Turning our attention towards BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, our free downloadable BBC Introducing Mixtape is curated this week by Max Reinhardt featuring a selection of his favourite artists from the BBC Introducing Uploader: VULA VIEL, OLIVER HOARE AND THE LATE GREAT, SOUND BOOK PROJECT, KONGO DIA NTOTILA, BELLE CHEN, VINCENT BURKE, VYAMANIKAL, TITUS MONK, PERHAPS CONTRAPTION, YAMA WARASHI, ELLIOT GALVIN TRIO, F L DUNKIN WEDD, ZOE WEST AND THE HANGING BASKETS and COLLUCUTOR

The BBC Introducing Mixtape is a 60 minute radio show broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2-3am every Sunday night/Monday morning. Each programme is downloadable in podcast form at the BBC 6 Music downloads page for the next 30 days. Full tracklists and track start times are published here at Fresh On The Net – together with info about the music provided by the artists.

As mentioned above, this week’s mixtape is curated by Max Reinhardt from BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction who has kindly written the following notes about each of the artists he’s picked. These are the listings for the episode broadcast in the early morning of Monday, 22nd August at 2am.

VULA VIEL – Yes Yaa Yaa [starts 00:16]
http://www.vulaviel.com
“The leader of Vula Viel is Bex Burch, the classical percussionist who upped sticks to Ghana’s remote North to study the traditions of their balafon, the Gyil. There she became known as ‘good is good’or Vula Viel in the local language. Back in the UK she put together a band with two members of Loop Collective and two kit drummers, and the results are never less than a perfect jazzy Ghanaian roots storm…appeared on the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude.”

OLIVER HOARE & THE LATE GREAT – Love Is [starts 06:45]
https://www.facebook.com/thelategreat1
“Oliver Hoare & The Late Great sound like they have a colossal future ahead. Oliver’s songs are delicious expressionist anthems simultaneously lamenting and delighting in this mortal coil…never pretentious but always engaging. His blistering torch singer’s voice and vibing arrangements of the band make each song a show stopper… appeared on the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude.”

SOUND BOOK PROJECT – Bellows Piece [starts 12]
http://www.soundbookproject.com
“A lucky find on the uploader! Sound Book Project make sounds with books, bellows, a flute and a harmonica. They’ve embedded harmonicas into books along with bellows, while pages and book covers also provide additional percussion… whether they are wound, sprung, strummed, slapped or thrown. A curious but inventive and uplifting way of making inspirational music.”

KONGO DIA NTOTILA – Feti [starts 14:40]
https://soundcloud.com/kongodiantotila
“I’ve seen Kongo Dia Ntotila around London and was delighted to find them on the Uploader. They’re lead by Mulele Matondo, a visionary guitarist and bassist from Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of Congo. He’s got together with musicians living in the musical cosmopolis that is London and they play a grungy garage variation on Congolese dance music. Wherever they go they bring a raucously joyful party with them.”

BELLE CHEN – Listen, London: The Opening || Intermezzo No. 1 [starts 22:58]
http://www.bellechen.com
“I heard and saw her Belle Chen on the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude and she was and is a revelation. She’s a virtuoso pianist and she often writes and performs pieces for piano which feature her live piano over soundscapes of field recordings she has made. That was some brave and unique solo debut in the middle of the competing sounds of Latitude! Brian Eno certainly reckons her and the bassist of Late Great went to music college with her when they both lived in Australia and says she always was a radical and impressive force.”

VINCENT BURKE – Can I Just Explain [starts 25:02]
https://vincentburke.bandcamp.com
“Vince Burke started to send me songs at around the same time he first uploaded some of his music and I always found them striking and memorable. He’s been pursuing the art and craft of singer/songwriter for about a decade and his power and depth shows in his melodies, in his idiosyncratic view of the world and in the sweet charm of his voice, which often contrasts with the bleakness of the lyric… appeared on the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude.”

VYAMANIKAL – Sa [starts 27:53]
https://soundcloud.com/slipimprint/sa-1
“The prescence of this on the Uploader testifies to how the wider musical scene views the significance and importance of BBC Introducing in getting your music heard on the radio. I just picked it for its sound, but on closer inspection Vyamanikal is a duo featuring radical exploratory somewhat jazz steeped keyboardist Kit Downes and saxist Tom Challenger..it also features organs in 5 different churches in Suffolk.”

