For a short but intense burst in late 2012, with one comeback special in January of 2014, I was a music reviewer. But not just any music reviewer, no no, I ran the Old Wave/Post Hype/New Reviews/Underground audio criticism arena that was NotAlbums.com.

For the uninitiated, Not Albums – or NOT NOT NOT as it was colloquially known – was a blog purely created for reviewing music so underground, music so unheard of, that it didn’t actually exist. Inspired by reading Pitchfork and watching Anthony Fantano’s The Needle Drop, Notalbums became my space for commenting on the never ending cycle of searching for ‘new bands that you wouldn’t know about’.

Following my first review (Amporhous Jump’s Finger Jazz) things got out of hand pretty quickly. Innocent reviews of fictional Delaware synth-pain quartets turned into a twitter account and an email inbox full of real EPs and pleas for write-ups from desperate for coverage bands.

Full Name Barbeque arrived first, followed by Johnty Flashheart, then Unsung Lilly, all banging down my door for a review. While only one of those just listed were actually real recording artists, the readership was booming and hungry for more content.

The problem with being a music reviewer however, is having to listen to all that damn music. Still, I got stuck into my task with gusto and while the accuracy of the reviews could have been called into question, the passion and the enthusiasm could not. For every Heat Vs Light review for genuinely interested parties, I would write a Cardinal Wolesey – Excommunicate This to amuse myself. Or so went the formula until I burnt out with Fabian Way and their Nordic re-imagining of Mexican Narcocorrido.

From there I took some much needed time away from the music world, that was until a special project fired up the blog once again. Stewart Reynolds’ ode to a cricket team 10,000 miles away was worthy of a few hundred words, so I fired up the creative synapses, didn’t listen to the song, and gave it the best damn write up I could.

Verdict: Two coconuts short of a medicine cabinet.