{"id":9243,"date":"2019-06-01T02:09:51","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T01:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kjkmusic.co.uk\/?p=9243"},"modified":"2024-11-13T00:09:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T00:09:00","slug":"music-kept-me-sane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/music-kept-me-sane\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Kept Me Sane: A Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-songlink wp-block-embed-songlink\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" width=\"560\" height=\"367\" src=\"https:\/\/odesli.co\/embed\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Falbum.link%2Fi%2F1466679323#?secret=xemQrBLgBT\" data-secret=\"xemQrBLgBT\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Quicksand Kerry is the name and persona I settled into during the ten year period between 1998 and 2008, a time highlighted by expressions of gender fluidity, forays into DIY performance art and gothic industrialism. This album is a compilation of music recorded in various guises during that time, remastered in 2019.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1: Quicksand Kerry &#8211; Music Kept Me Sane\n(2003)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I first wrote and recorded this in 2001, with the Ladykillers&#8217; &#8216;Electric&#8217; James Martin guesting on lead guitar. It then went through assorted remixes, overdubs and additional programming before I settled on this final version around 2003. <br><br>This is not a heavyweight lyric. As a discussion of mental health it&#8217;s on the level of They&#8217;re Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha, but I picked it as the title track of this retrospective because music really is one hell of a coping mechanism &#8211; there&#8217;ll be more honest expressions of my emotional foibles on the coming tracks.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>2: Kerry Samson &#8211; Motorway Enui (1998)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kerry Samson was my first recording and performing\nalias (Kerry stuck, Samson did not), under which I self-released two\nsolo acoustic albums <em>Playing With No Friends<\/em> and <em>Proud\nTo Be A Failed Waiter<\/em>. I no longer have suitable master files\nfrom those albums, so here is an early foray into digital multitrack\nrecording (combined audio and midi in home computer sequencers still\nfelt revolutionary in the 1990s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>3: T.M.O. &#8211; Desire Could Never Be More\nSatisfied (2004)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was the theme song for a series of messy transgender skit videos I made with a group of friends. The lyrics aren&#8217;t particularly deep, but the title was inspired by a line in Neil Gaiman&#8217;s Sandman comics, &#8220;\u2026neither male nor female, because Desire could never be satisfied with just one gender&#8221;. This quote came to define much of my gender identity at a time when non-binary had yet to be established as a grouping and all you could be was transvestite, transsexual or drag queen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>4: Quicksand Kerry &#8211; If Only They&#8217;d Taught\nUs (2000)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the 2000 album &#8220;Sick Parody of Normality&#8221;, this is a sarcastic statement on the rejection of conformity. <br>For this retrospective, I had to clean up the audio a lot on this one &#8211; audio processing wasn&#8217;t my strong suit back then and there were a lot of signal and EQ problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>5: Quicksand Kerry &#8211; You Left Me and You Jinxed Me (2005)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recorded in a single take on each instrument (organ, guitar and vocals over programmed drums), this is from the point of view of a dysfunctional, abusive and justifiably dumped protagonist.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I later wrote a sequel from the point of view of his aggrieved former partner &#8211; <em>Nothing For You Here<\/em> appears on the Jenni Bluish <em>No Fury<\/em> EP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>6: Excretia \u2013 Despair (2001)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Excretia (singer Felicia Devile and her guitarist\nboyfriend Darrel Pthisis) was a gothic drag act and affectionate\npastiche of the witchy gothic rock I was listening to at the time. It\nwas very much what it was, but Felicia was my first full femme stage\npersona and I still like some of the music I made under this guise,\neven if the vocal style was underdeveloped.<br>&#8220;Despair&#8221;\nwas one of the more serious tracks on Excretia&#8217;s mini-album &#8220;Witching\nHour&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>7: Devilish Deeds &#8211; The Mysterious and the\nMacabre (2006)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Composed as incidental music for a sword box\nillusion routine with Devilish Deeds, a magic act I rehearsed and\nperformed with a dancer friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>8: Miles From Anywhere \u2013 Thinking (1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Darkwave project Miles From Anywhere was one of my\nfirst full scale multitrack recording vehicles, the album <em>Ending<\/em>\nwas distributed by Peoplesound in 1999. I was in a bad place mentally\nat this time &#8211; I&#8217;d been unable to play for a while due to a bout of\ntendonitis, severely affecting my livelihood. I was also developing\nsevere anxiety around my identity, the struggles of life as a jobbing\nmusician and the feeling of my music not belonging to myself anymore.