Greetings From Shitsville.... London

Lets cut straight to the chase here, I FUCKING hate London!!! It stinks, its depressing, its far too overcrowded, no-one seems to have any respect for each other, its quite possibly one of the loneliest places in Britain, if not the whole world.

For some almost unfathomable reason, people actually seem to love the place. Brits flock there in search of all the excitement and opportunity that our nation's capital has to offer. People from all over the world move to London in search of a better life. Tourists and travellers are constantly drawn to the place, wanting to experience what they perceive to be the pinnacle of British culture.

There's an old cockney sing-song that goes something along the lines of "Maybe its because I'm a Londoner that I love London town." I can see no legitimate reason why anyone would love London unless that's all they've ever known, or their life outside of London is so completely and utterly shit that the "Arse-end of England" is actually an improvement. I guess there are worse places in the world to be, but there are certainly a great number of better places too.

Its true that to some extent London is the pinnacle of British culture, there are things I love about this country such as the cultural diversity, the music, the arts, our great number of scientific advancements and achievements. London has all of these things taken to extremes. You only have to take a walk along Camden to see the more alternative side of British culture in full effect, to some it looks a lot like a freak-show, but for many of those that frequent the place its the perfect location to express their individuality.

On the other hand, London is also the epitome of everything that is wrong with Britain and for that matter much of western culture. Its the hub of big business and corporate industry. A city built upon a capitalist foundation, where the only way to survive is to work hard, spend hard, conform and consume. Wherever you go in London you are bombarded with advertising of some sort. Everyone wants your money, whether that be for the latest product, fast food, memorabilia or useless tat that serves only to feed our indoctrinated need to keep spending, those that sell are unrelenting in their constant pursuit of custom.

Often its obvious and unavoidable, many times its far more subliminal. The voiceover at the mall by Victoria station constantly repeats the same refrain: "Hungry? Thirsty? Why not try one of our delicious refreshments?" (correct me if I'm wrong on the exact wording but the message is principally the same). Do people even notice it anymore? Businessmen with their laptops, mobile phones and other great technical accessories send out a clear message that social status is directly connected to the gadgets they carry around, endorse and rely upon. Adverts on the tube trains declare that the average Londoner wakes up 44 minutes earlier than the rest of the UK (6:04 am) like that's something everyone there should be proud of, a prime example of the degree of dedication only found in the capital, while the rest of Britain is populated by lazy part-timers destined to under-achieve and ultimately fall behind in our modern fast-paced hi-tech society.

Traveling at peak time on the London Underground is possibly one of the most unpleasant experiences known to man. Millions of wage-slaves packed, squashed and compressed into dirty, underground stations and dense, sweaty trains. Everyone eager to get where they've got to go with no regard or respect for anyone else. All just cogs in the great big corporate machine. No-one smiles, no-one talks, every day our self-respect and dignity is reduced little by little until we all passively accept that our lives are ultimately worthless and miserable, so we conform.

Control is such a huge part of London, through advertising, routine and misery everyone is forced to adapt to the system. London's other great weapon is intimidation, if ever there was a prime example of Britain turning into an Orwellian, dystopian, police state then London is it. The law is everywhere, the minute you step off a train at Paddington the welcoming committee is there in full uniform with sniffer dogs. What sort of enforcement is this? Are they there to protect the individuals, or simply to search and possibly arrest otherwise innocent people, guilty only of smoking a joint before they left home in the morning? In a city that brings everyone down on a daily basis, the law is there to ensure that no-one dares to consider such an illicit pleasure while attempting to lead a "normal" life.

The police presence is only one part of the authoritarian nature of London law enforcement. CCTV is in abundance throughout the capital. Cameras are everywhere, there is no privacy. Whatever we do, we are always being watched. Security in London is big business, don't believe that these cameras are passively recording you for your own protection. They exist to control and intimidate, just like the police, just like the advertising, just like the underground.

Someone visiting from one of the more civilised areas of Britain may find that people in London are rude, disrespectful and to some extent unpleasant. Its not the fault of the individual, everyone's just trying to adapt as they go about their daily business. This is the lifestyle they lead, for many that's all they've ever known. I could imagine that many Londoners would find the somewhat more laidback pace of the rest of the country dull or boring. Its a sad shame for those people. For the tourist visiting England, London offers many things to do and sights to see. It does not offer a true representation of the country. The North of England is vastly different, the Westcountry is far more relaxed and laidback. London is what it is, but it isn't the be-all and end-all.

