The Glasshouse

Lisa Murphy: Hello, you’re listening to the Making Tracks Podcast, a podcast about songwriting, production, and the music industry, brought to you by Access Music Production CIC, in collaboration with The Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Welcome to the Making Tracks Podcast. I’m Lisa Murphy, and today I’m having a chat with Maisie Cowburn-Bannister, who performs and writes under the name of Maius Mollis. Maisie is a songwriter with perhaps we would describe it as a classical folk background. We’re going to talk a little bit today about how she writes her music, what her influences are, and where she’s moving towards with the use of technology as well in her music making. Hi, Maisie.

Maisie Cowburn-Bannister: Hello.

LM: Thank you for joining us.

MCB: Thanks for having me.

LM: Can you tell us a little bit about your background then and your music that you make?

MCB: Yeah, so at the moment, I would say I’m writing a singer-songwriter. What people describe at the moment is like indie music, which is obviously a wide blanket. But my background in music is, I come from both parents who are quite musical, and my first instrument was actually classical guitar.

LM: Oh, I didn’t know that.

MCB: After college, I studied folk music at uni, and now I’ve done a bit of Bob Dylan, and now I play electric guitar and I sing.

LM: To the joy of your fans.

MCB: I hope so.

LM: Yeah. What made you move from then more folk roots to what you describe now is more indie? Is it more plugged in, would you say?

MCB: Yeah, I think so. I think what always really excited me about music was singer-songwriters. That music was, I suppose, when I listened to it, I went, Oh, I want to make things like that. The course that I studied, I suppose, was more traditional folk, and I definitely dived into that a little bit at uni. I graduated, had a bit of a reckoning in lockdown. That’s why I was a 2020 graduate. I was like, Why was I doing this in the first place? What do I really enjoy about this? The aspects that I did really enjoy were production at uni and I suppose more like experimental styles of music and indie music. That was what took me to that.

LM: We’ll talk a little bit in a second about what the music is like that you’re making now, but let’s just go back a little bit to last year, because last year was your first main release under your artist name, Maius Mollis. Can you tell us a bit about that and how that came about?

MCB: Yeah, I think I have to take you back to lockdown, unfortunately. I was writing a few songs. I think I was putting them up on SoundCloud and it was actually my older sister rang me up. She lives in Australia and we talk every now and then on FaceTime and she was like, What are you doing? What are you doing with your music? You’re not doing anything and you’re just waiting for something to happen. I was like, Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not really sure. I think at that point, I suppose I was feeling a little bit disheartened with the industry. I’d watched all my friends have things cancelled and I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it anymore, if I’m really honest.

LM: Were you performing at that time? Were you performing your original music?

MCB: I had been, yeah. I suppose I’d gigged on and off since moving to Newcastle. I’d done a few function gigs and stuff and I’d played in smaller venues and it just… I suppose there was always something else in the way, whether it was uni or trying to work and it just, yeah, for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen until that year. Actually, it was my first gig back after lockdown. It was at the Cluny and I was so nervous. I was planning ways of getting out of that gig.

LM: No why?

MCB: Honestly, I was so nervous. I think it had been… I was speaking to a lot of people at that point who’d not been on stage for two years and I had never had nerves like that. I’ve been put on stage like, I’ve got musical parents from the age of five. They were like, go on, dance monkey. It was so bizarre to me and I was like, maybe this just isn’t it for me. Maybe I’m not good at it. I got off stage and I was like, Oh, that was really rubbish and I felt really bad about it. The sound engineer came up to me and he was like, Did you write that song? He was like, That’s really good. Do you have anything recorded? I was like, No, I’m trying. I might try. He was like, Let me record some demos for you. Then I finally had some actually recorded music and I saw a call out from Brighter Sound. That was when I applied for a call out to work with a label and I got it.

LM: Brilliant.

MCB: And that was to release a track. That was sort of the beginning.

LM: Was that your first experience of recording when you recorded with that sound engineer?

MCB: It wasn’t. I did actually record an album with my family when I was 16.

LM: Oh, right, okay.

MCB: I’ve been in studio environments. It’s just never been, I suppose, that it was my project.

LM: As a solo artist? how did that recording happen? Was it a live recording or?

MCB: The one for the demos?

LM: Yeah.

MCB: It was at the Cluny, actually, funnily enough, and it was just a very relaxed environment. We were in Cluny 2, set up some mics and yeah.

