Music I Farted Out

Our esteemed columnist wonders why it is he isn’t more famous, musically speaking. We whistle, scuff the dirt and look in the other direction

Illustration: Steve appleton

Multiple choice question. Pay attention. One: am I an internationally renowned songwriter who’s penned hits for Adele, Autechre and Crazy Frog. Or two: am I a failed techno musician who masks bitter self-loathing with “witty” egotistical columns for leading electronic music magazines? Yeah, you guessed it. I’m an unsuccessful knob-twiddler who writes diatribes about more successful artists in the name of journalism. My jealousy is so acidic, you could pour it on your chips.

I had piano lessons as a kid, fancied myself as the new Mozart. There was something so human about an upright piano and I loved the mathematics of musical notation. Then rave happened. Rave taught me that all old things were rubbish, so I tipped my stupid piano into a river. Even now, there’s a swan somewhere downstream playing ‘Chopsticks’. I grabbed myself a copy of Ableton and let the pixels do the work. Finding the groove through incremental mouse clicks is in every way as human and as mathematical as a piano score.

These days you can release music on a paper aeroplane and still call it an album, so I signed up to Bandcamp and thought of a name for myself. I wanted something that sounded a bit mysterious, a bit Conan Doyle, so I plumped for Hounds of Hulme. Hulme is home of the classic night Herbal Tea Party where I used to dance like a tasered hippo.

You can have a listen to the music I farted out: it’s still there. A bit 1990s dour, a few too many presets, but some interesting samples and every beat constructed from scratch. In one year, I blurted out 20 tracks including a passable ‘Call Me Maybe’ drum ’n’ bass cover.

Since then? The creative flow dried up. Turn on the tap now and all you’ll get is dust. Paf. While that swan’s happily playing ‘The Entertainer’ to a simpering audience of quacking ducks, all I have are a million failed attempts to be half-good again. Everything I produce is yawnsome and crap. I wish I could throw my Ableton program into a river.

And so it’s back to my egotistical columns and writing about successful acts, something I’ve done for 25 years and something that will never let me down. That Gary Numan, huh? What a loser. Jeez. He’s literally worse than a piano-playing swan. That’s “witty”, isn’t it. Really, really “witty”. Sigh.

0 Shares:
You May Also Like
Read More

Mullet Mickey’s Taste Emporium

Our so-called columnist walks an ever-decreasing fine line between having a job and, well, how to put this? not having a job. Here he wins our Annual first mention of Xmas competition, by some distance…
Read More

Loyal Readers

This month, our regular columnist has locked himself away in the stationery cupboard with a huge pile of letters from readers…
Read More

Hegemony Of Beige

LISTS, LISTS and more LISTS. We’re drawing mighty close to that time of year. But our Fats has had enough already. He will 1) Not make any lists this year 2) Or maybe he will… 3) What? Oh…
Read More

Right in the Peepers

If you find yourself standing next to our professed columnist at a gig – trust us, you’ll know – we’d advise you to calmly sidle away…