Trademark Thinking
…a journey into the middle of the mind, and between the ears of a reckless teenager.
Picture this; you’re 16 years young, studying Art and Literature at an all boys school in sleepy Surrey, somewhere between London and Brighton. Your first vinyl just arrived by Royal Mail to play on the second hand Gemini XL500s you got from eBay the week before. It’s a whitelabel Chase & Status’ ‘Duppy Man’ ft. Capleton record, DnB is your life – at least it has been – until you hear Caspa & Rusko’s Fabriclive mix.
“Bass music at 140bpm?” you say to yourself, confused. “Reggae roots with a two-step structure – peppered with warped basslines?” you say to your peers, still confused.. until that kick/snare kicks your puberty into the backseat and forces you to dabble in the creation of this new underground bass movement from south London, otherwise known as Dubstep.
Now you’ll admit you went deep – and not just with he sound itself. You made a shit load of music over those remaining teenage years, a lot of it unfinished, almost all of it unmastered, but a shit load nonetheless. With all the knowledge learned through youtube videos and experimenting till the morning hours you had produced a finished project, a 25 track LP.
Although, even after all the late nights, all the remixes and crashed projects, you still weren’t ready for another part of your creativity to be on display, to be judged – dissected. So you hide it away on a hard drive and continue with your studies. It’s one thing to show someone a picture you painted; with an instant yes or no, an “Ooooh” or “Errrr” response (everyone’s an art critic nowadays)… but to get them to put some headphones on, to close their eyes and listen – really listen – to 3 or 4 or maybe 8 minutes of madness you composed from your thoughts and feelings? No way.
Fast forward 12 years and the world has flipped on its head, a strange community opens their arms and you decide to put copies of your music on OpenSea, on the Polygon ETH blockchain for pennies. “What’s the worst that could happen?” you say to yourself…
And that’s exactly what I did. Almost my entire back catalogue has been uploaded for sale, or one of 2011 ‘REWOUND’ NFTs can be bought giving you exclusive access to tracks I can’t show and tracks I’ve yet to produce. If you like any of the 30 second previews you can buy the token giving you access to a Drive link for the full MP3 to download. It would mean the world to me, and I know it would’ve meant the world to the 16 year old me back then.
