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

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

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

the cheques you used to write
you find now you have to pay
and you learn not to ever look back
but as they cut you,
you cannot look away

——————

This charming existence
brings me nothing but pain
Try to drink it away
wake up screaming in flames
then we do it
all again

I get sick of hearing you eulogise
my dysfunction
Qualities you detail
are the times that I fail
my destruction

————

look away
I don’t want
you to see
I am something
that you don’t
need to be

————

hating the deadlock
aryan dreadlocks
relative genocide
fucked out of wedlock

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)

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

—

had we met your friend before?
seemed so strangely pleased to meet me
got some show on channel 4?
mate, I don’t own a TV

what was the name of that last club
all the art up on the walls?
don’t try to claim it was a chip-shop
I take a swipe and something falls

—

laughing over band names
fantasies of flashy cars
when I’m famous you can remix me
we’ll both be superstars

don’t mean to sound precocious
but that wallpaper looks sick
there’s that bit there by the bookcase
with that geezer sucking

yeah well

it’s not my fault that I notice
you’ve got issues on your walls
you know I might if you asked nicely
but I prefer them slim and tall

we stroke our pleasure centres
with the candy from the crime
tongues do tricks while we’re transfixed
by a geometry of lines

—

your impression of a raptor
helpless giggles from my captor
someone’s phone camera captures
candid candy-coloured rapture

standing seems superfluous
so we languidly recline
watch your neighbour’s burly basslines
make the teacups dance in time

—

sitting on your sofa,
selling sophistry and soma
kissing clouds to make them cry
out of karma, too much coma

stay up early watching movies
on your walls and windowpanes
space invaders entertain us
leaving tracers in our brains

we set the world to rights
falling forwards in our chairs
slowly wake up in the night
peel back eyes
and no-one’s there

check your phone for missives
but it turns out no-one cares
great to see you
catch you next week
get some more, we’ll see you there

‘The Changeling’ is a remix of an original song by Salwa Azar – she’s got an absolutely stunning, gorgeous voice.

We’ve been slated to do a collaboration but haven’t managed to find a free day yet and I was jonesing to put some filthy breaks and bass under her beautiful vocals, so I grabbed a rough demo from her last.fm page and set about it with some vodka.

Really pleased with the result, making me look forward to when we sit down to write a track together.

Salwa Azar – The Changeling (DeathBoy’s Unexpected Filthmix)

(Oh, and it’s called the ‘unexpected’ mix because I cheekily didn’t tell her I was doing it and thought she might kill me, but she seems to have let me live )

You can – and indeed should – check the lady out at her Myspace / Last.fm / Facebook, and see if you can catch one of her gigs, she’s out and about quite a bit in London recently, it seems. She’s really got the sort of sound that makes you wonder why in god’s name she’s not signed to a mega-label, give her a whirl.

This is a home to the expanding list of mixtape-like bundles of DeathBoy tracks from across different albums that have a common theme (for instance, Trip-Hop, instrumental, etc).

As always, there’s a whole shitload of free music in there you might like the taste of.

Cheers!

Using a loop-texture I made by multi-sampling from my macbook’s mic on the flight.

The vocal is a very stream-of-consciousness feed from my tiny little mind.

This is how I feel when I fly.

DeathBoy – Delta 06

I hate it when there’s turbulence.

Every time the wings start to shudder and the cabin bumps up and down, when those lights come on telling me to get back to my seat and strap up, the paranoid inside me screams “This is it, man! We’re all gonna die!”

And for the second time in my life, I find myself able to accept the irrational fear and stare it in the face. I find the ability to take deep breaths and be calm despite myself.

The first time I felt this way, it was because life was terrible and dark. I didn’t want to die, but it was so arduous and painful to get through each day the thought of just not BEING any more seemed like a very reasonable alternative.

This time, it’s pretty much the opposite.

For the first time I can remember, I feel like I’m at peace with a world with which I’ve spent my entire life in conflict.

I’d HATE to die now. After a bunch of really shit years, I’ve had a few stolen moments of basic, actual happiness. Stuff I’ve always wanted. And because of that, I’m peaceful.

I’ve had a chance to feel the way I always thought I should.

If I have to sign off now, I’ll go down screaming and fighting. But I won’t feel cheated.

I don’t need false comfort.

The quirks of my psychology, the way my head’s set up, have made me live every day as though I’d lose everything I cared about.

And a couple of times, I have. I’ve lived through the the worst case scenarios that haunted me and stopped me sleeping since I was a kid.

I do live a pretty awkward life.

I believe that safety is weakness and resting means presenting the world with an undefended back.

And I’m a hideously over-sensitive, highly-strung individual. Sometimes I find my automatic empathy crippling, I just can’t work out how people can be so fucking hideous, I can’t step back from it all and it tears me to bits.

