FROM THE ASHES

“Hey cool, you’re in a band. So what sort of stuff do you play?”

Would you believe that this is the question I dread the most and not for any lack of pride or because I’m in anyway hesitant in telling people about what we do. To be honest, making music is such an intrinsically cool thing to do that I have no reservations about it at all. No, what I really dread is trying to describe music at all. I hate dealing in labels, be it in music or as a way of describing people.

I lack the sub-genre lexicon needed when it comes to describing modern music: I haven’t read a music magazine since I last picked up a copy of Kerrang in the late 90s. It isn’t that I haven’t had an interest in music since then but I prefer to engage with it in a primary fashion, simply put; I love playing the guitar. More than that though I want to be out there seeing bands, and feeling the music, as opposed to reading the reviews of critics and the like. Once, I read a review in a general ‘rock’ mag about a Bryan Adams gig and the guy doing the review was into metal proper (as established in all his other reviews for the magazine), so his review was….well…’dismissive’ to phrase it kindly. It seemed a bewildering mix up of reviewer and subject matter, and was the last time I picked up a magazine.

What makes the ‘Age of Information’ we live in so interesting is that now one wouldn’t have to make do with one review from that gig, instead there a whole host of different viewpoints out there, from magazines to blogs to twitter to Myface to music review sites. The technology available to us today has created fantastic accessibility to art: of course the bad thing about this ‘age’ is the same as the good, namely that EVERYONE can get their stuff out there. Therefore, just like Andy Dufrane, you have to wade through an awful lot of shit to find that nugget of gold.

Then again that’s part of the fun; the attempt to get your stuff out ‘there’. This is part of the reason why I put this band together, because I enjoy writing new music and creating something. Yet the absolute favourite part of it is playing live, with the people you know, the people you don’t, and the people that just wanna have a good time. And then there’s the exhilaration of playing as loud and heavy as humanly possible..

I love creating new material that doesn’t sound like everyone else. I love writing songs in different structures, fusing the disparate styles of those of us in FTA, creating the dynamic shifts in songs, all of which give us our sound. I think what makes a band interesting is the group dynamic. You bring together a bunch of people, stick them in a studio and let them get on with it. The end results will be different if you swap even one of those people out and that’s what makes it unique and different: each different group of people brings different influences and abilities, creating a style that, while it can be copied, can never be replicated.

With FTA I got lucky in bringing together an awesome group of guys who just have a dizzying array of talent and ability and I can’t think of a better group of guys to share a stage with.

See ya out there,
Steve