My birthday was a few weeks ago.
So maybe it is time to look back a bit at my life as an artist.
As a kid I always was more a scifi than fantasy nerd. But when I watched the occasional horror or fantasy flick, I often ended up rooting for the wrong, bad guys and girls. Which, in my childish mind, I assumed were just "misunderstood" and generally seemed to be more cool, interesting, and bold than the spiffy clean, always-correct, rule following heroes.
Surprisingly, it seems I became similar to a kind of real-world, minor royalty or deity of the underworld or hellish regions myself, later in my life.
Avoiding ego-mania and superstition would forbid to utter such "sacrilegious" words, but others told me so, and, if I'm honest, I guess it's sort of correct.
But let's do the time-warp (again!) and jump right to the beginning - of my artist "career".
I started in the mid 90s, at the height of the first techno/hardcore movement.
Nowadays, it seems a lot of artists are in it to gain money or become successful, but in the 90s it was the complete opposite.
Yeah there were "commercial" musicians, too, but everyone else detested fame, success, or money (on paper, at least). For example, if a Death Metal band gave one interview on the "MTV", this usually meant it was "over" for them. "Let the fan-hate pour in!"
I started doing music for a number of reasons:
I liked the techno/hardcore sound.
I used it as a way to deal with my mental health problems.
I was (am) an anarchist and looked for a way to empower other people and maybe start a revolution.
I was also into avantgarde art, and more importantly, avantgarde art theories.
In the 20th century, avantgarde artists, and all artists basically, tried to combine "everything" into one thing, or at least connect them together:
Art theory, rebellion, music, history, politics, socialism, intimacy, popular culture, youth movements...
This went for painters, writers, composers...
You can still see the results in some of the world's museums today.
This inspired me to combine various strains, too.
2.
So, what I wanted to do was to create a form of art and music, that was empowering people, helps with mental health problems, topples the oh-so-fragile political balance of society, is related to techno, hardcore, gabba, and avantgarde music, and is a lot of fun.
all of this was not easy. in fact, it was extremely complicated. even getting the production process "off the ground" was hard to do.
but i progressed, step by step.
so i had my music ready and was also ready to unleash it on the world.
i wasn't exactly sure or confident, though.
But why not give it a try? So I went to labels, parties, to other artists, the scene...
I supposed I would get the following reaction:
"hello nerd boy. now go back home".
But instead, people said:
"you were the one that we were waiting for".
So my music started to grow in the world of gabba, speedcore, techno...
3.
I played gigs at squat raves with no restrooms, barely hidden from the police. in front of hundreds of brawly skinheads. in run-down muddy basements hidden within berlin's residential blocks, that could only be entered after descending through a literal hole in the wall. for lunatics in the crowd that had run away from the asylum. at punk festivals during "riot situations". underneath a bridge, or in the fields.
and sometimes, now and then, even in a real club or disco!
i never had the chance to level up to the "respectable" realms of the upper techno echelon, or music world even.
or rather, whenever i had the chance to, i declined, because i preferred to stay underground.
so when, for example, a bigger label reached out to me to release or distribute my music, i usually told them "thanks, but: no!". i mellowed a bit down in that regard as i got older, though.
in the end this led to the quite "strange situation" that now, millions of people know my music, but the majority doesn't, and the general music press mentions my music "only" 3-4 times a year - if even!
i guess this is not such an uncommon occurrence these days, though.
4.
i think in the end it comes down to who you think that "your people" are, and what kind of company you seek.
i never felt very comfortable around "normal people". i always liked the weird and the wonderful. even if they are people who have heavy problems with mental health, or heavy problems with keeping a job, money, keeping social relationships, or even worse stuff. those who others call "freaks" and "misfits". that's who i wanted to do music for in the first place, after all.
and at first i feared my music went to some kind of void. but over the years people reached out to me and i got some feedback in return.
some said my music inspired them or helped them with their mental problems.
which, after all, was the actual idea behind my music.
they also told me my tracks were played all over the place, in france, canada, columbia, post-soviet russia, mexico, london. but, of course, most of the time, not really in public, or to very large crowds. but in the hidden, "underground" world.
5.
so it all worked out fine. i guess.
because moving in such obscured, strange circles, and with all the people that came with heavy problems at times, was not always easy. and it's easy to get burned, when you walk through a fire. but maybe such an "infernal fire" is also a healing or cleaning force.
sometimes i am not sure i always made the right decisions, or if i really did choose a nice place to stay in (and should have escaped early on).
but i am happy that i could help some of the people that inhabit this "fiery underworld" as well, which i met on my path.
this was my "half-life" as a minor king of the fiery underworld of music, or "hell", even.
it was never planned this way, i am still puzzled how all this happened at all. but that's why i decided to write this down, and i hope it does not come across as ego-mania or too-much-insanity.
so even strange plans or weird dreams can come true, if you just keep on walking.
maybe *you* could put one of your own strange dreams into reality, too!
and i hope that "we" were the good guys and girls in all of this, and were just "misunderstood", while all the normal folk that lived in daylight, that looked down at the likes of us - were just "too clean and boring".
like in those old movies i watched as a kid.
Note: No AI was used in writing this text.
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