Celestium Blog : 001

23rd June 2025

Welcome to my first blog anywhere ever.

I can't see me writing so many of these, but certainly if anything interesting happens, on my continuing Celestium adventure.

In this first blog I'm going to summarize my music life as briefly as possible.

Born in 1961, had absolutely no interest in music until 1974. Partly due to parents subjecting me to their mostly awful taste in music, and partly I'm guessing due to autism, which for me includes getting obsessed with things, a lot. Mostly Lego as a kid.

In 1974 everything changed. One lunchtime at school, it began to rain and I dove into the nearest classroom. It was the music room, and playing on a turntable was the most incredible music I'd ever heard. Nothing else was like it. I asked what it was. I was handed an album sleeve. Autobahn by Kraftwerk. I was none the wiser. I asked what instruments they were using and was told synthesizers. Even more none the wiser.

The following few years I spent all my spare cash on any vinyl with synthesizers on it, even Pink Floyd, Genesis, ELP, anything to hear these incredible sounds. Lots of German stuff.

Then along came punk. Oh yeah baby, loved that. First ever gig, The Stranglers. And just old enough to go out to watch local punk bands, and for the first time in my life get beers down and smoke holy herb at gigs. Hallelujah, my social life had begun!

Another very early gig, Here And Now, a psychedelic rock band with brilliant wibbling tribbling (now known as Cut Off & Resonance) doing wonderfully mad things to my brain on it's first spliff ever.

I formed a punk fanzine called Trash Can, and I got into the habit of writing to any band that was coming to Nottingham, asking if we could interview them. I did well, I even got to interview Joe Strummer (Clash).

Much more exciting, synthesizers were becoming much cheaper to buy, and electronic music bands were beginning to spring up across the UK. I bought every single vinyl release made by any of these people, from 1977 to 1981, then there was just too much to buy.

In 1978 everything changed for a second time. I was to interview the very early Human League, who had just released their first ever single "Being Boiled". The Sandpiper punk club was the venue, and 29 people showed up. The gig was mind-blowing. Afterwards I found myself in the back room enjoying free beers and began asking them about how they made the music. Martyn Ware & Ian Craig Marsh (later Heaven 17) took me back out through the empty club, back on the stage, and showed me their synths. That was the moment. Hooked for life.

A few days later I went to London & back to buy my first synth. A Wasp by Electronic Dream Plant. I began experimenting, irritating my parents and neighbours making bizarre "music", borrowing things from the kitchen and the garage, anything that made a sound, and "multi-tracking" using two cassette players.

I met others in Nottingham doing similar stuff, and in 1979 we rented out a 200-capacity room above a pub in town, and put on three live acts, preposterously calling it Nottingham's first electronic music festival. We advertised it by sticking up home made photocopy posters around town. We spent the afternoon setting up. At 8pm we said, right, better see if anyone's going to show up. We opened the door. The stairs coming up were rammed. We made our way down. The queue went outside, down the road, and round the corner. We had to go back and count everyone up to 200 and turn the others away. We ended up letting a lot more than 200 in. It was insanely rammed. My first gig was quirky, weird, probably crap. But that was it, hooked even more.

Early 1980s, more gigs, a reel-to-reel to record with, a 4-track mixing desk, a couple more synths, a drum machine ... the lifelong snowball had begun to roll ...

In 1987 my job sent me to Sweden for four weeks. I met the first girl I ever got on with, who seemed to understand me. I stayed for eight years. During which time I met two wonderful life-long friends, Nils and Todd. Between them they helped me upgrade my gear, much better stuff, and also taught me what MIDI is.

In 1995 another big fork in the road of my life. Divorced and moved back to England. Within a month I found myself at my first ever rave, with mind-blowing live sets by Pressure of Speech and Orbital. Finally I understood what this new "techno" "rave" shit was!

