We’ve got a few openings for our monthly Shift/Tilt event and are looking for live electronica/trip-hop/downtempo bands who might be interested in playing. You can find more info on our MySpace page.
Contact us directly if you may be interested!
Rolling Stone – The Record Industry’s Decline
June 28, 2007An interesting article on the state of the major labels from Rolling Stone. In my own experience from talking to people, it seems this line from the article is becoming all too true:
Rosen and others see that 2001-03 period as disastrous for the business. “That’s when we lost the users,” Rosen says. “Peer-to-peer took hold. That’s when we went from music having real value in people’s minds to music having no economic value, just emotional value.”
The real question is – how do we, as artists, impress upon the general public the importance of supporting the artists and, moreso, what are your thoughts, as music listeners, on how artists can regain your economic support?
Return to Mono – Involution
June 20, 2007Return to Mono’s debut release, ‘Involution’, has got all the necessary ingredients for a fabulous trip-hop experience – dirty, pretty synths, trippy soundscapes, beats that move your feets and simply smashing vocals from this talented trio (or quattro for their live shows). Definitely on the more mellow side of the tracks, it still has enough bite to satisfy. Dig it!
You can get this release at:
Artemis – Undone (the beginning)
June 20, 2007
Just bringing up a blast from the past – Artemis’ ‘Undone’, our very first release. This was a major labor of love. David Earl, our former co-producer, had been working with Artemis on her debut EP ‘Treasure’ and had played me a few tracks. After hearing it, I suggested to Dave that we get her in to lay down some vocals on a track or two that Dave and I had been working on. After the first session, it was pretty much all over – Artemis’ vocals, songwriting and message were so strong that we just HAD to make that the focal point. Dave and I dropped what we were doing and dived right into writing tracks with Artemis – and ‘Undone’ was the fruition. A bit rough around the edges, yes – we were working entirely in our home studio at that point (and continue to do so to this day..) – but the energy and passion, we think, were all there.
This release went on to garner Keyboard magazines ‘Artist of the Month’ and numerous other praises from the likes of Roy Elkins (founder of Broadjam) and Matt Gallagher of Electronic Musician (who would later do a feature on the creation of ‘Gravity’ in the May ‘05 issue).
The whole ‘home studio’ revolution was just getting on a roll when ‘Undone’ came out and the process of creating it brought to us a whole world of other indie artists who were in the same boat – unwilling to get suckered into a major label deal that may get you nowhere, yet still unsure about how best to promote yourselves and get the attention necessary to even make a modicum of income from your music. It’s not easy, by any stretch – between the thousands of dollars in equipment, touring costs, money to pay for cd’s, flyers, posters and website hosting and design, you’re already several thousand in the hole before the cd is even out there. We do it because we love it – the money is secondary to everything, but it sure helps to keep things rolling when you’ve got at least a little to work with. Lucky for us, there were resources popping up left and right – some had the best interests of the artists in mind, others not so much. CD Baby was one that really stood out – they made it extremely easy to get your music out there and did it on very fair terms. Of course you still (as an artist) had to promote yourselves and get people to the CD Baby site, but not having to handle credit card transactions or shipping was a godsend.
Anyways – back to ‘Undone’. I mentioned before that we thought it a bit ‘rough’ at it’s completion – well, it’s ‘completion’ was a task in itself. There is this phenomena in the music world of endlessly tweaking your songs – the mix, the instrumentation, etc. – to the point that you never actually finish anything. ‘Undone’ almost fell prey to that. It came to a point where we just had to cut it off – we had learned so much during the recording and mixing that we just KNEW it could be made better. To do so would take more time – and it had been in the works for over a year at that point. So we decided it was best to get it out there and start on the next one, where we’d be able to do all the things we had wanted to do with ‘Undone’.
We often are asked about what was used to create ‘Undone’ – well, here it is (from what I can recall):
Computer/Software: G4 800 and 500 running Logic (6.x? back when it was owned by Emagic and not Apple) and plug-ins from Native Instruments, Waves and Camel Audio (amongst others). Camelphat was one of my favorite plug-ins at the time (and still is) and you can hear it on the drums in ‘Beside U’. Reason 2.x was also in there a lot – pretty much every song had at least one Reason bit in it.
Hardware: I’m forgetting the name of the interfaces we were using, Sonic-something or other. Basically 8 channel A/D/A interfaces with ADAT optical outputs going to cards in the computer. The companies that made the cards and the interfaces are both defunct now.
Synths/Effects: Roland SH-101 (the bassline in the title song ‘Undone’), Ensoniq EPS-16+, Roland RE-501 space echo and other misc. musical toys.
Mics: Various – AKG 414, Shure SM-58 and several others.
Which reminds me – I hear an awful lot of people complain these days about how they ‘can’t work’ with (insert name of software here) because it doesn’t have xxx feature. This is SUCH hogwash – even the simplest, cheapest software has FAR more capability than a anyone dreamed of even 10 years ago. Complaints like these are just excuses for either lack of initiative, ability or talent. If you can’t write a great song with something as ‘low-end’ as Reason, you just can’t write a great song, period. In other words – quit complaining and get to work!
