Thursday, December 16, 2021

2021 favourites

As I did this last year, I thought I might as well list a few of my favourite musical things from this year too. So here we go, my favourite records from this year:

Murcof - The Alias Sessions

Andy Stott - Never The Right Time

Dean McPhee - Witch's Ladder


Can - Live In Stuttgart 1975

Veins Full of Static - Contours


Charlie Coxedge - Big Top


 

Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power

HTRK - Rhinestones

Yvette - How the Garden Grows


Space Afrika - Honest Labour


 

The Armed - Ultrapop

Don Broco - Amazing Things

Tinashe - 333

Pye Corner Audio - Entangled Routes

Snail Mail - Valentine



Also, my favourite music video of the year:


And the award for 'definitely not a very good album, but good to have you back anyway' goes to:

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Team satan

There's a new album of mine on the horizon, so it's got me thinking about how to try and make the release of it a success. Very much easier said than done, especially these days, but I wondered out loud this morning - well, what can you do?

Back in the old days of the band, there'd be humongous free-for-all when you put something out - journalists, blogs, websites, writers, magazines- they were all there and they were all fairly approachable. It's how satan used to end up on stuff like Perrier's website, or doing instores for Umbro. Random, made no sense, but we weren't complaining. Coverage is coverage!

Now though, and perhaps this is my age speaking, it's a lot less likely that something I make will get any kind of coverage at all, let alone the type of mad shit you used to wangle. Lots of reasons why this is to be honest - the death of blogging, the rise of streaming, me just getting older and all my journo friends growing up and being adults, etc.

So, it's with this in mind, that I wanted to consolidate and focus on what I do have, and that's a fairly healthy Bandcamp following. Instead of trying to get their editorial team to listen to anything I've made for like the 5,000th time, I thought 'well, why am I trying to get their attention? I already have people here'. So I've sort of decided to focus on that. 

It would also help me to be a little more prolific with stuff, as I could just release music quickly and easily, without having to rely on label schedules and pressing plant delays. Where I’m at personally these days, I like the idea of being able to release things as quickly as I make them. I can only really do that if I have you guys all in one place to get news to you easily enough. 

You can join Team satan by signing up to my Bandcamp mailing list here: https://worriedaboutsatan.bandcamp.com/follow_me

I don't message loads, and when I do, I try to make it as entertaining as possible, so you won't end up with 17,000 emails from me screaming at you to buy my stuff, but it is probably the best way to keep in touch with new releases, tours, discount codes, freebies, etc.  Sort of like a patreon/ subscription thing, but one you don't have to pay for. Just come join the team.



Friday, December 3, 2021

2021 release roundup

As I don't think any more satan is coming out this year, although various labels still have various things of mine in various pipelines, I don't think they'll be seeing the light of day before the end of December. It's the annual 'satan clears his schedule for the end of the year, but nothing happens' curse that afflicted me last year too. Oh well. Sometimes these things can't be helped.

Anyway, here's a big ol' list of the records and remixes I had out this year:

Releases

An Tiaracht (track, taken from a split with Charlie Coxedge on This Is It Forever) [here]

Providence (album, Box Records) [here]

Circles I (mini-album, Shimmering Moods) [here]

Live From The Studio, 2021 (live recording, self-released) [here]

Circles II (mini-album, Shimmering Moods) [here]

Der Hammer (track, taken from Hawk Moon Records' charity compilation) [here]

You Care Because I Do (track, taken from the end of year compilation on This Is It Forever) [here]

Remixes

The Anchoress - Show Your Face (Kscope) [here]

Christina Giannone - Telepathy (Past Inside The Present) [here]

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

A bit on socials

A few weeks ago, my football team played a game that was so unbelievably bad, that I immediately swore off football for the foreseeable. I sat down and muttered "right, I'm done" and logged into twitter. I unfollowed the team, the players I was following, the accounts that I liked who talked football, everything. I'd had it. After that, the team had another game the following Friday. I was on holiday at the time (in Scotland - very nice it was too), and thought to myself that if I log in and see this game unfold, on literally the first day of this 3 day break, I'll be bloody miserable. It'll make me angry, sad, and it'll fuck up my holiday. So, with all my might, I stayed off twitter. After the match, and then the holiday, I just kept it up - I didn't want to know the score, or how badly the game went, even when I was back home. Once I'd done a day or so of staying off it, it was easy to just keep off it. So I did.

I'd logged off and not come back in for like 2 weeks - only occasionally popping in for some band related admin to do, but not sticking around. I didn't post, didn't look at the trending topics, nothing. And it felt good. Really, really good. I mean, I'm not naive - I know part of my job as a musician now (sadly) revolves around cesspits like twitter, and trying to get the best out of it, but for that brief period, it just felt nice. No screencaps of the Jeremy Vine show talking about whatever he and his cabal of gammon faced lunatics whinge on about day to day, no Daily Mail headlines, no snarky bullshit from dead-behind-the-eyes irony accounts, no nothing. I missed so many culture war flashpoints that when I logged back in, I couldn't believe people were seriously mad at fucking Big Bird, or a bridge, or whatever it was that had people frothing at the mouth. What a load of bollocks.

