THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND

The first few years of the "noughties" saw me spending increasingly longer amounts of time in my room listening to music, making playlists and compliations on MiniDisc, reading endless music magazines and books (also a lot of astronomy magazines) in favour of going outside. Even on hot Summer days, i would shun the outside world in favour of my music collection. No wonder i was so pale! The odd Sunday or Monday trip to a few local pubs with a couple of friends aside - a few games of pool and a few tunes on the jukebox interspersed with twats playing fucking Coldplay on repeat - i barely went out. My solo night shifts at the local petrol station were similarly accompanied by music and magazine were a welcome distraction from all the local drunks, druggies, and dickheads i had to tolerate. In hindsight, i think the hours i kept resulted in a mild depression for some time, and i developed an obsession with facts and figures, namely reading books like the Guinness Book Of Hit Sin

As someone born in the mid-70's, i've been witness to several changes in technology and trends, especially in the world of musical playback formats. When i was a kid, vinyl and cassettes were the way we all heard music: CD's, although launched in the early 80's, didn't become popular with - and affordable to - the wider public until the end of the decade, and of course the MP3, the downloadable music file, and the iPod became a dominant force by the middle of the 00's. Some formats were dead ends commercially, such as the Digital Compact Cassette and the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) were generally used only by musicians and recording studio types. The DCC (created by Philips) was considered to be in competition with Sony's shiny new Minidisc, which was like a smaller CD housed in a square cartridge, like a floppy disk. Like the CD, it was launched several years before it - or the equipment needed to play it - became affordable to the general public, although it

2000. A new year and (in the minds of most people, anyhow) new millenium beckoned. Back at my parents, working nights in a local garage, and still single (terminally, in my opinion). As the possibilities of a career in radio work or music writing looked decidedly slim, i lost myself in my love of music. The bright new dawn of great British guitar music was a long distant memory, and the charts were dominated by godawful club sounds, gangsta rap, and UK Garage, an "urban" offshoot of dance and jungle with rap and hip hop influences, typified by the likes of Craaaaaig Daaaaavid. Not to my tastes and clearly aimed at at younger generation of twats in hoodies, my beloved indie and guitar music looked like it was being pushed to the margins. Now, there was a time when indie bands scoffed at chart success, refusing to play Top Of The Pops and being happy with a few plays on John Peel, but i wanted my favourite music to be successful, i wanted to have conversations with like-minded