Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Dance, monkey!

I stopped posting anything to social media the other week, more as a little experiment to myself than anything deeper, but I gotta say: absolutely nothing happened lol.

Did I feel better? I'm afraid to say, yes I did. Instantly, to be honest with you. 

Now I'm not stupid. I know I can't just come off social media, especially as a DIY artist- stuff like Insta is still a big channel, but is it the be all and end all? I don't think so, funnily enough.

 

I don't know of a channel to reach people that's as useless as Insta. Most Meta websites are lousy these days. I've never had as many existential breakdowns and long nights of the soul as I do with Meta products. What's the real point of Instagram? Bands were told back in the early days that social media would revolutionise everything, and reaching fans had never been easier, so we jacked in everything and moved on these apps. It's been almost two decades of this shit now, and not once have I heard anyone try to stop and reconsider whether this was a good thing or not, or whether we should maybe come up with a new idea. 

I'm not doing stupid fucking dances on tiktok, and my body reacts with visceral hatred everytime I see a slick 'comedy' skit on Insta reels, and I think I just reached a breaking point where I sat and thought 'what the fuck is any of this anymore?', like seriously - what's the fucking point? What is it doing? Why does it never even come close to reaching all my followers? why do I have to constantly perform for it, despite the fact it doesn't do the one thing I want it to: reach fans with news.

Meanwhile, my Bandcamp mailing list just bulldozes its way into all my fans' inboxes with non-flashy text based emails telling everyone what I'm doing or what I have coming up. No need to find funny pictures or do fucking videos of me talking, none of this 'oh you have to show your face to game the alogrithm' shite. Just 'bam - here you go, have some fucking news'. Haha.


That's not to say that all social media is bad, or that I'm jacking it all in and leaving to live in a cabin in the woods, far from it - I like stupid memes as much as the next person, but perhaps being mostly offline from it rather than constantly online is the way to go. For my own brain at least.

It's just stuff, stuff, stuff, constantly, all the time. Stop with the stuff! I'm fed up of the stuff! haha, I just want to put little tapes out and sit with them for a little while. I don't want to get lost in an endless sea of slop and 'content' - I want to just sit with things and let them sink in for a little bit. It's nice! It's lovely, just not feeling like you need to constantly do stuff all the time - I'm not a fucking youtuber, I'm a musician. I'm not getting the tiktok AI voice to narrate an unboxing video. I'm not talking into the camera with a 'whats up guys?!' - I'm going to sit in this room and make some tunes and you're going to listen to them and then decide if you want to buy them, that's it. 

what. is. social. media. doing. for. me? WHAT IS IT DOING FOR ANY OF US?

Answers on a postcard lol.


Friday, June 20, 2025

Go Real Slow (again)

Had a new release out again didn't I?

Forgot to update this blog again didn't I?

Oh well.

Here you go, a little single thing. It's two tracks - Start Again (Go Real Slow) - £10 store credit if you know where I paraphrased that title from, and Sleep With The Light On - £10 store credit if you know where those hi-hats are from.

There's also a remix by LDLDN, of NTS fame, on there! He's great, and so glad he agreed to mangle some of my stems into something a bit more dancefloor orientated.

Currently working away on some new stuff, just in case you wondered where all the albums were this year. I know, I know - we're 6 months into the year and I've only done *checks notes* 1 album. Very poor showing from me, but don't worry - I've plenty of stuff in the pipeline I'm working on!

 

I do have a gig coming up though, if that counts? August 9th at the Loading Bay in Bradford, supporting Richard Dawson. Should be great, although it's sold out now, so tough cookies if you fancied coming and don't have a ticket yet.

Oh, and one more thing - the Brad Flag bags are back in stock! If you missed out last time and want to show Bradford off to the people of the world, you can do so now:



Anyway, stay tuned for more fun from satan very soon.


Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Go real slow

I remember hearing on some football thing ages ago that no matter what team you support, football is all about moments - nothing will probably last forever, things can always get worse, so just remember those good times, celebrate them accordingly, but always remember that it's just a moment in time that's brought you some joy.

I've had this stuck in my head for months now (primarily due to supporting Aston Villa, and having them toy with my blood pressure all season), but I thought it's such a good jumping off point for being a musician, whether for a hobby or for your job, in 2025.

Ollie Watkins: fan of the satan. Maybe. Probably.
 

Satan's always been a very driven outfit, quite literally. Back in the early days, we'd jump in the car and play anywhere we could, we'd try our luck with promoters, writers, booking agents, labels, managers, blogs, magazines, you name it - if it was a position in the music industry, we probably had a conversation with someone about it. You can do all that stuff when you're young, because you're bulletproof when you're 20 aren't you? Nothing sticks, you can just reset and start again if it all goes to shit. And there's nothing wrong with relentlessly trying to push a band on in whatever way you can - a good work ethic and ambition is mightily important, but I also keep thinking what did all that really do for me, what did it do for the band?