But, then, sadly, came the realisation: the music 'biz', no matter how small my little part of it is, still requires me to be there. It's just a fact of life now. I'm old enough to remember life in the biz before twitter, before facebook, spotify, etc. It wasn't much better tbh, but at least didn't require you to strap yourself to a seething, toxic messageboard 24/7. I guess that's the pay-off for having things a little easier these days.

Yet for all the talk of 'democratizing the industry' - yes, it's easy to just release on Bandcamp yourself - the cogs of the biz still prefer everything the old fashioned way - release schedules, booking agents, crunching numbers, etc. etc. plus ca change.

If you want to aim a bit higher than self-releasing CD-rs, or spending ungodly amounts on vinyl pressing from your own back pocket and then trying to shift copies any way you can, then you have to play the game a little - followers, plays, clicks, buzz - it's all still looked at, and you're still judged by it. Now all the blogs have died off, trying to get any kind of press attention for anything is akin to a Battle Royale style fight to the death - you've no chance of getting the serious heavy hitters like Pitchfork (which makes it even more strange that satan did indeed get a p4k review in 2009), so you have to scrabble for anything - and does it matter? Sort of, maybe, I don't know? I suppose you have to try something.

I remember an old manager of a band I was in once who said that a booking agent wouldn't look at us unless we had 10k fans on Facebook. I knew it was bollocks, even then, but I realised that's what you're dealing with - these people are obsessed with this stuff. It's not enough that you make the music, and you tour it, and do everything else, we've now also got to come up with a way of getting TEN THOUSAND people to sign up to our stupid FB page.

Socials aren't neccesarily bad, it's just our way of using them has devolved into such a mess that I don't know how anyone does it for a living. I'm not exactly a massive name, but I have my little corner of the biz and I'm happy to have it. I understand people will want to interact, and they understand I'll have to spam new records, new tours, etc. and that's fine. But sometimes you just have to cut this stuff out of your life and do something, literally anything, else.

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

EP02 CD

Not to sound too much like a myspace blog or a livejournal entry from 2004, but a strange thing happened to me today... I went for a quick look at the CDs in my local charity shop, and came across this:


A still sealed, perfectly pristine copy of 2007's EP02

Which is weird, as I've not seen a copy of this for a long, long, loooong time, let alone one in such good condition! Anyway, I bought it (obviously) and I'll add it to the merch desk for next year's tour.

It's all very odd. 

Those CDs were great btw - 3 panel digifile, artwork on both sides by Cam Steward, and a professionally duplicated CD to boot. Doesn't sound like much in 2021, but back in 2007 it was a pretty cool thing to have, especially for a band that didn't have anything like a label or a manager, etc. 

It was our first foray into pressing something up properly, as EP1 was just a digital download (although I did press up handmade CDr versions of it to give away at gigs), but I think it came out looking really pretty nice. Back in those days, there wasn't a Bandcamp, or Soundcloud or Spotify, so physical pressings were what you did a lot of - I think we got a few hundred of these IIRC, which looking back was probably too many, but you could barely get on the few digital stores there were at the time, so a lot of people just gave away their mp3s via netlabels or p2p sharing sites, and sold CDs at gigs, or by having a Paypal donate button with the price listed next to it haha!

Anyway, if I discover any more old back catalogue CDs in local charity shops, I'll add them to the merch desk too ;)

Thursday, October 28, 2021

A quick war story 1

Seeing a friend of mine posting on social media yesterday about being dumped off a line-up without being told reminded me of a war story of my own. I thought I might start a little series of these, as 1) they're quite funny, and 2) burst the bubble that being in a band must be 100% fun all the time. Yeah, it's shit sometimes. Anyway, as there's a bit of downtime in satan land at the moment, here's one for you:

This was back in 2016, and the band was doing quite a bit to celebrate a new album: Blank Tape. That album had it's own war stories, lemme tell you, but that's probably for another day. Anyway, so we were asked by a very reputable London promoter to play a show supporting a fairly well known, and very critically acclaimed artist, at a pretty big venue. Of course, we were delighted and said yes. And then... nothing. Not a peep. Time (months) went by, and I thought I might as well check the listings and see if I can grab the poster to put online. But still there was nothing - just the main act listed. To see what was going on, I emailed the promoter.

"Oh yeah, sorry, just heard from [artist]'s management that they want [up-and-coming DJ/ producer] to support instead. Hope we can work something out for the future"

Yeah, cheers for that mate. I mean, if it wasn't for me being impatient and annoying, we'd probably be there on gig day, equipment in hand, being told to fuck off. Promoters: please tell bands who've been bumped by management off bills that they've been bumped by management off bills. FFS.

