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An Interview with Scott Deathboy of DeathBoy
Posted: Monday, September 07, 2009
By: Patrick Thompson

One of the most interesting and innovative acts on the scene, DeathBoy was born out of the rave and techno scenes, with founder Scott Deathboy making music while attending university. Around 1999, DeathBoy began releasing music for free online, capitalising on the then-popular MP3.com Web site. In 2003, the band released their first album, Music to Crash Cars To. Scott's bile-fuelled slogan-like lyrics – "I want to knife a pop star / I want to rape a girl band" – catchy synth hooks, and angst-filled delivery got the band noticed. Gigs supporting heavyweights of the scene like The Cruxshadows and Deviant UK and Scottish industrial artist Rico (a in collaboration with Gary Numan) soon followed. DeathBoy's music was used in the video game Project Gotham Racing and in the popular viral video "The Death Kiddy test." 2007s End of an Error was the band's second release and featured production help from producer John Fryer (best known for his work with such acts as Nine Inch Nails, Cradle of Filth, and HIM) and Rico. Having recently played a career highlight gig supporting trip-hop legend Tricky, Scott is currently deep in production on the new free to download CogRock album. In a brief moment between recording and going on his honeymoon, Scott caught up with ReGen to fill us in on the latest news.

Can you introduce yourself and Deathboy to the readers of Regen?

Deathboy: I'm Scott Deathboy, the deluded sequencer-monkey behind the breakbeat/industrial band DeathBoy. We've been putting out music for the best part of a decade and still haven't taken the hint and given up.

How did you start getting involved in music and what bands or artists influence you?

Deathboy: I began writing music as a kid with a Commodore Amiga, using a program called Octamed; I think I was about 13 at the time. My dad had fostered my interests by buying me cheap synths out of the Grattan Catalogue and technology was finally getting to the point where home computers could be used in place of studio equipment.

In my younger days, I was into The Prodigy and the Orb (as well as a million now-unknown hardcore rave artists), as well as having a lot of love for Gary Numan. Later in life and before I got into the industrial scene, I got very heavily into trip-hop artists like Massive Attack and Tricky, which is factoring back into where we're going at the moment.

Your music is heavily influenced by techno music which sets it apart from alot of other music on the scene. Are there any other industrial artists whom you like?

Deathboy: Yeah, unlike a lot of industrial bands, I came into music from a techno, rave, and drum & bass direction, so I've always been more influenced by bands like The Prodge, Chemical Brothers, Goldie and so on. I was a bit of a latecomer to guitar music! We've had a lot of comparisons with guitar-led bands, and folks tend to assume that's where we came from, but it really started with synths, basslines and breaks. The first bands that made me think guitars might be the way of the future were The Poppies and Jesus Jones – maybe Nirvana, too. These days, it's not exactly fashionable, but I think Trent Reznor's about the most wildly talented musician that's influenced my industrial music. I also appreciate his approach to music distribution and piracy; he's a smart, innovative and hard-working guy who seems to give a toss about his fans. And I can't fathom how he can stay so fucking angry in his music this long! Much to my mates' disgust, I never really listened to the 'classics' like KMFDM, Front 242, etc. I think I got in a bit late, so I didn't get excited by their innovation. I did like Sheep on Drugs as a youngster, but I even got into them via a few rave-style remixes a mate chucked on a mix tape for me.

You have taken the quite unorthodox decision to have most of your music available online for free download. Why did you make this decision? Does it help promote your music?

Deathboy: The one thing I've always wanted, over and above everything, is for people to listen to the music. You can make a few quid out of it if you work hard, but the fact is that for most of the bands you know and love, music's a profoundly expensive hobby that cleans out their bank accounts. It's better to accept that and have a pleasant surprise if you break even occasionally than to be continually depressed and disappointed that the limousine hasn't pulled up outside. These days, if people want to download the music, they will do. Trying to avoid that is like pushing water uphill, so while we ask people not to distribute the commercial albums, we're very happy for people to pass our pretty huge non-commercial back-catalogue around. Giving a mate a CD full of our tunes is one of the best ways people can support us; we encourage it.

Do you feel that this method of releasing allows you to release music free from the constraints of the traditional record label schedule, i.e release a single, then an album. then prepare for the next one? Does this allow you to release music when you want?

Deathboy: Certainly does! When we've put a new track together, we really just want people to be able to listen to it straight away. The tracks are really demos, though at a decent production level. We keep writing until it feels that there's enough material that pulls together as an album, then we go back in and knock off the rough edges and package it all together as one release. I don't think the old concepts of albums and singles are dead, but they're not entirely relevant anymore if you're not signed to some huge label. Sticking to old ideas about releasing music can hamstring bands; it rarely offers any positives. We've got the freedom to do everything the way we like these days.

Your have produced albums for Xykogen and will soon be producing the new Alterred album. How do you feel producing helps you learn as an artist?

Deathboy: It's definitely given me a chance to hone my production skills; working with someone else's music distances you from the songwriting and lets you concentrate on the sonic. It also gives you a basis for comparison of how techniques you're familiar with and using with your own music give different results with other peoples' material. It's very rewarding and keeps you fresh, because you're mixing your ideas with theirs instead of stagnating. Selfishly, it's a really nice change if you're not feeling inspired to create something new, to be able to pick up someone else's track that already works as a unit, and polish it up until it takes on a new level.

On your End of an Error album you managed to get Glaswegian industrial artist Rico and super-producer John Fryer involved on the production side. How did this come about, and how was this experience?

Deathboy: We met both Rico and John Fryer at the same time, actually. A guy who was one of our first and biggest fans, and became a good friend of mine, turned me on to Rico in about 2001. A few years later, as End of an Error was coming together, we managed to catch him playing at the Bar Fly in London, and got the promoter to introduce us. John happened to be there that evening, too, so we got two intros for the price of one, and after a bit of a chat, they both agreed to get involved with the album. John's a great guy who worked with us in the more traditional sense, by taking the stem files of a track and sending us mixes, then adjusting them until we were happy, whereas Rico invited us up to stay with him for the week in Glasgow. I got a great chance to learn stuff from Rico as I was there, watching how he worked, and a rapid introduction to Glaswegian drinking etiquette.

Probably one of the most interesting gigs you have played recently was the gig on Second Life. How did this come about and how did you feel about this gig?

Deathboy: I don't know, we opened for Tricky last year; that was pretty insane, too! The Second Life gig was a good laugh, but for a number of reasons, I didn't get the chance to capitalise on it over the year. The original plan had been to gig on Second Life regularly, but numerous things, including my having a son, got in the way. Though it's a weird way to interact with people, in a few hours we got our music played to hundreds of new people, who were by dint of being in front of a PC able to check out our Web site straight away. Compared to the – sadly not rare – situation in which you travel for six hours up the motorway and play to three Goths and a whippet for a net loss of hundreds of pounds, that was a pretty fun, relaxing way to get music across to new people. Hopefully I'll get back to that this year, though the studio work's likely to take a dent out of it again. Never enough hours!

What's next for DeathBoy? So far from the CogRock album we have heard 'Buddhabox' and 'Burnout,' complete with drunken video. Will this be released free online, and if so, when will we see the next commercial DeathBoy album?

DeathBoy: For the band itself, I'll be completing CogRock very soon; this will be another free album, then looking at the next commercial work, as it's about time! This will take tracks from Forwards, ToRights and CogRock, as well as some previously unreleased tracks and some wholly new material, and should be out early next year. We're also getting the band back into gigging configuration; we're not going to be on any massive tours soon, but it's been too long, and we need to knock the rust off, so we're keen to get a few dates under our belt before the end of the year!