Odd how these things seem to line up at times. Just a few weeks ago at my sisters wedding I was musing out loud how most of my past seemed to have been effortlessly discarded and how I had few or any contacts with people I once knew at school and grew up with. Out of the blue last month I suddenly made regular contact again with one old friend and as a direct result had the pleasure of experiencing what he is doing with his life these days.

Looking back, Dan Pugh was one of the most prodigiously talented artists I’ve ever met. Effortlessly sidestepping the pressure he must have been under as the son of one of the school’s most senior teachers, he seemed able to turn his hand to any creative discipline he chose. Had he wanted to he could have made a living as a designer and an artist, his forte as a teenager it appeared was drawing cartoons. His brightly coloured characters appeared everywhere, on the covers of exercise books, in the school newspaper and in full page spreads in sixth form magazines. He was also more than happy to accept commissions, so my father’s 45th birthday present was a framed cartoon of himself sat at his desk at work, harrassed by the staff, ringing telephones, equipment failures and the odd burglar. When my own ambitions as a radio presenter began to make themselves known, he presented me with my own personal caricature which remained pinned to my bedroom wall until I left home for good a few years later.

Sadly being a straightforward pen and ink drawing, the colours didn’t take too kindly to all those years in the sunshine but what is left of it still exists, so it is about time it was preserved digitally for posterity.


Despite this, Dan didn’t actually want to be an artist. Making music was what he really wanted to do. He kept quiet about the violin playing (who wouldn’t) but was wildly enthusiastic about electronic music and the creative possibilities it opened up. This creativity first manifested itself on the music demo scene for the BBC Micro. A mutual friend ran an old fashioned Viewdata bulletin board whose main selling point was as a download repository for computerised renditions of music, be they original compositions or more commonly faithful reproductions of pop hits. In 1987 Dan decided this was how to make a name for himself. Over the next three years or so he managed to push the sound chip of the Acorn computers to their very limit, overcoming the potential limitations of three channel sound to creative exotic sounding harmonies and coding the spare “white noise” channel to reproduce the rhythm tracks of the hits in question – most of which was done by ear since the sheet music copies of the songs rarely contained drum patterns.

As we spent school lunchtimes locked in the school computer room watching him code, I don’t think any of us realised quite the impact this little hobby would actually have, but these standalone demos are still to this day collected online as shining examples of the work that people were doing on these computers back then. This page in particular takes time out to pay tribute to Dan’s work and proudly presents a downloadable collection of his “masterpieces”. I remember the first time I downloaded a BBC emulator and ran some of the programs for the first time in decades. It is a very odd feeling to sit in front of a powerful PC and watch the scrolling lyrics to “Sign Your Name” that three of us worked hard to debug one lunchtime just over 20 years ago.

As time wore on Dan tired of reinterpreting other people’s work and began to code up his own compositions. Thus tunes such as “Passion”, “Addicts Anthem” and “ccl4″ were born. I thought they were so listenable I persuaded an electronically minded friend to wire me up a cable to plug our BBC Master computer at home up to the stereo to put all the music on a cassette – and oh yes I still have it buried in a box to this day. By the time we left sixth form, Dan had gravitated to the suite of Atari STs that the school had equipped itself with and was creating lavish electronic backings for a group of like minded performers. This group began life as Cloud Down before becoming Pavlov in 1991. They even pressed copies of a 7-inch EP at their own expense although this did turn out to be the closest they ever came to being proper recording stars:


So what is the purpose of this dated nostalgia you ask? Well Dan these days still makes music and sent me a CD of his collected works which seems to have formed the soundtrack of most of the last two weeks of my life despite the fact it is a world away from anything I would normally listen to.

The work of dan lo.fi is a series of aural soundscapes that somehow manages to be both relaxing and invigorating, often within seconds of each other. Each piece of music is immaculately produced and performed, often based around a single musical motif that is then twisted and expanded upon in ways that only truly become apparent in the third or fourth listen. It is music that is just made for soundtracks, be they in commercials, in films or drama or just as perfect background atmosphere. As I said above, it is to my own detriment that I would not normally seek out this kind of music, so I’m kid of glad that it is an old friend who gave me the motivation to expand my horizons in this way.

To hear them for yourself, check out the MySpace page for danlofi or his own personal website which sits here. Oh yes, and the track called “ccl4″? That is the very same piece of music composed circa 1989 in the school computer room and sounding just as fresh almost two decades later.