Where we return to the origin story of Kosmischeboy, and what inspired those early days of beatmaking.

A number of fortuitous co-incidences led to the birth of Kosmischeboy as a music artist. I’m going to try and cover them in this post but first some ancient history…

The Kosmischeboy project wasn’t my first foray into electronic music, in the early/mid 90s Graham and I experimented with electronica under the Aztechnology moniker. I’ll not go into details here on that as it’s probably worthy of another separate blog post. But the path from early 90s to the mid 90s leads us nicely to our first coincidence.

Coincidence #1

The release of “Better Living By Chemistry” by Fat Boy Slim in 1996.

We are currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of Fat Boy Slim’s debut album Better Living Through Chemistry, hard to believe it’s that long since it was released. It’s an absolute belter of an album, and the recently released anniversary edition is well worth picking up for the bonus cd of extra tracks including the excellent Michael Jackson, b-side to Going Out of My Head which got some serious play in our house!

Back when it came out there was a bit of mystery as to who Fat Boy Slim was, as Norman Cook was still signed to a major label and technically wasn’t allowed to release material elsewhere at the time. So the rumour was it was Norm but no one really knew for certain. I’d discovered the world of Skint Records initially through Bentley Rhythm Ace, who my little group of pals in Gainsborough adored. Myself and Tom went to see them at the Leadmill in Sheffield in 1997 and it was such a great night, Cut Le Roc was DJing and it’s a bit misty in my memory but I think Les Rhythm Digitales supported. Tom probably tipped me off about Fat Boy Slim too, we’d both been huge Housemartins fans and Tom dabbled with DJing, so was very much on the pulse of up and coming electronic music, especially when it was rumoured to be by an ex Housemartin. We were best mates at school but lost touch for a few years afterwards, happily we spent a lot of time together in the early – mid 90s and were pretty much inseparable until he moved up to Manchester then ultimately to the US.

Sadly he died unexpectedly a few years ago and I miss him terribly. I often think of him when I hear new music and then remember he’s not here to tell about it. So through Tom I heard Everybody Needs a 303, and Santa Cruz and excitement was building for the album release in September 96. Another semi coincidence happened at the end of August 96 too, myself and Graham and his brother John, went to Reading festival and had a bit of a revelatory experience watching the legendary Underworld gig there.

It was an incredible performance (thankfully archived on YouTube!) and had a massive impact on us, it’s not an understatement to say that me and Graham started making PROPER electronic music together because of that gig. We came back from Reading very fired up, and excited about the potential of live performance of electronic music.

Around six months later we started a brief club night in Lincoln playing the more eclectic Big Beat style music myself and Tom had discovered and immersed ourselves in and the more electronica Warp/Underworld style stuff me and Graham liked too. We called it Club Sprog partly as a tribute to Club Dog, an inspiration to us all, and partly as a nod to my past in Children Of A Lesser Groove.

Steve Beech at the Lincolnshire Echo ran a great piece on us, and we managed to do three fun nights over six months in the back room of the Falstaff before it fizzled out. Lincoln hadn’t quite become the Student city it is now, everything was very embryonic, but we pulled a reasonable crowd and had fun which was the main thing. Tom was invaluable as he had all the practical DJ knowledge and skills, me and Graham just chose some tunes. By now we are heading rapidly into 1998.

Later that year Fat Boy Slim released the Rockafella Skank and it all blew up hugely for him, suddenly he was a household name, I remember us playing it on loop when I moved Tom up to Manchester, another absolute revelation, and indeed a revolutionary record as far as production goes. That breakdown in the middle is still stunning.

But for now we need to go back to the beginning of 98…

Coincidence #2

Sonic Foundry released their “Acid Ph1” music making software in 1998.

Back in the 90s there really was only one piece of software for audio editing and that was Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge, I’d used it a lot to edit sounds for my Akai S2000 rack mount sampler.

Back then I was running a lot of hardware via midi, as I’d moved from my Amiga to a PC based set up with the release of Windows 95 and a grant from the Princes Trust to buy a PC for my Star Wars toy business.

Soundforge made it super easy to edit samples in a visual way then import them into the sampler, much better than the fiddly numbers based editing in the hardware alone!

