Glass Infinites

ALBUM NO. 10 IS OUT NOW!

Glass Infinites, my little modular synth/ ambient baby, is out in the world now:

Very much hope you all enjoy it. Here's some quickfire background on some track titles: 'Choppers' is a nickname I had as a child, as apparently I would make a mad chomping motion with my mouth everytime food was near. Yes, I was a portly child lol. 'Say No To Yes' is from this poster that does the rounds on twitter every now and then. Almost called it 'Say Pizza To Drugs', but thought better of it. 'Öxlinni' is Icelandic for 'shoulder', and I just love how the word looks so used it. 'How Does It Feel, What Do You Think? Are You Happy?' is a line from this HEALTH song. 'Boomkat Industrial Complex' was just a funny phrase to poke fun at their seemingly vice like grip they have on any underground music. I was gonna do a big graph, like the one on the back of Yanqui UXO by Godspeed, with all these labels and blogs pointing to Boomkat, but just couldn't be arsed in the end. 'Zyklus' is perhaps the most badass word in the world, and is German for 'cycle'. 'Rejected Ambient Works' is, obviously, a bit of fun with an Aphex record.

Endless Hum 2 pics

Not often I get nice live photos of me, or reviews for that matter, so here are both from Saturday's exploits in Shipley:

That sea of cables and plugs on the floor was very stressful

Look at that grip! holding onto that keyboard for dear life lol

Looking very serious - probably stressing about pedals

 And there's a great review of the night over at Louder Than War here:

https://louderthanwar.com/the-endless-hum-2-the-kirkgate-centre-shipley-live-review/

Community (it's important)

At the weekend I played for The Endless Hum's night at the Kirkgate Centre in Shipley, and it was really, really nice. I mean, the gig itself was class and the fact there's a cool night like this literally walking distance from my house, is worth shouting about if nothing else, but there's always something very important about getting involved in a community.

Me, onstage in Shipley

Like, when I was young, and growing up next door to Shipley in the Tory toy town of Baildon, I would've laughed if you'd have told me that Saltaire and Shipley were gonna be a hive of musical community, but that's sort of what's happening, and it's really really great. 

In the early satan days, we'd make a habit of turning up to nights we wanted to play, CDs in hand, and collaring the promoter to give us a shot. It didn't always work, but it got us out and about, and we met people in and around the scene in Leeds, which obviously helped get our name out there.

That's a very under-rated and still very important thing to be doing as a band, I think. Find your scene and get into it. The internet is all well and good, but there's still no substitute for turning up to a gig with some like minded people and just enjoying a night of music. 

I'll never understand why people don't do this more. Back in the day, I knew so many bands and artists that ran off down to London only to get swallowed up and they ended up quitting all together. If you live somewhere with a community hall, or a bar that does events, fucking get in there. You aren't retired yet! A community these days is probably the best thing you can wrap your music around.

Öxlinni video

 Hi all, 

Just a quick one... I've unleashed another slice of Glass Infinites for your listening (and in this case, viewing) pleasure. It's a track called Öxlinni, which means 'shoulder' in Icelandic. Just thought the word looked really nice. Anyway, the video is here:

and the album comes out on July 8th. I've also realised I absolutely did not need a 3 week pre-order-to-release window at all, and this will be reflected in up-coming releases lol.

Discography sale

I know, I know... I make a lot of music. It never used to be like this, I swear. The gap between Arrivals and Even Temper, albums 1 and 2 in the satan discography, was 6 years! SIX! YEARS! that's absolutely insane when you come to think of it, especially now you know how much I put out in any given year these days.

I suppose the landscape has changed a lot since then, and now I'm older and (hopefully) a bit wiser, it doesn't take me as long to finish stuff off and just put it out there. Albums aren't the big things they once were, after all.

