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!

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Stop using AI slop in your album art

Ah man, c'mon now.

Spurred on by two things: this skeet (yes that's what we're calling Bluesky posts now) by Posthuman, and the fact that Blank Tape had it's birthday a few days ago, I just wanted to say, for the record, that AI album covers look like absolute shit.

I'm sorry, but they all look exactly the same, like a fucking takeaway menu or something, and even after you divorce the catastrophic environmental impact it has, not to mention the theft of millions of copyrighted works, or the very questionable business practices by a lot of them, the fact of the matter is it looks and feels like absolute shit.

I mentioned Blank Tape, because the argument I heard more often than not in that Bluesky thread was 'oh I don't have time' or 'I don't have the money', etc. and I'm like, buddy - you think worriedaboutsatan has millions of pounds for these things? No of course I don't, but I do what every single artist has had to do for every release they've ever done up until the year 2024: get creative. Blank Tape's cover is just a photo of my garage door with a Critteri visual synth blasting at it. Literally all it is - took longer to clean the garage than it did to take the shot, but it means that the aesthetic of the album, the feel of it, remains 1) something I controlled and 2) connects on a much greater scale than AI slop ever could. It does not, I'd like to think, look like absolute shit.


There were lots of arguments for and against being chucked about all day, but the one I just can't get out of my head is: what are you even doing this for if you're going to just cop out right at the point where you want to draw attention to this wonderful piece of art you've just created? Typing "I dunno, some trees or something" into an AI generator and slapping that as your cover just screams "sorry, couldn't be arsed even doing the absolute bare minimum to present this incredible piece of music to the world, so I cheaped out and slapped some slop I found" - like carrying around a £10k guitar in a binbag - why would you do that?! Just to reiterate: it looks like absolute shit.

The only reason you're making music, I'm guessing, is because you have some feeling, or some sort of emotion that you want to express in a musical form - that's literally the reason art exists. If you outsource one very vital part of that to a computer, why should I be bothered by it? I can log onto Facebook and see millions of grandpa AI slop pictures if I want, none of them really resonate or connect on any level, because it's not trying to express anything - it can't by it's very being. Computers don't feel emotions, or have vibes or know what looks aesthetically pleasing - it's just a deeply inhuman attempt at making something it thinks it's vaguely like what you're after. Why should I try to connect with this piece of art, musical or otherwise, if you're just giving that job to a computer? It doesn't feel, so why should I try to? If you can't be arsed mate, I'm not going to be - why? Because these things look like absolute shit.

And anyway, as this skeet from Tarotplane explains, making friends with other cool artistic people is fucking ace. Why would you not want to do that?! If you can't bring yourself to make a cover yourself, well then find someone who can! More often than not, you can licence a picture pretty cheaply, or free if you're mates - the last couple of satan releases that had covers which weren't by me were just by friends who very kindly offered their photos completely free of charge - Providence, Crystalline, Falling But Not Alone, Time Lapse - all were free. Why? Because I made friends with cool people, and although I offered to pay them, they didn't want it because they believed in the artistic value of it. And it's that easy! Jusk ask! Tarotplane even revealed that a Gerhard Richter piece they used as a cover cost them the sum of €25 euros for the admin fee - that's insane! Use your fucking brain, your imagination, the very thing you're supposed to be presenting to the world with your music, because I'm sorry, but these things look like absolute shit.

Making a cover should be fun too, the whole process should be fun to be honest - I'm not here to impart a lecture about the value of art, etc. but as none of us are making mega bucks, the whole process should be fucking fun. There's no joy in just typing a prompt, burning a rainforest and ripping off millions of artists so you can have a front cover that looks like absolute shit. Have some fucking joy in it! If you still can't find or make a picture for your art, then go to MSpaint and fill a big square with any colour. Because even that is more creative than letting some computer program do it for you. Whip out your camera phone, download a trial of Photoshop, talk to some people, do something. "oh but I just make the music, I can't do art" well tough shit buddy, it's 2024 so you're gonna have to learn. We all did! It's easy, it's fun, it's never been easier and never been more fun to do it. Buy a cheap camera off ebay, use your camera phone, do fucking anything, I beg you, than use AI for your covers, because:

THESE THINGS LOOK LIKE ABSOLUTE SHIT.


