Posted on
May 9, 2012 – 10:32 pm by Johnno Casson

Each week Fresh On The Net invites an artist or band to answer a short series of questions in our new feature PRICK & DING: The 2 ½ Minute Interview. It’s convenient and quick – like cooking a microwave meal!
This week: PULCO
Pulco is lo-fi musician/poet and all round good bloke Ash Cooke. Based in sunny Wales, Pulco make enchanting, leftfield folk/pop music that beats its own path through this weird and wonderful music community we inhabit.

The music of Pulco relaxes me – as if the voice of Ash Cooke has an agreement with my brain to stop and listen every time I hear his music. It makes me think, it makes me smile, it takes me to somewhere I don’t often visit – and afterwards I feel pleased I visited. Though I couldn’t tell you why that was – or what route we took to get there and back.
Read the interview…
Posted on
May 9, 2012 – 7:10 pm by Al

Stop for one second and think about what Social Network actually means.
Social: Pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations
Network: An association of individuals having a common interest, formed to provide mutual assistance, helpful information, or the like.
My point? Having a Facebook page, Twitter Profile and YouTube account does not a social network make. You have to use it. Coldly firing messages into the ether like ‘buy my record’ and ‘come to my gig’ will have limited success. It may be that you don’t want to be all chatty with your fans and retain some mystique but at least provide regular an interesting content that will engage your fans to talk about you and your music.
No amount of fancy, all singing, all dancing social networks will make up for shit music or a boring artist. As to what to use, check out my default setup here.
Great music plus a network of engaged fans = career
That is all I have to say.
Posted on
May 9, 2012 – 11:40 am by Tom

Animal Noisewere featured by Johnno in last week’s inaugural Prick & Ding feature. Their song Run Loose sounded pretty good and was enough to send me to the BBC Introducing Uploader – where their song Baddow (below) blew my socks off.
It’s a wonderful piece of music – played from beginning to end with such fresh, ferocious energy that I immediately decided to embed it here so you could hear it too. I also intended to email the Soundcloud link to Steve Lamacq since he doesn’t use the Uploader.
Unfortunately, as things stood this morning there was only a 65 seond “teaser” to be heard on their website and Soundcloud.
Read More »
Posted on
May 9, 2012 – 7:00 am by Tom
From: Claire Kennedy
Date: 7 May 2012 11:59:11 GMT+01:00
To: Tom Robinson
Subject: The Lights by Rebecca Mayes – please!!!!
[no message)
————————————————————
From: Rebecca Mayes
Date: 7 May 2012 12:17:26 GMT+01:00
To: Tom Robinson
Subject: The Lights by Rebecca Mayes
Dear Tom Robinson,
My name is Rebecca Mayes, I’ve submitted a track to BBC introducing and I hope you like it enough to play it on your show. I am releasing it as a single into the official UK charts this week!
Here is the song and video http://youtu.be/F6BDVfF-A3c. I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for a great show,
Rebecca Mayes
ps. let me know if you’d like me to send you the mp3 of the song
————————————————————
From: Isabella Lazlo
Date: 7 May 2012 17:37:11 GMT+01:00
To: Tom Robinson
Subject: request
Dear Tom Robinson,
I would love to hear and see Rebecca Mayes with her new single ‘The Lights’ PLEASE x
with warm regards, love your show,
Read More »
Posted on
May 8, 2012 – 12:02 pm by Ruth Barnes