LM: Performed it live and captured it live. Then how important do you think it is being made to feel comfortable as part of that process?

MCB: Super important, I think.

LM: I mean, that was a bit of a leading question, but you talked a little bit there about not necessarily seeing the opportunity and having a bit of a crisis of confidence. What do you think about the recording process as a whole and like somebody actually approaching you must have been really… That must have been really nice.

MCB: It was so nice. I think we all have that moment. I suppose that was like going back to what my sister was saying. She was like, You’re waiting for someone to give you the green flag. As much as you can’t do that when you’re a freelance person and it’s your project, I think I actually needed someone to do that and be like, Hey, well, you’re doing like there’s something there and you should do something with it. It was honestly like I don’t think I would have applied for any of the things that I did if that one person hadn’t come up to me.

LM: On the back of that, you felt you had the confidence and obviously some examples of your work with that recording to apply for Both Sides Now records with Brighter Sounds and then go through the process of recording and releasing a full song with more musicians involved as well. I’d imagine that’s how that works, isn’t it? What were your big takeaways from that project? Because obviously there’ll be challenges to it as well as positive things as well in terms of having a single at the end of it and having a release campaign is great. But tell us a bit about that.

MCB: I think it’s shy bairns get nowt. It’s such a cliché, but I think probably, again, it comes down to confidence. It’s been like at my… What I’m trying to do is worth other people getting involved in it and other people want to be involved in it. I don’t know if that makes sense.

LM: Yeah, absolutely, it does. I mean, talking about confidence, let’s move on to how you make use of music technology as well in your music making, because it’s something we’ve talked about quite a bit in the past. Can you describe what your approach has been to using music technology and what do you tend to use it for?

MCB: It’s been like a mix of things, to be honest. In uni, I really, really enjoyed more experimental stuff. There was a module that I took in my final year, and it was based around a lot of field recording and less, I guess, what you’d call standardised structures of music. I think learning music production in more of a creative environment felt more accessible to me. Instead of it being like, right, we’re going to learn about EQ, we’re going to learn about… I think all that’s really important. But for me, it was almost a bit of a gateway entrance because the module approach was very much like, there’s nothing wrong. You can’t do it wrong here. Just you be creative.

LM: Yeah, so coming at it without the restrictions of, this is how it needs to sound and these are the techniques you must use. It was more like, make your own rules here, capture something creative. By field recording, do you mean you went out with a small like a Zoom, handheld recorder or something like that?

MCB: It was a H5.

LM: Then captured what? What did you tend to go for? Or is there not really a pattern?

MCB: One of the tracks I actually made my friends walk up and down alleyway and cat call me. That was an interesting session. Another one, I think it was like sounds in the city centre, all ambient things.

LM: What did you use them for afterwards? Did you incorporate them with music or was it a soundscape project?

MCB: It was with music. They were songs. There was lyrics, there was guitar. Oh, yeah, one of them had samples of news programmes. A lot of it was like taking those sounds originally and then manipulating them, and it’s growing and distorting and things. It was fun. It was a really enjoyable process.

LM: Cool. That was almost like your introduction to how you approach it in a hat. Then what’s the journey been like from there?

MCB: I think from there it’s been seeing it more as a tool to get my music to other people. It’s still pretty wild to me that you can make something and then just send it to, in theory, thousands of people. At the moment, my main thing is like making something that I suppose that I’m proud of and that I like and being like, Hey, do you want to listen to this? Also in more like a writing process as well, when you have the ability to record yourself, you can be a backing vocalist, you can be a lead singer, you can be a guitarist, you can be a piano player quite badly in my case, but you can put down those elements and I think because studio time is so valuable, if I can be more prepared before going to the studio, I think that’s going to be a bit of a game-changer.

LM: Amazing. You’ve learned how to use it to create your own demos and things at home.

MCB: That’s the plan.

LM: Does it help you with your writing process, would you say? Has it changed your approach, perhaps to write? I don’t know if it has, but I’m guessing back in the day, you’ve sat down with your guitar and wrote that way. Do you approach it differently now or not?

MCB: I think I’ve not quite got to that point yet. I think that’s what I foresee happening. There’s a song at the moment that I’m really stuck with, and I think, I suppose before I’ve got all this equipment, I should say I’ve recently got a home studio set up, is that I write with my guitar and then I’ve gone into the studio and put drums and synths over that, which can be a bit of a funny way to get to the point where you’re playing with drums. But my hope is, I suppose to… How do I word this? Like to find a groove or an atmosphere whilst I’m writing the song. Instead of… A lot of the songs I’ve sped up and I’ve put them to a metronome, where it’s like, okay, if I could start with that tempo.

