About Me

I was born in Caerphilly, South Wales at the Miner’s Hospital and grew up in the village of Abertridwr. I shared a home with my parents and sisters, and I spent much of my early childhood playing football and video games. I attended St. Cenydd school, and through playing video games I was introduced to many new friends that also lived in the Caerphilly area. We would often spend weekends and summers camping out in places around Caerphilly such as the St. Cenydd School grounds, Caerphilly Mountain and Cedar Tree field, making memories together that justified existence itself. Class.

In College I studied computing, and a few years later I began studying science In 2017, however, I began working as a web designer, photographer and digital marketer for my father’s Welsh love spoon business Angel Woodcraft. Somewhere along the line I got completely caught up in the guitar, and music has been my biggest focus in life ever since.

My musical journey

Early Influences

From a young age I found the guitar alluring. I vividly remember watching Slash playing on that cliff in the Don’t Cry music video, and I don’t think the impact of that ever really left me. Even then I think I was stunned by how right that scene felt. There were no words being said, nor were any needed to describe what it makes us feel.

Another childhood experience was crucial to forming part of my musical philosophy. I recall being at my uncle’s house with everyone sat around the TV chatting and casually watching one of Frank Zappa’s live shows. Frank had just finished a solo and I recall somebody mentioning that what is so great about Frank’s live shows is that there were never two shows that were the same due to all of the improvisation. Without even realising it, that statement had set a bar for what musicianship was despite the fact that I didn’t play an instrument myself.

Many years later, at around age 19, I became deeply obsessed with the guitar. I had picked the hobby up a few times through my teenage years, but a few new developments inspired this sudden fascination. Firstly was my love of Pink Floyd, driven in large part by David Gilmour’s ability to say so much through the guitar; secondly, there was my admiration for my good friend John Perrett’s discipline in his own practise of the guitar; finally there was a video of Allen Collins playing my favourite rendition of the Free Bird solo live in Winterland Arena, 1976. Upon seeing Allen play the solo I recall thinking “if I practised casually every day for 10 years I could probably have a fair crack at that solo.” Soon after this I even bought a similar white shirt to the one he wore during that performance, I was enamoured by how electric this man was.

The Journey Begins

So now it was deep under my skin, and I really had the bug. I was studying science at this time but it became clear that I was incapable of focusing on anything other than the guitar, and I was eyeing up a lot of guitar gear at the time without any means to afford it. At this time I was also experiencing a shift in my philosophy and felt that it was important for us all to be doing what we truly feel called to. After some tough deliberation, I took a leap and decided to drop out of college to play guitar and earn some money. 

I started by creating an e-commerce venture for my dad, and around this time I began listening to a lot of live Led Zeppelin performances and diving deeper into Gilmour’s work than ever before. I listened to many of the great talks by Steve Vai that are out there, and I think he really put into words how I was feeling about the guitar at the time. Vai is all about expressing yourself to the maximum, getting deep into the minutiae of your creativity and determining the level of technique you personally require to get it out there.

Some time later I came across Andy Timmons, and this was a moment of immense import for my journey with the guitar. Taking what I had learned from Vai about personal expression on the instrument, I found a true inspiration that really resonated with me in Andy. Andy possesses such graceful technique paired with an ability to improvise in a way that feels incredibly unique and sincere. His compositions so often move me to tears, and his guitar tones are simply divine. Andy was an important step because he flawlessly wields everything that speaks to me about the instrument.

Time to Start a Band

So once all the pieces were in place, what else was there to do but get out into the world and play some music myself? I began having jam sessions with friends, mostly my rhythm guitarist Alex Davison. We had some plans to create music together and would play a few tracks, but nothing sparked inspiration quite like Alex taking the cable out of his guitar and making it buzz by touching it to his hand. Couple this with a few pedals and he had created what we described as a robot’s heartbeat. This prompted half an hour’s worth of jamming over said buzzing sound whilst it did nothing more than shift up and down an octave on a loop pedal.

“we should do something with this” said Alex, eyes off in the distance considering the matter. “We should just make a side project where we just play around with these weird ideas… We could make a whole concept album about robots or something!”

We gave this a little thought that night until Alex left, but no solid ideas came to us. The next day, Alex called me up after a lightbulb moment in the shower and, lo and behold, we had a premise for a concept album about robots. It was perhaps a few months of working on the thing before we even realised that this side project had become the main project. We planned to make the album at home with a cheap interface and a few decent microphones. It was to be just me and Alex until we had put the album out, but an opportunity came up to record for free in a university studio, and we couldn’t pass up the chance to play the album with a band in this setting.

Soon after this we had an opportunity to ask our good friends Jack and Wez to join the band to help us in the studio. We had been desperately hoping that we would get the chance to work with the pair of them, and once that chance came the music changed completely in the best way possible. The studio opportunity fell apart due to its scheduling for March 2020 (haha!) but here we are holding onto our beloved rhythm section, ready to take on the world and preach to you our tale about the inception of sentient AI, with inspiration from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, Isaac Asimov, and all manner of other influences that live within us.