Musician and urbexer switches locales

Dead-Drop is an urban explorer and musician. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Dead-Drop’s latest news isn’t a new musical release or new exploration. The music producer and urbexer has relocated from England to Germany.

For an explorer of Dead-Drop’s ilk, such a move holds great appeal.

“Every single time I've visited, I've come back just feeling like I miss the place,” he said. “No motivation or interest to go out here (UK) or see anything new or explore any places. Just dreaming of going back to Germany and all the vast military things and infrastructure. It's just so much that there is to explore. It's such a huge country.”

Dead-Drop knew it was time to expand his horizons.

“It's weird,” he said. “I'd never been abroad and never left the UK when I was young. The first time I ever went on a plane was when I went to Lithuania. I'd never left the island. You don't realize how trapped you are until you escape it. Just visiting there multiple times, going back, I didn't want to come back to the UK. There's multiple reasons why I ended up going there, but ultimately it's where I feel like I belong at this point, or where I feel like life should take me somewhere different. I've been stuck here for so long doing the same routine. I had the same job for nearly 14 years, same routine, never changed. It's common for people to pack up a life and move somewhere else at least in places, not the UK, it seems to be common for people to stay where they are, stay in the very same town and never move and never experience anything new. I felt like I probably should just do it. It took a long, long process to get everything in order. I had to learn basics of German, so I had to pass an exam to be able to get the visa accepted and everything. My Deutsche is nicht good, but I'm practicing. I'm learning and, thankfully, I have friends there. I have contacts there. I'm not alone. The opportunity arose. I managed to make it happen.”

Dead-Drop isn’t just going to reside in Germany.

 “I'm going to get a residence permit,” he said. “I've got to get three of those. I've got to get them every two years for five years until I become a citizen, so there's still a lot more to be done. Unfortunately, that's because the UK left the EU (European Union). I didn't vote for that. I would have preferred to stay in the EU. Because we left the EU, I had to jump through all these hoops just to move there, but made it happen. It gives me so much more excitement to go out and do things and explore again. It's going to be nice to be out of the cycle and do something new.”

Dead-Drop will be able to retain his UK citizenship as well.

“Luckily, Germany only a few years ago allowed dual citizenship,” he said. “The UK has always allowed dual citizenship. So I can keep my UK citizenship, acquire German citizenship, have dual passports and essentially have the most powerful passport combination in the world and be able to go anywhere I ever want to go.”

Being British also helps Dead-Drop in his new environs.

“I have found it's been quite a bit helpful being English because English is one of the languages most used,” he said. “Many Germans speak English. So when I get into a tough situation, I can always revert and say: ‘entschuldigung sprechen sie Englisch.’ It's got me out of a lot of situations and people are very understanding that I'm still learning. It definitely helps being English because I think the majority of people that move to Germany are. I'm fortunate in a sense that I can revert back to a language that other people can still speak.”

Knowing people in Deutschland also helped Dead-Drop.

“It's good to have contacts,” he said. “I know people in Germany so they're able to sort stuff out for me. All the appointments are never-ending. Until you go through it, you don't understand how much there actually is to do. It's constantly sending in paperwork and paperwork and you've got to wait weeks and weeks for responses. You can't get it done within a week and that's it. I'm off of moving now. It's taken almost two years for the better part. It's like get everything done and finalized and it's still not done. I've still got another five years to become a citizen and have the move be complete if everything works out.”

Living in Western Europe enables Dead-Drop to visit many locales without his feet leaving the ground.

“Where your imagination and where you're willing to travel is the limit,” he said. “Another thing to look forward to German citizenship is because I'm back in the European Union then. I can travel anywhere within Europe without having to apply for a visa or anything. It's cross borders easily. So that's going to be nice to be able to do that, just travel and not have any thoughts like, I need to apply for this visa, I need to get this stamp, I need to go into this queue.”

Although Dead-Drop has many urbex fans, music has always been his primary pursuit.