TITUS MONK – Cheer Up [starts 34:36]
https://www.facebook.com/whoistitusmonk
“Another demon find…thanks to the Late Junction Team. Titus Monk is a source of amazing and indefinable but always exploratory and inspiring music. I’ve never seen him live but I hear that he has been known to appear in a purple and gold wrestling outfit and cape onstage, just because he can.”

PERHAPS CONTRAPTION – I am I [starts 37:02]
http://perhapscontraption.co.uk
“I read that Tom himself has swooned to the spell of this wondrous incarnation of experimental brass band madness. Perhaps Contraption are more likely to be seen swaggering and subverting their way through the cream of Europe’s festivals …the uploader brings them into the homes and hearts of the nation.”

YAMA WARASHI – Moon Bon Dance [starts 40:47]
http://www.yamawarashi.com
“Here’s a flower of the hybrid musical heat that grows and glows in Bristol. Japanese Bristolian, Yoshino Shigihara has somehow built a band in Yama Warashi that sounds like a 21C version of Ryushi Sakamato’s Yellow Magic Orchestra even though all the other musicians are people she’s met on Bristols labyrinthine musical circuit. They topped the bill on the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude on the Friday Night and had the whole crowd moshing in tuffest Tokyo style.”

ELLIOT GALVIN TRIO – Blop [starts 45:07]
http://www.elliotgalvin.com
“So Late Junction got a whisper from the jazz programmes on BBC Radio 3 about the radical Jazz piano prodigy that is Elliott Galvin and his trio cohorts: Tom McCredie (Bass) and Simon Roth (Drums)… and the whisper turned into a flash of light when I heard how this trio turn their tunes into encounters with musical forces that shred and fray tunes and time signatures before your very ears.”

F L DUNKIN WEDD – Brancusi [starts 48:30]
http://dunkinwedd.com
“What a wide world of music BBC Introducing represents……Dunkin Wedd has produced an intriguing piece of music concrete…in his own words: In Brancusi (2008) a single vocal line floats above a backing of industrial and other sounds. It’s in honour of one of my favourite sculptors, Constantin Brancusi, and sung here by one of my favourite mezzos, Susan Legg.”

ZOE WEST & THE HANGING BASKETS – Unfinished Lists [starts 55:06]
https://www.facebook.com/zoewestandthehangingbaskets
“Strange how, on the radio, most rock and pop music still sticks to the ‘straight’ world of the gender binary when it comes to relationships, but Zoe West sure doesn’t on this Arctic Monkey’s influenced angry love song. She sent me the tune and while it didn’t really fit the Late Junction soundscape I knew it would work on the uploader.”

COLLOCUTOR – Gozo [starts 58:45]
https://collocutor.uk
“This tune by Collocutor has been out on 12″ for around a year and I was delighted to find it on my trawl through the uploader. It’s a perfect piece of afrobeat meets jazz meets soul meets dance and I cant understand why its not a modern classic…yet.”

MAX REINHARDT
21 August 2016

ARTISTS…
NB from Tom Robinson: In the music industry, as in life, it’s best to treat unsolicited emails asking for money with extreme caution. You may hear from a PR company who have “worked with some of the most original and exciting artists in the UK” who “found you online and after having a listen would be interested in working with you”. Please be aware you haven’t been sent this because you are special – it’s a form email, regularly received by artists who appear on this blog – and it’s from a company who are trying to sell you their services.

There are literally hundreds of plugging and PR companies in the UK – many of whom have equally impressive lists of clients and who would be glad to have your business. You don’t neccessarily have to choose the first company that happens to get in touch with you. See our advice on Sending CDs to Radio and The Pros And Cons Of Pluggers – it’s possible you might not even need professional radio promotion at this point.

And if you do decide to pay for a PR company, don’t take their word for how good they are – get some personal recommendations from their clients. Before parting with your hard-earned cash why not email a few of the indie labels who regularly get their own artists on the radio – and ask which PR companies they use.