Pulling the power on Sad Light: reflections on closing a decade long musical project
I have recorded music since I was 15. I remember my mum interupting me as I arranged acoustic sounds recorded into the computer in a semblence of structure. She had stopped me to talk about what I was going to do for a job, or at university. It never occured to me somehow that music was a job. I thought I needed some kind of traditional profession and ended up applying to architecture school. My health meant I never made it, and I went to art college instead in the long run. Anyway, this “music” I was creating only really made sense to me, and to an extent perhaps to the guy in the record shop who kindly stocked my (of course ironically titled) “New Teen Pop Sensation” CDr with a cover created on the home PC, no doubt in MS Paint or maybe I had Photoshop by then but didn’t know how to use it properly yet.
The music began as electroacoustic and purely electronic experiments involving Cubasis VST, a microphone, a midi cable, and a Clavinova. I started adding other instruments such as recorder, with no regard for whether or not I could actually play them with any kind of aptitude. Truth was, I could play the piano and the clarinet to a fair standard, but I liked having a go at the guitar in odd made up open tunings, with strings missing — way before Seasick Steve (not really a brag-I’m not a big fan).
My friend Joe said I must have been gutted when John Peel died because he was the only radio presenter open minded or mad enough to play my weird music (I’m paraphrasing). I was genuinely gutted, not so much for the lost opportunity; I never had any major ambitions for commercial success and it was obvious what I was doing wasn’t likely to bother the charts. What I did have was a weird kind of split self-belief that ricoched off my self loathing and feelings of insecurity and deep inadequacy. You could call this self-belief in the face of absolute disinterest and disregard heroic, or maybe it amounted solely to a delusion of adequacy. But I liked making it.
The music was both an outlet for and an expression of a growing depression that was spiralling towards a more florid disorder. Through four hospitalisations I carried on making what was essentially Outsider Music (my initials incidentally OM, not that that’s really relevant) under a number of monikers: Phantom Bantum Hip Hop Collective (one of the one off party aliases when friends came round and got wrecked) the aformentioned NTPS, Jetta, and lastly Sad Light. Sad Light was for me, a culmination of the trajectory I was headed in. Intuitively produced and ultimately melodic music buried under layers of poor production, bad singing, out of time playing and other musical sediments. If this sounds like a poor endorsement, consider yourself warned. However, even now I maintain that there is something of value to be panned among the detritus of my back catalogue, were anyone to want to go so digging. But for me, as I get older, I have to accept there’s something to be said for traditional notions of craft. That the avant-ineptitude isn’t necessarily a badge of authenticity. And I don’t want to spend any more hours making music just to make myself happy, or rather less sad. Or if I do, it will be in practicing, honing, sculpting sound perhaps not to a polish, but to a patina at least. Some diamonds are too rough to see the sparkle within. The new project is called The Majeed Family band, and it’s me, my wife Bizzy, and our baby daughter on maracas. (I might have to sample them she’s only seven months old). I also hope to make Shoegaze with my friends Tom and Marc when circumstances allow. And as my friend Daryl suggested, I’m not going to rush out a new record, but we’ll take our time because an audience deserves that and so does the music.
(you can hear Omar’s eclectic and ‘seminal’ back catalogue at https://omarmajeed.bandcamp.com/)
