This page was last Updated 06/08/2011 – it’s important you know that, because sometimes this page goes for years without an update, and some of the information is embarassingly out of date!

Madly disillusioned and out of touch with reality, welcome to my site, where I publish the music I write and record, entirely for fun.  If the Guitar is not your favourite instrument, if Rock, Metal, and weird fusion type melodic progressive instrumental rock-jazz-classical weirdness puts you off, this place is probably not for you.

So, who am I? I’m in my late 30′s, happily married to Janet for the past 12 years or so, with 3 young boys, David, James, and Paul.

I currently work for T-Systems in London, where I work as a manager providing IT Services and Outsourcing to other corporate customers both in the UK and Globally.

I live with my family in Swavesey, Cambridgeshire, where we’ve been now for the best part of 15 years, and don’t look likely to move anytime soon – it’s a really beautiful Village, north of Cambridge in the Fens, and it has everything we need, and away from all the hustle and bustle of the Town/City. I do a fairly heft commute by car to work, pretty much because we love where we live and would hate to move. I guess one day, I’d ideally want to work back in Cambridge or thereabouts.

My main hobbies/interests outside of work, are Gaming – huge Xbox/360 fan, so check out my Gamertag score, and feel free to add my to your friends list – the Gamertag, is of course, Mork. Aside from that, as you hopefully have seen from this site, I’m a sometime Musician – I’m a guitar player, I have a small collection of instruments, and a nice loud Marshall rig with a DSP and some miscellanous floor pedals – my main instrument is a Vintage Gibson Les Paul copy – its not the real thing, but for the price, it’s a superb instrument and very, very beautiful in my opinion. I have a nice home studio setup going using my Apple Mac, GarageBand, Logic 7 and a Korg DSP, and produce a number of songs which you can download or listen to from the “My Music” page above.

I have a more modern Strat copy, and a Cort X1 for the real thrashy stuff. I also have a Fender Semi-accoustic, and old Squire copy, and a Tanglewood Bass. I mostly play Rock, Hard Rock Prog-rock, Metal, and I’m not too bad – not the best guitarist in the world by a long way, but I can hold my own, and I think my talent is more in putting songs together, rather than long drawn out flash solos – I still like to thrash out after a hard weeks work, and really make the walls shake – cant’ beat that for taking out your frustration with corporate IT. When I was younger I played in a lot of bands, and did some gigging, but these days, it’s purely for pleasure.

I’m seriously into my rock music, but I love all kind of stuff aside -from Classical, to pop, with a particular penchant for Musical Theatre – My favourite band is probably a hard choice between old school metal ala Maiden, and new-style mega-prog-rock ala Dream Theater – but I like pretty much all the big names in that Genre, with particular penchants for Bon Jovi, Meatloaf, Metallica and The Cult amongst others. I’m also a fan of much lighter bans such as The Cure on the Goth Side, and some more mainstream pop like Simply Red. If it’s got guitars in it, I probably like it.

What else can I say. I am a devout atheist, so If that offends you, please let me know, so I can appreciate that fact I support Ipswich Town in the English Championship (the division under the premiership, why it just can’t be called Division Two i have no idea) – which is a painful enterprise at the best of times, but you stick with it. One day they might win something again, you never know.

I’m currently still a part-time student, mixing my work, music and family inbetween studying for an MBA with the Open University, which I started in 2001. All being well, I’ll finish my MBA in early 2008 and be much happier for that fact! Update: I finished my MBA in September 2008 and Graduated May 1st, 2009

I started playing music seriously when I was a teenager, and am for the most part, entirely self taught. (had some early music lessons, and a few really helpful older friends in various bands who I picked a lot of what I know off) -  Again, as a teenager I was a member of several really silly bands, culminating in a stage appearance when I was 17 at some Charity School Concert.  Later through University I played in several bands, and played gigged reguarly in the West Midlands.

Over the years however, my real interest in my music, has been writing and recording my own songs. Back in the 80′s, I used an Amstrad 4-track tape-recorder, and the general quality was atrocious. In the 90′s, I bought a digital Zoom Multi-track, and to be frank, it wasn’t all that much better though it was much user to multi-track and you could do some post-processing which could tidy things up a bit.

However, following a significant gap where things like wives childrens, mortgages and debt were aquired, I then bought an Apple Mac…..

Today, I record songs using Logic Pro, though up until 2011, GarageBand was my DSW of choice.   I’ve recorded almost nine complete ‘albums’ of songs in the last 5 years, which are complete productions, save vocals and regardless of their shortcomings, I am really quite proud of them. In 2006, I recorded most of “Never a Truer Word”, the title track being the first complete and proper song I ever wrote, probably around 1990. In 2007, I’ve recorded a bunch of songs, under the name of “A Thousand Splendid Suns” (the first track I put down). Here, you can download and listen to my songs, feel free to comment and enjoy.

In 2008, after I had a brief hiatus playing other peoples music in a band with some work colleagues, I completed a new collection, “Inversions” in August 2008, and have since completed, “Many Ways To Be”, “Edge Of The World”, “Distant Journey”, “Tortured Soul” and have recent started “Pressure”.

My influences shine through, I think, and if you like this kind of music, you’ll recognise the strong influences that I take into most of what I write. My favourite style of music is the more progressive, modern rock, some old school metal, but mostly anything that is highly orchestrated and detailed music, with strong melodies and gripping rhythms  - my favourite bands include Maiden, Dream Theater, Bon Jovi, Rush, Priest, Zeppelin etc, but I also bring in influences from bands like The Cure, Ska, Thrash and other Metal bands.  Influences, I think that are evident in a number of my songs.

The favourite track of my own is currently ‘Magic Man’ or possibly “My Dream”, but I tend to find my favourite is often the last track I recorded, so make your own mind up.