At the end of 2020, in the dark days of the winter lockdown, I wrote a blog post titled The Year That Wasn’t. Now, what feels like a lifetime later, I’m looking back on a year that most definitely, for me, was. A lot has happened, and it’s been hugely stressful at times, but for the most part, it has been positive.
So here are a few things about 2024…
Living On My Own
This past year has been the first time that I have – officially and for the long term – lived alone. After years of sharing, it was time, and I’ve loved it. It made sense to get a city centre flat with our space (The Imaginarium) being where it is.
One of my close friends has lived in the same complex for a long time, and I remember being round at his, at some point last year, and saying that a place like his gaff would be perfect for me. I hadn’t realised how affordable the flats were.
Another friend had a contact who worked for the company in charge of the flats, and it all went from there.
It’s been nice as well, because within a few months a whole crew of us had got places in the same development, so as far as being sociable goes, it’s the opposite of feeling isolated. One mate described it as ‘like being in halls, but when you’re older, and in a better space’. It’s a good feeling to know that your pals are close by, but to also have your own gaff. I like to hang out with my friends, but I also like my own company, and I do a lot of things – writing and music, for example – that are better accomplished when there is nobody else there. I am rarely lonely or bored. In fact, the only times I’ve truly felt lonely have been when I’ve been in the company of other people. I think the most horribly alone I’ve felt in my adult life was when I lived with my ex, because he was always there, and I guess that below the superficial things, we had very little in common. That was a dark time. We made each other very unhappy, and for a long time afterwards I was convinced that I never wanted to be in a relationship again. Which is probably a bit extreme, thinking about it now. That actually led to a very funny misunderstanding, because I remember saying this to a friend, and he took it to mean that I was celibate or asexual, and he must have believed that until a passing comment I made in another conversation about a year later. A similar thing happened when I told an old friend who contacted me out of the blue that I didn’t take any mind altering substances at all. This was purely to palm them off in the moment, as they were being bait as fuck, and I meant to explain that shortly afterwards, but then I forgot all about it, and for over two years they believed I was completely straight edge.
Anyway, my flat is lovely. I do go off point when I’m writing – far more so than in conversation. But then I could never talk at the length that I write. I just don’t have it in me to say that much out loud.
Creativity
For a lot of 2023 I existed in a sort of creative void. That was awful. Then it slowly all came back. In a way, that has presented its own frustrations, because I have never been so busy in my life. In my normal state before the creative block happened, I would make endless Keep notes as ideas came to me, often at the most inopportune moments, hence the need for the notes. Most of these, though, if I deemed them worthy, would get done. This year that just hasn’t been possible. I have many notes and very little output. This will change. A lot of it has been down to our wonderful Imaginarium project, and how much time has had to be devoted to it, and also because it’s very hard to do anything that requires no break of concentration whilst working in a record shop. Things have begun to be put in place to make all of this easier, and it will not always be like this. If that was the case, I’d have sacked off the whole thing a long time ago.
When time has allowed, I’ve started working on music again, and I mix again, but drawing and painting – apart from a brief time when I had to make some work for an exhibition – remained mainly gone until very recently. I still don’t create artwork like I used to. I always had a sketchbook to hand back in the way back when. I should just start carrying one around with me again, I guess. Also, there is another psychological factor that hadn’t occurred to me until right now: The exhibition seemed a lovely thing at the time, but ultimately it caused a lot of grief. We struggle as it is, and it ended up costing our collective a lot financially. The costs we incurred far outweighed the little we made from sales. That shouldn’t matter – I didn’t actually expect to sell any work, but it was a stress. Also, far worse – pieces of work went missing, and worst of all it was someone else’s work, not mine. The matter has never been resolved. I ran around in circles getting no answers, and at one point I was so harrowed by it all that I ended up going to bed at 5pm, missing a party I’d been looking forward to for ages, and staying in my bed for over a day, just in this weird limbo state, depressed as fuck. That kind of association can really kill something for you.
