It’s the turn of Strummerville to take pride of place in the spotlight feature for the Downloader. We are truly honoured to be part of the Strummerville charity that was set up after Joe died to provide support for up & coming artists. For over a year now, we have been maintaining Strummerville DIY • a section of their site that showcases new talent and this Spotlight article has cherry picked ten outstanding new bands for you to check out • all of which have a free download available on their Strummerville profile.
But before we get to that, here is a run down of what Strummerville is all about … Strummerville is a registered charity that aims to create new opportunities for aspiring musicians. Set up by the friends and family of Joe Strummer in the year after his death, the charity seeks to reflect Joe's unique contribution to the music world by offering support, resources and performance opportunities to artists who would not normally have access to them. That has included opening up rehearsal facilities in The Roundhouse, London. Running the ‘Unsigned heroes’ event in conjunction with the Harmonn Group. Having a stage at Glastonbury Festival where new talent can perform. Partnering in the renovation of Bridgwater Town hall to make it a new cultural centre for Somerset. The charity is planning new schemes to help disadvantaged youngsters channel the musical abilities into something positive.
And what of the bands themselves, well here’s a selection that are rocking our world at The Downloader;
Is the US currently the market leader in new & innovative music? For decades the creative baton has been passed across the Atlantic but right as of this moment it does appear that the USA & Canada is producing artists of a more adventurous and interesting approach that we are currently able to produce in the UK. Now, I’m not talking about chart music, I’m not even talking about tracks. This is an album thing, because I still love albums, even though the only time I get to focus properly on an album is when driving, I still love albums. But even in the current album chart look at what alternative music is crossing over into the mainstream and the difference in quality between the UK artists and the US counterparts in terms of musical output:
UK Vs US The Fratellis Fleet Foxes The Ting Tings MGMT Scouting For Girls Vampire Weekend Kooks Cage The Elephant
I should rest the case now as it’s a joke! New British bands have dropped the attitude, they are playing it safe, the are making records with a view to getting a spin Jo Wiley’s show rather than making music that comes from there souls. People can see right through it! And where is the innovation, whatever happened to pushing the envelope, who is taking risks. The answer is blatantly obvious, the Americans… So if you haven’t already, check out the following:
Glastonbury 2008 The sun is out & I’m not going this year. Oh! The irony of it all!! For those who are, have a great time, its hard not to so long as the heavens don’t open. For the rest of us, then relax in knowledge that you’ll see more bands on the telly that if you were actually there – a poor substitute I know!! So here’s the bands that I’d get out of a tent for …
Kings Of Leon New album coming this autumn. A bold move for the opening mainstage headline slot but the biggest festival in the world has a habit of cementing a band’s legend. Maybe this is their time. http://dirtysexymusic.blogspot.com/2008/06/heart-attack.html
MGMT Wild horse would have to drag me away! My favourite band of this year. The fact they are mid-billing on the John Peel stage is very odd. Here’s a link to the Justice remix of Electric Feel which is about as big as it gets on mp3 blogs right now: http://welcometodanceclub.blogspot.com/2008/06/electric-feel-good.html
Alabama 3 Always at Glastonbury and playing all over the place as ever. One slot is on the Avalon Stage which is great place to hang out, although is Will Young really playing there, surely not! http://www.selective-service.net/?p=228
By all means email me tips of new bands you saw at Glastonbury this year and I’ll put features up about them – don@thedownloader.co.uk/ Have A Great Festival.
Marvin - The Blogspot Mixtape
We've featured Marvin before on The Downloader. He's the Brixton rapper who was formerly known as Marvin The Martian. His first album 'Devil In The Distance' comes out next month as does the class single 'That One Time' with more than a nod to the Grange Hill programme that we all grew up with (check out That One Time TV on Kyte - www.kyte.tv/marvinthehuman
And to further allow people to get a taste of his excellence, he's released today, the 'Blogspot Mixtape' which you can download for free from his blog: http://devilinthedistance.blogspot.com/
DJ Semtex has already picked up on it and has been dropping 'Believe It Freestyle', Marvin's take on the Saigon cut that is doing the rounds currently. Also on the mixtape are wicked versions including 'Acceptable In The 80s' (Calvin Harris) & 'Winebar'(You Know I'm No Good - Amy Winehouse) plus Marvin's own original take on tracks by Ice Cube & Lupe Fiasco amongst others, there's so much more ...
