All the Latest Smoke


	A little potted biography of Smoke-T. Smoke-T began life in 1988 in the Scottish Border town of Galashiels. He was originally called The Id, Id being the mind, the intellect (Got the idea from Forbidden Planet and it's Monster of the Id) and was the partner of DEF=Adder, then just plain Def in THE WATCHMEN which was an old school rap duo heavily inspired by the works of Alan Moore and in paritcular his 1985 collaboration with Artist Dave Gibbons, the graphic Novel WATCHMEN. Def and the Id worked together as the watchmen for about a year before changing direction and forming Extreme Astley Death with Professor X (Formerly Doktor X) and Jimski EEE. During that time they worked through a complicated array of tape recorders and cables as they had neither advanced computers or 4-tracks / mixers to work with, just a Commodore 64 and a Casio SK-1 keyboard. It was fun, it was terrible, but it was fun, and how we did it was pretty ingenious. We did pretty much the old classic thing of introduce ourselves, compliment ourselves and each other and then go on to threaten bloody retribution upon those who would dis us. Our influences at the time were pretty harmless rap acts, the whole Gangsta scene had yet to get going. We were really into Public Enemy and Run DMC and Bomb Da Bass (not really Hip hop but...) and Derek B and stuff like that. Def had loads of the Electro series of tapes so he had more of a wealth of material to be inspired by. We did this cool track about space aliens who come down to earth and completely freak out when they discover that of all the humans they could meet it was the famous Def and the Id. Mad. For a detailed sysnopsis of the EAD / PV years please see the PV website. In 1992 after the dissolution of PV, Smoke-T was working without the others. Prof X was still around and collaborating from time to time, DEA was in Gala working on his first solo tape which was to appear a couple of months before mine, Jimski EEE was working with Matthew on Tautliner (yet to appear), Lewis from time to time and most sucessfully with DEA as Tak-E. At this time i was not working to any purpose but taking advantage of my unemployment and my creative enthusiasm with my new 4-track. This was a pretty relaxed time and it showed in the music, while DEA consolidated his Hip Hop talents, i diversified into such things as comedy songs and electronic music. If this through making my music difficult to pidgeon hole and classify made me difficult to identify with at the same time then.... so be it. Like Rorschach i've never been one to compromise my thoughts or actions for anyone. Early in 1993, soon after graduation, my first tape came out to some pretty positive feedback, that made me feel pretty good. This led to me spending a lot of time perfecting my guitar techniques and working on my second tape which was more limited in it's diversity, being guitar based wit a couple of solitary electronic numbers. This was technically more accomplished but a tad more soulless and did not garner the same praise. After that it was all downhill. I have not always been the best person at coping with things and my life kind of hit the skids for a couple of years in the mid-nineties so i was unable to compose anything worthwhile and after that i got embroiled within a relationship with the lovely Vikstik and put music on the backburner while i enjoyed the not-single life for a while. Ahhh but music is something you cannot wholly forsake, and before long Smoke was struggling to get back some of the momentum he lost during his years of inactivity. his guitar playing had deteriorated, his enthusiasm and inventiveness sapped and his 4-track pretty well knackered with no hope of affording a replacement. Taking around 6 years to record a tape met with almost complete apathy would probably have caused any other bedroom musician to call it a day and find another hobby, but Smoke is a fighter. he will be back, he will be better. He will not lose, for better or worse he is part of history, present and future. He will never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon. You lot will just have to learn to live with it.
	Under construction, more to follow.