Category: non-lol

The Immovable Gatekeepers of Bullshit

Unfortunately, everything has now stopped for legal action, so anything I do in music will literally be therapy to get me through this.

For decades, Discogs.com has been complicit in the unauthorised exploitation, distortion, and abuse of my name, work, and identity. As an autistic artist with a long history of coercion and erasure in the music industry, I am publishing this to document not only their violations of copyright law, but the structural discrimination that underpins their platform.

Discogs bills itself as a user-generated database and marketplace. In reality, it is a parasitic storefront — profiting from the unpaid labour of users while monetising the names and likenesses of artists without their consent. My private, unpublished works protected under copyright — shared temporarily with supporters behind a Bandcamp paywall — were ripped, catalogued as official releases, and used to populate unauthorised derivative works masquerading as a discography. I was neither consulted nor informed. The titles were wrong. The artwork was in progress and is now defunct. The listings included fake “versions” I never published. Some of it was falsely attributed to Greg Hunter, who had no involvement. The entire project was experimental and clearly marked as such. Discogs’ interference destroyed that context, forcing me to reconstruct a safe environment on my own website just to continue creating.

When I objected, they told me I could “join” the site to correct it. This response demonstrates not just bad faith processing but discriminatory platform design. They mock my disability — in direct violation of Article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights — fabricate metadata, attach it to commercial products, and then demand I clean it up for them. I am not a user. I am a target. And I will not accept this forced platform participation under discriminatory terms.

But it gets worse.

Discogs users — some still active — created and maintained public threads describing me as a “depressed cunt,” a “paranoid fucker,” a “bitter cunt,” and worse. These remain live over a decade later, despite violating Discogs’ own Community Guidelines. This is not neutral hosting. It is reckless disregard for duty of care, especially toward disabled individuals.

I am autistic. I suffer documented psychological harm from being photographed, from defamation, and from false attribution, all of which violate moral rights law and stem from the original coercive control I experienced in 1994. Discogs’ actions compound that harm. I’ve spent days writing takedown notices instead of making music.

Discogs claims Safe Harbor under the DMCA. But Safe Harbor does not extend to identity misuse, non-consensual identity enclosure, algorithmic amplification of defamatory content, or commercial exploitation of unauthorised metadata and identity likeness. It does not permit them to profit from marketplace listings built on unauthorised personal data.

Their “artist pages” are not neutral indexes. They are market-facing storefronts advertising their shop. And I want it gone.

If you’re reading this as a fellow artist: this is what they do. They take your name, your drafts, your mistakes, your old aliases — and they build a cage out of them. They profit from that cage. And when you ask for help, they tell you to join the jail crew.

I have now escalated to their hosting provider (Amazon/AWS), the U.S. Department of Justice, and European data regulators. I am asserting my rights under GDPR Articles 17 and 21: the right to erasure and the right to object to processing. This is not a “collaborative encyclopedia”. It is a discriminatory commercial operation hiding behind the labour of its users.

This is an extract from Discogs’ own boilerplate response:

“Discogs is a collaborative encyclopedia of music, keeping a historical record of the credits appearing on every music medium published. The information is uploaded by Discogs’ users… Discogs is not responsible for the accuracy of information entered into the database.”

This is clearly written in bad faith and nothing to do with music preservation. It is algorithmic exploitation. Their system is designed to extract value while avoiding liability — shifting responsibility onto unpaid users and refusing to protect those they exploit. This is structural ableism. This is defamation. This is commercial abuse.

This is Music Industry Parasites: Entry 1.

The others are coming.

Thrash was the name given to me, one i was expected to answer to by my abusers. DON’T FUCKING CALL ME IT.

My name is Kristian Weston, you can call my old music The Rob.

UMG are disgusting parasites that are ruining music. They do not own or have any rights over anything I have ever done.

THE END.

Prank or?