Within a week I began upgrading my studio even more, an Atari ST computer running Cubase. I began spending insane amounts of hours in my studio. It was normal to get in there before 8am after waking up, and occasional interruptions like "what's wrong with my body?" - Oh, need a piss, go for one, back down the rabbit hole ... or oh, starving, quickly spoon a tin of cold baked beans down, and back down the rabbit hole. Often I'd work all night and into the next day.

In 1997 a friend said he had an old school friend who was a musician and could he come to see my studio, hear my stuff. Turns out his friend also owned a record company. He said he wanted to release an album of my stuff. The first Celestium album "Rising" was born. I wasn't ready for the sales, or the money. It more than repaid all the money I'd ever spent on gear, and enabled me to buy new stuff, better amp and studio monitors, and two brilliant synths, a Roland 303 and a Quasimidi Technox. 

Oh and why "Celestium" ... It was a very short notice thing - apparently the record company thought my real name was a bit boring. Good dance music builds to crescendos and takes the listener into an upwards spiraling journey kinda thing, hence the album title "Rising" ... so I was googling things to do with rising, music building, heavenly stuff I guess, and this latin word Celestium popped up and went yeah that'll do.

In 1999 I moved to live in Glastonbury and quickly found that I fitted in with the alternative "hippy" folk down there, non judgmental, easy going, and tolerant of my quirky weirdness. I became hugely productive in the studio, and also by being asked to do "techno wizardry" for a collection of musicians called Tribal Trance, I learned how to improvise, make things up on the spot, and go with the flow of things. I broke out of the precise, clinically clean Kraftwerkian mold.

Other albums followed, sales followed, lovely feedback from fans began, it was beautiful. The website selling CDs would email me, and I'd be posting them off all over the world, and be getting lovely messages back from everywhere. There's nothing else like it. I love making music for me, but when other people take the trouble to tell me they like it, that's one of the best feelings in the world.

So for the first quarter of this century I've been following my heart / gut / intuition / what the universe offers me, not just with music but with everything in life. A brilliant thing to do, take control of my life and allow my journey to be dictated by what feels right, and what doesn't. That's a whole other blog in fact.

So here I am.

2025 and yesterday I finished the 9th Celestium album. Which has been a deep-dive labour of love and learning. My first music using Ableton, which is a magnificent beast, huge, so much to learn, but so fucking brilliant ... I've spent maybe 40-60 hours a week in my studio for the past 18 months, and the result is "Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You" ... which right now is the music I'm most pleased with / proud of ... Quite early in the process I decided to allow my other obsession (with the craziness of world politics) to come into the music by sampling well known people talking about global issues, and weaving them into my music. I realize that I've put together a highly political album, my personal protest / rage at the machine. I also understood it would never have come together if I'd sought permission to use all the samples, and I didn't want this very personal protest to get bogged down in all that. So to anyone who I've sampled talking about stuff, can I please say these things. You said them, in the public domain, you wanted people to hear your words because they matter. I've showcased your words sympathetically and I have used them to further the cause. And Donald Trump. Yeah mate, you don't come out well on my album. But that's not because of me. You said these things, and a lot more besides. The fairest thing I can say to you, is you split the crowd. And I do respect you for a few things you've said. And you have made me laugh my ass off more than once. But I worry about you. A lot. And you're a big piece on the chess board of current world politics. So you're in buddy, OK.

Today I sent all the music files and artwork to the CD manufacturing company, and the album "Absolutely Unacceptable How Dare You" will be released on August 16th. I've decided to migrate to Bandcamp because those Robbing Bastards Spotify have hosted all Celestium music for 20 years, and you Robbing Bastards have paid me what's known in the industry as "Fuck All" - You killed actual album sales dead when you launched, and you've Robbed musicians and artists blind for two decades. But not this artist any more, you Robbing Bastards.

Next up - Need to self promote on social media, need to convert the album into a live performance, which will begin with a launch party at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms on August 16th, need to delete all my music from Shitify and upload to Bandcamp.

Thanks for reading.

Neil (Celestium)