LM: So almost it might be like maybe reversing the process by starting with a groove, a rhythm, a beat or a metronome and writing to that, which might change how the song turns out.

MCB: Exactly.

LM: Yeah, I understand. You recently completed the Making Tracks course with Sage Gateshead. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

MCB: Yeah, it was a fab course. I had so much fun. I think the main thing was it was a really relaxed environment and it was really nice learning alongside a group of people. I think the fact that the group was quite small, I suppose the thing I have to compare it to is learning at uni, which is much bigger modules. Not to say I didn’t get anything out of those modules at uni, but you can feel a little bit in a sea of people and you’re trying to put your hand up and go, Can I ask a question about that? Whereas there was much more of an opportunity to do that at Making Tracks. I think bit of a running theme with me was just getting my confidence back up and going, I’m going to put myself in this environment and I’m going to come away and remember. It’s like, actually, you’ve not done this for two years, but it’s still in there somewhere.

LM: How important is the learning environment, do you think?

MCB: I think it’s really important. I think if you feel like you’re meant to be in a room, you’re going to start with the intention that is possible. I’m a big believer in affirmations and I think as much as you can control what you can control, which is going in and being like, I’m ready, I’ve got my notepad, if you don’t feel like that space was set up for you to succeed, I think that’s going to impede you to a degree.

LM: That’s really interesting. Just to finish up, can we get your advice to anybody who is in that situation that you described back a couple of years ago where they’re a bit like, I want to get my music out there, or I want to learn more about how I can capture my music and show it to other people so that they can help me take it to the next stage? What would your advice be? Big question.

MCB: Yeah, I’m like taking myself back to me a couple of years ago. I think sometimes you have to tell yourself it’s not that deep. You’re just trying to make some songs and you don’t have to do it perfectly. No one’s going to pop out and go, Ha-ha, you failed. I think a really big thing is just like, ask other people. You will be surprised how many people, if you send someone a message on Instagram, slide into someone’s DMs, be like, Hey, you’re good at that thing. Can I ask you a question? Do a skill swap. I think one of the big problems is to start up, it does cost money. If you don’t have that, I think it’s finding creative ways of being like, Do you want to record a couple of songs for me and I’ll do this for you? Again, it’s just like, shy bairns get nowt. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I don’t know, just give yourself a chance.

LM: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s good advice. Then once you get kind of going and get your momentum, I think it’s fair to say that now you’ve got your momentum. It’s given you the confidence and perhaps the connections and the ideas for what’s next. So looking at funding applications, working more in a studio with producers who can help you develop your sound, which is really great to see. So it’s a really positive story, even though we went back to that 2020 lockdown thing. Thank you so much for talking to us today on the podcast. I know a lot of people are going to be really interested in this. Thanks, Maisie.

MCB: Thanks for having me. Bye.

 

Lisa Murphy: Hello. You’re listening to the Making Tracks Podcast, a podcast about songwriting, production, and the music industry, brought to you by Access Music Production CIC, in collaboration with The Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Hello, welcome to the Making Tracks Podcast. I’m Lisa Murphy, and today I’m sitting down with Claire Dupree from NARC Magazine. Hi, Claire.

Claire Dupree: Hello.

LM: Hiya. Thanks for doing this for us. Okay, so we’re going to be talking about NARC and how it plays an integral role to the northeast music scene supporting artists, I’m going to ask you some questions about how you feel that artists can approach promoting themselves and their music. Let’s just get straight into it. First, a little bit about NARC, let’s just do a little bit of background. It’s a local art, music, and culture magazine. Can you tell us just a little bit about how it started and how it’s grown over the years?

CD: Yeah. It’s 17 years this year, 2023.

LM: wow.

CD: It makes me feel really old. Thanks. Yeah, it’s pretty well established and really it was set up because I didn’t really feel that the local press at the time had very much a focus on the local music scene, on emerging artists, on unsigned bands. I could see so much good stuff going on and wondered why nobody was really talking about it. I decided to start talking about it, basically. It’s always really been the bread and butter, it’s about unsigned artists or at least grassroots artists doing stuff in the North East.

LM: Talking about grassroots artists, one of my first questions is going to be, how important do you think it is for an artist to connect with their local scene?