 

It gave me some amazing experiences, sure - it gave me some brilliant moments I'll keep in my head forever, but in terms of what we wanted to achieve with it - cold, hard industry success, well... the jury's out. These days, I like to think the opposite of what I used to, and I think going slow and taking your time is probably the best way to go about things. Oh, sure, if you're in your 20s reading this, you'll already have that 'old man yells at cloud' meme in your head, but I think it's worth swishing around your brain for a bit. 

In the broader scheme of things, being 'successful' means different things to different people. If you judge it on industry success though, then there's a good chance you'll fail. But then, aside from like 1% of any given scene that gets even close to big industry success, we'll all fail. That though, doesn't mean your art is any less special, or your endeavours any less worthwhile. If you put 1 gig on in a local venue, you've already done something that very few even attempt, let alone pull off. If you put just one thing on Bandcamp, again, you've done something there that most people will never, ever do, so I think it's always worth remembering these moments, and not getting too tied up with 'the biz'. If it's meant to be, that stuff will come eventually.

I see young bands shilling for streaming platforms, trying to get people to come save their song for reasons that are unclear. What are you getting out of that, champ? You can't get your hands on any of that data, there's no real money involved in it and if it went offline tomorrow, you'd be back to square one immediately. There's no clout in it, there's no 'exposure' in it, it's just a way of getting artists to do the tech company's dirty work. It's 2025 my guy, chill.


Just take a breath, sit back and figure out who you are, what it is you want, and why you want it. 

There's nothing wrong with just taking it easy - book a few gigs locally, see if you like it, see if you meet some new people - shake a few hands, listen to some new bands, interact with some likeminded people, get some ideas. It's magic! You don't have to tour right away - it took satan 2 years to even get to London, so don't worry about that 20 date mega tour right away. Make some friends, play some music, that's all it's ever been about. Listening back to a record you've made with your pals is one of the most invigorating experiences any human being will ever have, honestly - it's fucking beautiful. So don't feel pressured to boil that down to just pointless 'content' for some stupid fucking website. Your music will outlast all these stupid fucking websites - never forget that.

You don't need branding right away, you don't need PR or a label or a booker, etc. All that shit comes in time if it's meant to be, so for now, just enjoy it - enjoy the moments you get given and stop worrying about fucking Instagram or your arbitrary numbers next to your name on spotify. None of that shit really matters when it comes down to it, but you'll always remember that one Saturday when you played a good gig and you met someone cool.


Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The Future Can Wait

God I'm getting worse at updating this blog aren't I?

Anyway, on Friday I stuck out the 18th worriedaboutsatan album, The Future Can Wait. 

I've been doing this band for a huge chunk of my adult life now, and with the 20th anniversary of starting it coming up, it got me thinking about all the usual existential stuff: time, where it's gone, where does it go, holy shit I'm an adult now but when does being an adult start? why am I still thinking 2002 was like 'a few years ago', etc. 

That was the background hum to making this record, which I did in my tiny box room studio up here in Saltaire. I wanted to make three really long tracks and see if I could do a Tangerine Dream: piece it all together without it sounding too jarring or horrible. Hopefully I came close to cracking it, but that's for you to decide I guess.

Anyway, it's out now on digital, CD and streaming (apart from Spotify, because fuck Spotify). Have a gander at it here:

The artwork is a photograph by Marc Leighton of the Caroline Street Social Club in Saltaire.

Friday, December 20, 2024

"what were the skies like when you were young?"

Co-workers asked me the other day "why do you hate spotify?" and truly, I could've gone on for hours. I didn't (much to their relief) but thought I'd write down my thoughts and opinions on it seeing as how a few angry missives have been the total sum of my output on the subject. So here you go: my opinions and thoughts on it.

People like to view the music industry through various different lenses, but in the end it's all connected. You can trace the fact your favourite band doesn't come to your city, back to why they only put stuff out on vinyl or why they break up after 18 months. It's all very, very connected.

shout out to Max, aka Peretsky for this one

I didn't always loathe spotify.

Y'see, back in the day, we were all sold this lie of 'music democratization'. The thinking was that if you could blow up online (using social media & blogs primarily), you could bypass all those nasty A&R dudes at big labels and just do it all yourself. Slowly but surely though, blogs disappeared as the ad money dried up and people got older, apps and sites started to shift around from an 'anything goes' model to a 'you need to pay us to reach your own fans' one, and people got bored & broke, so bands needed to reset again. Ironically the tradtional methods just crept back in- A&Rs, big labels, management types, booking agents, etc. it all just reverted to type, but we were all locked in to these behemoths like Facebook and Twitter. Everything became about numbers. Big, pointless numbers. I'll never forget a manager telling me that satan wouldn't get a booking agent until we had 10,000 followers on our Facebook page. I mean, it was nonsense, complete bollocks, but he believed it so passionately.

