My parents listened to a lot of Rod Stewart so I absorbed a lot of his work
at an early age. And then some Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell I (and to a lesser
extent II), which i've since introduced my kids to. I grew up in a little town
called Carterton in Oxfordshire, which did have Ginger Records store for a
while, selling mainly rock and classical tapes and CDs. The tiny studio upstairs
was where John Peel filmed some of his Sounds of the Suburbs Oxford edition,
interviewing Lab 4 up there. I would go in and buy tape then CD singles on a
regular basis with my pocket money. I suppose we are talking early to mid 90s,
and I was a Blur fan (still don't like Oasis). I think my first exposure to rave
/ jungle would have been 1995 with the CD single of Shaggy's Boombastic, the
fantastic Firefox & 4-Tree Bassboom Remix which I just listened to again and
it's kinda fun. But I quickly strayed from the mainstream sounds and Ginger
Records didn't get too much of my money after that, maybe just to buy the new
Prodigy or Chemical Brothers singles when they came out. I would stay up late to
listen to John Peel like all the cool kids did, taping some of the sessions
(such as Kemistry & Storm which I've still got on C60, it's on youtube if you
want to hear a proper masterclass in decent drum and bass). Music has never
really been a deal with my family, so I've grown up as an outsider in that
respect. We never went to live concerts or anything. I remember having a
sleepover at a friends house in Lechlade and his older brother came back about 9
in the morning clutching a bottle of water and looking very happy with himself.
It didn't take me too long after that to discover what rave music was but I was
always just a little bit too young to get into it. Some of the old tape packs
with the likes of DJ Hype, Ellis Dee, great stuff. I somehow managed to persuade
my parents to get me some belt drive beginner dj turntables and a mixer for my
17th birthday, and would then often visit the iconic Massive Records in Oxford.
It was always a great place to hang out in and become fascinated by electronic
music culture, even though I was still (officially) too young to go to clubs /
raves. Of course HMV around the corner was cheaper if you knew what you were
looking for, and there was also AVID Records with the basement full of 2nd hand
dance tunes. All 3 shops have gone now unfortunately. Oxford was somehow great
for buying electronic music, but never really had a great club. All the music
venues played indie rock bands (and mostly still do to be honest).
What were the influences / reasons to start making a noise, the inspiration
to make SoundArt as were.
I got deep into clubbing when I went to uni in the year 2000, using and
abusing my new found freedom away from home. GodsKitchen in Birmingham was the
place to go on a Friday night, lapping up the big sounds of trance and
progressive house which had sort of taken over where the rave scene had been
killed off by the criminal justice bill. Suddenly it was big money, and I (and
my mates) were the target audience. As well as trips to paSSion in Coalville,
Gatecrasher in Sheffield, we would travel all over, have amazing weekends, met
some great people (many of whom i'm still friends with now, and we still do
occasionally head back to those big club rooms). After that honeymoon period of
uni I soon tired of the "big" sounds and started diving into techno and abstract
forms of electronic music, seeking out smaller venues with less lighting and
more esoteric sounds. I suppose listening to noise and dark electronics came
about as a way to counteract all the positivity of the big club music that my
well meaning mates kept dragging me along to. So I was late to noise as a genre,
but it had figured in the fringes of my listening for a while. I discovered
Autechre back in 2003 with the release of the Draft 7.30 album which was the
recommended electronic album of the week in HMV Coventry. It probably took me
about 6 months to begin to understand what it was all about - so different and
alien from everything else I had been listening to at the time, but I soon began
to realise how important that record would become. And thus this led me down
deeper and weirder paths. Diving into anything I could find on Rephlex, Planet
Mu, Warp, Blueprint. Buying online stuff from Boomkat and Bleep. Then later when
I started making zines around 2017, I discovered other niche distributors and
labels like Tordon Ljud, OutsiderArt and White Centipede Noise. I think the
first actual "noise" album I bought was the 2016 album by Wince called "Traum"
on Freak Animal.
Where did the moniker Soloman Tump come from.