I heard from the promoter a few months later, asking if satan could support someone I'd never heard of for barely any money at 10 days notice. I politely declined.

Actually, this happened before - a gig in Liverpool if I remember rightly. Big band suddenly brings support act at the last minute, and I get bumped to just 'DJ' instead of 'live' on the posters. This meant I just took my laptop and played tunes in between bands. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do distinctly remember the main guy in the headline act walking up to me, half pissed, asking if he could DJ instead. You should've seen the look on my face: I was taking zero shit that night, let me tell you. I mean, he went onto work with Katy Perry, and I'm sat at a desk writing this, but whatever.

Friday, September 17, 2021

how do you go on tour?

Thought I'd share a bit of the process behind the scenes, as I'm currently booking a tour at the moment, and thought it might be of interest to some of you, especially those of you in bands. Personally speaking, I tend to hire venues and promote each show on a tour myself - not ideal, as it's a lot of work, but smaller, DIY promoters aren't always available or musically fitted, so I tend to just avoid that altogether and go it alone where I can.

OK, so first off, you have to have an idea about the general level of the band. For me, this means I can't really approach any venue over 100 capacity, as the demand for tickets past that point just won't be there, which means I'll lose money, the venue won't be very pleased with me (and that will effect any future events I try and organise with them), and I'll end up playing to a half empty venue. Which sucks. So I lean on my knowledge of playing small venues for 15+ years now and pick the ones I think I can probably afford to hire without having a shit time. This is a lot of trial and error, sadly.

Once you've located one of these venues in cities you think you'll have a good time in (trial and error again) you have to pick a week or so in a month where you think you can maximise the availability of your fans. Bank holidays, easter, summer, and general large swathes of the year for no apparent reason, are still sort of no-go's. Satan did a few dates a little too close to Halloween a few years back, and they were dire. About 6 months down the line, we did the same venues just not around any kind of holiday, and they were packed. Lesson learned.

Always at the back of your mind, you'll be thinking 'why do I have to do this? Can't someone else do all this for me?' and the answer, sadly, is no. Without a booking agent (that's a whole other thing), you'll have to work independently. Smaller promoters do exist, and it's always worth saying hello to as many as you can in your particular genre, as they're worth their weight in gold at the moment. The bigger promoters in your city of choice will pretty much only work with bands and artists on rosters of booking agents.

Back in the early days of satan, we'd have a huge database of these DIY guys, and we'd tap them up whenever we wanted to hit the road, to add to gigs we could easily just do ourselves at little sweatbox venues. It's a whole different world these days of course, and my list of familiar faces in the biz gets smaller every year, but it's still worth keeping them close if you can.

Once you've sorted all that out, and paid to hire venues, you need to think about what your night is going to look like. You'll need some posters for example, just so the venue can stick em up and remind everyone you're coming to town soon. Online stuff is great, don't get me wrong, but there's also a lot to be said for just putting a fucking poster up. So you'll need someone to design a poster if you don't want to do it yourself. Plus, you'll need a support act (or two?), so you'll need to think about who's making your type of music in the area, who's good, and who actually plays live. Sounds obvious, but trust me - you'll soon build a community as people who tick all those boxes tend to be few and far between. Anyway, you'll need to rope them in as soon as you can, so you can start to build the night. Make sure to pay em as well, as there's nothing (and I mean *nothing*) worse than doing free shows for people you don't know.

Also, here's one for you - does the venue you like have a soundsystem? Sounds silly, but the amount of times I've turned up and there either isn't one, or it's falling to pieces or has integral bits missing (here's looking at you, sub woofer that's almost always never there), it doesn't bear thinking about. So that's another thing on your tick list: who rents out a PA? and does that come with a sound tech to help out on the night? Otherwise it'll be you pushing up faders and assembling monitor cables. Which is not ideal, trust me. For those nights satan used to do in a church in Leeds way back when, we'd have to hire a PA, sound guy, and the venue all seperately. Not fun.

Then there's all the other irritating stuff: who's going to be sat on the door all night? Have you got a float for the door entry money? Who's sat on the merch desk? Who does the sound tech need to speak to? Chances are it'll be you to all of those. Trust me, I know how that goes from very personal experience. If you're not comfortable doing any of it though, it's more favours you have to call in, or money you have to pay to people.

So there you go, once you've got all that sorted, you only need to worry about rehearsal, transport, budgets, parking, merch, promotion... the list is always growing. Oh, and obviously you have to do this for each show on the tour. For satan, that meant doing all this madness roughly 5 nights on the bounce every time we decided to tour. And it looks like I'll have to do it all again this time round too.

In short, it's a lot of work. But work that's also really rewarding if all goes to plan. Nothing ever does, 100% anyway, so there are a lot of bumps in the road. For every gig you do for no money in Oxford (6+ hour round trip on a school night), there'll be one at the Scala supporting Apparat. Just remember to keep the faith.