On a far more positive note, on the subject of creativity, a friend gifted me a wonderful book: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. It’s such a good read. Also – quite a lovely thing – my friend Marcus has this book, too,and he moved to Australia earlier this year, and he’s living in Melbourne, but had spent the turn of the year in Sydney, with a mutual friend. Anyway, he sent me a photo, from a gorgeous-looking beach – quite the opposite to snowy Leeds, although for me that is nice too, in a different way – of a very battered copy of The Creative Act, which he was reading at the time, asked if I’d finished it, and what I thought, and wished me a happy new year.
Some Other Books I’ve Enjoyed This Year
Very recently, I finished The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. My mate lent me it, and it’s a wonderful read. If you like fiction (I always think I don’t, but I actually read and enjoy quite a lot of it), then I recommend this.
Another recent read was William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘N’ Roll, by Casey Rae, a book that explores Burroughs’ influence on music. I’m going to cheat here and copy and paste from my Instagram post about this book:
As an icon of the counterculture, many 20th century artists cited him as an inspiration, hung out with him, sought him out for collaborations. I’ve actually sampled him talking in three of my tunes. He had such a weird, creepy voice and was so quotable. One of the samples took me so long to find because it was from a documentary that I’d watched when I was twelve, and a few years later it apparently wasn’t available anywhere, not even in the depths of Pirate Bay. I did eventually find it, and the tune I knew needed it was completed. I made a conscious decision to stop sampling Burroughs after the third tune he unknowingly collaborated on with me from beyond the grave, and moved on to my Philip K. Dick phase…
One of my favourite reads this year was Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt. Not a traditional biography, this as much – if not more – tells the life of its author as it does its subject. Peppiatt was a student when he met Bacon, and their friendship lasted until Bacon’s death, over twenty years later. Peppiatt describes his fascination with how Bacon would spend most nights drinking until well into the early hours, and then get up and resume work after just a couple of hours sleep. This struck a chord with me, and I found that a little disturbing – how much I could relate to this person, who I’d always seen as a dark character. Of course, there is nothing immoral about cracking on until dawn and then getting up and doing your day on very little sleep. The only victim in all of this is yourself. But still, I’d never thought of Bacon as somebody I’d feel sympathetic towards, and I did wonder a little what that said about me. Mind you, a while back, somebody said something very confusing to me about Ricardo Villalobos. He said something about very talented people not always being particularly nice, and cited Villalobos as an example. I asked what he meant, as I’d never heard anything like that, and he mentioned Villalobos having been quoted as saying that he stays awake so long sometimes that he gets to the point where he’s scared of going to sleep. I found this quite baffling, because I have no idea how that makes you an unpleasant person. (I also have no idea what the source of this quote is.) Also, I have done some quite spectacular throughers with the person who was telling me this. I never got to the bottom of it, because we were in The Imaginarium when this conversation happened, and someone needed me for something, so I was pulled away from the chat, and every time I’ve seen the friend since, it’s been the furthest thing from my mind. I will say, though, that I understand what Villalobos meant. If he said it. I’ve definitely been in that situation myself. I’m not sure ‘scared’ is exactly the right word to describe how I’ve felt about sleep at times, but I’ve definitely not wanted things to end. Which isn’t bad, really; at worst it’s irresponsible. Also, that said, I am always good at drawing things to a close when I know I have responsibilities. One thing I do – and maybe I shouldn’t – is very much wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to my vices. I think this makes some people think that is my entire life. Which brings me on to…
Living a Balanced Life
I will start by saying that The Imaginarium, while it is a beautiful thing – has been hard. At one point I was doing our bookings, our accounts, our socials, answering endless emails, dealing with various situations (we got reported for misuse of the building and accused of being a garden centre – long story – is just one of these), organising events, working in the shop, and doing a lot of floor shifts (making sure sound etc. is set up and maintained through the night, collecting glasses, helping clean), and also trying to keep up with freelance dev work. Obviously, all of this is a lot, and at its busiest has been to the detriment of a lot of the rest of my life. With the help of other people, things are getting easier, but it did reach a crescendo of absolute doom, where I wondered how on earth I would be able to carry on.
