Having spent his increasingly volatile teenage years in a series of awful/awesome indie guitar bands; making music fell away in early his 20s, as Toby struggled with his childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker.  He finally recognized defeat in his late 20s.  The intervening years passed sleepwalking through the motions of life; Toby becoming evermore socially isolated, as he wrestled with his, as yet undiagnosed, mental health problems.  By his mid-30s he felt trapped in a maze, each turn leading to thoughts of suicide.
 
 

A last roll-of-the-dice appointment with a Psychiatrist led to regular therapy sessions and, within the year, medication.  As the depression began to lift, Toby found himself flooded with years of repressed emotions; picking up his battered-old Telecaster, the songs just fell out of him.  Fearful he might forget the songs, Toby set up a rudimentary home recording studio and began recording his music.

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Years passed as the slow grind of his recovery and music-making evolved together.  Toby changed out his car for a bicycle, moved out to the countryside, and got a dog.  He became increasingly involved in supporting the online independent music scene, volunteering to host a hashtag hour [#MusichourUK] on Twitter, and giving his free time to writing music reviews for Brash Magazine Music Blog.

 

At the same time, he started mixing/mastering for other Artists, before ultimately specializing in mastering [Mastering Vadim Bessarab Trio’s EP ‘Differences’ - voted one of the Top 10 releases of 2020 at the Aprize Music Awards, Ukraine]; while, on the side, he began to try his hand at remixing, first under the name ‘Tobi’ and then ‘Tobisonics’.

 

 

What began as a pseudonym, gradually became a distinction between his depressed self and his recovering self; and so, from 2020 through 2021, it was ‘Tobi’ who released four singles, exploring his sound, spanning a range of electronic genres from his alt-pop debut, “All These Things”, to the politically-charged electro-wave follow-up, “Military Industrial Complex”; electro-hip-hop collaboration with London-based rapper Costi, “Eye of the Storm”, and spoken-word electro-dance groove, “All The Little Things” with spoken-word artist Wee Scots Poet.

 

 

While promoting “All The Little Things”, Tobi began work on what would become his 7-track debut LP, ‘We Need Light in the Dark'.  When an initial intention to build upon the collaboration with Wee Scots Poet quickly proved unworkable; Tobi returned to the collage-like form of songwriting, he had first tried with his debut single, “All These Things”.  Lyrics were pulled together from assorted Vocal Loops, B-Movie Quotes, and Vocoders.

 

Never intended to be autobiographical, but rather an exploration of the imperative of optimism; Tobi gradually realized ‘We Need Light in the Dark’ was, in truth, about the lessons he had learned during his ongoing recovery from chronic depression/anxiety and PTSD, and the lessons he was still trying to learn. The LP came together over a period of 15 fraught months; Tobi pushed himself to higher standards musically and technically, while enduring, terrible mood swings as memories and feelings he had buried deep inside himself were dredged up and exposed, raw and ever-painful.

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In addition to his own music, Tobi continues to support the online Independent Music scene by volunteering as a moderator for Fresh on the Net [run by Tom Robinson, Tom Robison Band/BBC Radio6Music], where he is responsible for organizing the guest moderators; in the Spring of 2022, Tobi set up an ongoing partnership with The F-List to have weekly guest moderators from their database of female music makers.  Tobi also curates his weekly New Independent Music Friday playlist, as well as writing articles & interviews on the subject of Independent Music.

 

‘Panic’ the first single from Tobi’s debut LP ‘We Need Light in the Dark’ is out Friday 5th August on all platforms with the LP also out the same day via Bandcamp as an exclusive early release.  The LP will be out on all platforms Friday 7th October.
 

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