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second side of the album featured some\nparticularly dark moments which I&#8217;m not sure I want to revisit.\n<em>Thinking<\/em> is fairly measured in comparison to those cuts, an\nexploration of depression-induced paranoia and distrust of those that\nwould help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>9: Miles From Anywhere &#8211; Inner Child\n(1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also from the <em>Ending<\/em> album. My progressive\njazz background accounts for the irregular time signatures that put\npaid to the track being played in the goth clubs that inspired me,\nbut the stilted rhythms just worked too well to dispense with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>10: Quicksand Kerry \u2013 Curious (2006)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A song about the awkward and dangerous time of life when the thrill of exploring the adult world combines with childish eagerness to please and need for attention. I experienced some of this on my way out of the trans closet (when you&#8217;re made to feel your identity is wrong and fetishistic it can leave you vulnerable to predators), but I knew that my experience was nothing compared to that of the girls I&#8217;d known from the alternative club scene.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The line &#8220;she wants to know about what she&#8217;s read in all the magazines&#8221; was inspired by a young singer songwriter I saw at the Duchess of York in Leeds. In the audience I found myself stood next to the singer&#8217;s Mother, who beamed proudly as her teenage daughter sang angsty songs about rape, drug abuse and other sinister life experiences. I asked the Mother if she was worried about the choice of lyrical motifs, to which she replied, &#8220;she reads a lot of magazines and has a great imagination&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>11: Quicksand Kerry &#8211; Don&#8217;t Want to Choose\n(2007)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though I have spent a lot of time presenting as a\ngirl, I realised early on that full transition was not my path &#8211; I\noften said that had I been born a girl I would probably have dressed\nas a boy. Though the term had yet to be popularised at that time,\nthis is non-binary identity in a nutshell. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A question that sometimes gets asked in trans\nforums is, &#8220;If you could only express one gender ever, which\ncould you live without?&#8221;. Personally I would 1) demand to know\nwho is defining and policing this arrangement and 2) rebel on\nprinciple. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t Want To Choose&#8221; is not only about\ngender identity, but every instance where you are forced into\narbitrary choices to fit roles assigned by others. This is the first\nrecording I made of the song, I later re-recorded it for the 2015\nalbum &#8220;Songs From the Age of Human Error&#8221;, which was in\nturn was remixed for the 2017 EP &#8220;Only Robots Need To Think In\nBinary&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>12: Quicksand Kerry \u2013 Beelzebub (2006)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A piece of silliness that came about during an\nimprovised rock jam at the Primrose in Leeds. As I recall, the chorus\nstructure and story pretty much came to me on the fly, I then went\nhome and wrote it out as a proper draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>13: Quicksand Kerry &#8211; I&#8217;m Smiling (live,\n2007)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First appearing on the 2000 album <em>Sick Parody of Normality<\/em>, this fanciful yarn became my signature song. I have often been criticised for smiling too much (I can&#8217;t help it, I have that kind of a face) so this is kind of a rebuke to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reading it back now, I guess the &#8220;angry young man&#8221; antagonist is a personification of my own insecurities, though I didn&#8217;t give it that much thought at the time. In any case, this sums up my mission statement throughout my time as Quicksand Kerry, a period during which I dealt with anxiety, depression and alienation by embracing misfit identity and just being myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Never stop smiling, and don&#8217;t care what they think.<\/p>\n\n\n[bandcamp width=400 height=472 album=651785984 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quicksand Kerry is the name and persona I settled into during the ten year period between 1998 and 2008, a time highlighted by expressions of gender fluidity, forays into DIY performance art and gothic industrialism. This album is a compilation of music recorded in various guises during that time, remastered in 2019. 1: Quicksand Kerry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-available-releases","category-supplementary-albums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9735,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9243\/revisions\/9735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mabno.co.uk\/kjkmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}