So anyway, in amongst all this, you had a growing problem of piracy. It'd moved on from just 'download 1 song a week' like the old Napster days, to 'fill this entire harddrive in 30 minutes' as technology and internet speeds got better. And so, people moved their focus from the new Metallica album to very DIY bands that didn't exactly make any money in the first place. So far, so 'democratized'. People helped themselves, and sometimes that was fine, other times it wasn't, but it made no difference. You were fucked either way. "I'll buy tickets to your shows!" they used to say, despite the fact we barely ever played outside of Leeds and they lived in California. But, whatever, it is what it was.

So some tech bros spotted this gap in the market and ran with it. Spotify was born, and now kids wouldn't need to download half a terrabyte of your life's work in 20 minutes as they could just stream it - you didn't even need to be good with computers, it was user friendly! Even your mum could stream stuff! And we'd get royalties! I mean, they're not great, but they'd get better, right? 

Yeah, sure.

So extrapolate that to right now, and we have Spotify paying $0.003 per stream (and even less if you agree to cut your rate to boost your music through their algorithm), jumping into bed with AI arms manufacturers, an incredibly regressive practice of only paying out tracks that have had 1,000 or more plays every year, and a music industry that is, even at this smaller level, completely and utterly fucked.

Even if you remove the arms stuff, and the payment stuff, and the 1,000 stream stuff, and you simply focus on Spotify as a thing in and of itself, and it fails to get any better. In fact it might be worse.

Streaming didn't have to be this way - it has the means to be better for all concerned, but it won't. I don't think it ever will, simply because it's just awash in so much money.

Bands and artists continue to upload their work, knowing that if it hits 999 streams in a year, those royalties generated will get just given to god knows who for no particular reason. It's FOMO on a huge scale, combined with that nagging hangover from the big blog days of the mid 10s - "this year will be my year!"

It's the apathy that absolutely does me in. Artists, bands, music industry people, shitposters on Instagram - everyone's been banging on about what a total shitshow Spotify is, has been and continues to be for a while now, and it's largely just been met with an almighty shrugging of shoulders, and carrying on, because 'well yeah, but I've got my playlists on there, and I like my Spotify wrapped!', despite the arms tech investments, despite the meagre royalties, despite the sacking of their editorial team, despite the 1,000 play thing, despite the creaking tech that's full of bugs, despite the adding audiobooks to they could argue for an even *lower* royalty rate, despite the general cheapening and disconnection of music, despite the explosion of shitty AI slop, despite one man masquerading as many different artists being responsible for a huge royalty payout by juicing the system, despite the literal owner of the platform claiming that 'content' doesn't take any money to make these days, despite everything, despite all of that. But people just think it's a bit of fun.


And you can scream it from the rooftops, but it's hard to snap people out of it. I mean, I'd understand if spotify was the only game in town, but it's clearly not - you've endless supplies of streamers if that's what you want. Hell, you could even just go back to buying things too, but if you want to keep streaming, you've so many other options - Tidal, Deezer, Apple, Bandcamp, Amazon, even fucking YouTube - it's not hard to just switch up. It's the weakest amount of pressure that's ever been applied to anyone's life, but people still seem so resistant, so hesitant to ditch it.

Even if you divorce all of that from spotify, what you're left with is a hollow experience: music as an unlimited trough of 'stuff', of 'content', with no regard to how it managed to come into existence - is this some AI slop generated by a guy somewhere sat at a computer? Maybe? Who knows, anyway, here's the new Snow Patrol album, here's a new Drake song, here's an advert, here's the new Blink 182 song, here's another advert, here's a longer advert, here's a song by a band that toured with Blink 182 and is most probably paying through the nose to be in your ears right now, here's another advert. 

Always remember: you're only ever paying for access to a certain number of things, never the things themselves with streaming. At any given point, access can be revoked for whatever reason, and if that happens: what do you do next? I remember when Mos Def's The Ecstatic left streamers, and kids just didn't know how to act - I saw a change.org petition to get it back, when the CD was just sat there for like £5. You guys ever thought about just heading to a record store?

