DeathBoy is the pseudonym of
Midlands
The Midlands is the central region of England, to the south of Northern England, to the north of southern England, to the east of Wales, and to the west of the North Sea. The Midlands comprises the ceremonial counties of Derbyshire, Herefor ...
-born musician Scott Lamb, and also the name of his band.
History
Scott Lamb
Lamb started making music at the age of thirteen, creating music in the
breakbeat
Breakbeat is a broad type of electronic music that uses drum breaks, often sampled from early recordings of funk, jazz, and R&B. Breakbeats have been used in styles such as Florida breaks, hip-hop, jungle, drum and bass, big beat, breakbeat ...
and
rave
A rave (from the verb: '' to rave'') is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance mus ...
genres using
OctaMED
OctaMED is a music tracker for the Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvem ...
on the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
. At school, he met Matthew Phillips (also known as "The Phil"), who became his long-term lyrical collaborator and friend.
In 1995, he went to Liverpool University, and began using the name DeathBoy. Beforehand he had been releasing tracks under the name Technohead, and wanted to avoid confusion with the newly popular gabber artist
Technohead
Greater Than One is an English electronic music band, founded by husband and wife Michael Wells and Lee Newman in 1985. They released many albums under this name, and also under the names Tricky Disco, GTO, John + Julie, Church of Extacy, Sign ...
. After graduating in 1998, he spent six months working for a games company in Aldridge which went bust, before working at
Blitz Games
Blitz Games Studios Limited was a British video game developer based in Leamington Spa. Founded in 1990 by the Oliver Twins, who ran the company until its closure in 2013, it is best known for producing games such as ''The Fairly OddParents'', ...
in Leamington Spa, where he met Phil Palmer, later to be his live drummer.
His online reputation spread in 2001 when he created the DeathKiddy Test, a
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Barry Allen
** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...
applet
In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program ...
with one of his tracks, "Decimate", as a soundtrack.
The band
On moving to London early in 2001, Lamb started spending time on the London net.goth scene through contacts he'd made online, meeting Jason Knight and Adam Gelman. In 2002, he formed DeathBoy as a live project after rejecting several alternative names, including "DeathBoy and the Bomb Puppets". The original lineup was Lamb (vocals), Jason Knight (guitars), Adam Gelman (bass), Phil Palmer (drums) and housemate Ben Noz Urbina (guitars).
Urbina left the band after three gigs to concentrate on his consulting career and compose music solo part-time under the name DJ Solution. Urbina was replaced by Nathan "Hexa-dB" Parton on keyboards. Parton left after a further three gigs, leaving a four-piece line-up that continued until October 2005, when the band recruited Lee Chaos of Wasp Factory Recordings as live keyboardist.
The band have supported such leading underground artists as
Tricky,
Sheep on Drugs
Sheep on Drugs are a British techno/ industrial music group, formed by Duncan X ( King Duncan) (vocals) and Lee Fraser (a.k.a. Dead Lee) (guitar/keyboards), and currently composed of Fraser and Johnny Borden (vocals/keyboards).
Biography
Dunc ...
,
Icon of Coil
Icon of Coil is a Norway, Norwegian electronic music band. The band was established as a solo project in 1997 by Andy LaPlegua who was joined by former Sector 9 (now Moonitor and Zombie Girl) bandmate Sebastian Komor to perform live. With the re ...
,
Rico
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.
RICO was ...
(with special guest star
Gary Numan
Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), known professionally as Gary Numan, is an English singer, songwriter and musician. He entered the music industry as frontman of the New wave music, new wave band Tubeway Army. After releasing two st ...
), and
Bella Morte
Bella Morte is a gothic rock band formed in 1996 in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. They incorporate elements of metal, dark wave, deathrock, alternative, and synthpop. The band's name means "Beautiful Death" in Italian language. Acc ...
. They have played
Whitby Gothic Weekend
Whitby Goth Weekend, abbreviated to WGW or nicknamed Whitby, is a twice-yearly music festival for the goth subculture, in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England, organised by Jo Hampshire. The event is an alternative music festival, consisting of two ...
(in 2003 and 2005),
[
] the Catalyst festival in Toronto (2003),
Black Celebration 5 (2003) in London, as well as numerous smaller shows up and down the UK.
Mick Mercer
Mick Mercer (born Michael Mercer, 19 July 1957) is a journalist and author best known for his books, photos and reviews of the goth and punk scenes.
Life and work
Mercer is primarily a writer focused on the Gothic rock scene that emerged fro ...
listed the band second place for his "Top 20 albums of the year" in 2003. The band has also been reviewed in ''
Terrorizer
Terrorizer is an American grindcore band from Los Angeles, California. It was originally formed in 1985 as Unknown Death by vocalist Oscar Garcia and guitarist Jesse Pintado. They would rename themselves Terrorizer after recruiting drummer Pete ...
'' and ''Meltdown''
magazines.
Deathboy signed to Line Out Records in 2005, and released their second commercial album, ''
End of an Error'', in 2006.
Discography
Commercial releases
DeathBoy have two commercial albums:
*''
Music to Crash Cars To'' (2003),
*''
End of an Error'' (2006)
Their
industrial music song "Black Morning" is part of the soundtrack of the
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...
video game ''
Project Gotham Racing 3
''Project Gotham Racing 3'' is a 2005 arcade-style racing video game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Microsoft Game Studios as the third entry of the ''Project Gotham Racing'' series. It was released exclusively for the Xbox 360 ...
''.
Free releases
Many DeathBoy albums, EPs and collections are available for download free of charge from their website, as a part of Lamb's "release early and often" policy, mirroring an ethic of the
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
movement. The releases include:
[ (And individual-release file directories linked to from this page, several of which are more current than the page itself.)]
*''BitScapes'' (2008–2011)
*''CogRock'' (2008–2010)
*''Covers'' (2005–2010)
*''Unalternative'' (2003–2010)
*''Remixes'' (2003–2010)
*''Premixes'' (2003–2010)
*''ToRights'' (2007–2008)
*''Forwards'' (2006–2007)
*''DeathBoy – LIVE'' (2004–2007)
*''Digital Deviant'' (2005–2006)
*''Ifyouunderstoodiwouldnthavetospeak'' (2004–2005)
*''Sociopathic'' (2003)
*''Boxesoftricksandtraps'' (2003)
*''Self-Hatred for Fun and Profit'' (2002–2003)
*''Riding the Biorhythms'' (2002)
*''GodKiller'' (2001)
*''Music to Crash Cars To (v1.0)'' (2000–2001)
*''Invisible'' (2000)
*''A Very Technical Boy'' (1999)
*''Deftunes'' (1996–1998)
The potentially confusingly named free release ''Music to Crash Cars To (v1.0)'' is not the same as the 2003 commercial album, although they share many of the same tracks; Lamb felt that the name was "too good not to re-use".
"Works-in-progress", completed parts of which are downloadable (as of April 2011):
*''Eschatology'' (2010–2011 so far)
*''BiPolar'' (2005–2008 so far)
*''Highly Derivative'' (2003–2005 so far)
References
DeathBoy on Mperia
External links
Official DeathBoy website''End of an Error'' on Line Out RecordsFounder Scott Lamb's blog
{{Authority control
Musical groups established in 2002
British electronic music groups
British industrial music groups
2002 establishments in England