about us and this blog

(some RFM comrades at the Crater Lake Festival, 2015: me, Sof, Luke, Joe, marlo)

PLEASE READ TO THE END FOR (NON)SUBMISSION DETAILS!

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.

Once the archival project was complete (augmented by the excellent job done by Bang the Bore: part one, part two), the implications of this throwaway line provided 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 art I have encountered, by musing narcissistically about life, music and their overlap, and by reactivating midwich in order to make a racket myself (superseded in 2018 by see monsd, my recording project which followed after I destroyed midwich at the 2017 TUSK Festival).

In 2013 the ‘single voice’ era at RFM ended as I was joined by three new comrades – Scott McKeating, Joe Murray and Luke Vollar – and from 2015 to 2017, following a bit of The Fall-style line-up shenanigans, the list of contributors was expanded to include Sophie Cooper, Chrissie Caulfield, marlo de lara, Johannah Henderson and Sarah Gatter.  Between them these folks have a (rather daunting, awe inspiring) wealth of hands-on experience in getting creative things done. I couldn’t believe my luck.  This meant that the range of music covered here could be widened and deepened but without losing our focus on the unheralded edges of noise and experimental music.  I trust you appreciate our differing tastes and styles.

In early 2017 I decided, for a number of well documented reasons, to step down as editor and take an indefinite sabbatical.  Joe Murray kindly agreed to keep the chair warm and did a heroic job as editor, publisher, lead writer and first point of contact until January 2018 when the intrusion of ‘real life’ meant he had to turn his attention elsewhere.  In the run up to his departure, the team voted to scale back operations, give up on the idea of a schedule and commit to nothing more than occasional posts when the muse took us.

Thus: RFM does not accept items for review. I have become increasingly uneasy with the idea of ‘submissions’ and the obligation that comes with accepting freebies. This blog is our contribution to a scene we are very much part of and does not stand aloof, commenting on it from a point of critical distance. Thanks for the kind offers – truly, we live in a golden age for the type of music this blog covers – but we’ll write about what we acquire fair and square and in our own time.

The no-audience underground thrives – as the three quarters of a million words posted here attest.

All is love!

Rob H