One thing I love about those Amoeba 'What's in my bag?' videos is that just one of them - just one 12 minute video - contains more joy and connection and life affirming love for music than anything Spotify can ever hope to give you. Here's Pallbearer talking about a solo flute album that was recorded in the Egyptian pyramids. Here's Keanu Reeves' band Dogstar recommending Big Star, Tom Petty and New Order. Here's Blood Incantation talking about why they love Steve Hillage and Klaus Schultze. Here's Marc Maron talking about Can and Thelonious Monk. Here's Alvvays talking about why they like Enya. It's fucking great, and even if you don't like the music, you can feel the connections, you can feel the passion in which they talk about how music and art shaped their lives. Why wouldn't you want something like that?

You don't need access to every record ever made (despite the fact spotify doesn't currently contain every record ever made), you need a few records that you'll absolutely love, and to get to that point, you need to do the hard yards I'm afraid - you need to see shows, listen to albums that stink, go and look in a record shop, talk to people, talk to your friends! Make friends with bands! See what they like, see where they came from, get involved in scenes! Read books! Make a zine! Fuck me, the possibilites are *endless*, why you would want to outsource the music discovery element of all this to a fuckin algorithm, I don't know. "oh but I don't have time" yeah, no-one does! Listen to cool mixes then, put the radio on, ask 1 person right now for a recommendation and go from there. It's not hard! In fact, it's never been easier! Or more fun! Fuck me. 

Bands/ artists: ask yourself, seriously and deeply. Look in the mirror calmly and just quietly ask yourself: what is Spotify actually doing for me? Look at your numbers, your money, your stats, your place in the world and just ask yourself is it worth it? You might have a billion streams on something, but you've no way of reaching anyone who's streamed it - does that not seem a bit weird to you? All the numbers in the world won't get you any further along because the biz is simply a closed door to you, to me, to all of us in the same boat. Your big shot at the big time will not come because of spotify - it'll come through doing what we've always done: the hard yards. The big numbers might seem important, but they're just a mirage. Would it make the music any better if I just paid for bots to stream it all day? And there's nothing to say that the more organic streams you get, the more spotify will punish you because it just thinks (ie. most probably uses AI) you've done it against the rules. And there's no comeback to that - you can't argue with them because there's no-one there to argue against, just a memory hole of AI chatbots. Game over.

It's all connected my friends - if you don't invest any time in music, then don't be surprised that the next artist that could change your life just jacks it in after a few years - it's really, really fucking difficult out there. Venues are drying up, the money's all gone, we're being squeezed at every single corner, so the least you can do is just sit and listen. Not just to the music, but listen to what the challenges are these days and try, in any small or seemingly insignificant way, to help out. Most of those ways are totally free too! Sign up to a mailing list, watch a video, stream a song, post on your socials about a record you like, do something - do anything, it's all connected.

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Favourite albums of 2024

Just thought I'd do a bit of an end-of-year list here for some records that came out in the last 12 months that I really enjoyed. So, in no particular order...

Cahill Costello - Cahill//Costello II

Drew McDowall - A Thread, Silvered and Trembling

Sean Curtis Patrick - Happy Home

Underworld - Strawberry Hotel

Moin - You Never End

Big|Brave - A Chaos of Flowers

Coded Marking - s/t (hot damn, this one's a belter- Krautrock infused post-punk!)

Broadcast - Distant Call / Spell Blanket

LL Cool J - the Force (enjoyed this one too! Can and Gary Numan samples! Q-Tip production!)

Universal Order of Armageddon - s/t

Majesty Crush - Butterflies Don't Go Away

Beak> - >>>>

Knocked Loose - You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To (OOOOF. A+)

USA Nails - Feel Worse

Cheekface - It's Sorted

Ike Yard - 1982

Dean McPhee- Astral Gold

Burial - Dreamfear/ Boy Sent From Above


Some other stuff I enjoyed this year:

Reading both 'Sellout' by Dan Ozzi and 'Our Band Could Be Your Life' by Michael Azerrad and discovering a whole treasure trove of stuff I'd missed from over the years.

The continuted decline of Man City

Aston Villa beating Bayern Munich 1-0 the day before I went on holiday (albeit now Villa on a continued decline lol)

Meeting snooker legend Steve Davis in Leeds and talking to him about Basic Channel

Josh Pugh videos

Getting a Nathan Fake remix, and realising that the front cover to his debut album was a photo of a village green just down the road from my parents, that I duly went to visit.

Finally seeing GY!BE live

That boybands documentary on the BBC

Pictureville being back open in Bradford, and seeing a restored Terminator 1 as the first film back

The Audi song by Satelliti


 

Satan '24

As we're approaching the end of the year, I thought I'd collate all the releases I had out this year, just in case you missed any! So here we go, fill in those gaps if there are any...

 

JÆJA

If Not Now, When

If Not Then, Maybe Now

Two Heaters

Ricochet

Windows (as Marta Mist)

More Meat for the Grinder (Nathan Fake remix)

Live 2024


Quite the list, eh?

See you in 2025!