So when Sonic Foundry announced they were releasing a new piece of sample manipulation software, it was an exciting prospect. Acid Ph1 dropped closely followed by Acid Pro, an expanded version, and we “acquired” it via illicit means, downloading it for free as we did most music software back then.

It was truly a revelation to me I could create multitrack songs using samples and midi, and the software did the audio time stretching, literally any sample from my library could be dropped into a track and it instantly matched the tempo, key etc.

This made it super easy to build song structures, and the added bonus of automation and built in effects (delay particularly) led to more complex arrangements being possible. Equally the ability to use time stretch in creative ways added to my sample palette, I could manipulate voice samples in new and exciting ways, as I’d heard on the drum and bass records seeping out from the underground into the mainstream. I also had fun with layering drum beats at half speed over normal speed beats, creating some almost syncopated rhythm beds for my tracks. Chopping samples visually in a timeline also allowed more complex arrangements to be made, especially when combined with automated panning and volume changes.

I began to create a collection of song ideas pretty quickly inspired by the new music I’d been inspired by and named myself Skinny Boy Chubbs as a tongue in cheek reference to Fat Boy Slim.

Looking back it was an incredibly productive time, by the end of the summer I had almost a full CDs worth of songs done.

I’d also seen an advert in a music magazine for something interesting…

Coincidence #3

I return to education and discover I’m not alone as a music nerd…

That something interesting was a Music Tech course at Doncaster College. I enquired in August and found they had places to start in September on a two year HND. I got signed up and after some frantic arranging of childcare was able to start the course on time.

Starting the course was another revelation, I found myself in a class full of people who were equally obsessed with music as I was, all with different things to bring to the “mix” some performers, some producers, some techs, all passionate. We were based outside Doncaster on the old High Melton Campus, a proper oasis of creativity, with studios, a theatre space and even a bar. We were able to use the studios pretty much any time, even into the evening, so I started bringing Fozz my old drummer from Children Of A Lesser Groove over occasionally to rehearse some electronic stuff based on what I’d been writing in Acid. Him drumming along to my live electronics, initially he struggled with a click track but soon got used to it. We’d rehearse for a bit then when we got kicked out of the studios go and have a drink in the bar with my tutor Dave (Formula of Magazine/Visage fame) who would regale Fozz with tales of his drumming heroes like Mark Brzezicki of Big Country, and me with tales of Strongroom studios in London. It was a fabulously inspiring time and I still count Dave as a good friend now, and he’s still as super supportive of my music as he was back then.

The other students were very supportive too, some of whom I’m still friends with now. I pressed a CD up of my big beat tracks called it “1967 Eldorado” and sold them around the college. Classic quote of the time was my student pal Dave Edwards, “Did you make this on Acid Dan?” “No Dave I was straight…” I never forgot that, it still makes me smile, obviously he meant the software!

After initially releasing it under the Skinny Boy Chubbs name I decided to change the name to a more serious one, as I didn’t want to be perceived as a “joke” band.

I’d already been known as Kosmischeboy on the various message boards I was posting on at the time so it seemed a logical choice. The name itself was a made up word, partly in tribute to one of my favourite electronic musicians at the time, Cosmic Baby. In hindsight it’s been quite lucky to have a made up name as the internet has grown, as when you search for the term Kosmischeboy, it’s all my stuff that comes up, there is only one KB!

Another bonus of that time was that I got a grant for doing the course, some of which I used to buy music making hardware; a Yamaha EX7 keyboard workstation, a Roland SP808 and (after an exciting trip to London to buy the last one remaining in the country from Turnkey) a Quasimidi Sirius. All three of which I still own now. As we rehearsed more this became my live rig and Fozz began to play a full electric Drumkit.

I also bought a legit copy of Acid Pro.

I managed to get some gigs at festivals up and down the country and we had lots of fun embedding our big beat electronics in amongst the plethora of indie bands and rock bands. It was always a bit unpredictable how we’d go down with the crowd but they generally loved us. One particular crowd at Willow Fest in Peterborough went absolutely crazy when we played, it was an excellent gig all round.

So there we go a series of coincidences led to what became Kosmischeboy.

Of course alongside this I’d been experimenting musically with Graham too, on what would eventually become Quiddity. And he’d been writing some embryonic Gribbles tunes using the Acid software too. It all started in the 90s… thirty years ago.

Which is pretty mind blowing.