“I love your art, man!”

 

This enthusiastic response from a punter after a Scruffamudda performance left me feeling gratified but also uneasy. “Art”? Is what I do art? The word evokes an air of pomposity and stuffiness. Art is viewed in a gallery, a space of quiet observation and reverence. Art is behind a barricade, cordoned off for the plebs to look at but not to directly engage with. Surely Scruffamudda is not art… It is music!

 

Music is fun! When performed live it is a shared experience that has the ability to bring people together in a very tangible and primal way. A beat that the whole audience feels synchronously. When I play I want to share in that energy and blur the line between performer and listener. Every Scruffamudda show features at least one random punter twisting an FX knob, jamming along on a percussion instrument or taking a keyboard solo. We are all sound-makers!

 

Music is fashion and it need not be. Scenester mentality infiltrates every fan-base of every genre of music. Whilst sub-cultures are inevitable and even important in society, they also help create and perpetuate stereotypes. It follows that popular musicians become the public stylists of these cliques. As Scruffamudda, I do not conform to any one genre musically or visually because I want my sounds to be accessible to everyone. I am the man next door, the guy who works at the shop, your weird cousin, but never a fashionista!

 

After playing in several bands of various styles over the years (Oven Fresh, Dr Kong & the Stem Cells, Great Apes, Go/No-Go, Celebrity Drug Disasters, etc.) I bought a loop-station to make my own one-man-band. Using live drums, percussion, sequencers, synthesisers, ukulele, guitar, bells, whistles and countless other toys and gadgets, I build up layers of unique loops which become songs. I want to make eclectic music by following any whim that comes to me, both sonically and stylistically whilst maintaining a thread of pop sensibility. Scruffamudda is the name my sister gave to her toy clown doll when we were growing up and it seems an appropriate moniker for this irreverent, candid and humorous project.

 

So come and enjoy my sounds, my “art” if you will. Whether you are streaming it over the internet or participating in the act at a live performance, I hope that Scruffamudda makes you laugh, cry, sing, dance or at least feel something. As Oscar Wilde is often misquoted as having said: “Life is far too important to be taken seriously”.