A little bit of pop-related fun over at the Guardian’s blog site. They’ve picked a few bands that they think are headed for stardom in the near future, and are charting their progress on a performance graph, punctuated by points of interest on the artist’s calendar and assigning them a score out of 100. It’s a bit like interactive top trumps with indie bands, but quite interesting to note what the media takes notice of.
After the success of the Christmas No.1, Rage Against the Machine, anti-X-Factor facebook campaign, a lot of copycat campaigns have sprung up attempting to achieve the same effect, and get specifically unknown music into the charts. The most ambitious of them has got to be ‘Storm The Charts’, which intends to place an indie musician at each slot of the UK Top 40. Currently the mainstream charts are devoid of ‘interesting’ music not becuase music fans don’t buy music, but because their tastes are far more varied than those of the people that buy chart music; those who are swayed by the marketing methods of the Big 4, and what’s pumped (pimped) through the TV on a Saturday night. Bringing disparate fans together for high profile campaigns is only a short term ’statement’ trying to get the attention of the industry and asking them to pay more attention to smaller artists, but it’s hard to see how the major labels can defocus their marketing budgets and make the same kind of impact for a wider range of smaller acts. Nevertheless, it’s something we’d like to see happen, and if enough noise is made, then it might further persuade the industry that the broadening of music consumption that is apparent online should be mirrored in the mainstream. This would have the knock on effect of encouraging them in their efforts to monetise content online, and mean that we’re all more likely to see viable legal alternatives to the file-sharing that’s so widely prevalent, and widely blamed for causing the steep decline in physical sales.
If you’re interested in participating in the campaign, however Quixotic it may seem, you can get more details by clicking onto, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=231943888357 – the main Facebook group, or www.myspace.com/stormthecharts.
Does your brain need scrubbing out after the weekend? Then you’ll be interested to note that Mancunian electronic artists Autechre have announced that they’ll be releasing a new album. Their music is a crushed up, jangling, unsettled and deeply atmospheric mix of glitchy, static sounding samples and electronic noises, sometimes over soothing synth lines and drum beats seemingly recorded over a telephone mic, sometimes blended with a brooding black wall of noise. Released and distributed through Warp on the 22nd of March, Oversteps will be Autechre’s tenth full album in a career that spans almost twenty years (their first single and EP were released in ‘91 – make you feel old?). Tracklisting as follows, but if you can make head or tail of it you’re a better man than me:
Oversteps:
01 r ess
02 ilanders
03 known(1)
04 pt2ph8
05 qplay
06 see on see
07 Treale
08 os veix3
09 O=0
10 d-sho qub
11 st epreo
12 redfall
13 krYlon
14 Yuop
There are a lot of fresh tracks (some with less than 1,000 plays) up on their white-on-white myspace page (drag highlight it if you want to actually read anything) but none of them seem to feature on the new album listing.
On Tuesday, M.I.A. tweeted a link to a music video without explanation, and the press (don’t make me say Blogosphere) jumped on it, full of speculation about what it could possibly be. Oddly, it turned out to be a new song called “Space Odyssey” that’ll be on her forthcoming album.
No big surprises, really. Every album release seems to be preceded by more or less official leaks these days, so why was thins one paid so much attention? It came on the back of some controversial statements that MIA made against the New York Times’ recommendation of holidays in Sri Lanka (where she’s concerned about civil violence), and it had both the seal of official approval and the element of mystery to it, to encourage speculation and conversation.
Replicating this buildup of momentum is possible even on a smaller scale. Any glimmer of notoriety for your band that can be tied into a current issue and subverted to your own purposes. Try and tie these things in to the release of your own new bit of hot content and you should see interest snowballing; people love following links, and the more meat you can put around an issue, the deeper people will explore it.
Genre: Various
Location: Yorkshire
ElectricStreetPolice is a British TV composer who writes in many styles for film and TV. Influenced by great music across all genres. Ambitions are to get more tunes on TV and in film. Music has featured on Sky1, Fox Network, FX channel, Starz, five, and the Cannes film festival.
RecordProduction.com is a site built for and by producers. There’s a punt-load of video interviews with famous and well respected music producers, plus video and photo tours of their studios. If you want to know how your producing idol went about getting a particular sound, or worked on a particular song, or just to sneak a look at what bits of kit they’ve got in their studio, it’s worth browsing the videos to see if they’re there. There are loads of links to production job finding sites, tips and reviews on equipmen, plus good places to buy it. There’s also a forum where jobs and kit are posted and a load of other like-minded people to kick your music production ideas around with, and ask about music distribution, marketing, tech stuff etc. Go watch some videos and recommend us around!
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