Hoodlum Priest (musician)


Named after a 1960s movie, Hoodlum Priest is a name used by producer/multi instrumentalist and composer Derek Thompson, born of an Irish background but born and raised in London, the name later became his self-chosen moniker for his work as a producer and engineer, using hip-hop, industrial, and techno influences as the source of material for his sounds.

Biography

Often known for being an eccentric in interviews, he claimed to have been kicked out of the Maynooth Seminary after producing a Thesis proving that the Devil did in fact have "all the best tunes" and later retiring from full-time employment at the age of 22. His first major musical background through the late 1970s and 1980s was with avant-garde industrialists SPK, and he played a variety of instruments including bass, keyboards and the trumpet. He departed after founder member Graeme Revell took the group to what Thompson felt was too commercial of a direction. After leaving SPK, Thompson had done a very brief stint with the Cure. He only played one show with The Cure, which was The Oxford Road Show in April, 1983.

With Hoodlum Priest

His initial goal with Hoodlum Priest, one of several musical projects he explored during the 1990s and beyond, was to draw in both film influences on his work—primarily via dialogue but also musically—and hip-hop with a specific goal of recruiting a London-based MC. He was introduced to rapper Paul Sevier, who had previously been known as Junior Gee, At a club performance in 1989 and after being offered a contract by ZTT after being featured on the License To Thrill soundtrack, the two worked together up until the album The Heart of Darkness. But with Sevier's apparent strong Christian background and Thompson's more free-thinking philosophy and darker musical approach eventually led to the MC's departure. During some time after the release of The Heart of Darkness, ZTT was bought out by Warner Bros, and the album deleted almost immediately upon its release by request of Warner Bros's Legal Department. The band was later dropped by ZTT, due to later having a fallout about refusing to release a controversial song called 'Cop Killer' and being displeased that the label had no idea on how promote the band. Thompson continued on his own, working on various sideprojects and interspersing his background work and continued to release occasional album releases such as 1994's Beneath the Pavement and 1998's Hoodlum Priest, which featured former Gaye Bykers on Acid frontman and Pigface/Apollo 440 bandmember Mary Byker on vocals. After the release of the self-titled album, the group has been on hiatus. Recently, Derek became a member of Brighton's experimental music collective and was last seen gigging as Komuso, which he described as an improvised unit, which featured guests who were given no information what to play on arrival to the stage.
His last known Hoodlum Priest recording was "Blood on the Moon" for the closing credits of the Danish film The King is Alive directed by Kristian Levring.
Later work have appeared under his real name, as He was commissioned to compose "Leafscape" a field recording that merges electronic sounds with sounds of nature, and "Black lux" in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the cinematic release of Stanley Kubrick’s for .

Cop Killer Controversy

Derek created a track entitled "Cop Killer" ZTT refused and the record was later banned by the record label due to heavy use of various 'cop killer' samples and due to a fear that this song would cause uproar. This song and the single "Caucasian" were banned, although some white labels of the records do exist.

Discography