Friday, September 3, 2021

Circles II

Today sees the second instalment of Circles available for pre-order via the lovely people at Shimmering Moods.

The first one, rather obviously called Circles I, came out back in May (remember spring?!) and now the second round, Circles II, is up and out there. It was good fun doing something a bit different, so big thanks to Paul at the label for indulging me in this slightly wacky idea - and thank you for listening to it as well!

The record is similar in sound and atmosphere to the first one (they were both recorded at the same time), but I think this one is slightly more electronic? Although, thinking about it, there's plenty of guitar on it anyway. The last track is all guitar - even the rhythm - that's just me hitting the pickup with a plectrum and the sound being reversed via a pedal. 

ANYWAY, here's the pre-order:


You can also pick up a limited edition cassette of both Circles on one tape! That's highly recommended.

Also, I roped in my old friend Gregory Hoepffner to come up with a video for a section of the record called Tunnels: 


It's pretty crazy, right? When I sent him the track, he said he got all these visions of optical illusions and wanted to incorporate them somehow, and as the track was so short, it meant he didn't have to do a more narrative focused video, and he could really experiment. Perfect! We even hatched a plan to have the illusions get increasingly more intense over the course of the video, and even to have some fake ones in there to really mess with your head. See if you can spot any...

Anyway, go and buy the CD & tape, and watch the fuck out of that video. Seriously, it's ace.


Thursday, August 19, 2021

worriedaboutsatan FC shirt 2021-22

Yes, it's that time of year again when I slightly lose my mind and get it into my head that spending ridiculous amounts of money pressing up 1 (one) solitary football shirt, and filming a really over the top parody kit reveal video, is a worthwhile use of my time. Well, it's nice to take a break from music sometimes isn't it?

Anyway, this year (season?) I've opted for an away shirt, which looks really rather nice doesn't it? Took fucking ages to get it sorted as well, as there were all manner of holdups with getting it made up. Here's the silly reveal video, as shot by my lovely girlfriend Sophie, on a football pitch in Saltaire, just down the road from me:


And I suppose whilst we're talking these ridiculous things, here's last year's inagural video:



and the first shirt I made up, all the way back when (I didn't do a video for this one, sadly)



Monday, August 16, 2021

Deep Breakfast mix

Been a while since I did a mix, so thought I'd try something a bit different. 

When Francesco from the brilliant Deep Breakfast series asked me to do a mix, I couldn't stop thinking about the phrase deep breakfast. I love a nice relaxing breakfast time, and although it sounds odd me saying it now, it properly sets you up for the day doesn't it? So I thought instead of doing the sort-of regular mix thing of putting some ambient things together, I'd try and soundtrack a really nice breakfast time.

I thought of those really nice hotel breakfast buffet things you get when you're on holiday - sun out, French doors open onto the balcony, massive bowl of cereal in one hand and a tiny European coffee in the other. I sort of went on holiday in my mind and wanted to put something together that would be ideal to play over the stereo as you sat down with your alpen and croissants.

So out went all the very good, but quite dark or melancholy stuff, and in came all the laid back, groovy bangers. See what you think anyway:

Monday, August 9, 2021

Anchoress remix

When The Anchoress calls, you er... answer, I guess?

Anyway, here's a remix I did for The Anchoress, which popped up on streaming sites over the weekend!


It actually started life ages ago as a Gavin Miller remix, but then when the band became just me again, I decided to open it back up and add a sprinkling of satan magic to it to turn it into a worriedaboutsatan remix instead. Think it came out pretty well in the end.

I've done plenty of remixes for Catherine in the past (this one a personal favourite), so it's always good to get to play with her stems and whip them into something new. Everything's always so well put together that it makes it nice and easy!

Anyway, enjoy!

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Facebook

I discovered over the weekend that there was a conversation going on about royalty money and stuff, via a FB messenger group I was once in. I didn't get any of the messages, as I deactivated my account about 2 years ago now, and very rarely update the satan page on there.

It reminded me that although my personal FB page is dead, apparently my messenger isn't - so please, and this is mostly to people who've messaged me before I binned off my profile, please don't message me on there. I don't check it, I haven't logged into it for a good 2 years, and I'm on practically every other social media platform going (although mainly twitter these days) - although if truth be told, I do like a good email, so please use email. Facebook is genuinely the least appealing social media platform to update as a band, which is probably the main reason I decided to give up on it. Not that any others are perfect, but I resent having to pay to reach people who've expressed an interest in the band, especially when Bandcamp does an email to all your fans for free.

So yes, fuck that.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

T-shirts! Live album!

Two quick bits here, but just in case you don't follow me on either Bandcamp or twitter (erm, get on it here: https://worriedaboutsatan.bandcamp.com/follow_me & https://twitter.com/teamsatan) there were two big developments yesterday...

