British underground dance music
I love dance music - I have done ever since I went to my first rave. It was "Shouldn't be Allowed" at the Cooltan - what a wickde place - a squatted ex-DSS office in Brixton, where they used to run a community centre during the day, a cheap café and facilities for homeless people, that kind of stuff. Then at night they held all-night raves. Acid house, techno, breakbeat - I remember hearing tunes at that rave that have stayed with me ever since - cuts like "House is a feeling", "Higher State of Consciousness" and "Go". I couldn't believe this music - how large it was - how psychedelic.
I spent some time in the chill-out room talking to a bloke who suddenly seemed like a two-dimensional projection of my own future-self image - sort of thing. I looked at him slightly sidewise, and he seemed to be 2D; like, flat; like a picture or a cardboard cut-out. Dunno really. Don't quite know what happened. He was probably really there. But after he'd gone I was looking around, trying to understand how this room could have come out of someone's pocket. Then I went downstairs and danced; and questions didn't seem important after that.
That night changed me in many ways. Musically, it inspired me to get into new sounds, new ways of writing - up until then I'd been writing very traditional music, classical quartets, piano-rock ballads, stuff like that. But now my head was alive with new psychedelic possibilities. Never mind the notes and pitches ... it's that sound ... that energy. I particularly loved the way a tune can be fast and energetic, yet peaceful and laid back at the same time. Like when you're on a train - you're moving forward at breakneck speed, but you're sitting on that speed, so it feels tranquil, like you're not moving at all. That's what I'm trying to capture; that peace and serenity in the middle of hectic activity. A kind of Zen. To describe it, I've coined the term Hard Ambient.
At one stage, I hawked all this round the record companies,
and most of them said the same thing .... your music's too
experimental
or you have to understand that you're
writing for a niche market - very small
(actual quotes).
I even tried writing to a specific style or established sub-category,
but it wasn't enough; it didn't really sound like I meant it.
And that's the rub - the music business wants your soul, but you have to fit the game as well. It's not enough to play the game; not enough to pretend - you have to want to do it.
So pants to all that - I'm just gonna give it away This music is free for your own personal, non-commercial use only. All the music is in MP3 format, which you can download or stream as you prefer (streaming MP3 generally requires a broadband connection).
Collaboration notes
- Bliss, Cave and Glade mixed by Dark Mark, co-produced by Adrian Smith.
- Cave and Schmee co-written with Ian Wolfe.
- Organic co-written with Marlon Edwards.
- Sexy features samples of the music and performance of Dave Drum and Al Bass.
- Satisfy features samples of the music and performance of the band formerly known as Acid Monkey - Matt Cobb, Dave Drum, Matt Lovett, Marlon Edwards and myself.