But, despite living like this, and often because of it, I’ve been lucky enough to steal a few moments of what I imagine it’s like to be normal and content with your life.

I’ve sucked the juice out of these opportunities, and held every little moment precious, and close to me.

I wake up amazed that I get to be here, know these people and walk through this sunlight.

When I go to sleep, I try to put myself to rest by accepting that these might be the last thoughts I get to have.

If I’m cuddled up to my wife or my son, it doesn’t even feel unfair. I’m so grateful to get these seconds of overwhelming, undeserved bliss that I almost wish my heart would stop, so that it’s the last thing I ever feel.

This is my daily routine.

So if this plane goes down, I’ll be fucking furious.

I’ll scream at the atoms in the space that dare to stop me. I’ll threaten the gods I don’t even believe in with an eternity of my incandescent fucking rage.

I’ll be horrified and desperate, now that, finally, people exist that love me and would miss me if I was gone.

But I won’t feel as though I wasted the time that I had.

I’ve been confident and foolish, stupid and brave, desperate and adventurous.

I’ve done everything of importance I thought I ever had a chance of doing and never let ANYTHING pass me by because of fear.

And I’ve spent most of that time terrified, because I DO fear. But preferring the momentary shame of acting like a twat over a lifetime listening to my own insecurities drilling into me for missing a chance.

Life gives you a limited number of chances. You can’t complain if you didn’t try to snatch them.

All of this has meant that I’ve fucked up a lot, but I don’t regret any of it.

The “What-ifs” of life will kill you, they certainly kill me, and I’ve always been happier to regret something I’ve done than something I didn’t do.

I’ve never taken anything good for granted and I tell the people I love that I love them every moment of every day.

So, if this plane goes down, I know that I’ve used the time I had, to live my life as fully as I could possibly manage.

If death comes anywhere near me I’ll rip its tits off.

This one’s a filthy little number indeed, and something of a departure from my usual lyrical style.

It’s called, appropriately, Sleaze.

DeathBoy – Sleaze

Lyrics:

oh, we barely get to touch
but my head is full of you
smell of sex, it’s just too much
can’t wait to get my hands on you

run my fingers through your hair
feel you sliding over me
can we just? well, do we dare?
waited so long for this to be

-

it’s not some dark internal voice
that told me what I had to do
there’s no doubt, there was no choice
I had to have a part of you

I want you just too much
you’re good for me
you’re bad for me
I need you just too much

I’m gonna have you just too much
until you’re full of
until you’re sick of me
I’m gonna give you just too much

I guess it wasn’t finished yet.

DeathBoy – Superstar

Lyrics:

Will you stay?
despite what everybody’s certain to think
when the milk has got too sour to drink
will you let me pour another one?

it seems
as though we’re running out of to rubbish to say
but we still talk about it every day
I used to think I was the only one

can we ride?
I seen your sister round the cenotaph
she’s in the market for a sociopath
I said ‘hi’, she said ‘don’t make me laugh’
she knows

Well, ain’t she
just a ray of fucking sunlight?
we pull our gloves on and we go out to fight
I bet she thinks about him every night
well, I would

look at me
charismatic with a microphone
we keep our distance cause our kind tell their own
fingers blister because ‘cos I’m holding this
too tight

they call time
finish drinks and then we couple up
sharing fluids like we give a fuck
and I’m back just where I’m comfortable
alone

There’s still some work to do tidying the tracks and adding live parts when appropriate, but the material is all written now. There may even be tracks that are dropped in favour of a more consistent album, depending on how everything sits together when the spit and polish have been applied.

Once it’s complete and we release properly, work will progress onto the next commercial album, tentatively named Eschatology, which (as with Music To Crash Cars To and End of an Error) will feature material from the previous non-commercial albums (in this case, Forwards, ToRights and CogRock) as well as entirely new work.

Somewhere in between all of this, we shall be announcing a new gigging roster and punting for dates around the UK slightly later in the year.

Forwards was a non-commercial breakbeat / triphop / industrial release from 2006-2007. It has been called nice things by people who like God Lives Underwater, Filter, Pitch Shifter, Jesus Jones and don’t think that there’s a problem with loving both Massive Attack and Marilyn Manson at the same time, but universally acknowledge PWEI as living gods.

It is dark and breakbeat laden. It is free.

You can find the lyrics page HERE

You can get the album HERE

If you like it, please send a comment or email our way. We love to hear it and Scott probably won’t set fire to himself / have sex with you / declare your genitals to be a new and unexplored continent and defend their accession to the European Union.*

Cheers!

*no, he’ll definitely do that. can’t stop him. christ, have we tried.