Friday, November 27, 2020

satan 2020

As we're rapidly approaching the end of quite a strange year, I thought I'd do a big dispassionate list of all the music under the names worriedaboutsatan & Gavin Miller from the past 12 months (although there's not been too much solo stuff for obvious reasons), just in case you missed something and you want to check it out. It also works as a nice little reminder for me, as I tend to forget these things more often than you'd think.

Releases (all satan unless stated)

Crystalline (album, Sound in Silence) [here]

Rewilding (track as Gavin Miller, taken from a compilation on Whitelabrecs) [here]

Orion (track, taken from a cassette split with Capac, This Is It Forever) [here]

Bradford Telephone Exchange (album as Gavin Miller, Shimmering Moods) [here]

Heart Monitor 10th Anniversary Edition (EP, self released) [here]

Dawn (single, n5MD) [here]

Time Lapse (album, n5MD) [here]

What Are You Looking For? (track, taken from a split with Veins Full Of Static, This Is It Forever) [here]

Lost At Sea (track on Daniel Crompton's 'From Perpetuity' compilation) [here]

The Vault (EP, self-released) [here]

Europa (compilation album, Past Inside The Present) [here]

Nothing Hurts Forever (collaboration album with Glacis as Gavin Miller, Whitelabrecs) [here]

Then For A Long Time, Nothing Happened (track, taken from n5MD's 20th anniversary compilation) [here]

Remixes

VLMV - The Great Escape (self released) [here]

Ghosts - Baekma (self released) [here]

preston.outatime - Semblance, Resemblance (self released) [here]

Pijn - Denial (Holy Roar) [here]

Zakè - Genève (Past Inside The Present) [here]

 



Wednesday, November 18, 2020

gigs, and a lacktherof

Been thinking about gigs a bit recently (for obvious reasons), and after Bandcamp announced they're doing a paid streaming thing coming soon - which I think is a great idea - I thought back over the past 15 years or so of satan to really pick out some gig memories. Then, I thought who the fuck wants to hear those? So I drifted into those times the band canned gigs off.

Now, since 2005(ish), worriedaboutsatan has been a side-project, a one man band, a college project, a full band, a touring monster, a support slot mainstay, a fully fledged festival headliner (citation needed) and headline act. Over the years, the band prided itself on the live side of things - we've done so many (and I mean SO FUCKING MANY) crap gigs over the years, it's a wonder the band still exists. Trips to Nottingham on empty Sunday evenings for the total of £9 (which we even had to haggle upwards off the promoter), Playing a 200 cap venue in Oxford to literally 3 people, a disused missile silo with no roof in East Germany - y'know, that kinda thing. But we never really canned off a gig. Hell, there was once when I was in hospital having to wait for emergency surgery, but the band still fulfilled a gig booking (albeit without me).

However, there were times when even we'd had enough. I thought about those the other day, and as there were surprisingly few examples (which makes us the good guys, right?) they were easy to remember. 

There was the festival in Kent back in 2007, when we'd just started touring and recording stuff. We'd play anywhere at that point, but a sort-of hippy festival in the middle of Kent over a weekend, with camping the only accomodation open to us, with zero fee, was a bit much. I remember reluctantly picking up a tent I'd had in my parents' shed for years, with the intention of sleeping in it that weekend. I took it back to my house, and in front of several people all calling us nuts for agreeing to do this stupid gig, I realised the bag didn't have any tentpoles. The decision was made there and then that we'd made a huge error, and we'd have to pull out. Which we did. Apologies to all Kent based electronica fans. Bit keen, weren't we? There's a difference between gigging around your local town for a surprise tenner in fee, and driving hundreds of miles to play for 30 minutes in a field in Kent. KENT!

There was another cracker I remembered too - Sheffield. We were booked to do a strange electronica festival (think it was more an alldayer) above a pub on a rainy winter Friday night. We got there, cold, tired (we'd come straight from work) and slightly annoyed that our stage time was close to 11pm. As we arrived, we went upsairs with a bit of gear from the car, to be confronted by two things: a massively empty room (naturally), and the promoter asking us if we'd switch stagetimes with another band, who, and I'm not kidding here, wanted to go hiking the next day. What was the stagetime I hear you ask? 2am. Yes, they wanted us to wait around until 2am (think it was about 9pm at this point) to play, as another band wanted to go on early so they could be up for a walk. To be honest, I think they saw how bad the night was going, and just wanted to get out of there. This was another one for zero money, so completely out of character for worriedaboutsatan, we sort of laughed, said no thanks, and just walked off. Drove home, ordered pizza and watched Terminator 2 before going to bed at a reasonable hour.

Halcyon days!

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Lost in a sea of content

Bit of a weird day isn't it? Feels a bit redundant to be trying to sell music to you all, but I dunno. Have to do something I suppose.

Anyway, as someone pointed out recently, my work rate this year has been a bit crazy, and there've been so so many satan releases that have come and gone over the past 10 or so months. I'll do a big list of everything that's appeared (spoiler alert: yes, that means more is on the way) in 2020, but for now here's a few bits you might have missed over the past few weeks:

VLMV - The Great Escape (worriedaboutsatan remix)


- I did this little remix a while back for the guys in VLMV (formerly Alma), as Pete from the band was in touch about another remix satan lent it's name to that was being featured on their upcoming remix record. I'd never really thought that other one was much to do with satan, or represented the name that well, so I told them I'd do another one for them. So I made this! Pretty good, right?

Glacis & Gavin Miller - Nothing Hurts Forever


- technically not a satan release, but c'mon - it's still me anyway so what does it matter? Anyway, this is a collab album I did with Glacis, which came out last week on the lovely Whitelabrecs label. It was basically me treating Euan's piano sketches that he sent me, then layering up with some guitar, synth, bass and Sophie's violin. This has been in the works for quite a while as it happens, and was actually finished off last summer, so it's nice to finally see it out!

Finally, there's a remix I did which I'm not sure I'm supposed to be talking about, but is online in a few places already so... anyway, go here to have a look at what it is :)