“A lot of people get confused about what I do or what I do primarily,” he said. “Music has always been my passion since I started my channel since I was 16, 17, and I'm 31 now. I've been at it a long time, making music, just dabbling, teaching myself. I thought I'd share my creations online and thought probably nothing's ever going to come of it. No one's going to really listen to some crappy music made by a teenager on his laptop. But lo and behold, people actually cared and actually liked it. I slowly but surely gathered a very small audience of a couple of hundred people. But it was pretty insane that anyone even cared about it.”

Dead-Drop later caught the urbex bug.

“I've lost track of actually how long ago I first saw this video,” he said. “But I was on Facebook of all places, and I saw a video going viral of some Russian guys climbing up the arm of a bridge onto the top. It looked insane. It was filmed with the GoPro POV and I'd never seen anything like this before. I thought, oh, let's delve into this. Then that opened it up to parkour, urbex, everything like that. And I thought, I can do this, too. Why not? Another hobby which I added to the collection. I thought not many people are recording these kind of videos, I might as well do it, share my version. And people seem to enjoy those as well.”

Dead-Drop represented Western Europe in an activity populated with Eastern Europeans.

“Weirdly, I got into a small community with Shiey, Desmond, Altair (Scorpio), Checkmate,” he said. “Somehow, some random northern guy from England got brought into this group of Lithuanians. It just continued from there. I met so many people and began going further into urbex. Because that's what got me the most notoriety, most people seem to think that's my priority, that's my main thing. But it's actually the other way around. It began with music. That's how I started. That's how it'll always be. I'm a musician first. People come in and expecting urbex are going to get disappointed when it's not there because I got so many comments like when's the next climb? Are you going to climb another chimney? Are you going to do this? And I was like, well, yeah, when I want to. It's not my thing. I just do it for the fun. So it's always been a bit of a tricky thing to keep music the focus.”

Dead-Drop does live streams along with recorded content.

“Streams every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday,” he said. “It varies what I do. I could be out in nature on rock climbing or urbexing. I do music streams sharing what I've made, doing a bit of music production live, various different things. But it's not mostly just playing what I've created like my remixes and my original stuff.”

Dead-Drop, initially known for his synth sound, perpetually seeks new avenues to indulge his musical creativity.

“I'm a Metalhead as we would say,” he said. “I started listening to just whatever as a kid. You don't really have a music taste. But as I defined my own music taste, really started getting into heavy metal bands like Slipknot. I liked a lot of the classic ones, even Blink 182, Sum 41. But when I started finding bands I liked rather than getting recommendations, I started listening to Enter Shikari. They were a big one for me. And now more recently,  Sleep Token and Beartooth. Don Broco. Those are some good bands.”

Dead-Drop was exposed to electronic music as a teen.

“When I first started around 16, one of my friends shared Song of Storms,” he said. “That would have been the first dubstep song I ever heard. I was like, what is this? This is incredible. That was this genre. It says it's called dubstep. It says it's bass music. I'm like, all right, this is interesting. It's got the heavier aspects of metal. It has cymbals, big drums, a very heavy bass line. Sounds quite grimy in a sense that sometimes it does sound like metal, but this is all electronic. Even better, people can just make this in the bedroom. You can make it on your own laptop. A lot of my influences when I first started listening was chiptune 8-bit inspired from old classic games. It brought those kind of influences in, so that's where my sound started off. It wasn't long until I thought, okay, I could do more things like that. I had a few people commenting why do you always just make chiptune stuff? And I was almost aggressively going against it. Well, because I want to make chiptune stuff. I'm going to keep making my 8-bit sounds if I want. Who's going to stop me? Then after a while, I started messing around with some strings and more actual classical instruments in digital VSTs. I thought I can make so much more than I originally thought. I'm not just stuck in dubstep and just chiptune stuff. So I thought let's try it out.”

