about me and this blog

Comrades,

Many thanks for visiting this blog.  My name is Rob Hayler and I am based in Leeds, UK. 

When I started RFM at the end of 2009 I claimed its function to be as follows: 

During the first five years or so of this century I created music (mainly) under the name midwich, released music on the micro-label fencing flatworm recordings which I co-ran with my colleague Sean Keeble, and helped run the Leeds experimental-music institution Termite Club. 

Now in my twilight years I think that this work might be fruitfully documented and made freely available to the world at large.  Over the coming whenever I will be uploading documents, mp3s, photos, gig momentos and the like to create a small but perfectly formed archive celebrating my corner of the experimental, drone, electronica, free music, CDR underground and its various no-audience-attracting projects.

 As an afterthought, I hedged my bets by adding: 

I’ll also post the occasional comment on current music and events in a woeful and desperate attempt to remain relevant.

Whilst the archival project continues at a glacial pace (and has been augmented by the excellent job done by Bang the Bore: part one here, part two here), the implications of this throwaway line now provide the blog’s primary purpose.  As I reacquainted myself with what I playfully call the ‘no-audience underground’, and as the people within it got back in touch, I found myself increasingly wanting to get involved.  This I have done by writing at length about the terrific projects I have encountered, by musing narcissistically about life, music and their overlap, and by reactivating midwich in order to make a racket myself.

Please feel free to contact me via the comments which, unless physically restrained from doing so, I will be checking obsessively.  You can also email me at r dot w dot hayler at leeds dot ac dot uk.

Should you wish to submit stuff for possible review please read the below first:

42mm x 191mm

These are the dimensions of my letterbox’s aperture.  If you wish to send me physical objects then please make sure your package is not too meaty to be stuffed through this orifice.   If I have to go to the sorting office to pick it up I will get the hump: it is a long walk and their opening hours are not entirely helpful.  If you felt like being all 21st Century about it then you could do what one space-age correspondent has done and zip up a bunch of mp3s, leave the folder on rapidshare and send me a link to go fetch ‘em.  I can manage that.

Once these things are in my possession the next set of conditions will apply: 1.  If I don’t like the music then, unless some other aspect of your project intrigues me, I will politely decline to write about it.  I’d like to keep the blog positive.  2.  If you send me a bunch of stuff then I reserve the right to ignore some bits, pick my favourites and just write about those.  3.  I can’t promise a definite turnaround time, though I will promise to at least try everything that arrives here and give it a fair mulling over.  Should this sound reasonable, then feel free to email me at the address above.