Supertalented – Cheesecake is the Best/ Scanner
Supertalented is Noa Kurzweil and friends: they make short, weird, lo-fi pop tunes about, well, cheesecake and potatoes and things… Weight Watchers and Plus Size are the two albums she’s released on netlabel Birdsong and every song is shorter and sweeter than the next. Their tag line is: “Supertalented are super Lo-Fi for Superpeople.” High five! Also, posting two tracks as they’re so short it’s only fair to get a proper taster… (Thanks to Greg Healey for the tip.) Read More »
Posted on
May 7, 2012 – 10:30 am by Massimo Zeppetelli
Gooood morning on this wet, windy, cold bank holiday! For most of you, this is depressing and terrible weather. I LOVE IT. I just absolutely love awful weather and have been having the best month of so of my life. Remember, that whilst the weather is so ‘bleak’, you can really focus on your music, work, love and general life without feeling the pressures of having to enjoy getting skin cancer, getting bitten by flying insects and sweating. You can take a walk outside and pretty much have the area to yourself unless you pass a couple of brave dog-walkers. I find this weather so relaxing and peaceful. I am dreading the inevitable summer which will be coming soon.
That was the upbeat paragraph! Onto music, here are the 11 tracks most voted for by you. I’ve tried to be as positive as possible about them, but I always make sure that I am not just fluffing up to songs just for the sake of it. Lack of enthusiasm is due where lack of enthusiasm is due, and for me, personally, this weak (week) I have felt a lot of it. I just felt there was an air of originality lacking this week and nothing “hit” me, whether is was romantically or energetically. So here are my thoughts and I hope I have made clear that it is nothing to do with the weather:
ALISTAIR SHEERIN – Take It All
Really catchy, funky and different. I love the mix of Franz Ferdinand-esque guitar riff, swing-style drums at times and a delicious pop chorus. More at his homepage: http://www.alistairsheerin.com/
Read More »
Posted on
May 6, 2012 – 3:53 pm by Chris Chadwick
So you’ve made a recording you’re really proud of, whether it be a single, EP or album, this is your best work to date. Now the only problem is getting people to listen to it. The good news? In the UK right now there are more avenues for promoting new music than ever before. From Blogs to BBC Introducing, Podcasts to Youtube channels, new music is a popular past-time and for those of us who push emerging acts to the masses, there’s nothing better than being the first to introduce a great new band or solo act to a wider audience. What’s the problem then? You’ve made a great recording and there are lots of people out there who are looking for exactly that! If only it were that simple. In truth, a great recording can count for very little unless it is promoted in the right way. It’s a skill, an artform. Whether you do your own promotion or are a budding PR agent for the next big thing, here’s a few tips of how to promote a release in the right way…

Read More »
Posted on
May 3, 2012 – 3:06 pm by Al

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at how to get set up online, avoiding the pitfalls and making the most of your time in cyberspace. This will be familiar to many of you but no harm in starting at the very beginning. It is easy to get caught up in the addiction of social networks but we must remain focused on what a band goes online for. Not all do and for good reason. With approaching 1 billion Facebook users and 140,000 Twitter users an online presence can further your reach and bring you new fans but only if used right.
The first thing you should do as an artist in the digital world is decide on your name. Sounds bleedingly obvious but if you are going to put a lot of work in setting up your digital identity you don’t want to be changing it in a year.
Once you have done that you need to register all the services you will use. I’ll go back over each one in future posts but this is my default setup.
Read More »
Posted on
May 3, 2012 – 12:32 pm by Emma Segal
Having recently toured with Azealia Banks, DEMS are certainly establishing themselves as ‘ones to watch’. The trio recently released this remix of Lonsdale Boys Club’s ‘Light Me Up’, in celebration of the latter group’s first headline UK tour. Take a listen
DEMS’ SoundCloud page can be found here

Posted on
May 2, 2012 – 8:08 pm by Johnno Casson

Each week Fresh On The Net invites Artists & Bands to answer a short series of questions in our new feature –
Prick & Ding: the 2 ½ minute interview (convenient & quick like cooking a microwave meal)
ANIMAL NOISE are a 3 piece indie dance band (with a balearic twist) from Colchester, Essex.
We were very lucky to bump into them recently when the band made a rare live appearance back in Colchester at an ‘invite only’ event at the wonderful creative hub that is 15 Queen Street.
They delivered an absolutely mesmerizing set of energetic indie flamenco-fuelled dance pop music that had the audience spellbound.
As a live act they demonstrated a wonderful ability (musically speaking) to grab you by the scruff of the neck and pull you through a hedge arse backwards and then have you thank them for the pleasure. What a massive sound they deliver!

Photo by Jason Cobb (c) 2012
Read the interview…