By 1998 I had pretty much given up making music. Years of slogging it out in bands on the music circuit had brought little reward and I’d thrown in the towel. After a year or so of being normal I purchased a 4-track to mess around on. I didn’t really know what to do, having been part of a group for so long with fairly clear and rigid ideas; now there were no boundaries. This new-found freedom, coupled with a complete lack of direction, offered up some bizarre recordings (some of which appeared on my first e.p) of no particular genre and even less cohesion.
But it was enough; the fire had been re-lit, and I begun to see possibilities opening up before me. I didn’t need a band – I could chop and change instruments and styles as I pleased, with complete control.
I needed a name to work under. I came up with Fuzz Against Junk, taken from a surreal fifties graphic novel about a narcotic sleuth, Sir Edwin Fuzz, and his attempt to rid New York of a heroin epidemic. (I later dropped this title due to another artist working under the same name - how many could there be?)
And so my one-man musical journey began. It’s been a continuously evolving process through which teaching myself to play new instruments and varying musical styles has enabled me with each album to shift away from the last. I’m not trying to hone a particular style; on the contrary, I want to expand it as much as possible. Obviously this has its drawbacks as far as marketing is concerned but that’s the way it has to be.
So now, ten years on, seven albums in and a well-oiled home recording studio in East London, I feel that there’s enough depth and balance to my work for me to offer it up to the world. I’ve been working under the radar for too long. I stopped sending demos to record labels years ago, and only produce a small run of about thirty c.ds per album. Now is the time for me to reach a broader audience, because without feedback it’s difficult to gauge a clear perspective of what you are doing.
I hope these recordings can form a solid foundation for what’s to come. It’s been a broad learning curve.
Kieran Harford
April 2009