The idea that London is the place to be is a self-propagating myth. Many talk about the music scene in London to the extent where it is the only city in which great success can be achieved, for the most part this is true, but it can also be where the greatest failures occur. Spend too long in London and one may very well lose all motivation and love for music, maybe even the will to live.

Once again, I FUCKING hate London. I could never live there, nor would i ever want to. Its a truly horrible, miserable place. For the millions of people that call it home, i have great sympathy. There's a lot of things wrong in this world, London is one of them.

Music Snobs

I hated music when i was at school! Not music itself, i've always loved that. I hated the subject of music that i was taught at school. I hated the lessons, they were boring and i hated the teacher. He was just an old classical guy who by the tail end of the 80s had finally come to accept that The Beatles had actually contributed something good to the world, but otherwise had no time for rock, hip-hop, dance or any other contemporary styles of music.

Music snobbery exists on so many levels, we can all feel united, whether rocker or raver, in knowing that that there are old-fashioned classical music snobs who just don't get what we are about and for some reason think that they are somehow superior to us. Our uncultured music with shouty angsty lyrics and/or loud guitars and/or repetitive beats is so beneath them. Its like the class system all over again.

Its not just classical types that have this snobbery though, its everywhere. There are many musicians who look down on producers because they don't play instruments, like that is the only definition of someones musical credentials. How long did it take DJs to get recognition as performers and not just human jukeboxes? Even now you have old skool vinyl DJs looking down on MP3 DJs, claiming it to be cheating. There are still a great number of instrument-playing musicians who find it difficult to recognise that triggering loops, tweeking filters and firing off synth sounds is actually a real form of musical performance.

Still it gets worse, even in the world of electronica you've got hardware snobs that look down on software musicians, claiming some sort of superiority because at least their synths and samplers are proper pieces of equipment rather than the virtual mouse-clicking USB-controlled inferiority on a laptop screen software producers use. Mac users look down on PC users, blindly believing that Apple are great and Macs are always stable even though they crash a lot and don't have that good old ctrl-alt-del that Windows users are all too familiar with. And to top it all off, the vast majority of producers that don't use Reason look down on those that do, even though there's been some genuinely great music made in that particular program.

So where does that leave the poor producer making dubstep in Reason on a Dell PC? Surely he can respect, admire and possibly even envy the skill of a talented guitarist. No doubt he would love to have a studio full of Korg and Roland synths, but simply can't afford it. Maybe he's listened to a few old Beethoven symphonies and appreciated the depth of composition involved. Theres no snobbery there, no feeling like he has some sort of musical status against his aforementioned superiors.

Its quite a humble place to be really, and possibly one of the truest. Doesn't much of the best music come from artists in the lowest places? If a bedroom producer has no-one to lord it over and feel superior to, isn't it fair to say they are doing it for the love of the music? In many ways the attention to detail and intricate level of composition in many pieces of electronic music is far closer to classical than the simple verse-chorus-verse 3-chord songwriting of many instrumentalist musicians.

Music can be the great unifier yet so often musical differences can cause so many divisions. Understandably people want to surround themselves with people whom they share common interests, yet so many times this leads to people excluding others whom they feel don't fit with their idea of whats right. I mention this hierarchy of musicians here, but lets not forget all the music lovers out there that actually just enjoy listening to good music without feeling any desire to play an instrument or write songs themselves. Are these people any less worthy of being defined as musical? Surely not. The fans are often the best critics, it doesn't matter whether they can play or not.

Music snobbery is an unfortunate reality, but it achieves nothing. There are so many tools available to people to make the music they like, there is no right or wrong. So long as people keep making good music and we all keep enjoying it, surely that's all that matters.

Music Industry Bullshit: Its All The Same

It all sounds the bloody same!!!

How many times have we heard people say that? Whether its indie kids complaining about hip-hop, metal kids criticizing dance music, junglists dissing techno or old people moaning about more or less any form of modern music, the "it all sounds the same" argument gets thrown around quite a lot. For the most part there's some truth in it.

Lets look at the pop charts, here we have an endless stream of "artists" manufactured to some extent to fit perfectly into a particular sound and sell as many records as possible. It may be middle of the road whiny alt-pop like Coldplay making sombre depressing music for people that have never really known true misery, gangsta-pop rappers like 50 Cent knocking out the same lyrics about girls, guns and money over identikit beats, obviously manufactured all-style-no-substance pop stars like Lady Ga-Ga singing generic auto-tuned hits about how sexy they are or any one of the hundreds of NME-favoured/Kerrang!-endorsed, rock/punk/indie/emo bands churning out teen-angst anthems for kids too young to remember Kurt Cobain yet treating him like some sort of saint.