The Downloader caught up with Marvin to ask a few questions and find out what's happening in his world ahead of the debut album release ...
Q: Tell me about the recording of the album, who did you work with? A: I recorded the album in Bristol with Bob Locke and Andy Jenks who are both incredible producers and musicians, as well as having the best ears for music of anybody I’ve ever met, they also have the best collection of vintage synths in the world…maybe not the world but it’s pretty incredible. Me and Jack basically locked ourselves in a small room with no lights in Brixton for five weeks and wrote ten songs, we then hooked up with Bob and Andy in Bristol for another five weeks to turn those songs into an album. It was a great process, totally organic and very energetic, we literally turned it around in ten weeks, and I couldn’t have planned it any better.
Q: What was it like recording in Bristol? A: It was perfect, I knew I wanted to be outside my element when I recorded my album, I needed to be away from my day-to-day distractions and I needed to be somewhere where I wouldn’t be held back emotionally from saying the things I needed to say. Bristol has a very unique energy, there’s a genuine respect for creativity in Bristol. It’s hard to explain but it always felt like we were in a creative place when we were recording the album, even when we were mixing or setting up equipment it always felt creative.
Q: Did it have any effect on your sound? A: I would say so. Obviously having legends of the Bristol music scene like Bob Locke and Andy Jenks producing your record is going to have an affect on the sound, they never pushed anything on us though. We sat down and laid out the purpose of the record early on; there had to be a certain energy and a certain attitude but as far as the general Sonics of the record, Jack, Bob and Andy went in, we’ve got songs with 3 minute outros, I don’t think we’d have done that in Brixton, but we did that in Bristol and they’re incredible.
Q: What’s your favourite track on the album? A: That’s a tough one to be honest. Every song on the album represents a different time of my life so picking a favourite song would be like picking a favourite point in my life. I think the meaning behind the last track on my album ‘Carry Me’ is the most relevant to me today, I listen to that song and it motivates me a lot, I wanted to make a song that represented the cross roads of street lad into father but what was going through my mind at the time was “I’m on a major label and I have a debut album” so the fear of success in that record is very real but it’s the fear of failure that really drives it. It’s not technically the most advanced song on the album but its simplicity leaves a lot of room for contemplation.
Q: How easy do you find writing lyrics? A: It depends, I have different modes when it comes to writing my lyrics, if I catch an emotion or just think up a concept I’ll flow through a song in about a day, sometimes I reach the black hole where my brain doesn’t want me to continue down that road for too long, with ‘First Born’ on my album I ended up stretching that over four or five days because whenever I’d write something down I’d get really depressed, the song is about my relationship with my mother and a lot of those memories are buried away, so writing a song like that took a lot of energy and suffering.
Q: How did you go about selecting beats and tracks to work on the mixtape? A: It was pretty simple to be honest, every couple of days I scoured the beat blogs and picked up what I could, then I sat down with them in iTunes, deselected the ones that didn’t catch me and burned the ones I wanted to a disc, about five at a time, I’d disappear to rapper world for a couple of days, phone Jack and get it done. Some of the cover versions I did on the mixtape had been in my mind for a while, ‘Superstar’ the Lupe Fiasco track was a song I had originally written for my album but I thought it was a little too much about “Being a rapper” so I let it go. ‘Great Day’ is a cover of Ice Cube’s ‘Today Was a Good Day’ which is about as good as rap songs get, I knew I wanted to do a version of that.
Q: What’s ‘That One Time TV’? A: ‘That One Time TV’ is the most obvious idea, so obvious that Channel 4 have an equivalent called ‘Rules of the Playground’ which is hilarious. I went to a pretty notorious boy’s school in South London so I literally have thousands of funny stories I could tell, I probably get 70% of my funny stories from school so I figured everybody would have some funny stories to tell and if not they could probably tell some emotionally crippling stories that could comfort some of my younger listeners who may be going through some things at school. I went with Kyte on the channel rather than Youtube because I wanted higher quality visuals and I didn’t want it to be associated with all the other random stuff over there. We’re starting to get the hang of it now, we’re up to episode 5 in terms of filming, we’ll have broadcast 5 episodes in the first 10 days which I think is good. We really want to get some high profile people to contribute though.
Q: What exactly is it that Mr Phillips says we all do? A: Mr Phillips is a dick head. Without sounding like an irresponsible rap star I think people, parents in particular need to know that education is not everybody’s path. Especially not with education the way it is now, I didn’t take well to tests and coursework, it wasn’t me, I should have given it more effort but I’m happy that what I know now, what I am now, couldn’t have been achieved in education, Mr Phillips didn’t accept this concept. He pretty much thought it was Uni or Prison for his students, it doesn’t have to be that black and white.
