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2010: A Grim Odyssey started out as a bit of fun.

I set myself a challenge to produce a track each month. I would not be allowed to tinker with it once the month had been and gone.

For example, whatever the first tune was that I worked on in January, that would be the one that would ultimately represent the month on the finished album – if I started anything else after that, it would have to be called something else that had nothing to do with January or 2010, and would have to be used on another album or EP, or as the soundtrack to a silly video, or be thrown away and forgotten about. Obviously, I had to start something each month so that I could fulfil the monthly tune challenge.

Oh, what fun.

The 2010 challenge was a way to try and organise myself better in my approach to composition.

I remember my A Level music teacher (Mr Stokes) once commenting that my compositions seemed ‘through composed’, which is a reasonable observation; I didn’t take a broad view of what a composition should achieve, I would just let it meander wherever it felt comfortable. If I didn’t have deadlines, who knows where they might have ended up (probably somewhere Grim).

As you can see from the cover, 2010 eventually ended up being packaged with a companion album, Sod Off. More of that later.

As you can also see from a picture taken at the time, 2010 was taking a considerable amount of concentration. So much so that I often forgot to brush my hair, and all the colour had drained from my face, and my clothes, and my surroundings.

TBD