Anyway, all this waffling brings me onto the subject of the digital discography option on Bandcamp. They have this neat feature, where instead of buying everything one by one and paying like £70+ for it, you can bundle it and offer a discount for the big spenders. Seeing as how I'm putting a lot of stuff out these days, I thought it'd be a nice thing to do to let some non-big spenders catch up with everything, so you don't have to go and stream it on Spotify or torrent it- both options would leave me with about £0.00000001p, and £0 respectively. Please don't torrent my stuff! I deliberately keep things as cheap as I can on my Bandcamp for that reason. 

Right, so the whole satan discography on Bandcamp right now is £22.74, which is 70% cheaper than it should be. And that's for (pretty much) everything the band has released since 2006 - that's sixteen fucking years, so quite the deal I think.

Go to any album on worriedaboutsatan.bandcamp.com and it'll pop up with the entire discography option if this sounds like a plan.

Glass Infinites

Remember when I said I wanted to get a bit quicker with releasing stuff after making it? Yes, well here we are already. Say hi to album number ten (TEN!) Glass Infinites. It's a collection of woozy, meandering synth and ambient guitar stuff, so actually something of a new sound from me, as there aren't any beats on it - just these zippy little synth lines and some classic ambient guitar stuff.

Anyway, the pre-order went up today, and that's here-

I did mention a little while ago that it'd be nice to get a bit quicker with releasing stuff, so this is the first of those experiments. I usually sit around for months on end, plotting who to send it to, and what formats cost what, and all that stuff - it takes me *ages* to actually get something out, which is ironic, because I'm probably the most impatient person in the world when it comes to actually making the music itself.

I had these recordings sat around for a little while, but it was only after I came back from tour in March, and had my nose cauterised that I endeavoured to finish it all off and get it released. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with cauterisation, but it's basically burning the blood vessels in your nose with silver nitrate, so it stops them bleeding so much. Me and my brother have always had nose bleeds, and it wasn't until I asked my mum about them that I found out that her dad had them too, so I'm guessing it runs in the family, sadly. Anyway, they're really horrible and annoying, so I wanted to try this cauterisation, and fucking hell it hurt! But it was for the best I suppose. Anyway, when I came home from having it done, I felt pretty awful - think I caught a cold at the same time or something, as I felt utterly wiped out. Weirdly, listening to these synth recordings was the only thing I could stand to do, as anything more just wrecked my head. So as I was recovering, I finished them off, added some new ones, and voila - Glass Infinites was born!

Very much hope you all like it. It's out July 8th on tape and digital via my own This Is It Forever label.

Marta Mist

In 2010, I was sitting in my room at satan HQ in Leeds late one night, just listening to some guitar loops tinkle over themselves and I thought about doing something with them. They weren't quite right for satan, but didn't want to just ditch them. Not really wanting to go solo or anything, I thought a good idea would be to finish it off as a new project, but keep it quiet. I liked the idea of it 1) not getting in the way of anything satan related, and 2) letting the music do the talking, so it would live and die by how good it was, and not because of the attached people involved.

Sophie, my girlfriend, also thought it would be a cool idea, so she played violin over those guitar loops, and we submitted it to various labels before the now- named Distance/ Skeletal/ Union came out on Hibernate in 2010. 

Anyway, we did various little bits here and there - self released singles, a quick 3" CD on now long defunct labels, a few remixes, etc. we kept it fairly lo-fi and enjoyed just bobbing stuff out as and when. This all culminated in Scavengers, a record we did for the awesome Time Released Sound label back in 2016. It went pretty well, and there were a few more attempts after that to get other records signed, but life sort of got in the way, and we put the band on the back burner whilst we moved around a lot.

Until last year, when I was a bit bored in the studio, and started playing with piano loops this time. I figured these would be amazing as new Marta Mist material, so I roped Sophie in to record violin over them, and viola! A new two track single, which came out on Friday:

We've been recording some new stuff too, so MM is basically back now, and obviously with me telling you all this, we thought we might as well ditch the anonymous thing, as we're not that fussed about that sort of thing anymore, and we're also too old for shenanigans. Well, I am anyway, Sophie's but a spring chicken.

So anyway, there you go! Some more satan-adjacent stuff to get involved with.