User:J.r.hodkinson/sandbox

James Hodkinson (musician)
James Hodkinson (b. Liverpool, 1973) is a British cultural critic and historian, who works in German Studies at Warwick University in the UK. He is also a contemporary musician currently based in Hertfordshire, UK: this entry refers to his life and work in music. Hodkinson is both a live performer and a recording artist, working in the fields of ‘post rock’, ‘progressive rock’, ‘electronica’ and ‘space rock.’ He has been associated with a range of bands, artists and projects, most notably Litmus (Rise Above Records), Pre Med (Voiceprint), and Alan Davey (formerly of Hawkwind). He is currently closely involved with the UK based post-progressive rock band Shadowlight and a solo project called Signals/ Signale. Hodkinson is a multi-instrumentalist, proficient in guitar, bass, and keyboards, is also a vocalist and is also a prolific songwriter and lyricist.

Early Life (1973-1992)
Hodkinson grew up during the 1970-s and 80-s on Merseyside, North West England. He was educated at a typical suburban state school. At the age of twelve he travelled to Germany on a school exchange, a pivotal experience, which defined his personal and professional life in many ways. At 15 years old he began learning German at school, showing particular aptitude for the language. Referring to the fact that a sunken German U-Boot had been found on the seabed by a Danish diver in 1986, then moved to Merseyside as a museum piece in the early 1990-s, Hodkinson jokingly imagined that the ghost of a young German sailor had finally escaped from the wreck and jumped into his body: he often remarked that learning German was akin to learning a language that he had once known, but since forgotten. The study of German would take him to university and abroad to Germany itself, where he would make contact with other like-minded musicians. This themes also form the backbone of the forthcoming bilingual multimedia project, involving film, art and music, called Signals/ Signale.

Musical Influences and Career
During his teenage years, music was Hodkinson’s other great passion. Indebted to a series of talented music teachers, who embraced both traditional musical values and modern music technology, he studied musical theory and violin at school and also had a few classical guitar lessons before opting to teach himself: using theory, he combined his Spanish guitar training with his new found love of electric guitars, he began crafting his style. Around this time he became involved with school amateur dramatics, where his teacher was the director and renowned electronic musician Robert Fox (also of Code Indigo), who inducted the young student into the world of digital and analogue synthesizers. Hodkinson left for university in 1992, pursuing his two passions: music and his passion for all things German. The sound track of his early life was the music of the heavy, progressive and space rock genres, which drifted in through his bedroom window from older kids’ houses and mingled with the more indigenous sounds of his family home. This collision saw King Crimson, Hawkwind, Caravan, Pink Floyd, Bevis Frond and Marillion blend with Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Elton John and the Carpenters and Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as the classical symphonies played on old vinyl records by his grandfather.

In the 1990s, Hodkinson connected with more contemporary music in the form of American guitar-based indie and grunge, as a wave of US bands such as Hükser Dü, The Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, The Pixies, Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction broke on British shores. This led him to look back to older US music, were he found and embraced the likes of MC5, The Stooges and Blue Cheer. His early bands 1988-92, ‘Acid Flowers’ and ‘Sonic Experience,’ had been largely guitar driven, with a garage, psychedelic feel and marked an attempt to fuse heavy guitar rock with ambient, space music, but also melodic song writing traditions. Throughout the nineties, he followed a wide range of music, picking up other influences as he went, including Radiohead and the Verve, the electronic tradition from Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk through to Aphex Twin, Lamb and Air, as well as the melodic Doom Metal of bands such as Paradise Lost and Anathema and the otherworldly sounds of Dead can Dance.

Hodkinson returned to making live music after 2000, initially joining the Oxford-based ‘Assassins of Silence,’ a tribute band specialising in recreating the sound and visual experience of a Hawkwind gig. Working, too, with Kevin Perry from the Assassins, he re-formed a spin-off composing project that later became a live act, known as Xoo, in which James played bass and synths. Around 2006 his career moved up a gear as he was asked to play keyboards for former Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey (Earthquake Records) and joined the progressive metal act Pre-Med, on keyboards and later bass guitar and vocals. James has played on a range of recordings with all of these artists. Leaving many of these projects behind, James consolidated his commitments in 2010, joining heavy stoner space rock outfit Litmus (Rise Above Records), playing mellotron, organ and analogue synths. He also formed Shadowlight, after reconnecting with university friend Mark Wilson in Hertfordshire late in 2009: with Wilson, Hodkinson had played in a fun but short-lived rock covers band called Black Rain (1992-95). Now, encouraged by the success of bands such as Porcupine Tree, Anathema and Opeth, who had managed to combine ambient progressive, with metal and good song-writing, the duo set about building their new band.

Shadowlight offers Hodkinson the opportunity to explore the full range of his musical interests. Having played bass and synths for a decade, he now returns to his beloved guitar and can take a more leading vocal role. His playing drifts between the melodic and emotive solo work of Andy Latimer (Camel) and Steve Rothery (Marillion) on the one hand, and the heavier riffing used by bands such as Soundgarden and Tool on the other – with a sprinkling of acoustic folk and shimmering twelve-string work added to the mix. His vocal style is characterised by a smoothly delivered though still powerful and impassioned English vocal style, often involving complex layered harmony vocals.

Equipment:

 * Epiphone Gibson Les Paul ‘Black Beauty’ guitars
 * Hohner Scorpion Lead guitars
 * Maton semi-acoustic guitars
 * Yamaha Twelve string guitars
 * Rickenbacker basses
 * Peavey and Hughes-Kettner amplification
 * Roland JV and Korg synthesizers
 * Cakewalk Sonar Recording software
 * Boss and MXR effects

Discography:

 * Xoo – ‘Poison in the Name of Beauty’ (2006)
 * Xoo – ‘Tales from a Red Planet’ (2012)
 * Assassins of Silence – ‘The Elements that Gather Here’ (2007)
 * Assassins of Silence – ‘Thank You, Dr Strangelove’ (2008)
 * Alan Davey – ‘Eclectic Devils’ (Earthquake Records, 2009)
 * Djinn (Alan Davey and Bridget Wishart) – ‘Last Wish’ (Earthquake Records, 2011)
 * Shadowlight – ‘Winter’EP, (Sluicegate Records, 2011)