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| Glasgow, 11/05 |
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| Bristol, 07/05 |
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| Bristol again, 07/05 |
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| Coventry soundcheck, 06/05 |
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| Coventry, 06/05 |
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| Another one of Bristol, 07/05 |
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| The day after Glasgow, in Helensburgh having a pint in the sun |
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| Enjoying the pier in Helensburgh |
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| Sophie thought my hat was funny because I was trying to keep the sun (which was setting at an angle) out of my face |
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| Shipley 05/05, in the world's reddest room (which meant all the pictures looked like this lol) |
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| Glasgow. 11/05 |
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| Glasgow, 11/05 |
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| Glasgow, 11/05 |
Well, here we are again my friends. Album time. This is no.3 for the year, and no.13 overall, which is quite a feat really isn't it? 13 albums. Although that's stretched over 17 years, so you'd probably assume I'd made a whole bunch more in that time, but I suppose if you include my solo stuff, Marta Mist, Ghosting Season, etc. it's probably closer to about 2.7m albums in that time, but you get what I mean. I fucking love making albums.
It's sort of what inspired The Pivot, weirdly enough.
No, it's not a dedication to defensive midfielders, or that bit in Friends where they move the sofa, or anything else, no, it was more a note on myself and how I really just fucking love making music and releasing it.
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Having spent 17 years sort of zipping about the music business, but never really getting too far into it, it gave me an odd vantage point to see other musicians and bands, and how they grow, move, twist, distort, or pivot, into something else entirely. For a while, I was obsessed with it, and the fact I hadn't found my pivot yet. I saw bands break up, or go on hiatus, and members move into film scoring, or become youtubers, or producers, or go into more educational stuff, or just stop altogether and find something else to do. That was their pivot - they started in a band, they made a whole bunch of music, and then they found something else which better suited them. I love that thought, and if you've not read J-Zone's book, I'd advise you give it a spin, as it's sort of what I'm on about - he's a rapper who gets a lot of love, but then his career sort of stagnates when labels and things get in the way, and before he knows it, he's playing shitty dive bars to 3 people again. So he quits - just up and quits, and writes this book, which leads him on to being a teacher, and eventually, the drummer in a low key funk band. He's happy, he's content, and all he had to do was look inside himself and think 'nah' and pivot to something more worthwhile.
For a long time, I was searching my brain for whatever my pivot was. What do I want to do? I'm getting old now, and I can't keep just doing this all the time I kept saying to myself, despite the fact that I really, really want to just keep doing this, so this album sort of became my own pivot - into my own little bubble, my own little cottage industry. I figured I could just make music, release it, and tour it all myself and still be ok. I didn't need anything else, so why would I want to stop doing it?
So yeah, anyway, here's to finding the thing you want to do in life and being happy doing it. Pre-order is open now, and the album releases on May 5th.
Sometimes I use that Blade Runner dialogue from replicant Roy, y'know the one, the 'tears in rain' one, to make a point. Or to have a laugh, depends on my mood.
Thinking about twitter's slow, gradual slide into a sludge of nazis, weirdos and grifters got me thinking about it again. Imagine, if you will, a time before twitter, a time before Facebook, youtube, etc. It was a real wild west, a real 'fuck knows how any of this works, but just press up some CDs and jump in a car and let's go on tour'. It wasn't any better in truth, just different. I was young, life's always fun when you're young because you have youth, you have energy, you have that wide eyed optimism that things will somehow turn around for you at some point. The gigs were shit, and the CDs never sold, but you had fun.
I'll be 40 next month, which scares me shitless, I'll not lie. Only seemed like yesterday that EP02 got a magazine review and I was like 'yes! surely I'll get signed to a label now, right?!' - nearly 20 years later, I'm still waiting lol. But y'know, I had fun. Whatever.
The real kick in the teeth though, is thinking back to all that time, money and effort the whole music industry invested in stuff like twitter and facebook. To watch it all slowly disintegrate, like Myspace before it, would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. I know managers and labels that spent ungodly sums 'boosting' Facebook posts, and trying silly little angles to get followers on twitter and stuff like that. And for what? Fuck all, it seems like at the moment. What a waste.
I came off Facebook a few years ago, and felt great. Never once felt the urge to return, even for the band. Twitter's impending doom is a little more depressing though - it really was a better network for stuff before you-know-who took over and tanked the whole thing. Was never perfect, obviously, but still. It rankles. Like, what else is gonna go down anytime soon? It's hard enough for DIY musicians at the moment, without these billionaire dorks fucking things up for us. Prick.
Anyway, rant over. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - managers who said we couldn't get a booking agent until we had 10k fans on Facebook, actual bands spending real money to boost funny videos of pandas to try and game the algorithm. all these things will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Are we sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...
It's time (already) for album number 12. Considering the band has been going for 17 years, you'd actually probably expect a few more albums in that time, but due to various side projects, doing-things-as-EPs, and just a general slow down some years, the count is currently still at 12.
