While working on finishing the dirt that is CogRock, bringing the new live set together and cranking the handles of the burgeoning Eschatology, the mind-horses sped into my tiny, enclosed brain and wraught a fiery message.

SCOTT, they said. YOU HAVE WRITTEN FUCKING TONNES OF MUSIC, you twat. IT’S ABOUT TIME THERE WAS A BEST HITS ALBUM, SURELY.

My mind in turmoil, I barely had chance to grab a hold of my punitively expensive vodka to scream BUT OUR MUSIC IS FUCKING SHIT.

Some days later, I awoke in the shade of an oak tree, sure that I’d faced the dark gods and told them to get fucked.

It was only then that FOUR THOUSAND LOBSTERS LEAPT FROM MY ACTUAL FUCKING GENITALS, ALL SCREAMING “NO YOU HAVE WRITTEN QUITE A LOT OF DECENT MUSIC AND EVERYBODY WHO DISAGREES CAN SUCK THE LEATHERY PENIS OF SIMON FUCKING COWELL – YOU ARE THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF BEING SHITFACED AND ABUSIVE AND FULL OF BREAKBEATS. IF YOU COMPILE IT, THEY WILL COME.”

So, I had a bit of a sleep, because I usually remember taking acid.

THEN I WOKE UP AND MY LEGS WERE MADE OUT OF SCREAMING FUCKING LOBSTERS AND I THOUGHT I SHOULD PROBABLY MAKE A COMPILATION ALBUM.

This … THING … was initially made by picking my favourite tracks from the 20+ albums I’ve written.

It was lovingly crafted by the process of listening to all the music I’ve made in the last decade and picking out the tracks that most made me feel like I’m not as massive fucking waste of skin.

Even this process was fucking horrible. Because so much of my music is bound up in the mood and time that I wrote it, this made for an evening of reliving all the spite and horror, introspection, self-hatred and general fucking failure to be anything I ever wanted to be.

And, you know, picking out the “best” ones. Somewhat like editing a video of your VERY FAVOURITE times you got punched in the fucking face.

THEN you have to come up with a FUCKING NAME FOR IT.

And, I suppose, if there’s any common thread throughout all of my music and my last decade of life, it’s that I’ve been relentlessly informed that I’m not normal.

I’ve tried to fit in. I’ve made lots of friends and I don’t hate what I am the same way that I used to, but I do still hate it.

I’m not like normal people.

So:

It’s a bit of a journey, from when I was 18 and writing rave, through the rest of my life. Not entirely in time-order, but in an order that you can listen through and makes a kind of sense. To me, at least.

It encompasses most (but not all) of the albums I’ve written. The songs I chose aren’t the ones people will have necessarily heard, they’re the ones I felt reflected ME, not what people apparently think of me. I guess I’ll enjoy listening to it if nobody else does.

DeathBoy – notlikenormalpeople

01: Fear – Written while I was at uni, in Fast Tracker II. Semi-rave. Wasn’t THAT fucked up yet.
02: Beautiful Skies – Taking a vocal from the gorgeous and wonderful Sohma G Dawling
03: Anuism Sly – My grisly rants over the pure and sensuous tones of her majesty, the resplendant queen Mog
04: Amphetamine Zoo – Giving the London goth scene and Slimelight way more time than either of them deserve
05: JustStop – Self-hatred and mass-scale masochism under the shelter of drugs and relationship dysfunction
06: Slip (live) – Stadium Industrial ode to everything going utterly, publically wrong
07: Antimatter – An attempt to say “I’m shit, you’re shit too, we cool, yeah?” – we weren’t cool.
08: Lost Again – Purest, reddest, bleeding DeathBoy. All of the hate I ever felt for myself and still do.
09: Johnny Dee – Escapism in the acceptance of your situation and yourself.
10: Buddhabox – The Modern London Man in Disarray. Blatant and sorrowful.
11: Sleaze – An exceptionally rare moment of sex overcoming the urge to hate. Fucking filthy. Just like life.
12: Burning Blood – The first industrial track I ever sang on. Hate. Longing. Regret. I haven’t ever changed.
13: Parasite – Mopey treatise about being drained and pulling yourself back.
14: Heatskive – A rare moment of self-confidence and lucidity, expressed in the usual hateful language.
15: Demons – Knowing what you are.
16: Crawlout – Either spectaularly well-crafted social commentary or me hating myself as much as you do, too.
17: Prozac Heights – A sci-fi concept piece about a tower block where crazies are treated like people.
18: Let Me Show You – Drugged sleep in a sea of adverts for perfume.
19: Caustic – The most prophetic, accurate and depressing track I’ve ever fucking written.
20: Sub-aqua – Written when I was 18, on a 4-track. Sleep now. Sleep, Scott. Sleep.

DeathBoy – notlikenormalpeople [FULL ZIP: 123mb]

—

So, that’s my whole life in a tin.

a lot of somebody feeling very bad about themselves for a decade or so.

if nothing else, I turned a lot of bad feelings from something that hurt me (and the people I loved) into music.

Which I don’t think hurts anyone.

Hope I entertained.

Couldn’t give a fuck if I didn’t

Second track from Eschatology, continuing along the theme of dark-as-fuck industrial trip-hop after the disease-ridden “Sleaze”

Saturated with orchestral theft and lovingly rotted slabs of finest breakbeat then drizzled with the DeathBoy trademark abject hatred for the human condition – download now and stomp down the street erasing passers-by at your leisure.

DeathBoy – Nihilist

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Lyrics:

Trapped in the ratrace
watching your body decay
confined and resigned
as your dreams and your life
move further away

and the few remaining good times
that you remember
cut into your back
like masochistic burning embers
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New track!

For a change, this is a purely vocal job from my standpoint. I’d been discussing Sleaze on Facebook when my old mate Joel popped up, said he didn’t realise I did that kind of vocal style and wondered if I’d be interested in putting something over a song of his. And lo! A collaboration was born.

It’s a rarity for me to only contribute vocals to something, I don’t adore the sound of my own voice half as much as people seem to think, but it’s flattering when somebody actually wants me to add to their track (another semi-recent example is my collaboration with NoWave on Waves of Paranoia)

The result is my take on a grimy, lazy sunday – the morning (and day) after the night before, with my sleaze-ridden vocals crawling over Joel’s dubby ambient track. Think “the Orb” smeared in vaseline. Hope you like.

Blue Box – Walls and Windowpanes II (feat Scott DeathBoy)

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Lyrics:

don’t shut the door too hard
just in case the neighbours wake
she won’t hear us playing cards
yeah, I know, mate,
but fuck’s sake

watch you set up the machines
like you’re tending to a lover
you tell me this one deals in dreams
scared to ask about the other
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