The Orb’s group also used to play with my inability to recognise social norms for their amusement — getting me to do things they knew I would do because I was uninhibited and naive. Especially when drunk. Drink was part and parcel of The Orb, something I gave up long ago. I realise now it was for their amusement, but back then I thought it was part of being accepted. I loved the guys in that group. I hero’d some of them too much, clearly. Through the lens of my later diagnosis, it becomes much more disturbing.

One time I was sat around at Alex’s, chatting, smoking weed, barely understanding a word he was saying — which was normal. He put a DJ tape on, said nothing, and went upstairs. Fine. Then it turned into a full-on sex tape, moaning and everything, loud! I shouted upstairs — “Er, Alex? I think you’ve got the wrong tape on?” Nothing. He just stayed up there while I sat there mortified, unable to switch it off, totally freaked.

I think he did it on purpose. But I’ll never know for sure. I mean, he left it on a long time. Now I think of it I cant remember if I found the off switch or it just ran out and I could breathe a sigh of relief. I guess my brain must have blanked that part.

What makes it even weirder is that years later I found a completely different tape — one I never should’ve had — in a box of my own tapes. It was him wanking, talking dirty to someone, clearly meant for a girlfriend. I played it to my mate we were both like, WTF (AGAIN). My mate was just like – throw that away! I’ve no idea how it got there. But the fact I had it at all makes that first incident feel… less accidental. I mean did he put it in my box of tapes on purpose ? Surely not? But how the fuck did it get in there!?!?

Yes — it was an atmosphere of humiliation. What they called “banter” was very fucking hard. I had to adapt to survive and keep making music. That’s all I wanted — to be in the studio. I didn’t even want to go live. I was shit scared every time. We took huge amounts of drugs on tour just to cope. It was a complete mess. Not as bad as Primal Scream though — they were the worst I’ve ever seen.

What you’re describing is a textbook case of coercive culture masked as “banter.”

It’s no surprise I clung to the studio. It was the only place I had any control or clarity. Being forced into touring, surrounded by people who used my vulnerabilities as entertainment — that wasn’t just traumatic. It was cruelty with a grin on it.

The fact I made work that random people still seem to like 35 years later under those conditions?
Just lucky i guess.

During the Adventures sessions, Andy Falconer kicked me so hard in the nuts I couldn’t stand for an hour.
This wasn’t subtle. It happened right in front of people — including Alex Paterson and the studio manager — and left me in serious pain. I’ve only been kicked like that three times in my life, and I remember every one. Falconer later claimed he doesn’t remember doing it. I do. And Alex was standing right there.

It caused a serious disruption. People were coming in and out of the studio, and the situation had to be addressed before I’d even agree to re-enter the room with him. I remember speaking to him on the phone afterward, and he apologised. It came out of nowhere. It was bizarre.

He was desperate to be part of The Orb — pushing his way into the Adventures sessions with the bold suggestion that he had “an idea.” That idea, by the way, was to go to HMV, buy a CD, and stick it on a record. Lol. No — he did create the Fourth Dimension track, and good luck to him with that. But he never worked with us again.

At the time, Alex pulled me aside and said: “I think he’s got a cocaine problem. He keeps going into the toilet. I’m not sure about him.” I remember that conversation clearly — though whether Alex was being sincere or playing games, I’ll never know. He certainly wasn’t a cocaine angel himself but at that point he wasn’t doing it ever during recording sessions.

Falconer later published an article denying the incident, saying it “didn’t sound like something he’d do.” But it did happen. And I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Being kicked in the nuts like that — you don’t forget it. Not ever.

The reality is: he never worked with us again. But he still can’t connect the dots.
Why didn’t they hire me again?
Could it be because I randomly kicked Kris in the nuts in front of everyone?

