Musical Recap

 Before I get into this blog entry's topic, I just wanted to add a little something regarding my previous one.  In that entry, I was talking about human body parts named after animals.  While I thought I'd covered most of them, it seemed that I missed one - the hamstring.  The reason I'm bringing it up now is because it's kind of funny, considering the hamstring was the main part that inspired me to do that subject, and yet I missed it out entirely.  How embarrassing.  But these things happen, so I won't get upset about it.

Now to today's topic.  This one is about my musical background.  I'd like to keep it short, not just because it's already late, but also because I don't want to have blog entries that are too long (unless I feel the need for it to be), otherwise you might lose interest fast if I keep rambling on.  So, without further delay, here's a brief summary of how my musical journey has progressed so far...

1. CHILDHOOD (1981-1993)

My love for music comes right from the beginning, I think.  I was probably into it earlier than I can remember, but my earliest memories surrounding music goes back to when I was 3 (1984 - a great year for music).  Around this time, my mother had returned to work and my father was working weird rostered hours that changed regularly (some days he'd do overnight, others during the day).  Therefore, they had to have someone look after me.  And who better to do the job than my 2 older sisters?  While our parents were away, they were in charge, and with that came control over the radio.  This was where my taste in music genres would begin to develop and expand further than it had before.  My mother loves the golden oldies of the 50's to the 70's (and some of the 80's hits of the era as well), while my dad was into country.  When my sisters took over, I got to hear the hits of the era firsthand.  Artists like Duran Duran, Billy Idol and Wham!  The latter of these in particular got regular airplay in our house as they were a favourite of my oldest sister.  But it didn't stop here...

After I started primary school in 1986, it was a mix of both radio and TV.  During the late 80's, it would appear that my favourite show on the small screen was, in fact, NOT "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" or "The Transformers" as many would suspect (I did rave a lot about those 2 shows though).  My favourite show was actually NZ's weekly chart show, "RTR Countdown", and since it was the late 80's, those of you who weren't there to experience it can only imagine how awesome the musical line-up was back then.  During this time, I discovered who would become my first favourite band - Bon Jovi.  My favourite song was "Livin' on a Prayer".  These were fun times.  I often wrote about them in my book at school when we had to write stories, talking about going home to pretend to be Jon Bon Jovi on stage (which was actually our couch).  The number of times I wrote about this, I'm sure my teacher was starting to get bored with it after a while.

By the early 90's, both my sisters had moved out of home after having left high school and decided to live with their then boyfriends (who they would later marry), so from about 1991 on, it was just the 3 of us.  It was back to listening to what my parents liked, plus I was old enough to have my own radio and cassette player, so I was able to explore music in my own time as well.  As well as this, I would often rummage through my parents' cassette and CD collection to see what I'd like.  After this, I did have a few selected favourite albums that I would often play when I was able (I might talk more about these in detail another time).  During my age of musical discovery, I found who would be my next favourite band - Simple Minds.  I saw a TV commercial for their compilation album, "Glittering Prize 81/92", which reminded me of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and a few other hits.  I just had to get that album, so I mentioned it to my mum.  Of course, I would eventually get a copy on either my birthday or for Christmas.  After which, it would be on high rotation.

Shortly before the end of primary school in 1993, after browsing my parents' collection, I discovered my next favourite band on a compilation album that I also had on high rotation.  I'd heard of this band before, but never really got to hear them as often as I could've at the time.  But their song on this compilation - which would go on to become their biggest hit overall - had me hooked to the point where I would sometimes ignore the rest of the album and constantly have this song on repeat.  It was a cassette, so it's no wonder that years later, it would end up getting stuck in my stereo from being so worn out.  The band in question?  That was Roxette.  The song?  "It Must Have Been Love".  This is where things really got interesting for me musically.

