I never thought I’d be able to get that buzz back after I prematurely stopped making music.
One day at the end of last year, I just started writing poems out of nowhere.
I have been a music producer for around 20 years and I made instrumental tracks for singers and MCs. I loved listening to music of all types and from the early 90s and I listened to all the hardcore, dance, hip hop and metal tracks that I could get my hands on. In 1996, I started playing out properly, whilst making bootlegs to play in my DJ sets. It didn’t take long to start working with artists and making original tracks.
Lots of home mixes and further studio trips later, I was signing dance tracks to internet labels. I also supported local singers and bands live with backing tracks and then built my own band with some good mates called Pistolhead. I finally got the buzz and really started enjoying playing on stage for the first time. I played synths and did some scratching on stage with the band and produced the original tracks before we made them work live. After playing at a handful of Portsmouth institutions (Cellars, Wedgewood Rooms and Guildhall), alongside playing live on BBC in Brighton, we had to call it a day for a multitude of reasons.
It wasn’t long after this, that I developed tinnitus and became a dad, so I needed to weigh up whether I should continue. The tinnitus freaked me out and my creativity completely dried up, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near music otherwise I’d have to contend with at least 2 weeks of ringing.
The pandemic brought a lot of things to the forefront. I wanted to do something creative again. I wanted my kids to remember me for doing something other than a 9-5 and coming home from work with the hump.
I was also struggling more with anxiety and I needed to make sense why I was dealing with this. I found a way to get thoughts to paper and do something positive. After I had wrote around 50 poems in a fortnight, I knew I had a creative output that I’d been craving.
Then one day, I was listening to my old mixdowns from my scattered firewire drives. There are hundreds of tracks that I can use, royalty free and luckily I still kept in contact with most of the artists, so I could make them more meaningful. I started reading the poems over the tracks and it just fit. I made sure the tracks were the right bpm because I’m not an MC, so it had to feel right, but here we are. 30 tracks were recorded and mixed really quickly, and I have to take it easy this time but it was another chance to be creative again. and I’m over the moon.
Paul B Write On 