Q: Any gigs coming up? A: Oh yes, I’m doing a load of dates in London in July and I’m hoping to get out and tour the country in August/ September. I plan to pull up at house parties, private parties and random gigs and throw down. I have a few different sets ready to go, I’ve got my party set, my human set and my Martian set as well as my newly established DJ set which is going to rock the world. Check my MySpace and my Blog to see confirmation of my live dates, if you want me to pass through your BBQ or your house party this summer get at me! I’m travelling! I’m filming for ‘That One Time TV’ all summer too!
Q: What’s you assessment of the state of British hiphop currently? A: I always get asked this and always give a different response. I’m happy on the whole, I still think we’ve got too many LuLu rappers remaking American records with no shame and I think there’s a lot of fake stories that mislead the youth but on the whole I hear more records I like in Britain than I maybe ever have before.
Q: And finally .. this Grindie thing, what the fuck was that all about? A: In 2005 I did a rap cover version of an Art Brut song, in 2006 it was labelled a genre. What can you do? In 2008 nobody’s doing rap covers of Art Brut songs so it doesn’t exist.
Thank You Marvin ... Check out his network of sites for all the latest:
Welcome back to the Downloader. After a long absence, the site is finally back in the land of the virtually living. However, the emphasis is going to change somewhat. When we started out, downloading music legally was a new thing • not anymore! We’ve had tracks storm to the top of the charts on download sales alone and increasingly download sales are taking a larger percentage of the overall picture and continue to grow. So you all know about downloads now …
Therefore we are changing tack to focus on where new music is really being championed on the internet and that’s on the Blogs … For those who don’t know, MP3 Blogs are run by music fans who daily (or weekly or monthly), write a feature on a band they love and give away a track so you can hear what they are talking about and hopefully fall in love with the band too, then run of a purchase all their music. These features with MP3s don’t stay live for too long • you’ve got to be on it to win it. Over the last 18 months or so, mp3 blogs have exploded • almost to the point of saturation. So as ever on the net, the sheer volume makes it difficult to navigate to things that you actually like, whilst great bands remain undiscovered underneath the clutter of nonsense that the ‘democratisation of distribution’ actually facilitates.
So The Downloader is going to do the hard work for you. Yes, expect features and interviews and a small amount of album reviews along the way. But also find out about the new acts, trot off to the appropriate blog and help yourself to a slice of the artist’s action. So, ‘Featured Tracks’ is no longer about single reviews. Now its all about what’s hot in the blogosphere.
Hard-Fi Talk Digital
The Downloader recently sat down with Steve Kemp, drummer to chart-topping terrace-rousers Hard-Fi, to talk digital music, Radiohead and the brave marketing of their recent new album.
Hey Steve, thanks for talking to us. How do you personally feel the rise of digital music has affected the music industry?
Personally I feel that it has affected the music industry in the sense that record labels have been forced to wake up and release that people can quite easily get something for free from the internet as opposed to walking into HMV, picking it up and paying £9 for it. As soon as everyone cottons onto that – I still don’t think everyone has – then the industry can begin to really move forward.
Do you see it as positive thing then?
I think there are real positives and real negatives. The negatives are that I spent 6 months pouring my heart and soul into making an album and I don’t know if I’m prepared yet to just see it given away for free – I don’t have 25 million record sales behind me like Radiohead have. But then again if people are listening to music and still loving it in the same way as they did before and this kind of change makes them want to come and see bands live then that’s got to be a huge positive.
Does it feel liberating to a band like Hard-Fi to have these new opportunities open to you?
I think as a band we’ve always looked at what’s going on with the digital side of music – we’ve always had our eye on it quite keenly as we sensed it would be so important. I mean, I’m not really into it, but kids today listen to music in their mobile phones. I think it’s preposterous, but if you’re some 12 year old and that’s what you want to do then we want them to listen to our music as opposed to anyone else’s. The world’s changing and we aren’t old enough to be rock’n’roll dinosaurs so we are going to change with it.
Do you take inspiration from Radiohead’s new model of releasing an album?
I think Radiohead are in a fortunate position to be multi-millionaires and have lots of more standard album sales behind them. Don’t get me wrong they make amazing music and the new album is good, I really like it, it’s just that it’s a model that works well for them. It fits them as a band. I doubt it would work for many other bands out there. They really do have the benefit of being a massive band.