2. HIGH SCHOOL (1994-1998)

After having been lured in to the music of Roxette, I found myself wanting to build my collection of their albums.  Christmas 1993 brought the first copy into our home, and from here came another perspective of the music industry.  I was so into it, I actually thought about the idea of doing what Roxette did for a living.  Inspired by the male lead, Per Gessle, I considered the option of learning the guitar.  And that would be my next goal.

Fast forward to 1995.  I was sitting in my class at school in the morning.  The teacher was going through the daily notices for that day, and one message stood out more over the rest.  "Guitar lessons, meet at lunchtime to sign up" (not those exact words, but you get the idea).  I was definitely going there.  This is where it all began for me as a musician.  Sure, we had instruments at home when I was a kid, but they were mostly toys (I'll talk about those later too).  However, my oldest sister had an acoustic guitar that she never played, and it was still in our possession after she left home.  So, to save time and money, it became mine.  Later on though on Christmas Day, I would get my next instrument - an electric guitar!  A black and white Fender Telecaster, which I still have to this day.

Despite having gone to the guitar lessons through a large chunk of the year, I never did get the hang of being able to read sheet music.  I found it was like learning a new language late in life.  After a while, I decided to go it alone and would do the rest by ear, taking what I had learned about how to play chords and try and use that while listening to my music collection at home.  I like to think that I did an alright job of that.  I'm nowhere near as good as the experts by any means, but I managed.

By 1996, my musical tastes were expanding further.  While hanging out at my friend Sarah's house with her and her sisters each week while our mothers went out to do their own thing, I went through a similar experience to what I did with my own sisters.  Yet another age of musical discovery through the radio and TV.  The bands that stood out the most (among many) were Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins (in that order).  With this, my style of playing music started to change too, as well as writing.

Speaking of writing, that all started in late 1995, while still being heavily into Roxette.  One night I was reading a book by Bill Cosby called "Love and Marriage" (I was a bit of a fan of his comedy while growing up - a story for another day).  I came across a sentence in the book that would give me my first song title - "Overnight Arrival".  After writing it down for future reference, I started getting more ideas for titles.  It was like I'd opened a flood gate.  Within weeks/months, I wrote my first set of lyrics for a song called "Time Traveller" (and if you know me personally and have heard me mention "Time Traveller" in one way or another, you now understand the personal significance of this phrase).

By the end of 1995, I'd written some more songs and it was great fun.  As 1996 was getting started, my best friend from school, Forbes, became aware of what I'd been up to with this music stuff.  After which he offered to join me in my musical journey.  Me being me and keen on getting a band started as soon as possible, I accepted his offer immediately.  Didn't matter what his musical background was.  At that time, I would've happily teamed up with a trumpet player (a little in-joke there that I will talk about another time).  As for Forbes' musical taste, it was more in the hard rock and heavy metal direction, which was an interesting mix with the likes of Roxette.  But as I would later include more of a grunge influence when Nirvana came into it, it would make more sense.

However, things didn't go quite to plan by mid-1996.  After a falling out between Forbes and I, the "band" that was then known as Swede (because Roxette is Swedish...) was no more.  I was back to writing on my own, and the songs that I'd written between July 1996 and late 1997 were very interesting.  Some good, some not so good.  A few spongeworthy, the rest cringeworthy (if you're a Seinfeld fan, you'll understand).

After over a year of writing on my own, another opportunity through the school notices came my way.  A "Rock School" was starting up and looking for students interested in learning about playing rock music, etc, and a meet-up in the hall at lunchtime was set.  So, of course, I showed up and put my name down.  Little did I know, this introduction to one Rasjad Addison would go on to become my first real band - Supertrip.  This band would actually become a band roughly around October 1997, and I would stay with the group right through to about March/April 1999.  There were a few changes in the line-up before I left, and I think this was a major part of why things ended the way they did.  The band itself (I'm told) would split around November 1999.