Friday, October 25, 2024

Nathan Fake

Out today! A remix by the one and only Nathan Fake.

I've been a fan of Nathan's for years, so to have him mangle up a track of mine is pretty much a dream come true. Think I even tried to book him to play a church in 2008 lol.

Anyway, it's pay what you want and it's here:

I was so excited when he agreed to do this too, as I'd been having a hard time of it with 'the biz' and my place in it. In honesty, I had some budget set aside to help the band move forward, but all the PR people I contacted wouldn't take it, so it got me thinking about better uses of that money. The first thing that sprung to mind was to shoot my shot with someone way bigger than me and see if I could score a remix. To my astonishment, Nathan said yes, so he's a total legend for that straight off the bat, but hearing his take on my track is just double legendary.

Anyway, I very much hope you all enjoy it.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Supertramp and nostalgia

I was sat listening to Supertramp's first album the other day, and whilst that might sound like a weird way to open a blog post about the band worriedaboutsatan, it actually got me thinking loads about everything. Y'see, we used to listen to this album very specifically on the way either to or from gigs - we'd have CD wallets bursting with the most random stuff we could find to make the journey go quicker - stupid novelty songs, random long forgotten nu metal albums, and after I raided a bargain bin for 50p, Supertramp's first album.


It's actually a nice little thing, just fairly inoffensive 70s folksy prog sort of stuff - very 'Canterbury Scene', but it soundtracked quite a large chunk of satan's gigging life. So when it came on again, I instantly remembered driving up the M1 at 3am after a gig, or stuck in rush hour traffic in London, or empty motorways in the dark - it's bloody vivid stuff, this Supertramp album haha.

But as much as I loved those days, it also came with the realisation that you have to put those behind you, or risk being swallowed up in nostalgia completely. 

I can sit and think about how driven the band was back than - how much we wanted to push everything and how we'd have lazer focused goals of getting on in 'the biz' and things like that, but now as a balding, portly 41 year old, it smacks you in the face at how much those days are just no longer there. And that's fine! These things always tend to go this way - you can't stay on the road forever, you can't keep harking after a music business template that simply doesn't exist anymore, and you have to move on and change.

It's hard, re-wiring your brain, no-one wants to do that, it's nice living in your memories, and having ideas about stuff, but sooner or later, you'll have to do it or you'll literally go insane. Your priorities change, your ideals change, your idea of 'making it' changes, it all changes - you just have to be ahead of the curve in that change. For me, it's meant having gigging take a back seat and just focusing on making records and just selling them to people who find it.

If you'd have told me 10 years ago that it goes this way, I'd be horrified, but now I'm here, it's alright y'know. Just keep buying the records, lol ;)


Friday, September 6, 2024

Two Heaters

Morning!

Some new satan for you, out today.

It's a double pack of dub techno jams I did relatively recently, and thought they sounded pretty good together. I'd realised, after listening to Basic Channel and Deepchord non-stop for a week, that satan used to do a neat sideline in this sort of atmospheric techno sound, and I'd neglected that side of the band for a while, which I thought was a shame, as it's always fun putting this sort of stuff together. 

Anyway, I sat down and just jammed out these two - didn't really think too much, didn't do *that* much work on them, just wanted them to feel loose and live and full of energy. Hope you like them, I also didn't think too much of a release 'strategy' either - just 'here you go - enjoy' vibes haha. 

So... here you go, enjoy:

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Live, 2024

I keep forgetting to post this here, so *finally* I've remembered. High fives to me, eh? Anyway, here's a recording of the latest worriedaboutsatan live set. It's changed a bit since last time, and changed loads since a lot of you saw the band live, pre-2019. 

Anyway, it's all semi-improvised and all brand new stuff too! We have a gig which we'll debut this set at, and it's at Leeds' Headrow House on September 4th, supporting the mighty Utopia Strong! Tickets are here, and if you want cheaplist, just lemme know as I have some space for it. 

See you there!