First off, after about 5 million years, the 'rings' shirt is back in stock. The band has only had a few shirt designs over the years - there've been trees, album artwork, and a modernist logo type thing, but the one that everyone always wants re-pressing, and by far the most synonymous with the band itself is the 'rings' one. It was designed way back in something like 2009 by my buddy Cameron Steward. He did the art for EP02, and a few flyers for the band back in the day, including that amazing one for the Ólafur Arnalds show we put on in 2008 that went down in Leeds legend.

Anyway, the rings are back, and you can go buy one here:

https://worriedaboutsatan.bandcamp.com/merch/rings-shirt-2021-edition

Stock is pretty low as over half have already gone! (fantastic effort there though, guys- nice one!)

On top of that, I also smartened up the audio from my live show I've been slowly uploading one piece at a time over on my youtube channel, and put it on Bandcamp. It was really easy to record, and despite a few fluctuations in volume (looking at you, Butterfly Effect), it came out pretty nicely! It's straight from the desk, so nothing is on there that I didn't do on the video. 

A few of you asked for the audio, so thought I'd oblige! It's pay-what-you-want, and it's here:


Oh, and you can watch the entire thing here too:


ENJOY!

Friday, July 9, 2021

Ghosting Season

I've often wondered what to do with the Ghosting Season thing. It stopped being a functioning outfit back in 2014, shortly before the release of the I'm Not/ The Next Round single. Looking back, it's pretty mad to think it was only ever around for 3 years, but bloody hell we did some pretty amazing stuff in those: toured Europe, supported Apparat, went to SXSW in Austin... even played an Umbro corporate gig, which looking back, was perhaps the funniest thing I've done as a musician. Absolutely loved it:

Anyway, as I'm defacto in charge of all this stuff now, I thought GS was overdue a little overhaul on various places. I got myself added to sort out the Spotify profile, which I have done now. I even added a little 'choice cuts' playlist, just in case you satan fans were unaware of the Season material/ remixes, and needed a bit of catching up. That's here:



Also, it felt a little silly charging for stuff from a dead band, and especially since I seemingly put an album out a week, so if you head to the GS bandcamp, everything is now on a pay-what-you-want. So you can fill your boots with our limited discography with no guilty conscience. Head to the GS Bandcamp here. I also added the superb Luke Abbott remix to the Muffled Sound of Voices single, as for some reason it wasn't there, despite being a career highlight, Season/ satan/ solo included! I know it wasn't on the vinyl release, which was also a bit weird, as it was the only remix people wanted on the 12". Oh well. Labels, eh? 

Monday, July 5, 2021

Live 2021

Today I uploaded the last of the Live 2021 videos. It's a fifteen minute behemoth, a re-do of 2007's live favourite The Butterfly Effect. That used to have big, chunky guitars, riffing out as the pinnacle of the satan set - all glitchy drums and huge crescendos. I've calmed it down a bit these days, but still tried to maintain that 'big' energy that it used to have - it's fucking fast too, so it's hard to not give it an epic feel.

As you can see in the video, I'm desperately trying to hold on, doing the bassline, drums, guitar and a bit of synth too - I hope I got it right, it sounds pretty good to me. It's a tough one to do, considering the others all have a similar pattern with how to put them all together.

Anyway, here's the full set - all 5 tracks in one handy playlist on Youtube, sequenced as I would've played them had I been on tour, playing them in venues:

 


I've really enjoyed putting these up, and had a lot of fun recording the set. I really hope I can play it sometime soon. I'll maybe put up the recordings as a live album on my Bandcamp too, just so you can all listen to my infernal noodlings on the go.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Live sets

As you might be aware, I've not actually played live as a solo outfit yet. That seems mad, considering the band's been me since mid way through 2019. Anyway, I'm not one to complain about venues shutting for over a year, as a lot more musicians have had it way harder than I have.

That said, I do miss playing live a lot. even the boring stuff, like loading in, or getting a Premier Inn at 1am and cracking a Red Stripe in the room, eating a hastily put together Toby Carvery, etc. So I did my best to try and replicate the live set I was going to debut at ArcTanGent this year, before it was sadly postponed. I've been working on this set for a long time, and I've added little gadgets and gizmos to it over time, and it's become something I'm really, really proud of, and so desperately wanted to show it off to you all.

I thought to myself 'fuck it, I'm not letting this go to waste', as I didn't have anything else in the diary, and would prefer others to get back on their feet first, whilst I could get to grips with touring on my own. I still might book one or two shows for this year, who knows, but for now it'll most likely be next year. Anyway, I rigged up two cameras and recorded an out from my snazzy new mixing desk, so you can see me in glorious HD and listen to me crystal clear too. 

I ran through the whole live set, which at the moment is 5 tracks long, but clocks in at just under an hour. Oops. I'll be putting up a new track each monday over at the satan youtube channel (hit that subscribe button!) so here's the first one, a rendition of Skylon (from the album Revenant)

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Circles I

A lot of you will think "two albums in one month? Are you mental? And the answer to that is probably 'yes'.