3. POST-SCHOOL ERA (1999-2000)

When I left school at the end of 1998, I was still with Supertrip, but had no idea that my time with them would be short in 1999.  I also wasn't expecting to get involved with another music project just before my departure.  A friend of mine, Darren Roverts, from my old church's youth group, made it known to me at a group meeting that he had started playing bass guitar some time beforehand.  After this bit of news, we discussed the possibility of doing a project together, which we would later do.  As the year was getting started, we met a few times to see what kind of group we could become.  We'd settled on a mix of Christian-themed alt. rock, nu metal and punk songs.  Starting off by doing a bunch of covers of songs by bands like Dogwood and MxPx.

During this time I'd officially left Supertrip, so it was now just Darren and I.  I didn't want to leave the group, but at least I had a backup plan for when I did.  We then continued to meet up for a jam session through the rest of the year.  Also, it's worth mentioning that from January to June that year, I also started my first tertiary study subject - audio engineering.

Learning audio engineering was a big step for me.  I had done work experience in 2 different studios during 1996/97 (can't remember when exactly), which was a lot of fun, but I didn't have the knowledge in how to work the equipment properly.  So I took it upon myself to change that.  This audio engineering course is where I was able to learn a lot about recording techniques among many other things.  It also led to me seeking a copy of the computer software they used so I could use it at home.  This would lead to the birth of a new era in my music production, which would gradually become something bigger.

Towards the end of the year, with my training behind me, Darren and I decided to do something a little different musically.  A little break from what we were doing at the time.  Using the software I had acquired, we made what would become a first for us both - a 100% digital song.  This track was called "Red Alert".  It was very experimental for us at the time, but wouldn't be anything of great significance anywhere else for another 3 years yet.  Until then, we went back to playing with instruments.  Also, Darren would later introduce me to a friend of his, Jared Hatcher, who would become our group's lead vocalist and second guitarist.

The year 2000 comes along and Y2K becomes a mere punchline, the band that we would later name Driftwood was now a trio.  For months after this, we would continue to play cover songs.  On occasion, we would have an original song, but didn't play it often.  Meanwhile in the sidelines, I somehow ended up joining a second band with another of my friends from high school - Warren.  He, along with a few of the members of the second band to come out of Rasjad's Rock School, wanted to do something together and invited me to take part.  I was interested, so I went along.  After a short while, this band in particular (which was called Kerfü [pronounced "curfew"], by the way) wasn't going the way I'd expected it to.  On most days we'd meet, there wasn't a lot of music being played.  It was just a group of guys hanging out with guitars and not much else.  Bit of a time-waster, honestly.  At least I still had Driftwood...

4. SOLO YEARS - PART 1 (2002-2007)

So, as it turned out, I wasn't meant to be with Driftwood forever.  My departure from the band wasn't anyone's fault except mine, really.  I had moved out of home in September 2000, and you'd think that would make things easier on the band to meet up.  Well, at the time I was afraid that if we were to play our loud music in the area I lived in, I might have noise control knock on my door or something silly like that (I didn't know the proper rules back then).  With that, I ruled out my flat as a rehearsal venue, which is a shame because it might have been an opportunity to actually record the band for once.  Missed out on that one.  My bad.  The other setback was the fact that I didn't have a driver's license and a car.  My mother was the one who took me to our band meetings all these years, so now that this wasn't an option, I couldn't get to Darren's house with all of my equipment.  So yeah.  In addition to that, I'd just had my first Internet connection installed, so I kind of became a bit of a social hermit after that...

