mmd

Some artists’ websites hide behind rules of impersonality. I won’t play games with you, seeing that I maintain this site myself. So this is my personal introduction by myself:

My name is mr_mark_dollin, although you might have seen other aliases around like MMD, and Foo? A child of 1980, I am in the vague zone between Gen X and Y. I grew up in a medium sized town on the NSW east coast of Australia: Taree. So in some ways my cultural experience was both typical and limited. Somehow I’ve ended up being a music composer and occasional performer. This rambling tale might give a clue as to why.

I’ve always had a fascination for music and sound – I’ve a lot of early memories of playing around with keyboards, electronics bits and cassette recorders in my youth. I also got deep into headphone listening early on with my Mum’s proggish music collection. A little slow to get into the more formal side of music everything got a kick start in 1993 when my parents bought me an electric guitar and amp. Before long I became as obsessed with effects and sounds that could be made with the guitar and electronics, as much as I was fascinated with the emotional expressiveness of the instrument.

My teenage musical development consisted of a heavy diet of all things heavy (grunge, metal, etc) and 90s electronic dance music; plus some good musical guidance from school teachers and guitar tutor Dean Snook. High school saw a few ad hoc bands formed, most prominent being one with the naive name of “NME” that gave me a good taste of writing and arranging original moody guitar music for a group existing in some odd universe between Alice In Chains and Pink Floyd.

Being a bit geeky led to a fascination with personal computers. Initially, as it is with a lot of kids, this started with games (which I often loved the music more than the game itself): but via the help of my friend Warwick Newell I discovered MOD music files, which were a form of Tracker Music. I really fell in love with a lot of these computer songs and would listen to them for hours on the simple PC speaker. Then in 1996 Warwick introduced me to Fast Tracker II – lo and behold a program that we could make our our computer songs with! I virtually exploded with creative work and started making dark techno influenced music. We learned a lot of tracking tricks of the trade from famous ‘scene’ names such as Mick Rippon, Hunz and Xerxes. Warwick and I initially operated as ‘duo project’ under the name of Audiophonica and made numerous songs for a few CD demos up till the end of 98, but never got anything online. I also completed my first solo project Amoeba, an industrial ambient EP, for my HSC Art major work.

Moving to Armidale in 99 for study at The University of New England my listening diet (as well as my personal life) got a bit crazier as I started devouring a lot of industrial as well as avant garde and art-pop music. I also finally had access to an internet connection (this was a big deal back then) and played catch up with the ‘tracking scene’ and began taking part in sharing and swapping my new solo music online. Some of this music ended up on the Tracked Worx 2k compilation. I also completed two more solo projects: the emotional industrial pop album Puddles, and later the very dark, experimental and mad Pornography and Other Corporate Nonsenses.

Missing playing live I performed in a few college music performances and met some cool people to be creative with. Early 2001 saw the formation of the post-rock improv band Pneumatic Bell, with band-mates Ryan Sanders (guitar), Ben Chapman (drums) and Simon Floth (bass). We sounded like a messy improvisational cross of Mogwai, Wire, Silo and Tool. The creative environment encouraged big ideas, so I proposed that we form a larger art collective consisting of the Ryan, Ben and Simon, plus other personally known composers James J Ward, Warwick Newell (under the alias Organic) and Martin Kidd. The collective formed “The Quiet Revolution” or [tqr], and released a whole stack of multi-genre music both solo and collaborative (plus many unfinished demos and projects) at the website www.thequietrevolution.net – The idea was to eventually collectively finance a record label, but it didn’t work out and the group eventually disintegrated. However, the whole exercise gave me experience in making websites and getting music out there for free. During this time I completed more solo work for the album Smargaid Maerd, and later 2 Smargaid Maerd, based less upon angst and more about dreaming and subtle emotional tensions.

I finished uni and in 2004 I tried my hand at a career of high school teaching around the Taree area. During this time I put in some lengthy volunteer hours at the local Taree community radio station 2Bob Radio. Apart from doing some rather curly radio shows alongside outer-limits-DJ Graze (who would inspire the ambient texture project Futurology), I spent some time doing audio production and basic engineering tasks around the studios. Feeling the need to improve the shaky quality of my vocals for my own music I saw Naomi Leago for a series of singing lessons, which saw some free jamming and creativity as well. After about 9 months I decided that teaching in highschools wasn’t really for me and that I needed to make a living some other way. Moving back to Armidale I eventually chanced on a interesting job as an Audio Technician at the University. I got it, probably due in part to all my experience at the radio station as well as my home computer production experience. Working a balanced 25 hours a week I used as much spare time as I can afford to further my musical projects.

Live music came up as an opportunity again with Armidale life. In yet another improv based project I eventually joined up with Iain MacKay, Luke and Dylan form an act called Unity Gain. In a smokey haze of confusion the band didn’t quite get off the ground but spurned a few live DJ extravaganzas via Luke, and a duo live electronic dance-improv project with myself and Iain that eventually ended up with the name Ghost Inputs. Ghost Inputs played a few gigs in Armidale, Uralla and Wytallibar during 2008. Meanwhile I did a revealing stint of vocal lessons with singing teacher Ruth Strut which helped me discover my lower resonant voice and address some long established bad habits of throat constraint. In 2008 I released another solo album finalizing the Dream Diagrams trilogy: 3 Smargaid Maerd, this time putting less emphasis on percussion and more on atmosphere and warmth.

I have had over the last few years numerous collaborative projects via the Renoise Community with online friends Beatslaughter, Mick Rippon, Pilot 7 and Alex Strain (see the mmd_as album), the results of which can be found on this website. Some of these will be ongoing, and others may pop up in the future. I’ve also made a slow start to a private mixing and mastering business for clients around the world. Some of the memorable experiences have been doing work for Helvetikone, Hunz and Distaudio.

I have created this website you see now to host my work, a lot of which has been created in the software called Renoise (and now a little bit in Reaper too). There’s also the blog which has documented archives of all my various projects and happenings. I hope you enjoy what you may have time to listen to. There is still much more to come!

My intention, on a more serious level, is to make new musical media that promotes consciousness development and largely give it away for free! The more I can share unique thought-provoking music the more a contribution can be made to cultural richness that enables people to think intelligently and create an intelligent future. Think of it as making a contribution to ‘the world of ideas’.

Greets,
Mark, September 2010.