CD: Yeah, I think a community, really, the North East music scene, we are a community. I have a really firm belief that music isn’t a competition and shouldn’t be something that people pit each other against in the region. Anything that strengthens the cultural output in the North East is really positive. I think the musicians and the artists in the region are so widespread. There’s so much, there’s so many genres, there’s so much going on, and people don’t really often know how interesting stuff is. I definitely think that we should shine a light on that.

LM: Thinking about first impressions then, so an artist or an emerging artist, let’s say they’re putting together their first single. Talking from my experience as a producer, I find that artists you work with don’t necessarily know where to start. They don’t know how to promote themselves or get people to know about their gigs or just get to know about them. I think sometimes they stumble through how to go about that. So obviously I want to ask you what your advice to an artist, but I also want to ask you how important is the first impression that an artist makes? Because you know that stumbling into it. Could that even be damaging getting it wrong?

CD: I mean, not with me, because I understand from an artist’s perspective how confusing and weird it is to start. At the end of the day, musicians are creatives and they’re not necessarily thinking about the business side. So once they’ve got music down, they’re just excited to get it out. And I totally get that. And that’s completely fair enough. And your fans are the first thing you think of. But just taking a little step back and thinking, Hang on a minute, let’s wait and tell the most amount of people we possibly can that this is a cool thing, and it just gives you a little bit of an extra edge and could get you more fans. Artists approach me all the time, Hi, I’ve got a song. I’m like, Great.

LM: Is that all they say?

CD: Yeah, sometimes. But like I say, they’re brand new or they don’t really know how the industry side of things work. I do like to walk people through it and I will ask them when is it coming out and I’ll ask general rules about how and when we cover music and explain the sorts of things that we need. We like to have a bit of information. It doesn’t have to be a fancy press release, but just a paragraph. Who are you where do you come from? That stuff. What music you’re making, that sort of thing. Finished music is the most important thing.

LM: Finished music. So do people send you works in progress, if you like?

CD: Well, often it’ll be unmastered or unmixed stuff, or I’ve got song coming out in two weeks and I’m like, Okay, great. So send it to me. Have you got it? No, we haven’t got it. It’s still being recorded. I’m like, well, it’s not finished then.

LM: So you need finished work.

CD: Finished work, completely finished.

LM: In two weeks, that sounds quite…

CD: Not enough time.

LM: That’s not enough, is it? So what would you say then? What’s the leading time so that people can really maximise getting people to hear about it, the lead-up, the campaign leading up to the release?

CD: About eight to six weeks is our preference, because obviously we’re printed and we’re monthly, so we work at least eight weeks ahead and we have limited space for reviews and that thing. When we’re full, we’re and there’s not much we can do about that in the magazine. There’s always options online, but the magazine is about eight to six weeks. I suggest that you finish the music, have everything completely ready, and then set your release date eight weeks after that. Our issue is that obviously if you’re releasing your single at the beginning of April or at the end of April, it doesn’t really matter. We need eight weeks notice in advance of the month of April. Very good point. Yeah. So, yeah, sometimes I trip to be like… But otherwise there is always a web option. But in general, about eight weeks and then you want to make sure that you’ve got finished music, you want a press release or just some basic info, photographs, artwork, that stuff. I mean, some of those things I can wait for and go back to your previous question about making mistakes, I don’t really mind if someone says, Oh, well, I haven’t got any pictures, I haven’t done that, I haven’t thought of that yet. That’s okay. I’ve got a bit of time. The most important thing is the music and knowing that I’ve got a space in that mag for you. If I have to wait for a couple of things, that’s okay. I would rather people made that mistake with me and then know for future, right? When I’ve got a contact, the line of best fit, they need a bit more information. They need it all in the right place at the right time. So I’m happy to be the guinea pig, if necessary.

LM: That’s about you supporting your local city as well, isn’t it? Trying to make sure that these emerging artists do get that advice early on because they don’t know. I think it’s true that just because you’ve learnt about your craft in terms of your songwriting or recording, I can talk about from the recording perspective, how people don’t necessarily know the approach to that, for example. But then you’ve got this thing. You don’t necessarily know the next stage or what is needed to push it. So you’re saying, to recap, the finished music, a paragraph or something about the artist, where they’re from, maybe what inspires them, get some info about the person, about the song even.