So the whole outlook has changed from an artist’s point of view in the last 5 years?
For sure, the last 2 years have seen things change more than in the last 30 years. It’s been that drastic in the last couple of years that as a band you have just got to change with it. You’ve got to use these changes to your advantage rather than being all bewildered and scared by these developments.
I suppose it’s a real positive for young artists but it’s more difficult for the dinosaurs of the industry to suddenly change their entire perspective?
It’s difficult for record labels I can say that much, but we’ll see what happens with that.
As a band constantly on the road/ touring – has the rise of digital music given you greater opportunity to discover new bands?
I carry a laptop everywhere I go and whenever we have wireless hotspots we can get online. If, for instance, I heard something on the radio or my mate just goes to me ‘have you checked X band out’, in the old days – and when I say old days I mean about 4 years ago – you’d have had to remember the band’s name, written it down, gone to one of the music shops, asked have you got a cd by ‘Blah Blah?’. Can I listen to it? No? Alright then I’ll buy it. Now you can go to their Myspace page in 3 seconds, listen before you buy, and if you really still want a track you can buy the song you like, or even the whole album. You can even get an iPod Touch and download the track directly from that in about 10 seconds. Just the fact that you can get access to this music at everyone’s finger tips does turn you onto new things. Don’t get me wrong, I do miss digging through crates of records but to have the opportunity to do both now is huge.
Moving onto the marketing of your new album and the whole anti-cover idea (Hard-Fi’s new album ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’ was released without cover art). It has been a huge talking point of late. Have you been surprised by how much debate it has caused?
I have actually. To be honest it was always going to be a controversial statement to make. We didn’t like the way that record companies like to make it easy for themselves and make it easy for record sales. We’re reasonably creative people and being so creative writing this album we didn’t want to put a generic black and white photo of the band on the cover because it doesn’t say anything about us or anything about our music. We expected people to talk about it, but Jesus Christ, a lot of people have really talked about it. I think it’s good because I think that a lot of people are now looking at classic album covers and realizing just quite how amazing they are. I think it’s helped in making people see album covers more as an art-form again rather than just a black and white picture of a band. The Beatles did that well enough with Revolver in 1966, let’s try and move on shall we?
Is album artwork really a dying form?
I think it depends how old you are. When you used to buy a 12” the album artwork was there in front of you, it maybe even made you buy the album. I’m not sure whether these days it makes such a big deal anymore. People now get a CD – if they even buy a CD anymore – and they just chuck the cover away, upload the tracks to their iTunes/iPod and then never go back to the CD. The album artwork then flashes up on the screen 2cm x 2cm and I honestly don’t think people pay as much attention to it as they should, which ultimately is a shame because we all love cover art.
So that was always the idea, to make people think about the purpose and role of album cover art?
Yes. Sometimes as a band we get a bit tetchy when people tell us what to do and we didn’t like it when the record label said we should have a nice ‘black and white’ photo of the band ,so we thought ‘Fuck You’ we aren’t doing that. So it’s a bit of both really.
Words: Geoff Temple
Hard-Fi release the second single ‘Can’t Get Along (Without You)’ from their number one album ‘Once Upon A Time in The West’ on Monday, 12th November.
Fixed Eye and All, Murphy's Back
Roísín Murphy doesn’t say much tonight, she doesn’t need to. The changes of hat, jacket, gloves, glasses then gloves to dress to cape between every song speak for themselves.
As her band make their way onto the stage albeit a little gingerly, the awaiting masses (well a 1/2 full academy) don’t seem to have even noticed that the show has started, until Murphy, looking very Veronica Lake strides out to the discolicious ‘Cry Baby’, and suddenly a very dreary Bristol is jolted into life. After this storming dance-athon of an opening the pace doesn’t relent when next up is forthcoming ‘house embracing’ single ‘You Know me Better’.
But it isn’t just disco that Murphy executes with such polish, the stripped down ‘Primitive’, an understated lustily charged 4 minutes of perfection and ‘Tell Everybody’ add yet a further feather to her boa.
Along with some perfectly choreographed moves from herself and her colour co-ordinated backing singers Murphy throws some of quite possibly the best shapes ever thrown, prowling up and down the stage she is completely captivating from start to end.