Fast forward to 2002 (See?  Hermit).  I had already moved to my second flat by this time, and it was around March this year that I started studying at another music course.  Funnily enough, it was through my old high school and was for adult students.  It was weird at first going back there after a little over 3 years.  I would take this music course right through to the end of the year and with it came a new age in my music career.  During this course, I found myself having a lot of self-inflicted sleeping problems (a story for another day), which had an impact on my studies.  However, not all of it was bad.  One day, while working on an assignment after a night without any sleep, I started on something that would become bigger than I'd expected.  In my drowsy state, I'd created what I'd consider a pretty decent track.  It would later earn the title "Eliminator".  As a part of the same assignment, I had to do a second track.  This one would end up being started and finished all on the day the assignment was due, but I reckon it turned out pretty good too.  That one was called "Electronica".  The creation of these 2 songs was only the beginning.  A short while after this took place, I noticed some flyers in the classroom.  One of which was about lack of sleep and insomnia.  The word "insomnia" stood out to me, and made me consider starting a solo project under that name, but spelled differently.  I recalled the name of one of the music programs I had on disc at home called "n-Track Studio".  It was enough to inspire me to adopt the style in spelling to create "n-Somnia".  Thus my solo project was now official.  Around this time, typical me wanted to get a copy of the software we used at this course (just like old times), so I made that happen so I could work on my new tunes from home, and then some.

By the end of 2002, I had a small number of tracks under the n-Somnia name, including the 1999 track, "Red Alert", which I made with Darren.  I figured because it was digital like the rest, I might as well adopt it as a part of the project.  After searching online for websites to promote myself, I started uploading songs as soon as possible.  Primarily at BeSonic.com, which was where I met my first success as an artist.  A track that I'd created in November that year, called "Robot Lover From Mars", ended up hitting the #1 spot on one of the site's charts in December.  Best Christmas present that year.  It was short-lived, but it would stay with me forever.

But the success wasn't followed by much else.  In early 2003, I'd uploaded a track that I hadn't finished yet (a demo of a song called "Once More"), but it wasn't well-received.  Because I had low self-esteem at the time, I removed it from the site and took a break for a while.  When I say a while, I mean I didn't make any more full songs until about a year later.  As a kind of comeback, 2004 saw the creation and release of songs like "Toy Store", "Starlifter" and "Desert Scorn".  But this comeback would be brief, as my old friend Forbes (whom I had already patched things up with back in 1998) made me aware of some music he'd created on his PlayStation 2 and was interested in teaming up.  So I decided to put n-Somnia in hiatus mode and see how far this new project would go.  By 2006, I decided to put all of my attention towards the new project - Kingrow - and retire as a solo artist.  As a way of saying goodbye, I made 2 remix versions of "Eliminator" and included them in a self-titled compilation album, which came out in 2007.  It was the end of n-Somnia...at least for now.

5. KINGROW & BEYOND (2004-present)

After Forbes and I teamed up in 2004, we would work together on some music by either sitting at his PlayStation console making tunes with the "Music 2000" software, or by sitting at my computer using the method I'd been doing with n-Somnia.  This was the first time we'd done music properly together.  Swede was mostly writing song titles and the occasional lyric, but very little music composition.  This was more of the real deal.  From the time we got started to about 2007, we had enough tracks to put out our first EP - "Kingrow Online", to get the ball rolling, etc.  It would later be followed by a full album in 2009, called "7-Sided Parallel", which was planned on being released on 7 July 2007 (07/07/07), but technical issues prevented that from happening.  Each year we would have something new to release.  Sometimes even releasing multiple albums, etc, in the same year.  We had THAT much material to distribute!  But things would start to change in tone very soon in late 2010.

On September 4, 2010, our home city had its first in a wave of many earthquakes.  This one being the 7.1 quake our near Darfield.  It had no major impact on Kingrow at this time, but what we didn't know is that it was only the beginning of what was to come.  With that being said, within a few months it got me considering my musical avenues.  You know, in case something happened (like an internal warning system).  In October 2010, Kingrow released an EP called "Digital Distortion".  I still consider it one of the project's best, and it was this release that inspired me to do something about getting my backup plan sorted.  In secret, I decided to bring n-Somnia out of retirement and started working on an album.  Something n-Somnia never actually had before (it was mainly singles, EP's and compilations).