CD: Yeah, just a bit of a hook. Things like that intrigue me. I want to read about the artist’s inspiration and the sorts of things they’re writing about. If I read something that’s particularly interesting that catches my eye or that I think our readers might really engage with, then that might be the thing that elevates you from a single review to an interview or to a larger feature, including things like gigs and festivals or whatever things that are coming up, anything you’re working on in the future. We like to see a bit of a progression with an artist. We would perhaps review a single and then maybe we graduate up to a feature on the website, and then we might do something larger in the magazine. If they’re working towards a larger release like an EP or other things are happening, then we can help them to plot a bit of a route through our pages.

LM: That’s really helpful, because one of the things I wanted to ask you was about momentum, because I feel a little bit like sometimes there’s a big push at the beginning with music. People have something ready. They’ve recorded a few songs. Then sometimes I think they go, What next? Because how many times can you book the same people and go, Please, interview me. Please, put something… What should they do? Because if they’ve had one review or I suppose you were saying there that you could go into more depth and do an interview, what would you suggest people do to try and keep the momentum in terms of being in the pages of the magazine, on the website, that kind of thing?

CD: Yeah, I mean, we probably try deliberately not to cover people too often because you don’t want to cover the same artists over and over again. There are people who are just really good at this stuff, and they would just be in the magazine all the time and nobody wants to read about the same people. But there are loads of different ways, and there are for us and there will be for other publications. Do a bit of research. I think research is really key because we cover all those genres of music. But if you’re a folk band, don’t send your music to a metal website. Just make sure that you understand the outlet that you’re looking for and note the things they do. Obviously, we have a printed magazine, but we also have lots of web stuff too, and an increasing focus on it as well. In future, you might have a video, or you might have a larger release, or even just another single that you could suggest, Oh, well, I quite like that feature that you do on your website about my favourite five, whatever it is. The increasingly weirder, the better, actually. -the top five emojis is one of my favourite. Yeah, be weird. But say something different, for goodness sake. I like that feature you do on that website. I’ve got a video, can we have an exclusive? I like this thing you do here, can we do that? And chances are we’re going to say yes. If you hit more or less our deadline, and there’s no good reason to say no. We are a bit of an anomaly when it comes to that, I’ve got to say.

LM: That’s brilliant advice. That’s like, do something different, do something that’s interesting. Show us something that we can get our readers interested in. Tell us something about yourself. What about beyond contacting your local music magazines and local arts and culture websites and magazines? Where else should an artist be going with their release? Do you think blogs or should they be focusing on the YouTube? If somebody came to you and said your advice as somebody in your position, what would you say to them?

CD: Yeah, I mean, we are obviously regional, so we only cover stuff in the northeast. There’s going to be plenty more of those. So particularly if you’re touring, that’s a good option. Look for the local NARC, your local in Manchester or in Leeds or wherever it is you are. The printed media is few and far between, I have to say, but there will be blogs and websites, so definitely that needs to come as part of your tour campaign if you’re going to do that. Obviously, local radio, BBC Introducing. Any other local community radio is always worth the play. People are listening. And national blogs, international blogs. Yeah, I mean, and it’s one of those hit and hope situations. Find the email addresses, send a nice polite email, do a little follow-up, and cross your fingers.

LM: Do a follow-up? Okay, there’s one. How many times should you follow something up, really? Like, is it beneficial to occasionally give a nudge?

CD: Yeah, why not? Yeah, I don’t really mind. If it’s within the means for us to be able to cover it, then yeah, I’m quite happy. I like to see musicians being passionate about what they’re doing. It’s a little frustrating sometimes when someone will go, here’s all the things, and they send you all the things, and you don’t have something that you need. You don’t have a photograph, you don’t have a website, whatever. I’ll respond and ask them for that information, and then I just get blanked. You’re like, Well, I’m doing you a favour.

LM: You can’t do all the effort.

CD: Give me the things I need. I think that’s probably the key thing, really, just treating the journalist as though they’re too lazy to go out and Google, give them everything they need because you’re far more likely to get something when people don’t have to do a great deal. The music is the most important thing and we’re there to review music. If we’ve got to search Facebook and YouTube and Google you to find out where you’re based or what stuff you’re doing, that’s just an added barrier. Like I say, we do it because it’s our job to do that. But for larger blogs or magazines or websites, they might not want to do that.

