In 2003 TAOP started Urban Desolation Collective. Tell us more about it: as far as I know, despite the name, bands in UDC aren’t united by their love to the urban culture.
I can’t really remember what was going through our heads when we came up with the idea for UDC; I suppose in the absence of any sort of musical scene at the time - regionally or nationally – that we felt we could relate to, we decided to construct our own, creating an umbrella term for projects that we were involved in, including some of our friends. There wasn’t really a concrete way of stating who was part of the UDC and who wasn’t, the whole structure never really crystallised. Nowadays our situation has changed; the whole idea of the UDC isn’t relevant to us in the same way, it’s just a convenient way of being able to discuss a number of different projects in one space, like this interview!
You’re correct that the name UDC isn’t a matter of shared aesthetic or vision; the idea was to unite the different projects based on where the members came from, i.e. the weathered urban landscapes of Teesside and the North East of England. How that location related to each project is a matter for conjecture, though most it must be said we about offering a psychological escape or relief from the place.
I can’t really remember what was going through our heads when we came up with the idea for UDC; I suppose in the absence of any sort of musical scene at the time - regionally or nationally – that we felt we could relate to, we decided to construct our own, creating an umbrella term for projects that we were involved in, including some of our friends. There wasn’t really a concrete way of stating who was part of the UDC and who wasn’t, the whole structure never really crystallised. Nowadays our situation has changed; the whole idea of the UDC isn’t relevant to us in the same way, it’s just a convenient way of being able to discuss a number of different projects in one space, like this interview!
You’re correct that the name UDC isn’t a matter of shared aesthetic or vision; the idea was to unite the different projects based on where the members came from, i.e. the weathered urban landscapes of Teesside and the North East of England. How that location related to each project is a matter for conjecture, though most it must be said we about offering a psychological escape or relief from the place.
