So who the hell are you?

My name’s Stu. I’m a 30-something married father currently living to the East of Edinburgh. I have two cats, an occasionally interesting office job and I’m originally from Northern Ireland, although I make a half-hearted attempt to disguise that.

Describe your blog in ten words or less!

Frequently updated, opinionated, obsessed, diverse, fun, arm-chancing bullshit.

What’s a ‘tidal wave of indifference’ then?

It’s a phrase I used in my first ever post on my short-lived Livejournal page to describe what I thought my online witterings would be met with. But it seems I’ve been wrong (mostly).

Why music blogging?

I’ve been ‘into’ music since hearing the likes of the Cure and the Clash at age 10. Smells Like Teen Spirit thundering out of my wireless aged 13 was a t-shirts, posters up on the wall, buy a heap of magazines kind of epiphany – an absolute life-changer. As it became clear that I had zero music talent but was a keen creative writer, some kind of music writing was inevitable. And a mere twenty or so years later, the Tidal Wave of Indifference was born.

Took you a while!

I know! Unbelievably it took me until December 2009 to publish something on the internet and February 2010 to get this site up and running. Even then I’d say I’ve only really been making an effort with it since September 2010 following a surprise, but welcome approach from a now defunct Edinburgh indie-pop three-piece to cover their music. While I’d stop short of calling them ‘my inspirations’, my good friends Milo and Lisa-Marie have also shown me that blogging is fun, easy(ish) and an outlet for creativity and/or ranting. Since doing this I’ve met a number of other like-minded extrememly talented souls and such as Jim, Lloyd, Matthew and a number of others, all of whom do this a darned sight better than I do. Worth noting at this point that I’ve also picked up my pen to write for the Scotsman affiliated Radar blog too.

Do you just write about music?

I do now. If you look hard enough you’ll find pieces about football, films and comedy but I’ve stopped that to concentrate on the tunes (man).

Are you a ‘Scottish’ music blogger then?

Well, I’m not Scottish for a start (see above), although I have lived here since 1996. When I started doing this I had no intention of being a ‘Scottish’ music blogger and wanted to cover a wide geographical area in terms of the bands I was writing about. I wasn’t exactly ‘in’ with the local scene either. But things change. While this blog will never be a site purely about Scottish bands, it’s fair to say that since the last quarter of 2010 they have begun to dominate proceedings. Put simply, I’ve been sucked into the scene. There are dozens of amazing bands in this country and people NEED to hear their music. If I can help facilitate that, then I’m happy to do so.

So who reads your blog?

Who knows? My Mum can’t be responsible for all those hits… can she? It’s hard to tell, to be honest but aside from the obvious reader bases of Scotland and Northern Ireland, there are plenty from Englandshire, plus the States, Germany, Oz, Netherlands and my former home of France.

I don’t really like to talk figures but I’ve been really pleased with how things have gone since October 2010 and things have improved considerably even since then. I’m delighted that people have taken the time to read and if I’m honest I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done. That said, I’d probably still be doing this if it was just my Mum that was reading.

Go on then, who are your favourite bands?!

Almost too many to mention, but here’s ten… My Bloody Valentine, Pixies, Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, Frightened Rabbit, Joy Division, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Boards of Canada. I have listened to a lot of shit it my time though and there are dozens of absolute duds in my collection.

I’m in a band – will you review our album or EP?

Maybes aye, maybes naw. Needless to say I have to like a record before I’ll do anything with it. I also have a fairly rigid structure in the sense that I have ONE ‘Album of the Week’ and that’s the album I’ll review in that seven day period. There has only been one exception to this. The album is a format that I’m absolutely obsessed by and for that reason I don’t review EPs (for clarification, in my world if a record falls short of BOTH 25 mins in length and six tracks, then it is NOT an album). BUT… I also feature bands (usually just one a week, but maybe two if I’ve a bit of a backlog) via a Q&A that I call Bandcrush and will plug live dates, EPs, albums that I’ve not been able to specifically write about, essentially whatever’s relevant.

How do we get in touch with you?

Best way is to email me at thetidalwaveofindifference@gmail.com if you’ve something I need to hear or see, or any tips generally. I usually check it at least once a day. You’ll also find me tweeting @Stu_Lewis and you’re welcome to ‘like’ the blog and keep updated via Facebook too.

And how do we get our music to you?

For reasons that involve limited time to listen to music streamed on a computer (I have a daughter, relationship and day job, all of which take priority), and the poor quality of that computer in the first place, I prefer to get mp3s rather than streamed tracks. I get between 2-3 hours a day to listen to music on my iPod thanks to a lengthy day job commute and that’s where I get to absorb tunes. I don’t turn my nose up at the prospect of getting CDs either but I’m realistic enough to know that producing and posting these things cost money.

Enjoy the blog!