Secret Cheeses

Over the weekend I went touring with Hallouminati. I say tour but really it was two shows, one in Brighton on Friday night and a slot at the Crystal Palace Festival on Westow Park.

This project is really interesting as I get try and transfer my skills in electronic performance into a totally different context. These guys play Balkan Ska and infuse it with Greek flavours, Jazz, Swing, Reggea and Rock. It's great fun and never fails to get audiences dancing.

My approach to this has been to infuse some dubstep style effects into the more half-time reggae moments and to add traditional percussion and acoustic instruments into the mix, as well as some big fat sub synths which thicken the mix in the more dancey sections.

I love this band. Their new material is awesome and they deserve to be heard!

Soundtrack and video

Today I am blogging about a couple of recent(ish) visual arts projects where my music was used. I am very proud to be a part of both these projects and glad that the creators felt that music was suitable.

First up is this short time-lapse video that was made to promote 3 days of spraying poetry quotes on the walls of Derby's Blue Note Club. The words and art were done by Joe Coghlan and pictographik the video was edited by thought projector. The music featured is from my second solo album 'The Subtle Sting of Change'


Then there's this fantastic film made by members of Derby's Q Club. The Q Club is an arts project aimed at getting kids involved in film production; 50% are kids on the autistic spectrum and 50% are looked after kids. I love this. It's got references to Halo and Portal and one of the kids is wearing a Rise Against T-shirt! Awesome.

Review - MILES PROWER - 'PNEUMATIC EP'

A while back, I promised to review this EP for Netlabelism but sadly as it is a paid release it does not really fall into the remit and so I thought I would pop my review here instead.


Not being a gamer myself, I had to Google Miles Prower to understad the reference. Being a fan of pop culture however, I can appreciate the reference in the same way I can appreciate Upcdownc's ubiquitous name too!

It is pop culture that we are concerned with here. Every track is bubble gum. The saccharine sounds on offer, evoke memories of first year freshers parties, living room mega-drive sessions and that movie with that Ryan guy that everyone fancies. The relentless 'whomp' of the kick drives this collection of infectious melodies deep into your skull until you see rainbows.

Stand out track for this reviewer would be 'San Francisco Nights'. It's stuttering arpegiator bass is clean and pulsating while the celestial delayed synth melody washes over you; all ear-wormy and lush. It's like the title track to a cult classic TV series in a perpetual 80's decade. It's like Bladerunner but Rick Deckard is a Powerpuff Girl.

Another moment of brilliance is the song 'Starlight Burning' at 2.31 as the beat breaks; all clicking hats and panning delay while a half time beat creeps in to accompany a steadily evolving filtered bass. It practically wubs it's way back into the refrain where Alice Maria Sparey's vocals glisten like angel fire.

There are times when this EP is trying to push new territory. The throbbing sidechain at the start of 'Second Chance' is forward thinking and Dan Mur's vocal is a revelation to this genre; it is immaculate and mainstream but reminds me more of Apparrat than Savage Garden in this context.

There are other times when the sacharine becomes almost too much but I get the impression this is what the focus was. 'Pneumatic EP' is a time machine. It's a nostalgic shell suit of an EP with a strong emphasis on synth pop and House. I have lot's of time for it.

You can purchase the album from Future City Records here for the modest price of $4.50 USD.

Introducing KADE

Live improvised electronica.

Shep and I have been developing a new approach to electronic music where by we can improvise stuff on the fly. These tunes are recorded jams we did in the last month which we have tweaked and mastered and released on the world.

We are looking for unique performance opportunities and perhaps even a residency so get in touch via Bitnormal Records contact sheet if you are interested in booking us!

Press Campaigns

Rysic Cygo Press Release

Today I thought I would blog a bit about how Shep and I have chosen to promote our artists on Bitnormal Records and about the things we've been considering with regards to press campaigns.

When starting the label, we asked ourselves what we felt we could offer artists who might potentially sign with us. We decided that a netlabel model was best for us as we had no capital to press and distribute physical releases and we had limited time alongside our various other projects to commit to the full time promotion of the label and its roster.

We decided that what we could offer was promtion through Twitter, Facebook etc, a nice, functional website providing info and links and a space from which to stream and download releases.

