The inexorable march of time. Plus I’m so, so easily distracted by an interesting new project. And I’m just fucking terrible at finishing anything.

Good question! In spirit: yes.

Just before closing down my old website I posted this which explains things a little more:

The time has come to close the shutters on Marmot Audio. I’ve been neglecting it for some time now. Apologies to any potential customers who might have emailed me in the last few months and received no reply: that was uncharacteristically rude of me and I hope you found help elsewhere with your projects.

There’s no drama. I took a full-time job at a brewery last year and since then I’m running the place. As such it’s demanding much more of my time and more of my physical and mental energy. Something had to give.

I’d like to express gratitude and humility to everyone who trusted (and often confounded) me with their projects. I got to work on some amazing audio gear and made many friends along the way.

I’m sure some of you have stumbled across my recent adventures in Max and OSC. I’m still pretty active in those areas (handy to be able to do your projects on a laptop!). I’m going to consolidate (and archive) a bunch of stuff and you’ll be able to find it all on a new website which is hosted on my Github repository.

Which brings us right here!

So what is USE HEARING PROTECTION then?

Truthfully it’s my attempt to try to consolidate all the little bits of me, current and archived projects, into one place on the internet. If that sounds awfully vain, believe me that it’s selfishness masquerading as altruism.

No, I mean why USE HEARING PROTECTION?

Well, from a safety and the long-term health of your hearing point-of-view, it’s just some good advice.

There’s a much longer story about growing up in Manchester in the 80s and how that is a deep part of my creative psyche. The short answer is it’s inspired by Peter Saville’s iconic FAC 1 gig posters from his when he was the designer for Factory Records. Here’s the design used on the 2019 box-set “Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-79”:

And here’s a photo of one of the original FAC 1 posters:

Now what?

Expect sporadic updates and long periods of neglect. Like most of my other projects. I make no apologies.