Audio Antihero, like all small cottage industry type businesses, was formed with one simple thing in mind: revenge. Not music, not friendship, not legacy and certainly not money…revenge. I do what so many of us do because women dared leave me, men dared ignore me and musicians dared dismiss me. Using my father’s money I set out to show them, show all of them.

And like everyone working in the music industry, talent has always eluded me. But this has never stopped me from feeling that everyone is a fool and a bastard for not having appreciated me more.

This unreasonable aggression has been my fuel every day since I was six years old. 2011 was the worst year yet…my fear of failure choking me night and day, my resentment for those who didn’t buy our records boiling the blood in my body, jealousy swimming behind my eyes, growing so jaded that even eating became a chore. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t trust anyone in music. Not the retailers, not the creators, not the suppliers, not the press and not the consumers. You were all working together to hurt me and keep things dull and dreadful while robotically exclaiming something about a ‘great track’. You all became walking Spotify adverts in my mind.

Some of you are reading this and think I’m joking. God bless you.

So in association with Lo-Band-Width I bitterly present:

‘Audio Antihero’s Top 10 Disappointments of 2011: A thankless task dissected.’

10. Selling no records. Getting no chicks. My parent’s subsequent dissociation from me.

9. The amount of sucking up I still have to do.

8. The press’ inability to grasp the concept of an interlude. I am referring largely to the reviews of Benjamin Shaw’s debut album.

7. Jack Hayter ruining our 2/10 review streak on Subba Cultcha with a schmancy 5/10 review. We had something going there Crazy Jack!

6. That I failed to convince Tom Robinson to adopt me when I met him. Daddy?

5. My Internet feud with the Wakefield based indie-pop group The Runaround Kids being left off NME’s ‘Feud Of The Year’ poll. I won this war by the way…I got 99 problems but Runaround Kids aint one.

4. That I still haven’t raised the £100,000 it’d cost to get Nosferatu D2 back on stage.

3. Every single professional working in the music industry today. Sub-Hate: Every single entitled feeling amateur ‘working’ in ‘the music industry’ today.

2. The moment when you and your artist have finally achieved ‘THE’ album you’ve been waiting for, years in the making. Bank accounts have been obliterated, friendships have been strained and resources have been exhausted in the creation of what is a masterpiece in our hearts. Then some punk from East London slaps a ‘6/10’ on it and tells you it ‘has potential’. Motherfucker, I have the potential to ruin you.

1. The fact that I’m still not more famous than all the people I went to school with; the fact that my ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriends don’t aspire to be me and fear me; the fact that the bands who disregarded my label proposals have yet to come crawling back to me, willing to do just about anything. The fact that I have yet to show them…ALL OF THEM.

God, help me.

It has otherwise been quite a nice year.

Words by Jamie Halliday