LM: True. I mean, how important do you think social media is with all this? I mean, you’ve just said there it shouldn’t really be your responsibility to be trawling around trying to find out the information that an artist should have presented to you about their release or about themselves. But do you actually go on social media sometimes and go, just have a look how many followers this person has or what they’re talking about their music?

CD: No, I don’t care about followers. Yeah, no. But I mean, mainly because I don’t really think that it’s important to me as a journalist to know or to care how many followers they’ve got. If the music stands up for itself, that’s all I really care about. Social media, as far as I’m concerned, is for fans, and obviously it is really important to get as many fans as you can. But to me, it doesn’t really matter to me. But again, we’re an anomaly. We are existing to shout about the bands that nobody else has heard of or that are brand new. That’s potentially why that’s the way I feel about it. But I think one of the other things that bands can make a point of doing is being varied with their social media content, creating interesting stuff, even if it’s a bit daft or a bit strange, just something that is just set themselves out aside from everybody else, a mixed media. So video, sound, pictures, little bits of chat, just keeping things light and entertaining. But at the same time, not having too much pressure to feel like you’re on it all the time because mental health-wise, social media is not fun.

LM: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there could be a lot of pressure on artists to come that’s try and be covering all of these things. You’re saying basically have some mixed different things out there that people can find. If they look for you, they find something and hopefully it’s something a bit interesting, and they can come along on the journey with you and keep your momentum going at a pace that suits both the music you’re making, I suppose, but also that it isn’t silly in the sense that you’re taking up all the time, because as you say, mental health is very important, isn’t it, to think about taking some time to just, I don’t know, for yourself to make sure that you’re doing this at your pace and it’s not taking over, because marketing can be a massive thing for a musician. It’s not like all musicians are made with these business heads, as you said before. A couple of more questions that popped in my head. Well, I’ve had lots of artists ask me this question, I don’t know, because I don’t do marketing. Should they have a budget for marketing? Because a lot of artists, they’re like, How much does it cost to make this record? But they’re not necessarily going, How much does it cost to promote this record? In your opinion, should an artist be thinking about having a budget?

CD: It depends on what they want to spend it on. There’s an industry-wide problem with payola, I think, in every walk of life, and certainly happens within printed media. We would never, ever ask a band for money and return for any coverage whatsoever.

LM: Interesting.

CD: I would actually very rarely agree to take an advert off of a musician when that’s a bog standard. It’s a quarter page. It’s very clearly been paid for. It’s a transparent thing. I deter musicians from doing that just because I don’t really believe that they should have to pay for that. We’re there to serve them, not the other way around. We can’t exist without musicians because we need their music to write about. For that thing, no. Then there’s the thing about getting on Spotify playlists and there’s reviews of…. submit hub or something.

LM: Submit hub, yeah. You can get people to listen to music and give you feedback for different reasons.

CD: Yeah, and if that’s important to you, then fine. I think to go into these things with your eyes wide open and to understand that someone is reviewing you because they’re getting 10 quid or whatever it might be, I take everything with a pinch of salt and ask yourself how realistic it is, if that’s actually going to get you anywhere, if you’re going to feel any satisfaction from that. And if you feel you will, then that’s your decision. But I think from a marketing point of view, your money is probably better spent on printing some posters, getting your name out and about make some merch, that kind of thing. I definitely don’t think that artists should be thinking about spending money on adverts for their article or certainly not paying for articles. That’s just a very ethical, bad point. The whole Spotify thing, it’s a bit ick, isn’t it? I would rather people didn’t do it.

LM: Well, the question is, if you pay for people to listen to. Are they engaged followers and listeners? Are they passively listening to you? And as you said before, if somebody’s reviewing something because they’re getting paid to review it, it’s got to be about what value that holds for the artist. But there is a need to have perhaps some money placed well, perhaps on some things. So maybe that’s about the artwork or the video, do you think?

CD: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Photography is really important. I think people misunderstand how important image is, particularly for us as a printed magazine. People will see you before they hear you because it’s a printed magazine. For us, we choose the most interesting, exciting images because we want to draw our readers’ eye to the page. Thinking in a cold, hard way, if you can get a really interesting image, you might end up getting more space on that page because you look interesting. Spending money with a local photographer would be a really good use of money. Using a local videographer to make a cool video. Artwork again, yes, something unusual or interesting. Although it’s worth bearing in mind that’s probably not going to get seen as much as your photograph will. If you’re going to spend anything, spend it on photography.

LM: And maybe the graphic design, perhaps, of how that’s presented, if it’s the single cover, for example.

