My Music

How I Got Into Playing Music

ah yes memories of the parque wooden floor and the smell of books I have been making music since I was a wee whippersnapper many moons ago, starting with recorder lessons in infant school at the age of around 5? followed by piano lessons following my seventh birthday. What made me want to take up the piano? Well we used to have school assembly and I remember watching the headmistress Mrs Jones playing hymns and other songs on the piano and it looked like fun. In fact, if you asked me at the time what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said for a period of time at least, 'headmaster' and when asked why, you would get the answer 'because they play the piano'. There were the usual hymns sung in school 'All things bright and beautiful', 'Give me oil in my lamp' etc. but there were also other songs too, from songbooks, they were wide and binded together. I sadly can't remember the names of them now, apart from one, 'Okki-Tokki-Unga' and I actually managed to find a copy on eBay a few years ago. You can view some pictures of the book and some of the songs I remember from it here. I started playing with a keyboard that I borrowed from my cousin before eventually getting an upright Rushworth & Draper piano in the summer of 1994. My piano teacher came around to tune it with playing that would make one's hair stand on end. The piano would stay in the house until 2000 when my auntie and uncle took it after I had lost interest in playing following the sad death of my piano teacher. Rewinding a little to 1997, on my 11th birthday my parents bought me an acoustic guitar from the sadly missed 'Boogie Sounds' in Ellesmere Port - a cool guitar shop back when the town centre wasn't such a depressing desolate dumping ground. I had a few lessons in school from what I can only describe as a short-tempered guitar teacher, he was very hot headed indeed, he taught a group of us in the assembly hall - about six of us. It was for sure 1997 as he was harping on at us about teaching us Candle In The Wind (the big song of the time following the death of princess Diana) and someone else in the group was into Cast wanting to learn Free Me. He taught us how to play 'Happy Birthday' (G, A, D7, G) and 'Green Onions' younger me had never heard of (I was 11 give me a break). People naturally wanted to learn Wonderwall because we were still in the cool britpop/indie era. I'm not quite sure how long the lessons lasted, there were maybe six or eight of them, but eventually we all got fed up of his tantrums, teaching wasn't his forte it seems, and we approached the headmistress Mrs Jones coyly telling her we felt uncomfortable around him, and the hot-headed man - a man probably in his late 30s/40s, with a wart on his face and brown medium length hair, stormed out never to be seen again.

1998 was and will probably remain forever, the most prolific year of my music making. I formed several bands with friends and we would record songs in my Dad's shed on a Toshiba ghetto blaster after we found out we could record using it! I loved the idea of making albums and there was no stopping me for months. Across the several bands that year, the most prolific being The Boysi, I must have recorded 30 albums easy. All on cassette tape. Sadly many of these recordings are now lost forever, though some have survived and I have backed up digitally. It is quite funny listening to them now of course, the recording quality is crude and the quality of the songwriting and musicianship for that matter but they are a nice time capsule and some of the ideas we had are actually semi-decent! In 2026, I actually ran a couple of tracks through Suno AI and yielded some interesting results!

I continued to use the Toshiba in 1999 through to 2002 for various projects until I decided it no longer was sufficient, whilst it certainly recorded audio - it didn't do it in the best quality and was no match for a dedicated 4-track recorder or indeed an 8-track or a day in the studio! I began piano lessons again briefly in 2000/2001 but they didn't really go anywhere, then I began having bass guitar lessons. It was in 2002 I believe (or it could have been 2001) that I joined my first school band - it went through numerous line-up changes and names, I initially started out on piano, one of the early names of the band was Forth Rail, it eventually became Non-Applicable and I moved from playing piano to drums in September 2002 after winging it the other people in the band and myself included actually thought I was pretty good considering I'd had no drum lessons. You can read more about the band on the page linked above so I won't go into more detail here. Non-Applicable eventually folded and emerged with a slightly different line up as the metal band Five Days Of Static where I would remain on drums. The music wasn't really my cup of tea, but I just loved playing the drums and it was good fun playing gigs (not to mention the attention it gained me from girls!). The band released two EP's and eventually folded in 2004. I began playing bass again and grew my hair out to the longest it's ever been, because, when you are 17 apparently you experiment with things like that. It lasted a few months before I got it cut short again as I found it quite annoying. During this time I briefly joined a band with school mates called Greatest Hits and we had a few good ideas but it never really took off. In summer 2004 I joined another band called Just For Kicks, we did some demos and recorded a track titled 4 AM where I sang and played bass. We didn't do any gigs. Another band followed called Almost Vital - we did some rehearsals and never wrote any songs if I recall correctly, I remember us covering the then-new track American Idiot by Green Day but the project fizzled out after a few months. I did some solo stuff in 2005 but never released anything publically, nothing happened until 2007 when I joined a punk/ska band called The Shelltones. We were pretty immature and mucked about, did some practices and some gigs in local pubs eventually recording an E.P. titled Don't Drop The Soap. You can read more about that band here. The band went on/off hiatus for a number of years, to this day we have never formally split, though our last gig took place I believe in 2018.

Another period of relative musical inactivity followed, I did a pretty awful solo project called K-Mex releasing a single and an album which I no longer share as it is pretty poor quality. Then in 2011 I began a new solo project Night Operations releasing an E.P. and three albums until 2020, eventually singing to Salford indie-label German Shepherd Records though I did no gigs besides promoting the first E.P. In 2012 I formed an electronic-duo called Exchange fusing chorus bass guitar with keyboards and synthesisers heavily inspired by New Order who we were heavily into at the time (and still are!). The band did some gigs eventually recruiting a third member on drums which really boosted the sound live. We released a handful of singles and two full length albums which you can still stream and download here. The band were prolific in releasing material during their short lifespan before ending in 2014. In the middle of the Exchange era, I joined an indie/alternative band called KIT B (standing for "Knowledge Is The Bomb"). We released some singles and EP's and did some gigs including the Kendal Calling festival in 2016. After musical differences/disagreements I left the band in late 2017. After this time I focused on Night Operations recording and releasing more albums until 2020's final album Protocol.

In 2022 I re-united with KIT B singer Danny Cusick after he had put the band on hiatus to form a new ambient-electronic project Stereo Listening Booth. We released the debut album Disko Noir in 2025 and did a low-key gig in Manchester. We are currently working on our second album with plans for more live dates in the future. In 2025 I launched a new solo project after retiring Night Operations, titled The Nexus Element. I released a single and an album in late 2025. You can read more about this project here and listen, stream and download here.

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