Once again, Monday finds me sitting down to build next week's BBC Introducing Mixtape, and as usual it's a case of trying to cram a quart into a pint pot. That's the expression we used in the old days before decimalisation: somehow trying to cram a litre into a half-litre pot doesn't quite have the same ring. But you get the idea. Each week I…
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Benji Kirkpatrick is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs on guitar, mandolin and banjo although his favoured instrument is the bouzouki. Born in Shropshire, England in 1976, he is the son of renowned English folk musicians John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris, and his entry into the recording business suitably came about on his father’s 1994 album Earthling. Benji subsequently formed the acoustic band The…
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This email arrived today from Martin Goldschmidt - the founder and chairman of legendary UK indie label Cooking Vinyl "Last November I went to Israel for the first time to see the industry showcase Tune In Tel Aviv. Jeremy from Tune in Tel Aviv kindly also hooked me up with some Palestinian musicians who took me around the West Bank. We met their fellow musicians…
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Folks, BBC Introducing is a free service designed to help emerging UK artists get heard. But we at the BBC can't help you unless you help us too - by actually sending us your music via bbc.co.uk/music/introducing/uploader... Between 150-200 tracks arrive in our Soundcloud dropbox here at Fresh On The Net each Mon - Thur and our entire moderation team, including me, listens to every…
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It's our proud boast at Fresh On The Net that any artist, anywhere, can send us a track and a dozen of our moderators - with a wide range of musical tastes - will listen to it. We don't offer feedback on individual tunes, but we do guarantee to listen to every single one. If one or more of us falls in love with your…
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It is nice, to be nice. The promotion of anything musical online is always hard, trying to get people interested in your product. Building up a fanbase takes a lot of input and - if I am honest - a lot of live gigging. You will likely tour with a lot of people with a similar sound, as promoters will target a type of audience.…
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Last Thursday March 5th a Facebook user called Tony Montague posted blurry mobile phone footage of a band performing in the streets of Eastleigh, which he captioned "Buskers in Southampton today brilliant." Even though Tony had no idea who they were, in the last five days his video has been shared 47,000 times and had nearly 700,000 views. It's been copied and recopied to YouTube,…
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Our friend Joanne Oliver is a PR for music and the arts - and also partner in a music management - and synchronisation (getting music onto films etc) - company. Why would she be interested in the "No More Page 3" campaign?" We asked her to tell us How Page 3 Affected little Joanne As a 43 year old woman brought up on a council…
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Here's Steve Albini - legendary producer, Shellac frontman and author of the famous 1993 essay The Problem with Music - giving the keynote address at Melbourne's Face The Music 2014 conference. His words define and confirm every conclusion about modern music that I've slowly been groping towards over the last few years. It's a long, dense talk that rewards careful study but basically his conclusion…
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The KLF – The White Room
The KLF - or Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu as they've always preferred to be known - are simply unique. That said, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty always had that anarchic Malcolm McLaren vibe of “destroy, subvert and undermine expectations…” and of simply improvising their strategy in response to each new idea or opportunity as it cropped up. That's why The White Room - far…
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