Oh my life.
I studied Fine Art back in the 90's and graduated with a first class BA Hons degree at Bath. I
have to tell you that to try to prove how fucking amazing I am at what I do. Around the same time I won the
Peter Kinley award for painting. Then after moving to Brighton for a couple of years I continued painting but
got more involved in music. I bought a crappy drum kit and taught myself to play drums badly while at the same
time honing my guitar playing. You don't always need a teacher just aslong as you're curious and constantly
inspired.
Around this time I discovered a few gadgets in the form of a Fostex 4 track recorder, a Sony
Minidisc recorder and stereo condenser mic together with an Akai S20 sampler. This opened up a whole new world
for me at the age of 28. I performed in a couple of local bands, did a month uni tour with The Lovelies (a
three piece made up of two wankers and me) and started recording my own music under the name Palomino.
Not long after that I moved to the Netherlands and continued playing and performing with other
bands on local indie labels and even god damn Universal (they can all fuck off). All the time supporting
myself by first working in a book store, the Dutch Institute for Media Art (where Marina Abramovic asked my
advice on how to title a new work that ended up sounding like the title of a soft porn film and I can say hand
on heart she is fucking crazy), IDFA Documentary film festival and more recently the VPRO. You know what?
Producer's are a nightmare to work with. Are you a producer? What the fuck is up with you?
Having a side job has been essential to me for obvious financial reasons because as an artist
musician you rarely make ends meet even if you are fucking amazing and land a major record label deal (which
barely exists these days, so Bandcamp all the way). Besides that, I got to meet a lot of people in other
fields and took a chance on teaching myself to code, at first in Processing and then later creating a few iPad
apps by porting LUA to Xcode (total headache before AI) and by programming with Pure Data and VVVV for audio,
midi and visuals.
Now we have AI and it's a fucking nightmare too because it's dividing people and scaring people
that have invested their lives in learning how to code. Get with the programme bitches. It's 2026 and there's
a new vibe in town. I've used AI to help me code web audio apps and they are extremely useful creative tools.
Software you might pay hundreds of euros for if it was packed in a metal case with a shiny oled screen and
menu combo's to make your eyes water. The main downside of AI is that it will kill us all one way or another.
Tending to lean toward misanthropic musings on a daily basis I say "bring it on".
I digress of course so let's get back to music stuff. A few weeks ago I bought my first lute and
it's beautiful. I am never gonna be John Dowland reincarnated but I'll do my best before I die in an AI drone
attack. Apart from that I have a small home studio chock full of Elektron shit, Sequential, Korg, Roland, Moog
and Teenage Engineering gadgets that really are made by teenagers. There's even more and it's all wonderful.
It's starred in many of my past recordings but more recently I've let the dust settle on it all and I simply
sit on bed, play guitar and sing into my iPhone using AUM. No doubt that'll change again soon and I'll be
recording my lute into the Octatrack and making dark fuzzy medieval doom core. It'll no doubt be amazing. If I
don't do that I'll be making and cataloguing field recordings of the declining bird and insect populations.
Anyway, you landed here and you read all that bullshit and now you really know me. It's time to
listen to something and hopefully you'll be inspired to make something yourself. Something that your friends
love and something that makes you smile, maybe cry or maybe even dance.
Love you all.