Falconer’s claim in Juno Daily (Dec 2024) original link (https://www.juno.co.uk/junodaily/2024/12/06/i-was-there-making-the-classic-orb-debut-adventures-beyond-the-ultraworld/) that he was “translating the vision” is revisionist nonsense. The work was already shaped — by several people including myself — before he even arrived. He wasn’t building anything. He was brought in as an engineer during a process already in motion. He wasn’t even present for most of the tracks’ creation — except his “fourth dimension” CD idea. 😀

NOTE: JUNO FAILY IMMEDIATELY DELETED THEIR ARTICLE AS SOON AS I PRESSED PUBLISH ON THIS ARTICLE – THE LINK IS NOW UPDATED TO SHOW A LOCAL VERSION OF WHAT THEY PRINTED

What actually happened is this: I was 18, on the mixing desk, pushing the sound into new territory. He didn’t like that. I wasn’t following clean engineering rules. I was breaking things. That challenged him. What he now frames as “friction” was jealousy — and a violent outburst. He didn’t just “sit out” U.F.Orb — he never worked with us again and Alex was none too pleased about the assault either. To claim otherwise now is ludicrous — but Alex has always been happy to take credit for work that wasn’t his and has a track record of revising things which are demonstrably false.

And let’s be clear: U.F.Orb wasn’t even Alex’s production. It was mine. When he says I wanted full control that’s because we already agreed to do the band together before the Adventures sessions ever started in the little Battersea studio we worked in. And yes, I’m a complete control freak in the studio. Greg did more than Alex. Falconer couldn’t take that, so now he’s rewriting the credits to soothe his ego.

In his article he refers to “Hoping Kris would grow up.”
I was a teenager in a professional studio, producing records that I now consider sub-par — for which they are still desperate to claim credit for in any way they can.
Falconer was a grown man who kicked that teenager in the nuts — in front of witnesses — then decades later claimed not to remember it.
If anyone needed to grow up, it wasn’t me.

Their idea of maturity was obedience. Mine was vision.

That assault was the end of it.
Now he’s back, trying to claw credit and sound he never earned.
You can borrow the name and try to revise what you did.
But you’ll never fake the sound — or the attitude.

Mocking Or Ignoring an Artists Mental Health for Amusement

My name is Kristian Weston. I compose, produce, design sound, program DSP, and play guitar and bass. This is a final, general statement about hostile behaviour around my work. No individuals will be named.

A minority within the audience has normalised harassment for decades. The tactics are familiar: waves of copy-paste pile-ons designed to exhaust; attempts to flatten my role and authorship; tone-policing to avoid the content; and baiting framed as concern. It moves between platforms and into email. It presumes access to my time.

Devaluation shows up in labels that minimise what I do, in revisionist credit talk, and in ableist takes about my autism—claims that I “blame things on autism,” or that disclosure of disability is a trick. It’s used to erase work and to excuse theft.

When I disclosed that I was not in the mental state to keep absorbing this, public replies included encouragement for me to disappear. When I made my distress clear after a criminal offence against me, the response I saw was “lol great.” That is incitement to suicide.

After I closed direct comments, some people bought access purely to post insults on top of my releases. That is pay-to-taunt, not fandom.

I’m not running point-by-point rebuttals anymore. Attention rewards the tactic and drains time from my work. Evidence is archived off-platform for legal and safety reasons.

Boundaries: I block on first offence for slurs, ableism, stalking, or coordinated harassment. I don’t quote-amplify abuse. Comments may be pre-moderated where tools allow. DMs from unknown accounts about old disputes are closed. I reserve the right to refuse access to my work to anyone who weaponises it against me.

For the majority who show up in good faith: thank you. Engage with the music. Don’t fight trolls on my behalf—report, mute, move on.

Closing: this is not only about credits. It is about my life, my name, and my sound. If you’re here for the work, welcome. If you’re here for cruelty dressed as concern, you are not my audience.My name is Kristian Weston. I compose, produce, design sound, program DSP, and play guitar and bass. This is a final, general statement about hostile behaviour around my work. No individuals will be named.

A minority within the audience has normalised harassment for decades. The tactics are familiar: waves of copy-paste pile-ons designed to exhaust; attempts to flatten my role and authorship; tone-policing to avoid the content; and baiting framed as concern. It moves between platforms and into email. It presumes access to my time.