Dead-Drop subsequently expanded his musical horizons.

“Just dabbling with so many different aspects and genres,” he said. “My music taste expanded so much since I started producing because now I could listen to any single genre. There's no genre I don't like. There's no type of music I don't like. I appreciate all music for music and I can listen to the composition and the instruments used and because I understand how it's made, I can appreciate it so much more. It's opened up my eyes to so many different genres and so many different influences. I just listen to something. I take a little piece of that. I think, oh, this is a cool aspect. And it's just slowly but surely molded. I don't even know what you could classify my music as now. It's more of a unique sound. But I wanted to do that on purpose. That has been my goal now: to create a unique sound that's forever progressing because I'm never happy. But it's hard to mold something new, unique and not copy other people, but still taking inspiration. It's hard to actually describe music now.”

Dead-Drop eventually added lyrics to his music.

“If you listen to the lyrics, I always say don't read into them,” he said. “They mean nothing because I'm just stringing together sentences. It's all just syllables. If it fits the rhythm and the rhyme, it works. You just say it with enough conviction and enough confidence and it sounds good. That's what I've realized. It actually doesn't matter what you say. I've given up trying to write good lyrics because I'm not a writer. But I do try to make an effort. I've got a few urbex-related songs and just bringing in different references and bits and pieces that people can relate to and would have seen and gone through.”

Over time, Dead-Drop has become less hesitant in some aspects of urbex.

“I started so much later than everyone doing these climbs and things because everyone had already been urbexing for some time when I started getting into it,” he said. “I didn't do any climbs. I'd never climbed anything tall. So mine mostly came from a place of fear as well. And now I've done it. I've climbed quite a few chimneys and radio towers, antennas and things, rooftops, everything. Dangerous ledge walks. I realize it's definitely something that comes down to experience and knowing what you're capable of. I just draw from my own experience at that point. It's based on how long has someone else been doing this How many times have they done this repeated thing over and over. If there's even a sense of hesitation, I'd suggest someone doesn't do it. You got to be 100 percent certain, not even a little bit of doubt in your mind before you want to go do one of these things, because then you're not going to enjoy it. You want to build up small.”

Dead-Drop, who often climbs rocks for practice, said an aspiring climber can always try again later.

“You may fail,” he said. “If you look at something, you think it's, nah, not this time. You've learned from that and you can build on it next time. You can figure out what's holding you back potentially. You just have to go and reassess and look at it again. The most popular video on my channel is A Failed Chimney Climb. I think it's just the title that got the clicks because people expecting to see someone fall. But it's just a failed climb because I got halfway and I thought, nah, I can't do it. I'm too scared. And I came back down. It took me three attempts, three tries. The first time, couldn't even get on the ladder. Second time, got halfway. Third time, I just forced myself to do it. I unlocked the door at that point. I realized, okay, I need to assess things a little slower. If anyone else is doubtful in any scenario, then I do become the voice of reason and start saying, maybe think about it. Can you do it? We don't have to. There's always another time. There's no reason to feel bad about skipping out on something.”

Dead-Drop has avoided serious harm during his exploits.

“I get pretty lucky with all my injuries,” he said. “I have had some very close calls over the years and just got lucky. Almost lost my finger when climbing down from a roof. I was dangling and dropping from an air conditioning unit. I didn't realize how sharp the metal was. It severed a chunk right out of my finger. If it would have got it at a good enough angle, finger would have been gone. So that one wasn't a fun one to try and patch up on a step in the middle of Sheffield. But I managed it. It stopped bleeding after a while. Nail straight through my foot. Got pretty lucky with that when I stepped on a nail and it missed all bones, everything. It stopped bleeding within a couple of hours. Quick little tetanus shot. I was good to go.”

Dead-Drop has watched urbex content improve since he started watching it.