But, you have to believe me when I say that I actually never intended for so many records to all come out at once. Circles I is only happening now, because Providence has already been and gone - that was already delayed anyway, so everything has been squished into this mad pile of stuff that will be chipped away at during the course of 2021. 

Anyway, Circles I.

First off, here it is for pre-order (or regular order if you're reading this after Friday)



I feel I should write something about it, as it's quite a strange record. It all started back in the glorious summer of 2020 *Scooby Doo style flashback* - I'd just moved house (for the second time in about 6 months - not recommended), to where I am now - a little terrace in Saltaire. It's really nice here, and the weather was also really nice, so I sat down and thought about making some new stuff. I played around with a few bits, and before long I had two sort of sounds going: loop station guitar ambience, and jittery electronica stuff, aided by the purchase of several sample packs. Now, if you don't know what sample packs are, they're sort of a cheat code for anyone who doesn't have thousands of pounds (or dollars if you want to get American about this) to throw at vintage gear - why pay for the machine, when you can pay considerably less for some wav files of someone playing the machine? I opted for the latter, as the former would've broken my bank, but the upshot is I was playing around with all these samples - slashing them up, pitching them all over the place, speeding them up, slowing them down, y'know, just generally fucking with them. It was great fun, and inspired me to keep making more and more stuff.

After a few months, I had so much new material (I blame the football season being delayed - you'd be lucky to get a two track single out of me if it hadn't), I aimed for a double album. I sequenced them, and then had a brainwave. Why do just a regular album, when you can be really difficult and do a sort of mixtape/ unskippable album, like that weird dEUS thing! 

I'm a bit enthusiastic when it comes to doing weird things, especially with music. I like the idea of resurrecting older technologies and techniques, as nothing really matters anymore in terms of music biz stuff. Certainly not at my level anyway - it's quite liberating to be able to do any mad thing you like. Although I suppose the trade off is you never get big or make any money, but that's by the by for now.

Anyway, one of my favourite bands, dEUS, did this album back in 1994 called 'My Sister = My Clock' - it was a stop-gap release, especially for fans signed up to their mailing list, to tide them over until their second album proper 'In A Bar Under The Sea' came out the following year. For some reason, they decided to sequence it all as one track, so you couldn't skip anything and had to listen to the whole thing if you wanted to get the full experience. It reminded me of those CDs you'd get back in the day, where you rewound the first track and got a secret song. So I thought, sod it - I'm gonna copy dEUS and do this thing as one big mixed song, one big track, and see what happens. It might be stupid, it might not work, or it might be a cool bit of fun. I guess you'll decide that, but I liked the idea, and so sequenced two albums worth of material like this. Circles II will appear at some point in the year, but for now, enjoy Circles I. 

Oh, and those field recordings interspersed between songs on the album are made by me - I walked around Roberts Park and recorded it on my phone. I thought if I was taking you on a little journey with this one big track, I could also try and take you somewhere by recording the sounds on my doorstep.

ENJOY!

Friday, May 28, 2021

Albums, albums, albums

 Hi!

Yes, I've been a bit slack updating this, but I kinda figured that you'd all know about albums coming out and all the stuff from other places, and I don't really want this little space of the satan-web being overrun by endless announcements. I like just chatting on, to be honest.

That said, I suppose I am going to have to do a roundup of Providence's greatest hits, just because it's nice to keep track of stuff, and you also might have missed them.

OK, so first off, here's Providence:

To go with it, why not read this interview I did with J Hubner over at Complex Distractions. It was a really nice chat, and we got into some real nitty gritty stuff about me, the band, the album and all sorts. It's good! 

If you were interested in the making of the record btw, there's a cool little track-by-track guide thing I did for I Heart Noise here.

There were nice reviews about the album from Birthday Cake for Breakfast, the aforementioned Complex Distractions, a great write up by Ron over at Textura, and also Chris Nosnibor's Aural Aggravation - he's always so good at writing about satan. 

Oh, and the only other thing that happened was that silly Robert Fripp video... I went on one of those celebrity video message sites and paid him £80 to basically say how fucking class I am. I uploaded it, thinking it'd give you lot a giggle, but ended up going sort-of viral:

 

So yes, that was all good wasn't it? Glad to finally have an album out there now. Speaking of, there are going to be quite a lot of those this year, and I'm gearing up for sort-of-album number 2 of 2021, Circles I. It's... quite an interesting thing, but I'll talk more about it later. For now, here's what it looks like. It'll be out on Shimmering Moods next Friday, and you can pre-order it now.


Thursday, April 29, 2021

Stop Calling My Phone: Video Premiere

Delighted to be premiering the latest slice of the new album on the blog.

