracks emerged, mine was Echo Box, his you can find via the mp3 page. A track that didn't go on the Midwife EP was called 'Nymph' and this I sent to an online music collective called the Infinite Sector. They let me in. And I've profited very much from the other musicians' activities. The aim is to collaborate, exchange sounds and so on. Hearing their stuff was and still is very inspirational. Anyway, then came Midwife for Black nights. I sent this off to some 20 places consisting of zines and radio shows. The first responses were from radio shows, some of the tracks got aired in Canada and France and in the latter was reviewed. Then a couple months later several more reviews came through. All of which I was pleasantly surprised with. The only bad stuff was about the quality of the artwork for the CDr and that was because, I admit, they were homemade and my printer screwed up (I've learnt from this lesson. Let me also say, that when I offer CDs to people and charge for them, they get professionally printed artwork, that has always been the case). After this, musical activity became a little more sparse. I had other things going in my life. But it didn't stop dead. I was producing a track every month or so. Then I offered to remix a track by singer songwriter Julie Chow. The track is called 'Gentle Breeze'. Since then I've remixed another of her tracks called 'Red Like Wine' and we've collaborated on a couple of other tracks called 'Underbelly' and 'Cheshire Grin', the latter is on the next EP. The 'next EP' is called 'Dolls of a different kind' and is as different to the last EP as that was to the one before it. It has a more organic sound. The idea for the music on it came from an idea for a painting. The idea was to have a group of creatures playing in some dingy jazz-club like club. So the music on this next EP is less dense, and less electronic, although that's still pretty electronic by most people's standards. This should be available soon, I'm planning to send it out for people to hear and if they like it, spread the word, within the next few weeks (the time of writing is late July). |