We also felt that it would be fair to offer press campaings for new releases. This would involve building a network of reliable contacts that would be happy to feature and review our artists. After scouring the internet and building a list of the websites that looked like they would welcome a press release from us, we set about looking at how best to capture the writer's attention and not over-step the social parameters of sending out lots of info on a regular basis.

It was my thinking that it would be best to build an email template in html so that press recieved one email that looked sweet, exhibited the label branding and all the artist info in one foul-swoop. The problem we hit upon instantly was that most email clients filter images contained in emails and it is up to the user to enable visual content. This negates the impact I was aiming for and forced us to consider other options.

So the choice was either a plain text email (often widely accepted and preffered by many) or an attachment.

I still felt that an attachment would be better. As someone who has written reviews in the past, I still felt that a one-stop-shop for all links, bio and art work etc would be better for the writer than a plain text email that forced them to dig out info themselves. Also I thought that building the brand was an important aspect of standardising our press releases and creating a sense of community and cohesiveness.

Above is an example of what we have been sending out. This isactually the press release for my forth coming album under the name Rysic Cygo. The template is standard and we just drop the pics and the text in for each release. We add the links in with InDesign and export as a pdf document. This then gets attached to a personalised plain text email which goes out to the press contacts on the 3rd Monday of each month (as and when we have a release obviously!)

Eventually I would like to look at the question of how often we send out press and create a 1st, 2nd and 3rd waves of press that builds towards a wide spread campaign for our international artists but that will take time and we need more contacts to make that worth while.

Props to Pete 'Dedpop' Clark for the design elements of the rpess release which are taken from the website he designed for us.

Self Publishing

Today I am thinking about the notion of value.

In just over a month, Shep and I will be speaking at a Self Publishing Fair at +Derby QUAD.



We will be talking about netaudio and digital distribution in oppostition to the music industry and how rising technologies can affect how musicians are able to self-publish.

For me, the concept of netaudio is intrisically based on the notion of value; that is to say, how much value a person places on the product. In the last few months I have been closely analysing the sales statistics of Bitnormal releases. As a netlabel we aim to make our releases available for a nominal price (that includes free!) in order to give the user the option of having the audio for nothing or choosing to support the label by offering a nominal fee. But does this model work? Is it self sustaining?

It is important to remember that audiences do not invest in music as a stand alone construct. They invest in the aesthetic of the artists themselves. This is a matter of semiotics. That is to say, the meaning that audiences derive from the sounds and the images associated with the artist.

It interests me then, that some things sell more than others.

What is it that drives audiences to invest time and money into an artist and what kinds of choices exist in the gap between streaming audio online and clicking that download button?

I have written a few words on the topic of value and aesthetic before but today I am wondering if there are any new words to say...

Supajam

Last Friday I noticed a call out on this website Supajam for a 30 second version of the song 'Get Together' by The Young Bloods for use in a TV commercial for a  popular food brand in the US. I literally jumped at the chance to have a go at making an advert theme as I rarely do covers for one thing and secondly the brief was challenging. On Saturday I reached a point, round about 6pm, where I realised that my voice was not going to do this piece any justice, or indeed sell this popular food brand's product so I put a call out on Facebook to a talented singer I had recently met called +Katrina Borroff .



The track came together beautifully after that. Her vocals really made it and I managed to submit the track just before the deadline last night.

As well as this, Shep (aka Shep on Bass) finally dropped our debut EP under the name KADE and so part of my first Father's day was also about frantically exchanging emails in order to the tracklisting, write a bio and actually decide on track names!

The EP, entitled 'aphotic love feel' is a slightly unique concept in that it consists of a series of improvised jams (or beatscapes as I like to call them!) rather than structured songs. We aim to market the project as an alternative to having a resident DJ or a mix CD playing in clubs and bars; live, improvised background grooves and ambience if you like. The idea is that if you see us perform, no song will be the same twice.

We put the album out on our pown label Bitnormal Records last night and already we have had some great feedback, which is nice to hear.

Finally, today has seen the release of Karhide's Rough Sleep EP on Bandcamp, Amazon and iTunes. I did a little remix of the title track so it's all a bit exciting to have it out and available on so many popular platforms!