What’s your artist name and why did you choose it?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I’ll go first. My as yet unused artist name is 100% Failure Within 72 Hours. Slightly pretentious? Oh, yes. Will the music press (who am I kidding?) ever bother to write it out in full? Absolutely not. Will people drop it into casual conversation? Hell no. But it’s a quote from the computer HAL in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and I like how oddly specific it is. Like what does 100% failure sound like? And why the three-day timespan? Plus, it gives me a little wiggle room to be a bit shit like it’s a deliberate sonic aesthetic. So, yeah…

What’s your story?

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#2

This is exactly why I call myself No Masters.

That and I can’t be bothered to learn how to/pay to master my tracks.

Also, no-one tells me what to do. I literally have no masters.

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#3

CLRBRS, as in the bars of light you see behind your eyes after giving them a good rub. And a slight nod to an Elliot Smith song/lyric.

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#4

When I started our band, I wanted to have a kind of smart stupidity in our name. I loved crappy heavy metal song titles that had a kind of tårta på tårta feeling like ”Chained up in chains” or Motörhead’s ”Killed by death”. So stupid, it’s clever.

Following that path I wanted a band name that had two ”bad words” in it. As a graphic designer I needed to have a capital ”N” in both ends of the name to have them as lightning bolts in both ends of our logo. That’s when I ended up with the word pairing Nightsatan. Very stupid, and easily googleable.

My favourite part of being in a band is coming up with stupid song names and slogans, and we have bunch of them on our albums.

Man, you’ll be a woman soon
Satan from hell
Nightmare in the night
Mangelis
Four-eyed cyclops
Steel Diamond
Doomsday Judgment
etc.

My own name in the band came from a review of our first single which stated that our music is ”Heavy as wolfram!” Wolfram is another name for tungsten which is a heavy metal. Wolf is a fierce animal and Rami is a common male name in Finland, so it’s kinda perfect name for a postapocalyptic synth heavy metal warrior. Tungsten - Wikipedia

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#5

My solo release is going to be under “n-fold”. It’s a reference to rotational symmetry, as well as quantum physics… and an obvious play on “enfold” also (with emphasis on the first syllable rather than the second.)

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#6

Artificial Intolerance. Pretentious PR blurb:

“ Artificial Intolerance implants a soundtrack for the 21st century age of data-capitalism, post-truth politics and hybrid warfare into unsuspecting nervous systems. Raw sonic textures propelled by intrusive synthetic rhythms.”

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#7

Nice one.

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#8

Spaces Sound is my kind of agitated ambient project and follows a bit from my studies/interest in aural architecture.
Baby Swindle is my name I produce daggy electro pop with and that is an anagram of my actual name. I sometimes also use Esbahnov (Ubahnov Esbahnov …a German pun) cause I love public transport and wanted a Slav sounding name

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#9

Half the fun of being part of a group is trying to agree on a name… coming up with a solo name just doesn’t have the same appeal.

I was originally going to use bitshifter before I saw that it was already in use by someone else else who actually published work (I am not that bitshifter)

Then I was going to pick Recon Suave because it was stupid enough that surely it’s not already in use… nope, someone else grabbed it.

Every damned name I wanted to use seemed to be taken.

I debates just using a password generator to create the name, who wouldn’t like virulent-couch-balls

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#10

A:M Club

I fractured my skull about 10 years ago. Got signed off work for about 6 weeks. I was really bad for a week or so but the doctor wouldn’t let me go back to work.

My friend worked at the local Sainsbury’s bakery on the night shift.

We threatened to make a few tracks for ages and never got round to it but then he started to come round to mine after work. We got pissed all morning and made some tracks.

Honestly up until that point id never made anything half decent and was ready to give up and these sessions transformed everything and really kept me going.

Solo these days but still credit him on every track.

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#11

I used to make unusually potent weed rice krispie treats. I would take them around to parties and despite all my warnings people would scoff at the idea that they should be taken very seriously and outright avoided by any but the stoniest veterans. These things ruined countless evenings for countless people who said stuff like, “Weed?!? Haha that stuff’s for beginners and I’ll have three of those things!”. I’m talking people laid out on the floor crying, 911 being called because they think they’ve been poisoned or overdosed or whatever rookie bullshit. One year right before my friend’s big annual party I asked if I should bring anything special and he said, “Would you just leave those fucking annihilation squares of yours at home this time?”. That was instantly written down on my Band Names Master List and here we are.

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#12

Alienna

Alien (alienation, aliens, fascination for alien subjects, topics & science fiction)
+
Ann (my real name backwards)

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#13

Fun topic! Mine is my username and it actually originates from a psychobilly band I started many years ago. (The Turnbucklers if you’re interested.) We wanted to use stage names as it’s more fun and my guitarist had a professional life that would eventually interfere. Anyway this bandmate’s name ended up being Andy DeFaux. Sort of a play with Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption FTW), and Willem DeFoe. Someone joked I should be Freddy Unfake which changed to Unreal, playing off the “Faux” in my bandmates name. I’ve been told it’s cool, but I always feel someone must ask themselves “Unreal? Really?” and think I’m full of myself. I’ve thought about rebranding, but it really has become how people have known me for over a decade in some cases.

Edit: Spelling and added band name

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#14

Considering this, having a dog as your Avatar is really funny.

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#15

I know, right.

I’m like Alanis Morisette, only a dog.

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#16

Dualism

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#17

I change mine every time I write a tune nearly. can’t stick with any of em. get bored real quick, it’s a pain in the a$$

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#18

I just use my name. Mike E River. The middle initial is real, but I was in to The Fall for a while and thought it amusing.

Had a bunch of different artist names before that. Could never settle on any of them. Nor any of the pretentious bollocks people write explaining their artist name.

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#19

In about 1992 I chose Basehead for an online handle based on 2 songs - Public Enemy ‘Night of the Living Baseheads’ and De La Soul “My Brother Is a Basehead” - not that long after, I read a review of Basehead’s album Play With Toys in Spin and was like, oh I guess that wasn’t a great idea. But I released a lot of music in certain scenes under that name anyway instead of changing it… I haven’t released something under it in a long time though, and ‘that’ basehead (Michael Ivey) did contact me telling to stop using it many years ago. :joy:

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#20

After several attempts, I chose Tchu in memory of my beloved brother who committed suicide in 2010.

Tchu was the nickname we used to call each other.

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What does it mean? What does it mean to you?