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.