“It's changed for the better,” he said. “It's definitely progressed. People are taking more of a documentary route with it now, which is nice to see. There's some UK urbexers which I really enjoy. They really try getting cinematic shots now. Really put in a lot of effort to cover the history and actually talk about the places and capture more unique buildings. And that's where I feel like Urbex is really doing a service then. You are documenting stuff. You're not just looking around an abandoned place for fun. You're not just making a viral video or trying to make content. You're documenting the area as it once was, capturing all these old buildings you're surveying. That's what I love to see. There's a lot less clickbait videos.”

Dead-Drop said some people’s content was about brushes with law enforcement, not exploration.

 “I did this crazy thing, police came, this, that and the other,” he said. “Oh, just avoided capture, just avoided security, all these kind of things. That's less of the focus now, which is good. It's actually the locations. Urbex was going down a dark path with those people that were getting viral views of police escapes and everything. It wasn't really urbex. They put urbex in the title, but it wasn't. They were just sneaking into an active place and getting chased out by security. So it's progressed for the better.”

Dead-Drop lamented the loss of so many older structures.

“Why did they tear down all these beautiful old buildings? But for them, it wasn't a beautiful old building,” he said. “It's just how they were. So they didn't care. They didn't preserve them. Now, we've got to the point where we do understand the importance of preserving all this history, but yet people are still so determined to tear it down and replace it by metal sheds essentially. I don't understand why people don't care about the history of where they're from in their own country or even history of other countries. It's fascinating. I love seeing different forms of architecture and infrastructure and seeing how all these problems were figured out. I could never comprehend how people figured out a keystone and an arched window to support the load and everything. All those things, it's lost now. The art is lost as well. The knowledge is being lost and people are so unaware.”

Dead-Drop remains motivated to make music and content.

“For me, it's reassuring myself and confirming to myself that the focus has always been and will always be just through what I enjoy doing,” he said. “Even though I have a schedule, it almost would seem like a very strict schedule, but it's not. It's just the days I want to do things. I scaled everything up. It used to be one stream a week and one video. Now, it's three streams a week and one video. For a short period, it was more than one video. It's however I want to do it. I'll always do it that way. I've never held myself to some expectation to be like this YouTuber or that everyone else does it like this. I don't do it for any reason to be known or rich or famous. It's always been because I enjoy doing it. I've always been grateful that other people like what I share and always been surprised that anyone even cares in the first place. Well, people care now, so keep doing it. It's like when music gets done. I realized that if it doesn't feel ready, it's not ready.”

Dead-Drop said his motivation is basic.

 “You have to do something for long enough to know there's no real way to do it,” he said. “There's no right way to do it. You do what feels right for you, and if you are satisfied with the outcome, that's all that matters, really. So that's how I've always tried to think about it. Some days are harder than others. People have some fake philosophical reason of why they do what they do. Me, I just want to do it. I think it's fun. That's literally it.”

Dead-Drop dispensed advice to aspiring musicians.

“Just do it,” he said. “I started out with literally no musical knowledge whatsoever. I taught myself everything. You've got to be persistent. And if you don't like it, then you move on to something else. But you'll find a passion somehow. If you just keep trying things and if you really love it, you'll keep doing it, and that's how you'll know.”

Dead-Drop said new urbexers should start off slow.

“Just do it, but do it very safely in small doses,” he said. “Don't do anything big to begin with. Just go for a walk. Look at some little ruins. There might be an old little square brick building without a roof. That can be your starting point. You don't have to be doing these grand, amazing places with everything left behind and the power on and all this, that and the other. If you're passionate about it, you'll put in the time and effort to locate those places. But don't worry about it. When you're starting, just start very, very small and work up.”

The Grid does not disclose the legal name of people who don’t divulge it on social media.

Dead-Drop’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DeadDrop420

Dead-Drop’s website: https://dead-drop.co.uk/

The Grid’s first profile on Dead-Drop: https://www.gridnews.net/profiles/british-music-creator-also-into-urbex?rq=dead-drop