It was somewhat of a minor miracle that Murphy made it here this evening as it was only a matter of weeks ago that she suffered an unfortunate accident involving a chair, her eye and lots of stitches. So when the ‘dreaded’ chair was brought about during the intro of Movie Star, cue a rather sharp intake of breath.
So strong is the material from ‘Overpowered’ that only ‘Sow into You’ and show closer ‘Ramalama (Bang Bang)’ are played from her debut album ‘Ruby Blue’ and for the diehard Molokoids a remixed version of ‘Forever More’ from the band’s last studio album is played. But it’s probably the lesser know ‘The Truth’ which got the best response. Originally a track with Handsome Boy Modeling School, Murphy took on MC duties and rather impressively managed to sidestep some tongue twisting lyrics.
In the press she is often compared to the likes of Alison Goldfrapp, Kylie or even Madonna (the last album anyway) – well they’re all blonde and do disco music of some description. When in truth Murphy is truly unique carving out her own niche, it should only be a matter of time before venues become rather more packed.
The Duke Spirit Live
Liela Moss is beautiful. After a brief spell away, tonight The Duke Spirit’s vivacious frontwoman is back on home soil proving she’s retained all that elegant swagger and rock and roll poise.
After spending much of the last year relentlessly touring the states and recording their recently released Ex-Voto EP and sophomore album Nepture, some may have felt that The Duke Spirit have neglected this island’s fair shores and in some respect tonight felt like this was a band who was desperately trying to reconnect with their audience, with Moss tentatively inviting the audience into ‘their’ world.
So having severed ties with major Polydor and back on another indie label are this much loved alt.rock band back to where they started?…not quite.
It was pretty surprising that the bulk of the set was lifted from the forthcoming Neptune not because of the quality of the material but simply as this was the first time the band had toured the UK in some time. It was the likes of Red Weather to remind the crowd these were a great band and still can be with the help of producer Chris Goss (QOTSA/Kyuss) on the helm.
Yes they were as engaging and powerful as ever and the new tracks seemed to have shrugged off the gritty unrehearsedness of ‘Cuts Across the Land’, but it took the opening chords of ‘Love’s an Unfamiliar Name’ moments before the encore to finally fully engage the crowd. Which is a shame when new tracks such as Lassoo carry a sharper, poppier and more self assured tone and will in a few months be as strong live as the likes of ‘Cuts Across the Land.
King Creosote Live at the Thekla...
On a night when I though I managed to avoid the Euro ’08 qualifiers, by going to see a tousled folk hero on a boat, not even two words into his set does Anstruther troubadour King Creosote gloat, Scotland 1-0, but I wasn’t to let this set the tone for the evening.
Scotland’s King Creosote or Kenny Anderson as his mother intended to call him, is the brother of ex-beta band and Aliens frontman Gordon and head honcho of DIY label Fence records, he is indeed a multi-faceted character, but King Creosote is no solo effort. Anderson is backed by a troupe of quirky named folkettes, most notably guitarist The Pictish Trail who fills in from time to time with his own numbers whilst Anderson frantically tries to tune his guitar.
Tonight at the Thekla, this is the first night of his UK tour, to promote shiny new album Bombshell, perhaps his most commercially viable to date. Opening with his beautiful new accordion KC barely bothered the stage with wistful album opener Leslie, coincidently the first track he ever wrote as KC. As he gently burrs the opening lines the chatter of the room dies down and conversations move to a hushed murmur.
Next up another new one ‘Home in a Sentence’, a little more electric guitar and less of the delicate acoustic that we’re used to but a reminder that KC has more depth to his repertoire. However it’s not until 4 tracks in that the crowd feel fully warmed up when they are treated to some KC Rules OK (the album that really brought KC to the fore), the fantastic ‘Not One Bit Ashamed’ had never sounded better. At this point a rather deranged member of the crowd cries for new songs, a rather bemused KC replies ‘that’s what we’ve been doing all night’, but he complies and launches into Twin Tub.
As the set meandered gently only highlights included recent single ‘You’ve No Clue Do You’ which sold 300 copies, a figure that won’t put any food on the table KC freely admits but something he appears a little proud of, this Cluedo inspired tune is swiftly followed by another new track, the rather brilliant ‘Spystick. As the set starts to pick up pace it suddenly gets nicely wrapped up with ‘Now Drop Your Bombshell’.
After a brief sojourn backstage the band reappears to play At the w.a.l. and end the evening with yet another KC Rules OK classic, 678, now even the hecklers are silent.
