Digital Midgets

Once in 1996, a man named Alex Wilford was skating down a metallic road and noticed that the surrounding forest was alive with electricity. Curious, he stopped to take a closer look at this. Then, midgets in outfits made from circuit boards ran up to him one by one and gave Alex an electric shock by pinching him. That is how and where the artist got his “Digital Midgets” pseudonym. Oh, right, that all happened in a dream.

As for the reality, Alex Wilford got himself familiar with circuit boards, electricity and sound at a rather early age. His father was a sound engineer who toured with some big names (Black Sabbath, BB King, Thin Lizzy, Tom Jones, John McLaughlin and others — the list is huge). To father’s credit, his son was allowed to play with the equipment after a sound check. Alex, of course, jumped at the opportunity. His favourite was the manipulating with FX units and his own voice.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alex was into electro and hip-hop. He started messing around with tape decks, samplers and turntables, making beats and rapping with his mate Snooze (who later become known as Ill Inspired). For Alex it was just good fun (nevertheless, the people in his town enjoyed the result), and he only started taking music making seriously later — when he moved to Brighton in 1999.

“I make music because mainly I really enjoy it. It’s where I can escape from myself and the intense world. I love to get involved in sound manipulation. I want to create a new world in music form that’s wild and fuzzy, bubbling, bouncy, mysterious, deep, thought-provoking and involves a sense of humour. I make it for myself, but obviously get a good feeling if other life forms like it.”

Unfortunately, we should consider Digital Midgets a studio-only project: as the author honestly noticed, he suffers from tinnitus, hyperacusis and a little hearing loss. Scared of damaging his hearing any further, he decided to not play live or DJ-sets. Another fly in the ointment is that seven times out of ten Alex leaves a track unfinished and puts it into the “Finish later” folder.

Fortunately, there are some tracks that get a chance to reach the audience — so we can listen to these ones. Good for us, life forms!