Its always the same, find a formula that works and repeat until no-one cares any more then move onto the next big thing. Record company executives take no shame in their blatant destruction of music art in the name of big business.

Of course, we're all freethinking underground people, we can laugh at how rubbish the music industry is, but are we really any better? Take any genre and you will find the same thing happening on a smaller scale. Producers knocking out formulaic tunes, using the same sample packs and software synths as each other. The beats rarely deviate from the established template, the structure is generally the same. Maybe its that 4/4 techno kick with a few sequenced arps or acid loops, that current favourite that is sidechained bass or pads, the wobbly bassline and half-step beats in the occasionally original dubstep scene, reece and amen tearouts in drum n bass, i could go on.

With vinyl sales dwindling and digital downloads hardly showing much in the way of profits its not entirely surprising that record labels, both large and small, are reluctant to invest time and money into artists that deviate too far from the tried and tested. Major labels are finding that the only stuff that sells in large quantities are those indistinguishable, glossy manufactured pop acts, or those artists already well established in their own right. Similarly, independent labels are only really interested in finding acts that fit comfortably in their genre specific roster. Dance labels want tunes that will work well on a dancefloor and hopefully sell to enough DJs for it to be worth the investment, hence the focus on stuff that sounds like the stuff thats already being played. Even many of the most experimental of dance labels have found their own particular flavour of experimentation to stick to.

So, yeah... It does all sound the same. Why is this pissing me off so much?

Honestly, i have sent copies of the new EP out to all sorts of electronic/breakbeat labels, some well established, others less so. Not one of those fuckers has bothered to get back to me, no feedback at all. I spent hours listening to practically identical breaks tunes on trackitdown.net trying to find labels that might just be interested in the Infected Minds sound. Very few... And most of those were foreign. Its all just the same old shit, it really does all sound the fucking same! Actually its depressing to hear the amount of tunes being released with the same beat, the same "Brutal Electro" synth sounds, the same old Vengeance samples. Does no-one care about innovating anymore?

Well, fuck em! I thought for a while before that i wanted to release my own shit, retain full control over my music. Kinda got talked out of that mindset, but since none of the labels i've tried want to know, then i've got no choice.

And you know what, i quite like it this way. At least i can put Deadline out at a reasonable price now. Its a bit late for the summer but better late than never. I know its gonna involve a lot more work for me but thats the way it goes. I've got a few things on for the rest of the week, but if all goes to plan Deadline will be out to download very soon for a good price. I need some decent cover art if anyone cares to donate some, but aside from that its ready to go.

Ahhh, how to end a pretty angry post on a positive note.

Peace, all. Shaun. X

Boredom- The Great Pacifier

You ever get that feeling when you just want something to happen? Anything... You know you could go out and do something, make some excitement for yourself but you just can't be arsed.

That's boredom for you. I shouldn't complain really, i've had a couple of great weekends recently. Thjis year's Glade was probably the best yet, Secret Garden Party turned out to be another great festie aswell. Its not like i've been sat around twiddling my thumbs for the last month. Nevertheless there is a real feeling of boredom. I've even found it hard to muster up the energy to actually sit here and type.

I've said it before, misery breeds apathy. Its like i'm actually too bored to even complain about boredom. I could blame the weather, actually to a great extent i do blame the weather. Once again Britain is suffering another shit summer, its grey and wet outside just like yesterday and no doubt the same as tomorrow. A little bit of sunshine does wonders, no such luck here then.

Being skint sucks! I can't afford to do anything interesting, i can't afford a social life. All i can do is sit here and feel bad as my not-very-profitable business goes down the pan. Even that's a catch-22, working in a dead-end job for some faceless corporation is surely one of the most depressing, soul destroying, worthless ways to spend your time yet it seems the simplest way right now to relieve boredom and earn money.

What about my music then? Well, i'm still trying (albeit not hard enough) to get this last EP signed. I've got some ideas i'm working on for new stuff but nothing even close to finished. Oh well...

So what was the point of me posting all this, then? I'm not really too sure, to be honest. I just wanted to try and do something. Its all too easy to just sit here and follow the same routines as every other day. Its a vicious circle. The title sums it all too well, boredom is the great pacifier, a self-perpetuating sedative. Sometimes it feels like the only way to relieve the boredom is to do something else equally boring and uninspiring.

Anyway, thats enough for today. I reckon its time i got on and actually did something interesting! I promise to cheer up next time you hear from me.

Shaun