Anyway, this new one is a bit different. First off, it's coming out on Golden Ratio Frequencies, the sort-of ambient, sort-of new age, sort-of noise label run by Alex of Salford's finest purveyours of slow motion mayhem, Gnod. So, this one will sound different. There are no beats, no synths, no mad samples or post-rock guitar action, it's just 4 tracks of pure, foggy guitar based ambience.
In fact, you can trace the whole record back to this one tweet I did:
Just sat listening to one tone go through a few of my pedals and it's really, really nice. You're all up for an hour long album of just lush tone, right?
— worriedaboutsatan (@teamsatan) November 10, 2020
That was me messing about with a new pedal I'd gotten, an Electro Harmonix Freeze - it sort of captures one element of whatever it is you're playing, and stretches it into one continuous tone. Whack that through my reverb and delay pedals, and ho boy, you've got yourself a big ol' washy ambient album.
So I recorded these things, and sent them to GRF, not knowing it was actually Alex from an old band satan had played with waaaaay back in the day - Manatees. The band used to play on much heavier line-ups back then (I'm guessing the metalheads liked our computers), and it was on one of these that we got to know them a little bit. They split up though, and we all went our seperate ways (as these things tend to do), so I was very nicely surprised when Alex piped up on the reply email saying it was him! Small world.
Anyway, due to covid, scheduling difficulties, real life stuff, and a variety of other things getting in the way, it's taken a little while for this one to come out, a little like my January album 'Falling But Not Alone' - that ended up being in limbo for about 2 years - this one has had its own fairly intense backstory too.
But it's here now, and if you'd like to pre-order a tape, you can do so by hopping over to the label's Bandcamp here.
The name, by the way, was just a joke I kept saying to my girlfriend Sophie - back in lockdown, the first football to come back was the German Bundesliga, so I started watching it, and really enjoyed it, so when all football eventually returned, I kept watching the German league, to which I'd exclaim "I hope you like the Bundesliga!" every time there was a match on. My team is St. Pauli btw (although who's isn't it? What a bunch of lads)
Anyway, there you go - I very much hope you like I Hope You Like The Bundesliga.
How on earth is 2013 now 10 years ago?
Well, it is, and with it is a little anniversary of some records I'm very proud of. It marks the first time that I put music out under my own name, which is an important milestone to remember, seeing as how that's how I've ended up doing just that with worriedaboutsatan.
Anyway, back in 2013, I was living in Manchester, and sort of inbetween bands. Ghosting Season was on it's last legs, and plans were afoot to resurrect satan from it's slumber, but before all of that, I started knocking together some music for myself. I made all this in my bedroom in a block of flats in Ancoats (spitting distance from the Etihad), and wanted to do something that wasn't anything much to do with anyone. Over the course of a year, I knocked together 3 EPs (as well as some other stuff for splits and things), and released them on my now also-resurrected This Is It Forever label.
Fotograf was a big, murky ambient thing - I was seeing if I had the chops for this dark ambient lark, so came up with this. Eagle-eared fans might recognise part 2 in a few Adam Curtis films. He liked that one I seemed to remember.
Instruktion was an attempt at kosmische - just synth lines pinging off each other underneath wailing guitars and a steady bass & drum combo. Think I managed it, and part 2 was the basis for my solo live set, that I attempted a few times over the course of 2013-14. I only did it a few times, as I found it super difficult to get gigs. Anyway, I like how floaty these two tracks are.
Manuskript was made out of these weird synth things I'd had floating about on my laptop for a while. They were sort of in-tune with each other, but sort of not. Anyway, I thought of doing a super sterile Raster-Noton sort of thing with them, and having fun cutting up some mad jungle breaks. That's always fun. The front cover btw, is of a cable car in Croatia - me and Sophie were on our last day of a holiday, so did the only thing we hadn't done all trip, which was go up this massive cable car, however the weather was all foggy, so although we could see fuck all, it did give me this excellent photo.
All three EPs are pay-what-you-want, and preceeded an album, Somn, which was released in early 2014.
Yes, I'm hitting the road once more, in an attempt to get you to part with some cash and watch me frantically flail my arms onstage, trying to reproduce various worriedaboutsatan records for your pleasure and amusement.
Anyway... the tour will be announced in full very soon, as I'm just waiting on one or two stragglers to either confirm or deny whether I can come visit with all my various boxes and keyboards.
For now, you have three cast iron opportunities to come see me play:
5th May at The Triangle, Shipley (tickets here)
6th May at Just Dropped In, Coventry (tickets here)
7th May at Cafe Kino, Bristol (tickets here)
- the Bristol show is the latest to be announced, and will be on a bank holiday Sunday, so don't worry if you saw 'sunday' and thought 'good grief, no-one's going to gigs on Sunday you idiot'. It'll also be the farthest south I'm going, as London didn't work out this time, so if you Londoners fancy a road trip, Brizzle is your best bet.
It'll also coincide with a new album as well, which is nice!