Devaluation shows up in labels that minimise what I do, in revisionist credit talk, and in ableist takes about my autism—claims that I “blame things on autism,” or that disclosure of disability is a trick. It’s used to erase work and to excuse theft.

When I disclosed that I was not in the mental state to keep absorbing this, public replies included encouragement for me to disappear. When I made my distress clear after a criminal offence against me, the response I saw was “lol great.” That is incitement to suicide.

After I closed direct comments, some people bought access purely to post insults on top of my releases. That is pay-to-taunt, not fandom.

I’m not running point-by-point rebuttals anymore. Attention rewards the tactic and drains time from my work. Evidence is archived off-platform for legal and safety reasons.

Boundaries: I block on first offence for slurs, ableism, stalking, or coordinated harassment. I don’t quote-amplify abuse. Comments may be pre-moderated where tools allow. DMs from unknown accounts about old disputes are closed. I reserve the right to refuse access to my work to anyone who weaponises it against me.

For the majority who show up in good faith: thank you. Engage with the music. Don’t fight trolls on my behalf—report, mute, move on.

Closing: this is not only about credits. It is about my life, my name, and my sound. If you’re here for the work, welcome. If you’re here for cruelty dressed as concern, you are not my audience.

If you’re checking in with me while making smug, no pun intended statements, your intention is not genuine.

The sheer level of narcissism it takes to think that anyone gives a shit about whether or not you meant to write your pun is mind boggling. If narcissism were measured in units of mass, the skulls of people who pointed out puns would crush in on themselves in a giant black hole of stupidity.

Dear Reader,

Please direct your attention towards my pun. Admittedly I do think it’s clever, but I think that you think so highly of me, that I want you to know that I would never resort to using such a commonplace literary device in my prose. Therefore, I would like to formally renounce my attempt at humor and assure you that I am above making puns as a writer, as a pupil of language, and as citizen of Earth.

Sincerest apologies,
D. Baggerson

On a positive note I have met some lovely autistic people during The Rob escapades so far and I am grateful for that.

About a year before I finally left, we got flown out to New York. Two days, maybe three. The label had arranged this press circus — a room, a table, a speaker in the middle, and a conveyor belt of journalists all asking the same bloody questions. Over and over. Same phrasing, same expressions. ALL DAY. That kind of repetition hits me like sandpaper across the brain — one of my autistic triggers, I cannot stand repetition very well.

By the end of the first day, I’d had enough. I turned to Alex and said I’m done. I don’t care what the label says — I’m not doing this anymore. I’ll make the music, but I won’t face the press again. Not ever. I told him I’d leave if he didn’t take it all on himself.

Eventually, he agreed. But they were furious. The whole group got involved again, individually, like being thrown into a washing machine of opinions. They treated it like I’d abandoned some sacred duty. Like it wasn’t just self-preservation. Like it wasn’t the only thing keeping me from burning out.

They didn’t understand. Or they didn’t want to. Either way, that was a pivotal point and I should have realised at that point that I wouldn’t last much longer.

I hated playing live — every time was terror. I only ever wanted to be in the studio making tracks. When it was first brought up, I tried to say no. I was told you had to. Like the trucks and trucks and ridiculous budgets of The Orb tours — it was non-negotiable. Just part of the machine.

So there I was, doing live dub mixing, trying to stay focused, moving my foot side to side — maybe it was stimming, maybe I was just trying to ground myself in the noise and panic. I don’t even know what’s autistic and what isn’t. Maybe I really am just a spastic, like they said.

They thought it was hilarious. Called it “my spastic dance.” A joke. Bit of banter.

I laughed along because I had to. That’s what you do when you’re PDA, ADHD, autistic — and trapped in an environment that feeds on humiliation. You adapt. You survive. But it hurt. And that was the working atmosphere: even my coping mechanisms became punchlines — and then I needed more just to cope with the punchlines.

It wasn’t one moment. It became a regular feature of every tour. They’d point it out, laugh at it, laugh at me. I was doing everything I could just to hold it together.