I have not been living a balanced life at all recently. I used to maintain a very decent wholesome to crackhead ratio, but this has gone out of the window somewhat. (Note – I am not actually a crackhead, but you know what I mean.) I am very comfortable with partying. It’s a very positive thing if it’s done for the right reasons, but I’ve also always been a person who enjoys all things that are acceptably wholesome, too. I used to go for lovely walks, go to improvers dance classes, to the gym, and it’s been a long time since I’ve done any of that. I also used to read endlessly – something which is much more rewarding with a straight head – and do things like learn new coding skills or how to use animation software. Stuff like that. I had both the time and inclination to do these things. Also, I have always eaten well. Since I have been able to do so, I have cooked from scratch, and that’s something I’ve always loved doing, partly because it’s possibly the only creative thing I do that has no aim other than itself. Everything else I do always ends up getting out of hand. I had a joke with a mate that I should never buy a pair of rollerskates because I don’t have time to get into having a rollerskating career.
As far as the no wholesome goes, it was probably towards the end of the summer when things started to really go that way. This was for a combination of reasons. I was having to get up really early to do my freelance work so that I’d have time either to do the space’s admin tasks, or to have completed any work before the shop opened. This meant I was often up at 5am. Which I don’t mind sometimes, but to get up at 5am and look at dev work whilst stressed to hell about your other business is a little harrowing. Summer is quiet for music venues, and running a music venue costs a lot of money, so by the time Autumn was coming round, there was a lot of time when I was deeply worried about how we would make ends meet. Things had been alright for a long while, but a combination of factors – which I don’t need to go into – meant that it had not been as easy to ride the storm of the Leeds summer as it should have been. Anyway, when you have a real urgent and pressing anxiety like that, plus work to do outside of that, plus often being in public-facing situations when you are not in the headspace for a chat, and this being your day almost every day, then when it gets to be the night time, and someone suggests a mix or a pint then you jump at that, because it’s something nice after all the argh.
Also, living where I live, with a lot of mates in close proximity, makes for much opportunity for week night shenanigans. At the height of this being slightly out of control, a typical weekday would go something like this:
I’d wake up at five or six, with the first thing on my mind being how we were going to keep our business going. I’d have to put that to one side, though, and crack on with dev work for a few hours. Then it would either be Imaginarium admin, or opening the shop, or doing some admin and then going to the shop. I’d try to get some tasks done whilst there, but that’s hard because firstly you have to keep changing the records, and secondly because people come in. Both of which are good, obviously, but they limit the things you can tick off your task list. On Thursday nights we’d have something on at the space, and I’d usually have to be there for that. Other days, I’d go home for a bit, try and get a few more things done, then either work until late, or at some point in the evening someone would message and ask what I was up to. Then it would be the early hours, and I’d find myself having a lovely time with my good pals, knowing that in two or three hours I’d be waking up in the same state of horror as I’d experienced at the start of that day…
… That is just not sustainable. It’s a constant cycle of two extremes with nothing in between and no down time. The weekends, I’m fine with. I’ve often said that dancing in a club is actually quite healthy if done right. That is, if you mainly drink water and don’t do coke. And I am not suggesting the impossible here as the latter isn’t really my tipple at all. I mean, you’re basically exercising with short breaks for six or so hours. If that was a gym class probably nobody would sign up for it. And the sesh – again, if done right, is a positive thing involving creativity, bonding, exploration and adventures. But yeah, humans need down time.
Festivals
I finally made it to Gottwood. I won’t repeat myself – the last blog post I made was about that, and if you so wish, you can read it here.
Also – obviously – I went to Houghton, which as ever, was magical.
