DeathBoy
DeathBoy | |
|---|---|
| [[File:country = UK|frameless|upright=1]] | |
| Background information | |
| Years active | 2002-present |
| Members | Scott Lamb Jason Knight Adam Gelman Phil Palmer |
DeathBoy is the nom de guerre of Midlands-born Scott Lamb, and also the name of his band.
History
Scott Lamb
Scott started making music at the age of 13, creating breakbeat-fuelled rave tunes using OctaMED on the Amiga. At school, he met The Phil, who became his long-term lyrical collaborator and friend.
In 1995, he went to Liverpool University, and began using the name DeathBoy. Beforehand he had been releasing tracks under the name Technohead, and wanted to avoid confusion with the newly-popular gabber artist Technohead. After graduating in 1998, he spent six months working for a games company in Aldridge which went bust, before working at Blitz Games in Leamington Spa, where he met Phil, later to be his live drummer.
His online reputation spread in 2001 when he created the DeathKiddy Test, a Flash applet with one of his tracks, "Decimate", as a soundtrack. This spread through the blogosphere and gained him many new fans of his blog and his music.
The band
On moving to London early in 2001, Scott started spending time on the London net.goth scene through contacts he'd made online. This is how he met Jason and Adam. In 2002, he formed DeathBoy as a live project after rejecting several alternative names, including "DeathBoy and the Bomb Puppets". The original lineup was Scott (vocals), Jason Knight (guitars), Adam Gelman (bass), Phil Palmer (drums) and housemate Ben 'Noz' Urbina (guitars). They started gigging in London, meeting with an ecstatic reception from their fanbase but cooler welcome from the general public. Over time their live performance grew tighter and more professional, and there are now few people who can fail to be impressed with their energy.
Noz left the band after three gigs, and was replaced by Nathan "Hexa-dB" Parton on keyboards. Nathan left after a further three gigs, leaving a four-piece lineup that continued until October 2005, when the band recruited Lee Chaos of Wasp Factory Recordings as live keyboardist.
The band have supported such leading underground artists as Sheep on Drugs, Icon of Coil, Rico (with special guest star Gary Numan), and Bella Morte. They have played Whitby Gothic Weekend, the Catalyst festival in Toronto, Black Celebration in London, as well as numerous smaller shows up and down the UK.
Discography
Commercial Releases
DeathBoy have two commercial release so far, 2003's Music To Crash Cars To and 2006's End of an Error. There is talk of a CD full of MP3s of every track DeathBoy have released, as part of an ongoing series.
DeathBoy are featured on the soundtrack for Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360, with the song Black Morning being included in the Industrial genre.
Free Releases
DeathBoy has made several albums worth of free music available for download from their website. This is part of Scott's "release early and often" policy, mirroring an ethic of the Open Source movement. Confusingly, one of the free release albums is also called "Music To Crash Cars To". This is not the same as the 2003 commercial release, though they share many of the same tracks; Scott simply felt that the name was too good not to re-use.