The Djentleman at Work

Djent: A heavy metal movement. Onomatopoeia for the distinctive high-gain, distorted palm-muted guitar.

I have a few comments to add to this. Generally, it's all pretty heavy. It can get pretty funky. And it usually consists of some really weird song names. "Inside What's Within Behind" for example. That just doesn't make any sense.

Luckily, I live with a man capable of explaining all of this to me. Alasdair Cooper (cue looking at the bar to the right to see the links I've put up already...) is, to put it bluntly, an INSANE GUITARIST.


Completely awesome and pretty damn heavy.

That's Cooper, on the left.

He's been playing guitar for seven years. I don't think I've done anything for seven years. Write, maybe. And I've known how to read for a fair while. The most I know about guitars is that they sound pretty horrible when they're out of tune, and I can play a few basic chords. He knows how to tune them not just into standard tunings, but other tunings too! OTHER TUNINGS! Who knew? I can be honest and say that I honestly didn't know that before I met him. 

Now he has his own Soundcloud profile that brings in a big number of views, and a successful YouTube channel, and I want to try and help him out. I know that it can be quite hard to break into the music industry on the whole, so any support would be appreciated.

His music is pretty heavy, and technically superb. Heavy metal to those not in the know. Djent to those already in the know. If you want to know more about what that actually sounds like then search for the band Meshuggah - the whole music genre is based around their music.

 He writes everything himself: the guitar, bass, drums, keyboard and vocals. Given that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, that makes it even more impressive. He has a very intimate attachment to his guitars...

He has your plain old six-string, an electric six-string and possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen - AN EIGHT-STRING GUITAR. It's incredibly cool, and makes his songs sound epic. They're his babies. So far he's written enough to fill nine albums but still manages to find time to juggle a Masters degree in Chemistry.

Most of all he's my best friend and roommate. His banter can get a bit grim sometimes (and in writing this blog post all about him, I'd hope that I get plenty of cups of tea...) but he's really, truly brilliant at what he does. Please promise that you'll check him out. Promise? Okay. Good. Sweet.

Click here to go to Cooper's Soundcloud account

And click here to go to his YouTube account!