Welcome to Headstash Music!

Growing up in the 70’s on a small island with no electricity, music was, and still is central to almost any social gathering. As kids my sister and I would regularly get hauled off to band practices, stuffed in the back of our Volkswagen bug with nothing but a wood crate of home brew wedged between us, a hole in the floor panel and a steady stream of incoming exhaust. As the 80’s rolled around and I morphed into a long haired teenager, I began to fall in love with much of the same music my parents used to play at those band practices. And not just the music, the whole counterculture message of those bands really resonated with my alternative upbringing, and formed who I was at the time. There was no high school where I grew up so we had to move away, somehow ending up in the posh Victoria neighbourhood of Oak Bay, where my step dad rented a house, and psychedelic tie-dye parties were not an uncommon event. For me and my friends it was bands like The Doors, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane that really formed the backbone of our musical preference, and general outlook on life. It was was all about coloured vinyl, dual deck ghetto blasters, and how well you could splice together a treasured yet chewed up cassette; one you and your girlfriend listened to before she dumped you, for your best friend. But with scissors and scotch tape, you could fix that. But as amazing as those times were, nothing lasts forever and it was in the early 90’s when I first started hearing electronica that my outlook on music really changed. It wasn’t instantaneous though. I initially didn’t care for the  synthetic sound or the clinical repetition of the beats; and the whole warehouse pill popping raver scene was so at odds with how we experimented, which was more likely to be hiking up a bluff with art books and a ghetto blaster loaded with Pink Floyd. But soon, thanks to new digital workstations like Pro Tools, electronic music production became more on the fly customizable and a lot of that ‘stupid computer music’, as I called it, actually started to get good! Groups like The Orb, Prodigy and Fatboy Slim were just becoming well know, and electronic music producers started introducing more live instruments into their tracks, giving them a more organic feel. These days I don’t really have a favourite genre, but whether its jazz, folk, ethnic or house, the overall sound I am most intrigued by usually incorporates modern beats and programming with live instruments and vocals. I love music that take the listener off the beaten path, into the little rabbit holes that dot the edges, without getting them totally lost. Besides the wide range of genres and hybrid genres, another aim when creating Headstash was to focus on newer artists and their fresh interpretations of the traditional genres we have grown up with. So as much as I love the music of my youth, who the mentors to many of the musicians you will find on here, there is no Marley in the reggae section, no Zeppelin in the rock section and no Aretha in the soul. I feel like everyone already knows this music and I really wanted to shine a light on all the amazing contemporary artists out there. Despite what we hear on mainstream radio, it really is an incredible time for music. All around the world musicians from diverse backgrounds are linking up. Electronic music producers are collaborating with World Beat, Dub and Folk artists and constantly creating new hybrid sounds. Even classical is seeing an explosion of modern composers playing around with more effects and overlapping their compositions with subtle electronic textures. At the top of each category you will find my Soundcloud Master Playlist for that particular category. These are large playlists, up to 500 songs each and as the main components of the blog, definitely the best place to start. Various incarnations of Headstash Music can also be found on Facebook, Soundcloud and Youtube   

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I am a dusty warrior

floating in the plasma

often alone

with nothing but my music