The lyric video is directed and edited by myself, and I'm super happy to finally share it with you all. I wanted to create something that tapped into the current obsession with nostalgia for the early 2000s, and especially the aesthetics of the early internet, in a hyper meta, pop culture mash-up...

Oh, forget it. Yeah, I'm just taking the piss a bit here, but I thought it was quite funny anyway:


Thursday, April 22, 2021

Für Immer

 Hi!

There's a new satan track out in the world today, taken from the new album Providence. It's called Für Immer, and sounds like this:


It's had a pretty tortured existence, this track. It was originally part of this batch of demos I put together because a label I was talking to had mentioned they wanted to get into the ambient techno area. Knowing I'd done a fair bit of that in my time, they wanted something like that to put out. So I rolled up my sleeves but suddenly thought "fuck, I've not done this in ages" - I was rusty. Rusty as all hell, and after listening to them after the dust had settled, it's no wonder the label didn't want them.

I did manage to get another track from the album out of those sessions - one called Just To Feel Something - so it's not all bad, but I had this thing (originally called 'Spiral' for some reason) that had a good enough feel to it, but was just put together really badly. So I did what I always did, and slowed it down. I do this all the time with things I'm not quite feeling - I'll slow it down and take a load of stuff out of it, strip it back and see what happens. This time it worked really nicely, and went on a sort of múm style trip, featuring foggy atmospheres, cracked pianos and clicky crackles. So I re-named it Für Immer (a nod to my German roots) and put it on the album I sent to the same label. Thinking I'd blown it with them with those disastrous techno experiments, to my surprise they said 'yes!' great! Although, then they didn't put it out and never spoke to me again, but still! 

Get your pre-order for Providence on the altogether nicer Box Records here btw: box-records.com/album/providence

Friday, April 2, 2021

Providence

howdy!

Today sees the unveiling of album number eight: Providence.

It was pieced together from various recordings I’d made over the past year or so, picking up pretty much exactly where Time Lapse left off. I didn’t want it to be just Time Lapse 2 though, so had it in my head that it would be an album of stuff that sort of varies in style, with shorter tracks, but still retain a satan atmosphere all the way though. I think I’ve managed it - well, I hope I have, but I guess you’ll be the judge of that...



It’s coming out on May 7th via the excellent Newcastle based label, Box Records. Matt, who runs the label, is an old pal of mine, and I was very fortunate that he offered to release this record, as it very nearly didn’t see the light of day. It ended up homeless after various industry shenanigans, but Matt was a proper legend when he stepped in to save it. 

I had a bit more fun with song titles too, as the John McGinn one was based on a Villa tweet I made two years ago after we played Norwich, and Stórar Franskur is Icelandic for 'big chips' - I just thought it’d be funny to make the blandest phrase I could think of into something that looked very 'Spotify ambient' as they love a good pretentious Icelandic title. Plus, most Icelanders I know aren’t the Wes Anderson caricature they’re sometimes made out to be, so a big plate of chips was the funniest thing I could imagine in a cutesy faux Scandinavian accent.

The front cover is the big brutalist clock tower in Shipley, in case you were wondering. It’s a photo by the excellent photographer John Cade.

Anyway! The pre-order is open now, and you’ll get the McGinn song immediately, so go on - get one ordered!

Friday, March 26, 2021

Rankin on satan

If you're based in Scotland, you might've seen a show running on BBC Scotland called Shelf Isolation - it's a little programme where famous people chat via Zoom about what arts & culture they've liked during the pandemic. It's a fun little thing, and the latest edition involved author Ian Rankin, long-time friend of the satan. 

Anyway, he talked about how much he enjoyed last year's album Time Lapse, and to my surprise, talked at length about me, my music, and all sorts of other stuff. It was great! So I've clipped it and smashed it on the satan youtube for all to see. Well, until the copyright strike comes, but so far I've avoided that...


 

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

New previews

Over the last few months, I've been teasing little bits of up-coming releases. I thought I might as well, as everything in the schedule has been shunted back quite a bit from where it was originally planned. One album was supposed to come out last November, but has since changed labels, release month and release year. Hopefully it shouldn't take too much longer, and then I can start to talk to you all about these things I have in the pipeline. 

Anyway, those teasers - I basically cut up some nice looking videos from various sources, and started posting them to Instagram stories. I liked the idea that I could tease a new track, and all traces of it would be deleted after 24 hours. It was very me, so I started putting them up a bit more regularly as the months ticked on, and over time I've experimented with putting the same ones on different socials, to see where the reactions were better and what people said. Twitter didn't do too well, but Instagram stories was a hit. YouTube, the jury's still out, but the views haven't been stellar, and someone unsubscribed the other day when I uploaded two new previews! Haha. Oh well. 

Here you go anyway, here they all are in their glory...

 
 
 
 
 

 


 

 

 


Monday, March 1, 2021

Si begg remix

It's March! Lovely!