I’ve probably rambled on long enough about this one. It’s still our ‘baby’ and we hope you love it as much as we do.
Cheers!
Keith
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You can purchase ‘Undone’ on the following sites:
Magnatune • Cyberset • CD Baby • iTunes • Amazon • eMusic • RTFM
From Bob Ezrin to Moses Avalon…
June 16, 2007Someone sent me a copy of a blog of yours in which you cited a speech I made wherein I declared the RECORD BUSINESS (note – note not the MUSIC BUSINESS) dead. In it you called me an angry old-timer. You’re entitled to your opinions but the conclusion you cannot reach from my presentation is that I declared the Music Industry dead or that I am angry about the current state of affairs.
On the contrary, I think this is the most exciting time in the history of music and I feel the industry is expanding and developing in ways the “old-timers” never dreamed of. The problem is that because they never dreamed of them, the companies that they created – dedicated to and dependent on the sale of plastic boxes – are suffering from a sort of flesh eating disease that is killing them…and that is a good thing.
The business you are in has NOTHING to do with selling plastic boxes and yet, as you point out, you’re perfectly happy to be making a living doing something you love. Well, me too. What I love is the creation of music, the playing of music, the presentation and production of music, the sharing of music, the elevation and development of music and affecting change through music. For a while, that meant making stuff to put in plastic boxes – along with creating and producing shows, writing music, helping to put music into schools and areas hit by disaster, teaching music and trying to inspire musicians to reach for their creative stars. Some of it has paid well, some of it less. But, like you, I am happy to be making a living in the Music Industry. Now it means much less of the sale of plastic boxes and much more of all that other stuff – and far from making me angry, I feel it has liberated and inspired me. I haven‚t been this excited about music in many, many years!
Record companies and their business are a thing of the past. Major music companies are growing out of the ashes. Some will adapt successfully, some like EMI will fall victim to market forces. Many jobs within the Records Industry will cease to exist (if the trucks can’t be filled why have trucks, drivers, warehouses etc? – if there’s far less concern about radio, why have specialized promotion? etc) Any major company that is solely in the business of plastic boxes (even bolstered by 2billion in downloads – hmmm, let’s see…we replace 1bilion in albums that generated $12 billion in wholesale with 2 billion in single downloads that generate maybe $2 billion in retail) is going to have to shrink significantly in its infrastructure and overhead or go out of business. They all know it. That’s why they’re all buying pieces of management companies and merchandising and live entertainment companies and doing their best to get out of the pure Record Business. And so they should – IF they can.
The reality is that a lot of folks don’t want and cannot embrace this change. But you’re a fact-oriented guy. You really shouldn’t be lumping me into this category. My intention is to create a revolution from within and to partner with folks who DO see the brave new industry and want to be a part of changing it. I don’t care if you share this with anyone. I just thought you ought to know a bit more about who you were criticizing before you started casting stones. Good luck with your career. You’re doing good stuff here.
Burnlounge.com – FTC asks court to shut down illegal pyramid scheme operation…
June 14, 2007We were solicited by Burnlounge many months ago and declined due to the rather unspecific nature of their claims on how we could make money through their site. It seems others have glommed onto this and dug a little deeper…
FTC Asks Court to shut down illegal pyramid scheme operation.
We’ll see how this turns out…
The demise of Weedshare?
June 12, 2007It seems Weedshare is no longer in biz, due to some changes in recent versions of WMP that flummoxes the Weedshare protocol. In reading more on this, it’s difficult to determine exactly what happened – some reports state that Microsoft has acquired the patents and technology, but there’s no report of this on the Weedshare site. Gizmodo just reported a little while back about the favorable position that Weedshare and Shared Media Licensing would be with a Zune sharing rewards program.
A case of big, bad MS killing the little guy, or just buying them out??
Free Skylight CD download!
June 11, 2007
For a limited time, you can get the entire Skylight – Walking Through Clouds CD, plus 2 bonus EP songs as a free download! More details on the Skylight MySpace page…
You can also buy the CD on the RTFM Records store, you know, if you’re into supporting the artists in a monetary fashion.
And they wonder why we think the RIAA is evil!
May 22, 2007A very revealing look at how the RIAA, ASCAP and BMI ‘leverage’ their way into everyone’s pockets, including those that gain nothing from their ’services’…
Digital Bliss Vol. 1
May 21, 2007
Digital Bliss Vol. 1 is a compilation to celebrate and promote some of the most talented female electronic musicians, producers and vocalists, with tracks from Artemis, Celeste Lear, Alu, Divasonic and many more. Gorgeous, ethereal voices of the modern electronica movement lend a decidedly metropolitan feel to downtempo, drum-n-bass, techno and ambient grooves.
