Fat Roland's blog: happy 20th birthday

At the risk of raising your heart rate until your eyelids burst, I’m happy to announce that this blog is 20 years old today.

On 13 November 2004, in a post titled ‘Fat Roland’s blog’, I wrote 49 simple words heralding a new series of “blogs”, by which I probably meant “blog posts”. Blogging made sense: I'd spent much of my life as a journalist (see picture). And the rest, as no-one has ever said about any blog ever, is history.

On that same day, BBC weather bods promised the coldest night of the year. The Strokes and The Libertines dominated the front page of the NME. And it was the end of the Wu Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who died at far too young an age, as did John Balance from Coil.

Meanwhile, in my metaphorical basement, I was tapping away on my metaphorical typewriter. Early blog posts featured my under-developed thoughts on X Factor, Bill Drummond, Sandi Toksvig and, er, the Formula One driver Takuma Sato. A lot of it wasn’t that focussed.

In 2009, I decided to take my blogging seriously. Have you had one of those friends that suddenly becomes a knitter? They’re clacking out scarfs like a machine? This was me and blogging. I went from 50 to 140 posts a year, pledging to myself that I would post at least every three days.

My blog posts became more interesting. Speculation about Aphex Twin's new album. Guides to the Mercury Music Prize. being silly about The Prodigy, my bestest Warp tracks. critiquing Michael Jackson. An ill-advised pretend letter to James Blunt. A fake Autechre album leak. My sacking as a DJ and my debilitation from a stroke. Gaining MC Hammer and Barack Obama as readers (!) thanks to this post and this, or at least the people who run their socials. It has been quite the ride. 

I won’t bore you with the rest of this blog’s history, so here’s a precis of all the things my blog has led to. Think of this as a montage sequence, like wot they did in the A-Team. 2010: win blogging awards. 2012: become columnist for Electronic Sound magazine. 2014 and 2015: win awards for my spoken word gubbins. 2016: quit my day job to earn money from literature and performance. 2022: blog is infiltrated by the deep state, who use it to control your 5G. Okay, I made that last one up. I owe all of this to my bloggerising.

This blog still limps on, like a decrepit family cat that plops around the house in places you least expect. The site's view counts once reached the giddy highs of ten-thousand-plus, and have since dropped to the hundreds. A Blogspot page flattered by some Photoshop design is not "where it's at". I'm very much okay with that: it's a humble home but it's my home.

I asked ChatGPT to write me a tribute to blogging. A heart-warming paragraph extolling the joys of web logs. Here is what the AI came up with:

Blogging is a beautiful, chaotic celebration of personal expression. Whether it’s crafting whimsical rants or profound musings, each post offers the joy of connecting with the unseen. It's an archive of thought, a playground for creativity, and a space where ideas grow at their own unruly pace. Long live blogs!

And now, here is that same text rewritten by me, but with key words replaced with electronic music artists and/or animals.

Blogging is a beautiful, chaotic Sweet Exorcist of personal X-Press 2. Whether it’s Tomcrafting Whildchild rabbits or profound Mu-ziq, each polecat offers the Joy Orbison of Kon Kan-ecting with the unicorns. It's an armadillo of thought, a Playgroup for creativity, and a Spicelab where ibexes grow at their own unraccoony Plaid. Daddy longlegs LFO blogs!

Jeez, that was rubbish. Aaaaand that's how blogging works.

Pictured: Me (right) working at a newspaper in the mid-1990s. Cheeky news man Tristan Freeman on the left. Photo by Mark Waugh^.

Further Fats: Hammer time for Fatty Bumchops: how to blog properly (2011)

Further Fats: Blogging highlights 2004-2014 (2014)

Lunar tunes: Jon Hopkins sends his music to the moon

Not content with flattening audiences with his massive bass frequencies, Jon Hopkins will now attempt to destroy the entire universe by sending his music to the moon.

You see, Nasa have this box of memorabilia called the Lunar Codex, in which is stored tens of thousands of artistic creations. It's like the Blue Peter time capsule, the only difference being it's not in a garden, and its sodden contents won't be scowled at by a tortoise.

The Hopkins tune Forever Held will be one of the tracks rocketed to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex. The string sections on the track are by Ólafur Arnalds out of Kiasmos, so it's a double-whammy as far as I'm concerned.

It's a great track to choose. Forever Held is the kind of airy panorama that Hopkins is so good at, and the strings are truly moving. If anything, it's going to make any passing aliens blubber with emotion, their extra-terrestrial tears finally granting the moon that elusive liquid we've been hoping for. 

Nasa's Creative Director Erica Bernhard has made a visualiser for the track, which is just a fancy way of saying video. This will also be included in the capsule. She says Hopkins' composition "asks us to consider our place in the universe and our responsibility to the planet." No pressure, Jon.

It's not the first time Nasa have dabbled with dance music. Earlier this year, they hosted a 'Kennedy Under The Stars' techno party, which included a resident DJ in their Rocket Garden, a miniature golf course which had their colossal Apollo Saturn IB rocket instead of a lighthouse, and circus acts dressed up like the Blackpool illuminations.

This sounds amazing, so if the Kennedy Space Centre wants to invite me to the next one, I'm well up for this. I will dress up as Buzz Aldrin or a xenomorph or something, and if you're paying for my travel to Florida too, I'd like to go in a rocket please.

So well done, Jon Hopkins. Your music is venturing to the moon, trundling down and up craters like a disco Wallace and Gromit. Don your space helmet and watch the video for the track^.

Further Fats: The devil has all the best IDM: Jon Hopkins (2010)

Further Fats: Watching space from inside papier mâché (2016)