Music video for 4 U 2 M8 M3 0 here: vimeo.com/703357625


I moved to Berlin in 2016, and promptly began drinking on the daily again. While working in Film/TV, I was introduced to a lot of new music throughout the day and spent my evenings hanging out in parks and on rooftops with members of the South Berlin underground hip hop scene.

From 2016 to 2017 I lived in the Rubensstraße and made some of the most sinister and pointlessly-but-insistingly inaccessible music of my life; current as of January 2022 (I can't vouch for my future self).

This was a confusing and turbulent time in my life. I met a lot of people who would later be very important to me, but also spent an awful lot of time in very messed up places, company and situations. I was in hospitals, police stations and dealer's homes more times than I care to admit. I worked in Film, TV and the medical sector while myself being a dramatic, unhealthy mess. I was lost.

I'd find notes, songs, pictures and people in my flat upon waking up, and not remember where they came from. Booting up my 2006 MacBook in the morning to find a text file open with a conversation between myself and my unconscious. I wasn't meditating or doing anything positive for my mental health like that, and all my raw creative power was channeled in fucked-up harmony with an immense chaos and destruction. Somehow I survived physically, was a well-meaning if challenging member of my social circle, paid my bills, changed jobs as I wished....and made as much music as possible.

I'd been introduced to Radiohead around 2016 and this opened new roads of artistry to me. My guitar was once again my primary songwriting instrument, and I regularly practiced singing for the first time since 2013. Inspired by Thom Yorke, I embraced the inherent weirdness of my voice, which had always prevented me from truly committing to the higher part of my range, and falsetto.

The chord progressions and harmonic movement lack real polish and coherency (to my ears) but begin to show a freedom of movement and more unique nature, informed by 11 years of guitar playing (at this point) and compositional studies in jazz, avant-pop and contemporary classical music.

Opener Run U begins with a sound collage I also used on Sevilla (BMus Experiments - 2014) and rapidly moves into a guitar riff I recorded drunk on Sean Savage's Jack Daniels, and with his telecaster, while staying at his and Tristans in 2016. To this day it's one of the nicest guitar sounds I've ever recorded DI, and as soon as I had some disposable income (not until 2019) I would pick up a tele myself. The lyrics are fairly standard insecure ego-boasting "I swear, don't ever try to fucking test me, cos I will run you into the ground" but also self-referential; "you might by now have understood I take it too far" I sing, over a beat which is certainly too far into wonky territory to be enjoyed by the majority of humankind. I wish I had notated the chords or a tab of the guitar I played on there, cos it's one of my favourite guitar parts I've ever written - but alas, back then I was too chaotic for that.

Obviously Fake was written in my mate Marius's room while he was at work after overnighting because my flatmate was being too loud for me - I wrote it on a lovely M-Audio the editor at my then-workplace had given me, ever-so kindly. Shout out to you, Suraj! You can hear an ambulance in the background - those were constantly running down the Rubensstraße, in which we both lived. During this time I was going through a bit of a psychosis - I found it hard to see anything as real, and the lyrics reflect this mind-state. The instrumentation is sparse, haunting, and inaccessible. I'm proud of the harmonic structure though, because it's the kind of thing I always wanted to write up until then, but was either too devoid of imagination or skill. This was one of the first times I wrote something which was mildly atonal while still having functional and related harmonic development, and not just aggressively chromatic.

I was busting out my trusty Ibanez again. Often, I'd sit on my bed, with the window open, and play guitar in tune with the courtyard's many birds. In between chasing up the **** from the repair shop after spilling red wine onto my MacBook (he took over a year, and closed shop shortly after I got my MacBook back - unfixed) I made a few tunes, starting to get the hang of mixing acoustic and electronic elements in a more smooth style than what we heard on Paul Snow (2014). I was beginning to get my mojo down, even if my mental health was still catastrophic.

Will U is a little snippet I bounced at some point, from a track I never finished. It's a welcome palate-cleanser after the juxtaposition of bombast and introversion. I Want This To Be Over and Ina are both tracks I started in London - you can hear how firmly IWTTBO is rooted in bass music, and the Goldsmiths rehearsal room piano is all over Ina - but after Paul Snow (2014), and fit nicely to move this album to a close. Blood In Her Hair is a truly schizophrenic medley (I actually suffered from schizophrenia, so don't try to cancel me, it's not used in a derogatory style) and 4 U 2 M8 M3 0 an homage to Radiohead, and cosmic unity.

Hash closes the album, an improvised piano piece recorded in the Goldies rehearsal rooms. I love the background sounds of the other students in the neighbouring rooms - thus the album begins and closes with field recordings.

All in all, rooted in electronica/bass styles, with a healthy dose of romantic whiney vocals. Years of unresolved personal issues are ever present as intense inner anguish - the breakdown of I want this to Be Over, all of Ina's claustrophobic, fragile production, the melodies and delivery of I Don't Think You're Listening and Knives In. Speaking of which, I'm not sure what I was on when I recorded that, but I hope I never take it again.....