We were a somewhat depleted Leeds crew compared to previous years, but there were still lots of us. Also, my good pal Nel was there. Nel is one of the nicest people you could meet, and he moved to Australia quite a long while ago now, so it’s a golden thing to be able to spend time with him. He’d never been to Houghton – he got his visa granted right before the second one – and thankfully, after us all going on about it, he wasn’t disappointed. It was awesome having him there. I like to end the festival at the Terminus, and I went in for the second time late on the Saturday (or early hours Sunday), with a big crew of Leeds folk, arriving at the start of Oriana‘s awesome set. Three of us had decided that was us and we’d be staying in there until the end, but both of those guys ended up feeling a bit worse for wear so I did a good few hours on my tod, and with various groups of friends who came in and left again. It really is the most beautiful place. In the middle of all of those trees, and the sound, and also the luxury of having an actual floor to dance on. For a few days of the year, that is probably the greatest dancefloor in the world.
A couple of observations… firstly big ups to Houghton for putting a snack bar in the Terminus. A banana every few hours was a really nice thing to be able to have. Second, some of the security guys were mental! Generally, the security at Houghton are very sound, but there was this one particular guy – my God, what a jobsworth! And he was so sour, it was actually entertaining. He was manning the first gate of the queue and he kept ordering us to get into single file and complaining about the music. Then, when we were right at the front, and chatting about football, he expressed his strong dislike for that, too. I asked him if he liked anything, to which he replied:
“Rugby, because people get hurt.”
What a guy!
This same guy, later on, was manning the dancefloor, and I don’t know what he had done to his hair, but it looked mad. Basically, it was all swept forward and looked like it had been gelled into place. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it didn’t go unobserved by other people either. At one point, I got so fixated by the spectacle that I lost all focus on the music. I insisted that my mate get a video so I could recap later and make sure I wasn’t just tripping.
I did 24 hours in the Terminus. At one point I realised that I’d been dancing non stop for maybe eight hours, and that it isn’t good to do the same exercise constantly for that long, so I went up to the top and did some stretches, which baffled some bystanders at first, and then I explained and they joined in. Early Sunday evening I thought about going back out into the rest of the festival, because I didn’t want to end Houghton without seeing Nel. I’d made him promise that he’d do the Terminus at some point, but there was no sign of him, so I decided I’d do another couple of hours, and then leave if he hadn’t come in. At that point, all my friends were elsewhere. I did think it was likely they’d come by, as a lot of people go to the Terminus at the end, but also people are put off by the queue. With all that in mind, I was just on the point of making an exit from paradise, when a big bunch of Leeds heads appeared, and then Nel and his crew. It was a lovely end to the festival.
The Imaginarium
As much as I’ve ranted about how it has eaten my life, The Imaginarium has been a wonderful project, and it is something that I’ll do anything to keep going – part of the reason, I guess, that it has been gruelling at times.
The parties and the getting to sift through some wonderful job lots of vinyl in Plant & Deck aside, the thing about it that is really wonderful is the sense of community. Friends of mine who didn’t know each other have met and formed their own friendships, I’ve made new friends, and become close to people who before I just knew in passing. One of the nicest things that we do is our producers’ collective, where people can bring in their own productions and listen to them on our club system, and get feedback and inspiration from other producers. This was an idea that isn’t original – other people in Leeds have done similar – and I think it’s occurred to a few of us separately. It came to me for us to do this last year when me and Phil were listening to our tracks through the old system. I thought it would be cool for other people to be able to do this, particularly when we got the new system in. I even earmarked some dates for this in our calendar, but having so much on, didn’t get it started. A few months later the same thing must have occurred to Pete Melba and Tilly, because I got a message saying that they’d just thought of it, and replied saying that so had I – ages ago – and it was even in the calendar. Anyway, that was the kick up the arse to actually get the thing going.
We installed our lovely Martin Audio system in February, and it sounds beautiful. I wasn’t quite happy for several months, because I felt an error had been made. The day we’d originally planned to install the system got moved, and I couldn’t be there on the new day. I’d have objected to the one part I thought was wrong if I had been. So anyway, it all got put in, and mainly it was a great job, but this one thing wasn’t right… the bass bins were right at the front, and right next to the decks. This is bad because it will cause needle jumps and feedback. I actually wrote an post, a long time ago, about bad set ups, citing this as an example of things not to do.