The weather is still rubbish though, so to get you through, here's a remix I did of Si Begg, which is out today:

So weird to be on a Si Begg project - literally have his albums stacked up at home, so to be asked by him to cook something up is unreal! I remember doing the first draft ages ago, in a right huff as I was in a terrible, terrible mood because Villa had thrown away a lead at bloody Arsenal, and we ended up losing in the last minute, which was utterly painful. That first draft, you'll not be surprised to hear, ended up being awful, so once I'd calmed down, I went back into it, and did this version. Sounds pretty good I reckon!

Monday, February 15, 2021

Can't get you out of my head

Adam Curtis is back!

You may remember him from such films as Hypernormalisation, and The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel. OK, maybe not the last one, but definitely the first one.

You might also be aware of the connection between his films and my music, as it's appeared in a lot of them since about 2014. His last outing, Hypernormalisation, even managed to get me a credit at the end of the film, which was very nice.

Anyway, after a long break, he's back with 6 (count em) new films, all under the title 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. I've seen the first two, as I'm resisting the urge to binge them all and just let them sit in my head for a few days before going back in, and I was a) delighted to be delving into the murky world of Curtisism again, and b) nicely surprised that some of my music popped up during various segments.

Now, you might be thinking 'Gavin, why don't you know in advance what he's putting in?' and to that, I'd say: 'well, he makes everything himself, and is no doubt still editing it all about 5 minutes before he sends them to the BBC, so has neither the time nor the energy to submit cue sheets. Plus, he layers different tracks together a lot, so would be a nightmare trying to unpick it all'. So there. Plus it's kinda cool that he collages so much stuff together that he probably forgets what he's used and where. And he's busy. Always busy.

ANYWAY. I thought I'd keep a handy list here as to what stuff he's used of mine in the docs, as it's just nice isn't it? I wrote a sort-of passive aggressive tweet once about the time when loads of satan stuff got used on Hypernormalisation, and I thought labels and agents would batter down my door asking to work with me, and the only thing that happened was a dude at a label tried to use me to get Adam's email address so he could just send him all his music instead. So with that in mind, I resolved to always just big myself up, if no-one else was going to do it for me.

Here we go then, I'll update it as I watch them, but for parts 1 & 2, here's the stuff of mine he used:












UPDATE! Just watched part 3, and whereas it was a bit light on the ol' satan stuff, there was a cheeky bit of this one, slithering into a scene involving an irate American in the suburbs:
 

UPDATE 2! Blimey, part 4 is tough stuff, eh? Found one or two bits peeking through, which were the intro riff to this-


and there was also a tiny bit of this old ambient thing I did years ago (it's appeared in a fair few bits of his before)


Oh, and he loves to play the clattering, reverb drenched intro to Evil Dogs too:

UPDATE 3! Yes, nearly at the end now. I don't think anything new popped up, apart from one intro to something that's been buzzing around the whole series so far that I just couldn't place. Turns out it's this, from Revenant:

LAST UPDATE! Finally watched the end episode last night, and whereas there wasn't anything new, there was this in the credits! Lovely:



Friday, January 22, 2021

Split out now!

Today sees the release of a little split tape I put together with Charlie Coxedge.

I run a little label called This Is It Forever, and about two years ago, I started doing little cassette splits, where I'd take one side, and someone else would take the other. It's been really good fun, and ever since the band became just me, I've been able to share the satan sound with some people I really like. 

This one's the sixth so far, and my track on it, 'An Tiaracht', is a relatively new one. the thing I like about these splits is that you can do stuff quite off the cuff, and pretty quickly - there's no big schedule, and you don't have to sit on things for that long if you don't want to. They've always been good as little snapshots of the more experimental side of satan too, as you get about 10-15 minutes to do whatever you want with. Naturally, I always want to make something fucking massive.

Anyway, really hope you enjoy it, and stay tuned for a lot more satan music this year!

Thursday, January 7, 2021

An Tiaracht

Howdy!

Well 2021's off to a banger isn't it? Picked a hell of a day to announce a new release didn't I? Oh well.

Anyway... here's the first bit of new satan material for the year - a track called An Tiaracht. It's part of a split tape with Charlie Coxedge, and is out on my own This Is It Forever label on Jan 22nd. Charlie took side B, and weaved this gorgeous looped ambient guitar piece called Who Is To Say, and I basically wanted to make a wall-of-synth style thing, which I think I've managed to do. I guess you'll be the judge of that. 

Here's the cover I made, which I thought was pretty good. Quite like using text in weird ways now, after years of just thinking 'yeah, that's a nice picture - use that as the cover. no text' as a template for releases:


The name, incidentally, comes from this tiny island off the coast of Ireland. I discovered it on one of my usual wikipedia rabbit holes, but just look at it:


It's deserted now, but had a functioning lighthouse and small living quarters for people to work there. The buildings are all still intact, but it's only birds that inhabit the place now. 

Tape is out Jan 22nd, pre-orders open on the 15th!