CD: Definitely, yeah. But also bands shouldn’t feel hamstrung by money. I think there’s a lot of this stuff you can do yourself. The whole press thing, especially for new artists, there’s really no need to go out and get a press agent. These things cost literally thousands of pounds. It’s really expensive. You can do it yourself. It’s perfectly possible to do on your own. You can get a mate to take a picture on an iPhone or an Android phone, and it will be absolutely fine for print. Just make sure it’s high resolution, for goodness sake. But you can do these things yourself. It might take a little bit of trial and error and a little bit more time, but you can do it.

LM: So much really useful information. Thanks so much for your time. Are there any other top tips you want to add before we close up?

CD: My top tip would be make sure your music is never more than one click away anywhere that you are.

LM: That’s a brilliant tip.

CD: If I go on Facebook, make sure that the link that’s at the side is to Spotify or to YouTube, or even better to a linktree or something where I can find them all. Just never more than one click. Just remember how lazy people are. Not just me, but everybody else. I’m not lazy, but you know what I mean?

LM: No, but it’s so true, isn’t it? You don’t want to click on this to go through that, to scroll through a website to try and find something. You want it to be quite immediate, don’t you? -that is a brilliant tip. Thank you so much for your time. If you want to pick up a copy of NARC Magazine, it’s available in over 200 outlets across the Northeast, so from coffee shops to music venues, it’s everywhere. If you go on the NARC magazine website, narcmagazine.com, you’ll find a full list of places where it’s available. Also, if you visit NARC Magazine online, you’ll be able to view the online content. That includes NARC TV and the monthly E-ZINE. That’s all at narcmagazine.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you again for another episode of the podcast very soon.

Lisa Murphy: Hello. You’re listening to the Making Tracks Podcast, a podcast about songwriting, production, and the music industry, brought to you by Access Music Production CIC, in collaboration with the Glasshouse International Centre for Music.

Holly Rees: Hi, I’m Holly Rees, one of the co-directors of Access Music Production, and I’m here with Frankie Jobling.

Frankie Jobling: Hello.

HR: Who is the Making Tracks programme leader at Sage Gateshead. I work with the introductory groups in production room and you work with everybody.

FJ: I do, yes. I am there with everybody. I am very lucky I get to be in both groups and see both sets of young people every week and see them progress.

HR: I think it’s really nice because it also means that when we have people progress from introductory to intermediate, there is already a friendly face at intermediate for them. -that is you, your friendly face.

FJ: Familiar, friendly Frankie.

HR: I love that. Today we are talking to Hannah and Joe.

Hannah Daly: Hi.

Joe Wallace: Hi.

HR: Who have taken part on the introductory and the intermediate courses of Making Tracks. So, before we dive into talking about your experience of Making Tracks, could you tell us a little bit about your background in music? Who are you?

HD: I grew up in a very musical family. My grandad used to run the karaoke at the pub. That’s how he met my grandma. And then my auntie used to do a lot of work in musical theatre. She put on productions that I was in sometimes.

FJ: What productions were you in?

HD: I forgot what it was called. It was one about a spelling bee.

FJ: Nice.

HD: I used to do a lot of the productions at school throughout primary school and secondary. I was in a band for a bit, a three-person band.

HR: What was the vibe of your three-person band?

HD: That’s why I didn’t work out.

FJ: You couldn’t find the vibe.

HD: Me and my friend wanted… Like me and one member wanted to be like an indie band and the other one was like, Oh, I want to do more punk rock things. I was like, I can’t sing that. Creative differences.

HR: Creative differences.

FJ: So have you gone more down the musical theatre route then?

HD: I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say I’ve got like a musical theatre voice. I don’t know, I feel like I’ve got more of a radio voice.

HR: Voice for radio. And podcast. What about you, Joe?

JW: I started playing guitar in year three. Just liked learning different things. I started singing a bit when I was 10, 11 and then, yeah, got into the performance side of it.

FJ: Don’t you do loads of gigs?

JW: Gigs and busking and things like that.

HR: How did you get into busking?

JW: Sounds like a weird story, but one of my dad’s pals goes to a club in Wickham where they have like a busker’s night on. We went to that once and we’re like, Oh, this is good. I reckon we could do this five nights a week.

HR: Amazing.

JW: And then we just…Yeah.

FJ: Five nights a week?

JW: Yeah.

FJ: Wow. That is hard. That is hard work.

