The Struggle

My realisation of todays world…..

“ It’s not the post itself, it’s how it digresses into the Pursuing, nasty conversation about me personally.”

I’m sharing this because I find myself (as always) being the Centre of all my own life’s problems. I have been so successful at achieving my personal goals that I have single handedly wiped myself from history.

I have to now live with my decisions to be invisible.

This personal knowledge was always fine (in my personal unassuming bubble).
From the very beginning, way back in 1977 I hid my name and worked under hundreds of different artist names. I did this so as to get as much music into the birthing rave scene without out people realising it was possibly just one person.
I loved the music so from the very start of Acid House I was engulfed in it.

I have never liked fame. My depression makes me always think I’m going to fail.

Hiding myself from the diverse music I constantly created was easy. I would just invent new artist names for each release and allow the music to be judged on its own musical efforts, rather than on any hype about the artist. 

This detached me from the hype of the music scene and allowed me to experiment and make whatever weird hybrid I wanted to without any negative feedback on my personally.
The down side to this was I constantly achieved massive musical success and was not enjoying the ride that comes with such success.

“Hardcore, Techno, Jungle, House, Garage, Speed Garage. The names always came after.
This was a golden time of ideas in music and a scene that required volumes of music in a style before it could find a name and a home where it could grow”.

All underground music producers in the UK would be inspired by other releases and all were churning out styles and sounds that were all new and never before heard.

It was all about being inspired by each other’s music and the scene around us.
Hell…
Just listen to the album 2FinRuff!
That album alone shows many future branches of styles.

“I sat on that album [2f in ruFF sic]for 8 years before I could release it in 2002 because in 1993/4/5 eveyone I played it to said it was intense and not something they understood or could fit into their style that they were playing..”

“I made the  Ruff Da Menace album when drum and bass was just getting established as a fully fledged scene, but breaks were not being chopped to any extent so this was way out there for the time and it also had sounds that were too far ahead but would later become established styles.”

Hearing it now; you can hear so many defining track styles, and it still kick the arse out of a lot of current music, even today.

In this Information Age, my invisibility in the scene is now embarrassing to me.
I have a wealth of knowledge yet seem to be having to explain myself to online flamers and half wits who have no idea about the history of the uk underground.

I’m wiped from history, so my voice holds no weight. All because I chose to evade notoriety, deny interviews or music connections and keep my world underground.
I don’t really exist online for anyone to investigate. its always been word of mouth or people who look deeper and find out who the producer of the tunes are.

I don’t even remember a load of tracks I have done until I hear them on YouTube or someone tags me in them.

PRS actually said:

“Due to your prolific nature, we will in future have to charge you a fee of £100 for every new artist name you register with us”  

This was due to the amount of made up artist names I was creating for all the music I was releasing.

For me getting albums of music out there was a way to grow the scene and be diverse musically with no backlash on me.

I think I expected too much from the ravers and DJ’s.
My passion for the music makes me dig into who is doing what, but now days; if it’s not searchable online or hyped then you don’t exists.

It’s sad and funny, that I am the creator of my own situation?

I think I felt this coming when I made a real decision to actually use my name on a big release that was going to chart in the official UK top 40.

But  This is still all I do (make new music).

I push new styles and try to reach others who need to feel that escape music gives us because this has never been a part time hobby for me. This is my life, my reason to get up……. 

“I just get it, in ways I can never explain in words but consistently do with my music.”

Just look at the massive albums and work out how many style I have pushed and that would still not include the defining tracks that were really really massive but not on my labels, because I never pushed any song to commercial success.

I have always preferred other companies to play the hype game, So with my more successful music being licensed to them, I am free to continue to be underground and and experiment on new styles (like BassLine Garage) which are tomorrows sounds.

I am from the underground. My music is my therapy from depression.
The fear of failure is a constant companion; yet my discography of music is the history of my success after success and yet still I feel that I am about to fail.
So I continue to choose to keep a low profile and put out the music because that’s the only real test.

I have created my own invisibility In a world of fakers who claim so much but have no substance.

“I know I can not be called out and I know I’m not able to shout to say ‘look at me here is all the proof’ just to satisfy un-educated music heads who don’t know the score.”

I’m in a conflict everyday because my depression conflicts with my success and heightens the fear of failure.

This is why I openly state that I am a ‘contradiction’ and an ‘arsehole’.

My self worth is hard to justify each day and not being able to fight idiots who dismiss me in such degrading ways is both funny and sad, because I have no presence in the dance music scene due to your own avoidance methods.

This is why I have so much respect for the supporters who buy my records religiously and connect the dots.