A drive in the country
heading west on the A40...you'll find a signpost towards the hamlet of
'Solomon's Tump'... it's maybe at most a couple of farms and cottages in the
middle of the Gloucestershire countryside. The remoteness of the place and the
name stuck with me as I started recording my own electronic sounds. I
bastardized the name slightly as I was a "solo man" doing lonely dismal sounds.
I think the Memowrekz album by Ekoplekz was a huge
inspiration for me in terms of the lo-fi noisy sounds that I wanted to try and
create. In the early days of Soloman Tump it started with plugging a couple of
pedals into my DJ mixer; I had a Boss loop pedal and a noise generator synth. So
I could sample and loop short snippets of records and layer them with square
waves or white noise blasts. All very silly but fun experiments. Then I would
loop and layer the run-out groove of records. I don't think many of those
recordings still exist.
This is a little convoluted but when Dieter Müh was
becoming recognised (30+ years ago) a question that was often asked was 'what is
the U.K. scene like?' . It was as if UK sound-artists and noise-makers knew
each. We were all part of one big club, which back then was quite untrue. But
times have changed. Along comes the Internet, file sharing, things like MySpace
(R.I.P) and Bandcamp. Small compact & bijou live sound events etc. You have
collaborated with other artists, so, What is the U.K. scene like.
The whole
covid/lockdown thing was a huge creative period for me - whilst I was still
fortunate enough to still be working and earning, I had more "spare" time in
which I could create. So yes, this is when I started making zines and
collaborating. Theo (Territorial Gobbing) ran some online events under the
Heinous Whining name which were pretty much essential for tuning in and seeing a
bunch of artists from all over the UK come along and do their stuff. Really
informative times, and I got chatting with loads of different folks via there,
many whom I went on to meet at events like Supernormal Festival or shows about
the place. The likes of Blackcloudsummoner, Luxury Mollusc,
Knifedoutofexistence.... Heinous Whining also featured the first "live"
performance by Soloman Tump, I recorded a video performance which I then edited
over with some glitchy filters and stuff. It was fun. Then I performed on other
virtual live "noise fests" across the globe that were looking for artists - such
as Nim Brut, Wonder Valley Experimental. Hugely prolific times for anyone who
was looking to contribute creatively and I do kinda miss it in a way. In terms
of collaborations I worked with Lee Riley, a great guitarist from Oxford who I
met through an ongoing monthly show called Gappy Tooth Industries. I say
Guitarist but he plays it in such a way (with effects) that it's really unlike
anything else. Drone wizard, and a great guy. The modern virtual world allows
for easy international collaboration too, so I had a one-off project called
Clarvont where myself and an artist called Stonejaw from Connecticut
(https://clairvont.bandcamp.com/album/the-first) did a faux-psychic "clarvoyant"
recording just from a few prompts, each providing 2 tracks of the same length
that we just layered over each other. The only bit of mastering I did was
adjusting some levels when sounds clashed. Worked surprisingly well to be honest
and i'm still impressed at the outcome, a shame we never did part 2. Have I even
answered the question? I guess the UK "scene" is still pretty much fragmented
but there are great pockets of stuff going on in different towns. Bristol and
Leeds seem to be powerhouses in the New Weird Britain sound as the Quietus call
it. If I want a big day out of live music it's often far and between in Devon as
you know... Bristol always delivers on that front. So yes, the internet
(bandcamp / instagram) help to a certain degree with connecting people, but you
really cannot beat turning up at a dingy venue somewhere, paying a few quid to
get in, and having your ears blasted whilst sipping a random pint of lager.
Has moving down here to Devon changed the outlook / direction of Soloman Tump.
A lot of your recordings are made on Dartmoor.
