DC:UL – Defy Convention – Uphold Law is a project I started in 2004 – 2008. This project began to explore some of the spiritual concepts and knowledge that I was learning. I wrote lyrics to these songs that were a mix of personal reflection, social commentary, praise, psalm, and proverbs. I found myself correcting course to focus on spiritual matters as my first experience with the music industry, with secular music, was that it was a lot of hard work, and all apparently essentially for nothing. l ended that experience feeling that I had been “swallowed up”, devoured, ripped off by people who I had associated with in the music industry, even friends and people in the “church”, which reminded me of a scripture:-
Those who sit at the gate mock me, and I am the song of the drunkards.
(Psalm 69:12 NIV).
This isn’t to say that I literally wore sackcloth, but my demeanour and outlook on life changed because of events like; returning to my home town of Ipswich from university after being the victim of a racial attack, and returning to the reality of my parents divorce that happened while I was at university, my brother committing suicide – which for a long time people including myself considered wasn’t likely, and rather that he was murdered. Additionally, I had real battles in my family who viewed my take on faith, keeping the seventh day biblical sabbath, as legalism, and because I also wanted explore a path to faith that is different from what is taught in mainstream Christian churches.
I had a an awakening when Future By Design launched in 1998 that led me to abandon music for several years, as I needed not only to take a fresh look at my life and where it was headed. I decided I needed to flush out a lot of the negative influences, in order to help the seed of my re-found faith grow.
Defy Convention : Uphold Law
Technically this project was also my first efforts in to digital multi-track recording with a much smaller studio set up, just one keyboard an Emu PK6, and Cubase SL3 with a few VST plug-ins like D’Cota, Korg Legacy Collection, Drum ‘n’ Bass Rig.
DC:UL Studio Set Up
I wasn’t and have never been really confident with my vocal efforts, and the project didn’t make it past demo stage. In fact I started studying web development and work left little time for music, so this project fell by the wayside for quite some time, with only demo tracks being recorded. The demo tracks are below, retrospectively listed with the title “Journey of Faith”, if you want to check them out feel free to listen.
DC:UL Journey of Faith – Vocal EP
Looking back at this project, I like the lyrics and the music, but as demo’s I wish they were better recorded. I still have the instrumental versions of these tracks and am open to collaborations if anyone wants to re-record them. I also have the Cubase Project files but not the Emu PK6 synth or all the sounds and plugins that I used previously.