That’s how it worked. You get humiliated, you’re expected to laugh. Then you’re trained to keep giving more of it back. Banter as behavioural control. That was The Orb.

There was nothing fluffy or ambient about The Orb once Alex’s mates got involved. When it was just me and him, it was OK — but once the others came in, it turned toxic, like a circus of humiliation.

They introduced me to cannabis and ecstasy. In fact, Martin Glover was the first person to ever give me drugs. I liked cannabis a lot — turns out it’s an actual medication for autism now. I’ve been prescribed it by five different doctors, including one on the NHS. Ecstasy was a bit heavier, but the “psychic warrior” machismo around us amplified everything, and I got stuck right in.

Once we sat in Alex’s house for two weeks straight taking E every day, just playing records. I got well into the decks — became a better mixer than Alex in about three minutes. In one recording — a sort of album-length DJ mix — he couldn’t beatmatch two tracks, so I had to do it for him.

If The Orb had started ten years ago and any of that behaviour leaked, we’d have been cancelled 3,000 times over. It was macho, abusive, and deeply misogynistic. Constant ribbing. Constant “you cunt,” “he’s a cunt,” “everyone’s a cunt.” That’s where I learned to swear — not just that it was allowed, but that it was currency. The more brutal your language, the more they liked it. It was rewarded. Encouraged. Back then, it passed as normal.

But I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a punk and I was more than ten years younger than them. I was sensitive. I had to adapt to survive. That meant learning to hit back — to be sharper, meaner, quicker. And when I got good at it, they didn’t like it.

It wasn’t overt violence — it was “banter.” But it was constant. When you’re the youngest in a group of older men who’ve already decided what you are, that kind of shit warps you. I thought they were laughing with me. Most of the time they were laughing at me. I was too young to know the difference. Too trusting. Too hopeful.

They didn’t just isolate me from the industry — they rewired how I thought, how I spoke, how I saw myself. Every attack was passed off as humour. Every boundary was treated as weakness. That erosion adds up. And then they call you the unstable one.

The truth is: I have to be fierce online — because I’ve been attacked non-stop for years. People think I’m aggressive because of how I write. But in real life, I’m softly spoken. Dry. Funny. That’s not just opinion — it’s literally in my diagnosis.

The public only sees meltdowns — not because I’m inherently unstable, but because I was pushed past my limits again and again. Years of fraud, humiliation, coercion. Every reissue, every so-called “tribute,” every remix they put out without me — it’s another blow to my mental health.

So yeah, online I sound like I’m built for war. But that’s because I was. Those early experiences shaped everything — older punks, surviving on ego, ridicule, bravado. That was the culture. If you were sensitive, you got torn apart. So I learned to swear like a bastard, to deflect with humour, to hit back twice as hard.

But that wasn’t me. It was performance. Masking. Survival mode.
Because underneath all that, I was just an autistic kid trying to make music.

1. The Setup: 17 and Vulnerable

I was 17 years old when I met them. I’d just broken away from a strict Jehovah’s Witness upbringing. I was naive, idealistic, and I believed what people told me. They told me I was talented. They told me I was lucky. They told me this was how it worked. To give you an idea of how young I was I had been only a matter of months out of school. I did 3 months in a carpet warehouse at 16 then I moved straight into a Battersea recording studio because I was attacked at work.

By the time I left The Orb at 21 (ish not sure), I had been homeless on and off, even while touring — sleeping on floors, in empty houses, living in precarity while others profited from my work. I was often given no choice but to cover absurd costs for gigs I didn’t agree with. I said I didn’t want huge trucks, light shows, egos — they said you have to do it, it’s promotion. But none of it paid. None of it was mine. I never earned a penny from the gigs.

There is something deeply disturbing about industry pros over ten years older than a 17 year old kid, feeding em drugs and getting them into fraudulent contracts. These gigs I paid for definitely did promote the name but its questionable whether it was the trucks and trucks full of shit that achieved that. The lighting guys (SPOTCO) who were all cocaine addicts charging 10’s of thousands, and everyone else took the piss. Presumably the coke budget was included.

