If someone decides that they want to disappear off the grid, they’re going to need certain things in order to do it. They’ll need some cash to get started – unlike credit and debit cards, notes, and coins don’t leave any kind of digital footprint. Supplies would also be needed – although this is unfortunately where our limited knowledge of this subject becomes apparent.

Alternatively, they should become a journalist in the dance music world. Don’t believe us? Well, journalist Michael James – who did much to expose multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Derrick May to the world – is now on the lookout for a mysterious hack who used to work for Electronics & Music Maker between 1985 and 1994, but who seems to have vanished without a trace since.

Simon Trask first wrote for the April 1985 edition of the periodical – and given that most print magazines work at least two issues ahead of what’s currently in the shops, this would suggest Trask started working at the magazine in January of that year. His final article from this archive site – taken from The Mix magazine – was published in the December 1994 edition.

But since January 1995, there seems to be no trace of Trask anywhere – and it tells you something when even a hardened journalist like James admits he’s finding it difficult to track him down. All we can currently add is that searches for any of Simon Trask’s writing – mostly reviewing hardware – have so far proved absent from archive copies of the defunct Muzik Magazine we have in our possession.

The only other thing we do know is that Trask seemed quite well-connected in the world of techno. A search of the Mu:zines website reveals that he interviewed A Guy Called Gerald, Juan Atkins and none other than Derrick May – back in the days when he didn’t have to have his interview requests approved by someone else.

Yet no new work of his has been published since 1994. Are we really meant to believe that Trask simply disappeared off the face of the earth – or is something else going on here? A source within the dance music press gives Ears To The House an interesting theory – that Simon Trask could actually be a pseudonym.

Explaining his train of thought, he said “It used to be quite common in the early days of dance music for writers in dance music magazines to use pseudonyms. Sometimes, it was because they just thought it was the cool thing to do. Sometimes, they did it in order to publish things that could cause them problems if they were associated with their real names. It was pretty easy to do in the past. There were no reverse image searches or Facebook to look up people with in those days.”.

It’s certainly an intriguing idea. And on a totally random, unrelated note, anagrams for Simon Trask include Simon Stark, Roma Stinks, and Atkins Roms…