I've always been inspired by trying to blend industry with nature; rhythm with
noise. Taking my roots of techno music and 4/4 beats and sort of mashing them
with the experimental noise of recent years, incorporating field recordings and
found sound samples where possible. My first "proper" release was in 2018 via
netlabel The Dark Thursday, when I still lived in Oxfordshire. Most of my work
since with DIY physical releases were self released, save a few tapes for other
labels. I don't think moving to Devon has changed the sound of Soloman Tump more
cementing the ideas that I had started with. Grim's Ditch was my first DIY EP on
3" CDr, a great medium that I want to release more of (i've still got a load of
them sat in the cupboard ready to burn up). The EP was about the folklore legend
surrounding these bronze age ditches, possibly furroughed out by the devil
himself. Dartmoor is dripping with dark folklore and i've attempted to convey
some of it with my dismal electronics.
You also produce a magazine called 'Intrusive Signals'. Is this an ongoing
project.
Zines were a great way to get into the scene and meet folk, both virtually
and in real life. I started with a zine called Snare Rush which ran for 7 issues
from July 2016, producing a couple a year. These were slightly more electronic /
fun focused with interviews, crosswords, art, reviews, silly stuff. Loved it.
Then a short gap as life got in the way, before I started Intrusive Signals
which only ran for 3 issues from 2021 - 2022. It was slightly more "serious" in
tone, taking in more noise / experimental music, drawing inspiration from the
mighty Noise Receptor Journal. Zines were great for trading and I acquired a
great collection of zines from all over the world for a good few years. I
probably traded as many as I sold. The process led me to interviewing some real
inspirations of mine, including the aforementioned Ekoplekz and
Knifedoutofexistance, Qebrus (rip), Himukalt (recently reprinted in the Sex
Works book) and Isnt'ses, amongst many others and including Dieter Muh!
Interviewing was the bit that I enjoyed the most. I've been sat on Issue 4 of
Intrusive Signals for a while now, never quite finding the right time or
motivation to dive deep into it again. I've just not had the mental capacity to
sit down and give it the attention it deserves. Recently I've had these internal
barriers that stop me from sitting down and "getting creative". I get guilty,
like I should be doing some "more constructive". I've found it harder to make
music because of this reason too (although this is mainly why Soloman Tump has
remained a "hardware" project - as little computer time involved as possible
please!). Hopefully i'll get over it soon. Maybe I need the chance of an
interview that I cannot possibly turn down! The other thing is that my new
day-job contains way more screen time than my previous job, so I tend to spend a
lot less time on my phone/laptop in the evenings. I've lost touch with some
people, and find less time for the music research that goes into making the
zine. But I do hope to return to it at some point, it was very good for my
mental health.
Can you tell me about your radio programme 'The Tump Clump'.
Amassing a great music collection over a couple of decades, it's only right that
I get to play some out to people and hopefully there might be a few people out
there that like it. The Tump Clump also started as a lockdown project, in 2021,
and Chris @ SoundArt was very responsive to me having a show as long as there
was no swearing. Brilliant, I can do that. And for the slightly socially nervous
me, recording it at home in advance works very well so I can edit out my
mistakes. Although thankfully there have been less over time, I could probably
do a live show now given the opportunity. The original artwork was drawn up by
Blackcloudsummoner, which led to us working on and releasing a split tape a few
months later. Each month I slightly altered the original art (different colour
filters, moving things slightly, I hope they didn't mind). I know of a few
people around the world who listen in each month, but it's mainly nice to know
that someone might accidentally tune in whilst driving down the A38 on their way
to Cornwall for a family holiday. The Tump Clump is really a melting pot of all
the different sounds that I listen to. Be it techno, drone,electronic, noise,
soundart, ambient, anything considered weird really. I try not to make it just a
noise show or just an hour of drone. There is usually a conscious effort to mix
up the sounds and play contrasting stuff adjacent to each other because that's
fun. I recorded one show from a forest on Dartmoor. A couple of shows were all
from bands I heard at Supernormal the week before. Some were full of exclusives
or live tracks sent in by friends of the show. And so this is a reflection on
the sounds that I release as Soloman Tump - I can't fully shake the thumping
rhythm of a dark dancefloor, even if i'm ankle deep in mud on the moor,
clutching my tascam.
The recording of Soloman Tump live on MuhMur Radio 26 October 2025 can be found here : https://www.mixcloud.com/muhsteve/soloman-tump-live-ritual-26-oktober-2025/
