The supporting of new music is a strange and sometimes frustrating road to travel but occasionally you stumble across a great moment.
Last year Amazing Radio invited me to be the first new voice on their national station.
This year I embark on a new show for Playdio who are adding shows to Spotify, the piece of software that has made listening to music a simple and beautiful pleasure.
For example as I type this I’m listening to Jackie Leven’s ‘Forbidden Songs of the Dying West’. It’s a great slab of Celtic rock but something I would never have owned due to lack of funds.
My CD collection is not as extensive as you might imagine, most of it will have stickers from second-hand shops and it’s currently in storage thanks to Spotify.
The new show is called ‘Xan Phillips presents…” will not only feature acts like them but also top names visiting the area. The first show has an interview with Badly Drawn Boy from the 2010 Eastleigh Music Festival
There is no denying a pure south coast show would be fantastic but new bands need new listeners and the bigger the name the bigger the exposure.
It’s a great opportunity to get their music heard on a wider platform and once again promote the great song writing scene we have in the south. Visit www.playdio.com
First published 8th Agust 2010 in the Southern Daily Echo
Last week I promised some interesting news about Archive, the collective Dave Pen (Birdpen) joined in 2004 as an emergency tour replacement for an errant singer.
Archive have eight albums under their belt and a very strong following in Europe.
Their most recent double album ‘Controlling Crowds’ fulfilled their contract with Warners and instead of re-signing with a major label chose to go it alone.
To look after the global distribution of their back catalogue AWAL (Artists Without a Label) have been given that task.
However, to raise funds for future projects, they’ve turned to an exciting musician led company called PledgeMusic.com.
The pledge system involves fans buying the CD or DVD in advance through incentives, such as signed merchandise, being the band photographer for the day, or just having a signed set list.
On 19th July Archive asked their fans to help raise funds to record a live DVD at a 5000 seat amphitheatre in Athens: ten days later they’ve achieved their target!
“The response has been over whelming,” Dave Pen told me, “I personally didn’t think it would go so quickly so am very happy it has done.”
Numbers of fans is the important part of this equation.
When you consider Archive have over 60,000 ardent followers on Facebook you can appreciate that raising money this way is blindingly obvious.
So pledging might not suit bands at the start of their career but it’s a massive incentive for looking after your fan base and encouraging its growth.
First published in the Southern Daily Echo on 30th July 2010
There are many reasons for loving Birdpen: their next album is one.
Even though it’s untitled, and the tracks are yet to be decided, the rough mixes I was lucky enough to hear sound fantastic.
They’ve been putting samples on www.birdpen.com and out of the five you might’ve heard ‘Sorrow’ is the one that has the potential to break the band globaly.
These recordings deliver a natural progression from their debut ‘On/Off/Safety/Danger’ presenting the same amount of depth but with cultured experimentation.
The two albums are likely to be bridged by the track “Only The Names Change” which is classic Birdpen: a giant, tension filled riff lurking beneath a melodic sub-plot of a lyric.
It’s already a firm favourite with Birdpen fans across Europe and they are desperate for an immediate release.
So if you are curios check out this French TV show “One Shot Not” (Arte) and you’ll see a great live performance from March 2010.
“Only The Names Change” might come out as an EP later in the year and for album2 we’ll have to wait until 2011.
Another reason for admiring this Southampton duo is their unassuming nature.
When he’s not in the studio Mike Bird can be found guitar tech’ing on some of the hippest tours around.
While Dave Pen can be found singing for Archive, a European collective that has released seven albums and attracted many thousands of fans on Facebook.
Archive have recently announced something really cool and we’ll talk about that next week.
There are some people who think that Motown is just a style of music rather than the famous record label that came out of Detroit.
Whether the seeds of similar success are being sown in Southampton by Sotown Records has yet to be seen but the cause is a worthy one.
Sotown is based at Oasis Academy Lordshill as part of their personalised learning department.
They run courses about the music business with students gaining qualifications based on composing, performing and marketing their music.
It’s run like a proper label with the music uploaded and sold on iTunes.
They recently released an album called “The View From Here” ranging from Grime to Folk via Hip-Hop and Indie and featuring tracks by Tee MC, Lil Mike, Charlotte Jones, Daisy Wheeller, The Noobs and Youth Culture.
Sotown is aimed students who are in need of an alternative curriculum, Bernard Andrews told me: “The course keeps young people in education by providing a logical reason to stay engaged with society.”
The theory is that by learning to enjoy what they do they find a place in the business at a level they are comfortable with be it management, a technician or a musician.
“It’s up to them to justify their role,” Bernard continued, “you don’t want to fill people with X-Factor fantasies.”
It’s early days for this label but at the grass roots already the sound of learning sounds great. Bernard thinks they’ll be bearing fruit come January.
