Hi there, thanks for visiting my page here at Soundclick.
Please give my music a listen, and let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your opinion.
My situation is: after completing a B.Sc. in Music Technology, I've moved to London after getting a great job in a top recording studio.
After 11 years of gigging and writing with various bands of various genres from progressive metal through funk to disco, pop and showtunes, I write and record music in every spare moment I'm not at work.
My current plan is to get 3 or 4 tracks of my own together to send to record companies and management companies, but I figured, in the mean time, it'd be nice to find out what people really thought of my music.
Of course, fitting this project in between working and doing session guitar for other people proves to be a little tricky.
Currently, all instruments, vocals, programming, and production on this project are done by me, Phil, Just Phil.
A select bandography:-
93-95 Ethereal - Prog Metal
95-02 Groovedealer(nee Dealers In Groove) - Disco
98-00 Fyl - My original solo stuff - Prog Grunge?
01-02 Intake - Hardcore, Rap-Metal
01-03 Undecided - Pop-punk/rock
02-03 The Shift - Funk/rock
04-.. Mindfall - electronica/rock/dub
05-.. Just Phil
Plus various session gigs including Matrix Club Mix and Family Affair (soul, r&b, funk).
Apologies to anyone I left out.
Playing live is one of the most amazing experiences in life. There's nothing quite like seeing crowds of people dancing to the music that you're playing, particularly if it's your own music.
I've played the west-midlands(uk) pub scene to death, and 7 or 8 small to medium-sized festivals (200 - 5000 people), but since I moved to London I've been concentrating on settling in and writing new material rather than putting together a live act.
As for special moments, I feel that all gigs have their own special moments, but a few to stand out in my memory, like the time I had to play a pop-punk gig with a broken elbow after leaping out of the back of a moving minibus on the way to the Leicester Uni Rock Night, highly inebriated, because I needed a pee. When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.
There was a small biker 'festival' (large barbecue is probably more accurate - 200 people at most) a few years back, and I was having so much fun leaping around the stage that I totally hadn't noticed that I'd cheese-gratered the fingers of my right hand on the guitar strings halfway through the gig. It was only afterwards that an enormous biker came over to congratulate me on having bled on my guitar (the thing looked like it'd been in a gang hit) more than anyone at any gig he'd been to. That was quite funny. Amazing how much pain you can actually go through when your adrenaolin's up.
After growing up on Iron Maiden, I got into Metallica, AC/DC, Guns'n'Roses, Van Halen when I started playing guitar.
I did the grunge thing for a while, before really discovering myself musically when I got into Vai, Satriani, Dream Theater, Rush, but always was looking for a way to incorporate the things I love about these acts with other more accessable genres like grunge.
If I was to name bands that I really respect nowadays, it'd be Tool, (Lateralus, in my opinion, is the best 'ALBUM' since Dark Side Of The Moon), Incubus, (Crow Left of... is inspired!), Alice In Chains (Layne Staley R.I.P., long live Jerry Cantrell), Rage Against The Machine (I just rediscovered 'Battle Of Los Angeles" and the self-titled debut album - still kickin after 12 years of charlatans and chancers ripping them off - are you listening Limp Bizkit? I'm talking to you and all the rest of those RATM-clones that've been clogging up the metal charts for the last few years!).
So, after slagging off so many bands, there's probably no-one left reading this.
Long and short of it is, that although I like selected music from most genres, I hate most music I hear.
What can I say, I'm a paradox.
Guitars: '59 Fender Stratocaster/ESP Strat hybrid, 90's re-issue 60's model Japanese Fender Strat, 2 Ibanez RG550's, customised Ibanez RT150, and a borrowed Fender Rory Gallagher Stratocaster (please let me keep it Keith, I love it).
Guitar Effects: Vox Tonelab SE (OMG it's great)
Vocals: dodgy old 70s Shure mic.
All my drums are programmed, although I've been developing a programming style that emulates a real drummer (it being one of the instruments that I do actually play but don't have room for in my place in London). I use Logic 5.5(for vocals and guitars and bass) and Reason 3(drums and anything electronic or synthetic) on a 2.5 GHz PC with an old E-Mu APS soundcard and a dual core 3GHz PC laptop with a MOTU 828 firewire audio interface.
Keep it real... keep the faith in good music.
I hope you put my music in that category, but either way, I'd love to hear your opinion on my music, so please drop me an email or sign my guestbook.
