What brought me to be stood inside a hot, sticky Camden venue on a balmy July evening was the promise of witnessing the live incarnation of the second album from Eddy TM's band, the Xfm stalwart and all round nice guy trading decks for a bass guitar, and a curiosity and passion for anything this guy touches had not prepared me for what came next.
'Beautiful Losers' the debut album was reconstructed beats, a dance-rock hybrid tailor made for Eddy's longstanding Remix show, practically filtering his playlist for influences.
I knew what I wanted, I wanted to dance.
And as the amps were all turned up to 11, I had to put my expectations aside.
Opener 'Acrobatica', was a heaving, unrelenting beast of a industrial rock track, being played by a industrial rock band as if they were facing oblivion and could only ward off the end of the Earth with use of an extremely loud P.A system.
I was shocked.
I presumed that the guitars would subside into some oozing electro-samples and squelches, I presumed wrong, the guitars did not subside, and as the set progressed I realised that I was watching an adept band and not just some meandering side-project.
What I was witnessing was a band purpose built to slot into the middle of any major UK festival, the type of band you stumble across on an unspecified stage, a band that commands attention with their stage presence, absolute passion and unquestionable skill set, capturing imaginations with their blend of Nine Inch Nails and UNKLE swallowing Placebo's Brian Molko whole.
A handful of the tracks offered up dip their toes into the dance arena, but rather than mourning the lack of hands in the air moments, instead I swooned at the fine crafted set that built to rapturous crescendos and euphoric highs.
Losers have evolved, from a collaborative remix project, to releasing a guest-laced album, and now taking up the mantle of a uniquely enigmatic tech-rock act that play is if they have scores to settle.
With so many bands resting on their laurels, lapping up airplay, selling their souls and watching the money roll in, Losers once again cast themselves as the outsiders, choosing to embrace change, facing a turning point and embracing it whole-heartedly.
If the music industry is really in decline, expect Losers to adapt and survive by any means necessary.
but many people that i know do, and i will still find myself flicking through the pages of absurd, lowest common denominator news and celebrity tittle tattle
so it is with some surprise that i occasionally find The Sun actually broaching a serious subject that more people need to be aware of, it is just such a shame that the real story they should be covering is always so brief
it was also in 2010 that i read a short article regarding Black Eyed Peas head honcho, producer and solo artist, Will.i.am, admitting that he was suffering from tinnitus, a high pitched ringing in the ears that is caused by prolonged exposure to loud music, and is common among musicians, DJs, clubbers and gig-goers
and then, just last week, almost perfectly timed to coincide with the annual campaign to highlight the causes and prevention of Tinnitus, N-Dubz lead and now solo-artist, Dappy revealed that due to his severe tinnitus he has now had small speakers installed around his bed to play soothing background noises, so that he is less aware of the constant ringing that is most obvious, and often frustrating, when you realise that you can no longer hear 'silence'.
of course, the newspaper was more interested in getting there jolleys by mocking his band's music and thinking up a shockingly bad rhyming headline rather than providing any real support or advice for anyone that may find themselves in a similar situation to Will.i.am and Dappy.
suffering since 2004 myself, i was relieved when i was first handed a leaflet about earplugs while at Glastonbury, not feeling quite so alone and happy to be pointed in the right direction for where to find advice and suitable hearing protection
and i believe that as a duty to fans and gig goers, more should be said about the causes and effects of Tinnitus so that people can hopefully spot the signs early enough to spare themselves the fate shared by not only Dappy and Will.i.am, but also Bono, Trent Reznor, Pete Townsend and Moby, among many others
perhaps it is slightly old fashioned to pass on a demo CD to someone.
i like to think of it as nostalgic instead.
and this is the story of how, with clammy palms, i handed over my CD to Eddy Temple Morris yesterday:
so perhaps my own self-promotion has been a little bit lax of late, perhaps my own musical work ethic has been a little lax of late, i have become accustomed to the truth of the mater that these things will happen when moving into a home, my own home, with the other half (well, half hers too actually)
the spare bedroom has one blue wall and one white wall that i have taken it upon myself to paint, the remaining wall is still that nasty possible-magnolia-really? colour that it has been since we moved in, i would have painted it except she has talked about stripping the textured wall paper from the walls and i don't want to have painted it all for nothing
and yes, the room does actually have four walls, but one is entirely taken up by fitted wardrobes, although i did once consider painting them
but this isn't a case of decoration, this is more a matter that i fully intend to move all my kit into that room and it become my little haven to hide in and create whilst she watches television downstairs, but for now the computer still sits around downstairs, leaving my creativity rather stunted when she turns the tv on
plus, once you consider all the time i actually end up watering the garden, cleaning this, washing that, cooking something, and a whole bunch of other household chores that i hadn't really anticipated yet feel duty bound to complete so i don't end up living in a complete shit hole, there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to fire up the machine and start manipulating sounds
and with all this repeatedly happening since last september, why should i waste an opportunity to burn a number of tracks i am proudest of and pass them along to one of my all-time musical heroes?!
Eddy TM would be DJing as part of Akira The Don's album launch party, and Eddy TM is a DJ that i have huge love and huge respect for, and i am extremely proud that he has played one of my remixes on his long running Xfm show, aptly named The Remix
so i pondered the structure of the CD, settling on an equal mix of original material and remixes, including The Enemy remix that he had already aired, and a rejigged Akira The Don track, since it only seemed appropriate
now, i have been training myself to not act like a complete fanboy when meeting famous people, but those that i hold in the highest esteem still cause an outbreak of hysterics in me, and it was no different when Eddy walked past me, i wasn't even facing him, and yet i felt his prescence (or perhaps caught him in the corner of my eye) and my heart skipped a beat
the plan was to grab a little chat with him and try and retain a sense of composure, but the gig moved swiftly and i would have felt that i was disrespecting the performer and Eddy himself if i tried to catch his attention and hold a conversation during a gig
and so there was nothing left to do but approach him whilst he DJed, seriously, the guy is a consummate professional, graciously accepting the CD from me and even holding a slightly disjointed rhetoric as he cued up and mixed tracks whilst observing that i wasn't going anywhere just yet
i introduced myself, told him how much i thought of him, allowed him to do what he had to do, and then continued to tell him that he had played a track of mine before, at which point Eddy took a little more notice, looking over the almost unreadable tracklisting in the poor lighting and acknowledging that, yeah, he remembered it
he then remarked that he thought we had met before, blimey! either he is an extremely gracious person making a lucky guess, but i believe that i saw recognition in his eyes, i didn't expect for him to remember at all, it must have been a good couple of years ago at least, but i'll quite happily live with the belief that Eddy TM not only is a great DJ, but also a great human being with superhuman skills of recollection
we briefly discussed the artwork of the promo, that he loved, and that i admitted to half-inching and not really being able to claim as my own, and then i said i would leave him to it, he had a job to do after all, and i left beaming...
i hope that he will give it a listen and i hope that he will enjoy it, i would be bloody ecstatic if he saw fit to air anything from it but that is regardless, the most important thing is that he is something of a hero of mine and that in the two brief moments that i have been able to converse with him, Eddy has been nothing less than a complete gentleman and an all-round nice guy
and i couldn't ask for anything more than that when meeting a personal hero
