Stuck in the past having a blast.
For those that don’t know me, hello. I’m one of nearly eight billion people on this planet, so it’s a genuine pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m in my 50s, happily married, and my role as a ‘parent’ is enthusiastically filled by a cat who has life figured out far better than I do. I’m an Australian and a previously senior IT Professional, now happily retired from the corporate race. My days are now an intriguing blend of contemplation and absurdity; I worry and act the fool in what I hope are equal and balancing quantities.
My story, particularly my creative one, is deeply rooted in the digital dawn of the 1980s and 90s. Under the name “Gazza”, I was an active member of the demoscene, a vibrant, competitive subculture of programmers, artists, and musicians who pushed early home computers like the Commodore 64 and Amiga to their absolute limits. My particular obsession was with their unique sound-chips. I developed a profound affinity for the warm, analogue-like filter sweeps of the MOS6581/8580 SID chip, the raw, buzzing textures of the Atari TIA/Pokey, and the sharp, digital precision of the AY-3-8910. These weren’t just components; they were instruments with distinct, often stubborn, personalities.
Today, I’m channelling that lifelong passion into recreating covers in the Bitpop genre. My goal is to explore how these wonderfully constrained 8-bit home synthesisers can be transformed, creating a compelling fusion of old and new electronica. It all began on a Commodore 64 in the early 80s, where I was utterly fascinated by the sounds that could be coaxed from that humble machine. I wasn’t a musician by any formal training, but the technical challenge was intoxicating. I taught myself 6502 assembly language and wrote my own music driver, painstakingly manipulating registers to invent techniques that could simulate chords or create percussive effects the hardware wasn’t explicitly designed for. While I dabbled in graphics and other coding, I always came back to sound. It felt like a language I was uniquely compelled to understand.
Over the decades, that technical compulsion has evolved. I moved beyond the ‘how’ and poured myself into the creative ‘why’. Looking back, I now see the artistry that was always present, even in the most technical code. Finding a novel or innovative way to solve a programming problem is a creative act in itself. As a self-taught musician, my journey has been one of constant discovery, eagerly absorbing new techniques in sound production and musical theory.
This evolution has completely reshaped my creative process. I used to write music like a builder, starting with a foundation—a beat or a bassline—and meticulously adding layers. Now, my approach is more like that of a sculptor. I begin with a large, dense block of sound, a rich sonic texture, and I carve away, etching out space and contour until a form, a melody, a statue, is revealed. It’s a subtractive rather than additive process, and it has become a fundamental part of my artistic growth.
Ultimately, this pursuit isn’t about seeking money, publishers, or fame. It’s a deeply personal journey of growth and learning, a space where expression is allowed to flourish without commercial pressure. Yes, it’s a wonderful feeling when a track gets a ‘like’ on YouTube or SoundCloud, or when someone buys a song. But if no one ever listened again, I would still create and release my music. I share it primarily for my own sense of existential meaning. It’s a small piece of myself that will be left to survive me when my time on this world is over. It’s my legacy, a tiny little mark in the vast digital archives of mankind. It’s my graffiti that says, “Gavin was here.”
But more than anything, I just love doing it. In the end, I consider myself and my music to be an anarchic display of the pop-culture anti-hero, repurposing defunct and forgotten computer hardware to create a bridge between an underground electronic music culture and the modern mainstream medium.