It was inevitable, but somehow deep inside I had a feeling the day would come.  The end of Kingrow.  It wasn't anyone's fault, but a force of nature that caused it.  On February 22, 2011, the 6.3 quake that hit Christchurch's Port Hills (much, much closer to home), causing the deaths of over 100 people, put everything on hold.  In fact, I'd only just announced the day before that n-Somnia was making a comeback and the album would be soon after.  This had to be pushed back to late April.  As for Kingrow, any unreleased music for this project would be of the archived kind, as Forbes had suffered more from the quake than I did, and as a result of this, he stepped down from his role to get things sorted out at his end.  I was very understanding of this, of course.  So now it was up to me to put the rest of Kingrow's material out gradually, but as fun as it was to do so, it was kind of sad knowing that eventually there would be nothing new coming to the table for Kingrow.  Eventually, the final compilation album - "This is Kingrow" - came out in 2012.

The opposite, however, was the case for n-Somnia.  Even though I had to delay the release of the first album, "The Awakening" - the project's comeback release - it was well-received when it did arrive.  Mainly through my circle of friends, but in some places online (e.g. the now defunct DailyBeat.co.nz), a positive response came when a few of my tracks were featured.  It was a good time to be alive, and having a life to live was definitely something precious in 2011.

Since the comeback, n-Somnia has released a lot of singles, EP's, compilations and a few albums.  There was a point from 2016 to 2019 where not much happened, but that was due to events in my private life that got in the way (again, stories for another time).  But in 2019, I released a track to mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of "Red Alert".  It was a remix of the song made with the help of none other than Darren Roverts himself.  We'd actually made it in 2018, but I had it reserved for the anniversary date.  Either way, it was like coming in full circle.  I'd also taken the time to make a track as a B-side, which was sort of a preview of what to expect in the near future as it tied in with the follow-up release...

If there's anything good to have come out of 2020, it would be the fact that I was able to get back into the music in a big way.  By the end of September, I had to leave my job (it was 2020...), so because of this, I had some extra free time.  This led to what would become one of my favourite projects so far.  Back in 2015, after releasing a compilation called "Singularity", I made a vow to never re-release any of the songs I'd created between 1999 and 2015 after that year, unless it was for a special anniversary (e.g. "Red Alert" turning 20 in 2019).  It was an end of an era for me, and I wanted everything beyond 2015 to be a new chapter.  So this next n-Somnia project - a trilogy idea that I had been contemplating for years building up to this point - would be the first in this new era.  As 2020 was coming to a close, the first part of "The Empires Trilogy" was released - an EP called "Before the Empire".  Shortly before the actual end of the year, the second part came out in the form of an album (the third one overall) called "Empires of the Night".  The end of the trilogy would come in April 2021 as another EP called "The Empire Has Fallen".  This trilogy would be the biggest release project I'd done up to this point, and I think it's up there with some of my best work (and I'm not being self-centered when I say that).

Between April 2021 and today, I've only released a few things.  Another EP called "Stop Fighting, Start Writing" and a song called "Raise the Curtain".  The latter of which came out only days before Christmas, so 2022 hasn't seen any new tunes yet.  However, I do have plans.  While new music is to be started in the near future, there is another big milestone coming that involves re-releases - the creation of "Eliminator" and foundation of n-Somnia.  In a few months, n-Somnia will be 20 years old!  I've already been working on this project, so keep a watchful eye on that one.  Beyond that, I do have a string of ideas in mind for what comes later.  I won't reveal any of this for a while, but I will eventually.

And that's about it.  You're probably thinking, "You said you'd keep it short!"  Well, yes I did.  The truth is, I could go into a LOT more detail than I already have.  There are just some things I couldn't leave out.  For the sake of context.  So, I hope you didn't lose interest and that you've enjoyed a glimpse of my musical journey.  You're welcome to continue the journey with me as I carry on as n-Somnia in the future.  And who knows what else might happen as well as that..?