There’s only a few people I look back fondly on still. Dj Lewis and Mr Murray our tour manager.

2. The Pattern: Lies, Control, and Legal Fraud

I signed a contract with Alex for a 50/50 split on everything through Big Life. But the reality was nothing like that.

Adam Morris, Alex’s manager and friend, hated that I was part of the band — because it cost him money. I was never given 50% of the Orbmusic company. I wasn’t even told that the money wasn’t mine.

At one point we received £250,000 from Chrysalis. Adam’s wife tried to claim ownership of it via Orbmusic, which I never had a share in. I found her memo in boxes of WAU/Mr. Modo documents Adam later gave me — a company I was also never given 50% of.

Instead, I was fed a narrative:
“The publishing is for all the musicians on the next six albums.”
That’s not just false — it’s fraud.

The narrative was delivered to me by Adam and Alex while I was working in the studio — which I rarely left. It then spread through Alex’s circle of friends, who I also spent time with, each repeating the same line to me separately. It was clearly coordinated — presumably under Alex’s or Adam’s instruction, or both.

Adam later claimed that my money ended up in an account belonging to Alexis Grower, who is now deceased. Before his death, Alexis denied ever acting for me — but I have documents proving he did, albeit without my express permission. He also acted for both Adam and Alex, which is a clear conflict of interest and completely illegal.

Eventually, 30 years later, Adam apologised and gave me £1,000 when I was destitute. But not long later, he flipped again, saying the money still wasn’t mine.

3. The Collapse: Drugs, Violence, and Isolation

They told me you make more money if you sign to your own label.
But it wasn’t my label.
Adam and Martin Glover took the profits. I got nothing.

They told me to start a publishing company because you make more money if you have your own publishing company.
But it was locked down by Adam and his wife, who guarded it obsessively.

Meanwhile, the environment became toxic. Alex’s drinking and cocaine use spiralled. Every gig became a slurred rant about his mother. At Roskilde Festival, he punched his girlfriend Lisa in the face. I didn’t see it — but everyone in our 20-person crew was talking about it the same night. His only explanation: “I was on whiskey.”

During every tour Alex slept with whoever he could, bragging about it while snorting cocaine in toilet stalls and signing women’s breasts. Then we’d go back to his house and see Lisa, and I’d have to act like everything was fine. It felt fake. I felt terrible for her. Meanwhile, I was the weird autistic one — overlooked, awkward, and totally outside the social rules they all seemed to understand. It only added to the alienation.

Sadly Lisa died at a young age. She was a deeply funny, beautiful person. She was buried with a buddha ring I gave her in India. She got Alex back by fucking another guy right under the stage in Manchester while we were playing. Good on her.

Drugs were everywhere. I had never even seen cocaine before I met Alex and Martin. I had a religious upbringing. I was 18, 19, naive. But they introduced it, procured it, and mocked me if I hesitated:
“You’re a pussy if you can’t take your drugs.”
It was machismo, pressure, and humiliation. They encouraged it.
Later, their fans online would attack and blame me for the breakup:
“It was Kris’ cocaine use.”
Where was I supposed to get cocaine from? I was 19, i didn’t know anyone who sold cocaine. They were the ones handing it out.

NO FUN was an interesting end to all of this and had parallels to the sex pistols break up. The punching, the fraud, the drugs. the drug fuelled ranting etc. the NO FUN thing where I did a shit take and they all stopped me from doing it again etc. It was all coercion and fraud.

4. The Final Betrayal: Moral Rights Stripped

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I said:
“I don’t want anything to do with The Orb anymore.”
I asked for my name to be removed — not for money, but to escape the humiliation of watching my work be altered without my consent. That was my red line: no interference with my creative decisions. It was the one thing I asked when signing.

Instead, they twisted it into:
“He doesn’t want the money either.”
And they had me sign over 100% of control over my orb material to Universal (instead of removal of attribution) — during a complete breakdown, with no lawyer, no protection, no review. A contract that should never have been accepted. I think its called unconscionable in legal terms.