We moved the bass bins as far away from the decks as we could, but ideally we needed a day to take everything out and move it all. This took months to organise, because it’s hard to find a day when someone else is free (this is not a one man job), and the shop is closed, and it’s not a weekend, which would be impossible. It was August when we eventually did it. Pete couldn’t be about for this one, Phil was my wingman, and it took us about eight hours, because we had to move everything out upstairs, and move the system, the decks, and also move all the furniture and deck stand. There’s one corner at the back, where a lot of stuff is stored, and we couldn’t move everything out of there – it was just too much, and one of the leads ran behind all that, so we had to try and pull it out without damaging the cable or toppling loads of stuff. Of the entire mission, this was actually the hardest part, and as we were doing it I suddenly had a vision of an anime I’d seen years ago where someone is pulling all these intestines out of some huge monster, and I burst out laughing. It was such a silly thing to pop into my head in the middle of all that, but also so apt. Anyway, we did it. It was exhausting, weirdly fun, and very worthwhile. Also, this was during the time that Nel was back, and I’d arranged to go meet our friend Joey with him, and have some food at a pub out in Calverley. At the end of all that, there was nothing nicer than melting into a corner of a pub with good friends, steak, and wine. That was a good day.
As far as all the parties go – so many weekends I find myself saying ‘This has been a really special night’ – it’s hard to pick one out as a favourite. You just can’t. We’re honoured to have so many wonderful DJs come and play at the space – and this includes less well known people – talented mates who mainly just play on the Leeds circuit. Two things, though, that have been very nice have been these:
The awesome travelling record store that is the Wax Material van doing two pop ups with us in 2024.
Friendships formed with people from across the globe… Back in February, we invited Elias Sternin to be our guest at Imaginarium Presents. He stayed in Leeds for nearly a week and it was like he’d always been part of the crew, and we were keen to invite him back, and he returned in September. My friend Alex Brown (AKA Vacancy – check out his productions) coined the phrase ‘International Nice People’ and it’s so well put. What we do, and the bonds that we form through that, transcend distance, and cut through all the crazy shit that a lot of people think matters.
Gigs & Mixes
After a long time of very little, it was great to play some gigs again. I used to do loads with John Paynter back when I used to do loads, and I was buzzed when he asked me to join a line up at The Eagle Inn in Manchester, which is basically what looks like an an school Shaun of the Dead type pub that turns into a rave den. It also has a cool outside area. I love these kind of venues, and one of my favourite boozer turns club type places that I’ve been to recently is DBA, where I played the warm up when Creatures of the Night invited Raphael Carrau to head a line up. That was an awesome gig, and an amazing weekend. I’m buzzed for the next Creatures party too – with Oriana and Kensa at Starlane Pizza Bar.
Being asked to join Creatures of the Night was a high point last year. It made me very happy on a day when many things up until that moment had been causing me grief. The joint party with Last Days of Rome was a brilliant day and night, too (Last Days of Rome being a party me and Chris Kitchen founded again in 2024, after I’d written the name on a scrap of paper a long while back, intending, at some point, to use it for something). That gig was the start of a stint of very enjoyable back to back sets that I played with various people. The week after was the second Manifesto party, and I played b2b with Carl Saunders (AKA B6) of Fifty, and I’m pleased that one got recorded.
You should record everything. Mixing, I mean. I have known this for time, and I used to. I have hours of me and my friends playing tunes in my various old rooms, all our parties at Wire, all of that recorded and stored on hard drives. And then the silly thing is that we haven’t recorded most of what’s gone down at The Imaginarium. I just kept not buying a new Tascam because things were that tight, and I have been implored to do so by various people, and they are right.
I could go on writing for a long time. I’ve had a lot to say about the state of the music scene in Leeds, but that’s for its own post. Posts even. One is in my head, and the other needs to be recovered from a drive. I could also rant about the eerie, manipulative politricks of the far right, but again that’s an entire spiel. Anyway, it’s time to conclude. It’s 2:53 AM, and I’ve been up since seven in the morning. A lot has happened this year, and much has changed, but one thing remains a constant, and that is that I am absolutely shit at getting my head down for a good night’s kip.