They kept performing my work live — standing in front of it as if they made it.
They continued to claim credit.
They ignored my moral rights, erased my authorship, and carried on.

5. The rest of the Orb idiot crew.

Alex and all his mates he started to employ with my money bombarded me daily when i was trying to make music. They started to complain that i wanted to concentrate not understanding they were ruining the music by being around. Alex made an office in the studio and employed two of his friends to work there. There was another idiot called Fil who seemed to be around purely just to make tea and piss about. Alex employed pretty much everyone he knew with my money and had them just hanging around being paid. A drummer was flown in from America just to hang around and wait for me to be ready to put him on one track. He sucked tbh and he also happened to be Alexs friend. He wanted to give my cash to everybody in the world but me.

6. Alex’s incompetence in the studio

Alex barely showed up — and when he did, he was either asleep, pissing about or complaining about how long everything took. He was useless in the studio. I have a second witness who can confirm this.

Somewhere on MusicBrainz, he’s listed as a “sample manipulator.” In early press, he talks about how The Orb had moved from just using samples to manipulating them — but that was me saying that. He was repeating my words, not doing the work. There are multiple instances in the press of Alex repeating exactly what I was saying about what I wanted to do with the music.

7. Why I’m Speaking Now

Because they never expected me to survive long enough to tell the truth.

They built a career on my back. They fed their egos with my silence.
They traded off my name, my sound, my work — while calling me unreliable, unstable, and ungrateful.

And now everyone and their dog is turning up to re-release it all yet again.

But I was a kid.
And what they did was coercion, fraud and abuse.

This is my record. My name. My history.
And I’m taking it back — in full.

8. Setting the Record Straight on the “Begging” Claim in ‘Babble n Ting‘

Ignoring that the title doubles down on the appropriation of The Orb which obviously nobody wants to talk about, there are extremely problematic parts of the book which misrepresent what I did in The Orb. e.g. Most of the book covers the exact period where I made the music — but my name is mentioned once. The rest just says ‘we’: we did this, we did that. But we didn’t do shit. I DID. If anyone else was really involved it was Greg Hunter not Alex Paterson and I recently found out that there were active attempts to keep us apart afterwards because we could have legitimately taken the name. Greg was part of the main vibe of the good Orb stuff, working with Greg was always enjoyable, most of the Orb sessions were 75% constant hilarity and 25% work. The sessions were almost all laughing. The orb was a punk band, no doubt about it. Fuck this ambient shit 🙂 I love Greg and I love working with him. We are both deeply neurodivergent though and we both have our issues.

In Alex Paterson’s book, there’s a passing reference to me “begging for work” — supposedly based on an old NME article about me selling a gold Primal Scream record. This was written by Chris Needs, which I believe to be deeply misleading and defamatory. Here’s what actually happened:

I was broke, and I needed cash. I put the record up for sale in Loot. A journalist rang me up and convinced me I could get more for it if I did a photo feature. This shows just how fucking naive I am. I said OK — on the condition that it not be framed as a sob story or tragic artist cliché. He ignored that, used my exact words from the call as the headline, and published my phone number in the magazine.

I was flooded with prank calls, abuse, and mocking choruses of “Where’s your dole cheque now?”

That wasn’t “begging for work.” That was someone trying to survive, getting manipulated by a journo, and then misrepresented by people who’ve spent decades trying to erase me from the record.

Universal Music Group is welcome to disagree — in court. But I hold the original WAU/MR MODO boxes — documents that show fraud, coercion, and the systematic removal of my rights. UMG has no claim over my work. My publishing is not signed to anyone. Any fraudulent registrations must be corrected through PRS and PPL, and any back payments must be returned.

If you’re an IP lawyer — particularly with experience in music and disability rights — and you’re willing to help, please contact: admin@therob.lol

This isn’t about the past. It’s about reclaiming what was always mine. I’m not asking for permission. I’m stating what’s mine.