JW: It’s good fun, though.

FJ: Yeah, it’s good. And you’re passionate about it. Lovely.

HR: You were busy being musical, doing stuff. What got you interested in doing Making Tracks?

HD: Well, my grandma is on Facebook a lot. She saw a thing pop up from The Sage. Actually, it was a turn of the choir. It was a programme before Making Tracks. She was like, Oh you should do this. I was like, Yeah. Then I came in the studio for a few weeks. It was more like songwriting, actually, more than actual production. Then I got an email saying, Oh, well, sorry, we’re not doing that course anymore, but there’s a new Making Tracks one. I was like, Oh, I’ll apply for that.

HR: Turn Up the Choir was another Sage programme that was all about getting gender minorities into music. Very cool. Anyway, Joe, what about you? What got you interested in Making Tracks?

JW: I’ve always been passionate about having a music career and trying to find as many paths in and had a music teacher who was like my best pal, told me me about the course that actually came up at The Sage. So I applied for that.

FJ: Was it interest in production and songwriting that made you want to join Making Tracks? Or was it more like, Oo, I want a career in the music industry and this might be a good next step?

JW: Both of those things really. Like trying to expand on the songwriting, different ways of doing it, but also looking for different avenues in the music industry. I would be very happy to do recording for a living, so it’s worked.

FW: Yeah, it’s a good little sandwich of both of those things really, the course. What about you, Hannah?

HD: I never really wanted a career in the music industry until I joined Making Tracks. I did songwriting as a bit of a hobby, and that’s when my grandma was like, Oh, I should do this because it’s like songwriting, but you get to produce it as well. I was like, Oh, I’ll do that. I was like, Oh, I really enjoy this. Then now I’m studying music technology at A level.

HR: That’s so cool.

FJ: Progression.

HR: That’s so cool.

FJ: It’s called Fate.

HR: If you could pick one thing across all the programme that you’ve done, because you’ve done introductory and you’ve done intermediate, if you pick one thing that’s been either the best thing you’ve done or your favourite thing that you’ve learned. What would it be?

HD: For me, it’s probably like feeling more confident in a studio. I could go into a studio, I would say, and be able to set things up and point things out like, Oh, that’s a patchbay.

HR: Yes. Love that.

HD: I feel like more like I have a place in a studio now.

HR: Yeah. Yeah. And you do.

FJ: Own it. Yeah. You’re a producer.

HR: Joe, what about you?

JW: In general, learning how everything works and problem-solving and working out why things aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do and just getting the proper hands-on experience, just the experience that you wouldn’t get normally. You get all that knowledge and you’re like, Yeah, I don’t know how to explain it, but yeah.

HD: No, I think that’s good. I really like what you said about problem-solving because I think that’s such a key part of music production. It’s just something isn’t working and having not even just the instant knowing how to fix it, because sometimes you don’t instantly know how to fix it, but knowing that you will be able to find out what it is and fix it.

FJ: Yeah. I think one of my favourite things about Making Tracks is watching young people get to that point by the last half of the course. They’re just coming in, setting up by themselves, and me and you and Lisa were just in the background like, Okay.

HR: I usually just be like, We’ll spend 20 minutes, I’ll tell you about this new thing, and then I’m going to go sit on the sofa and let you crack on it. It’s good. Because you guys have done the entire progression route. You’ve come in and then you’ve progressed on to intermediate. How was that? How was that transition? And what was the main differences between doing introductory and intermediate?

HD: First of all, obviously the size of the studio, you go from a small studio to this massive, full-on one. I don’t know how to put it into words.

FJ: No, yeah.

HD: More like equipment, and two rooms. Well, more than two rooms.

HR: Yeah.

HD: It was quite a bit overwhelming at first. I remember the first session like, Oh, my God, what’s all this? But now I’m like, Oh, I know things.

FJ: You did, you did. I think it was nice because the introductory people that I progressed on were always sticking their hand up and answering their questions because you had that foundation of knowledge from previously that you applied to…It’s more equipment and it’s bigger, but the foundations of what it is essentially the same as what is in this smaller studio. You knew what you were doing the whole time.

HD: Yeah, you have a good insight in that because you’re in both sessions.

FJ: I know.

HR: Do you think doing introductory, first, helps?

FJ: Yes, definitely. I think obviously the people that come straight into intermediate or in intermediate because they’re ready to be there from what we’ve read. So that’s fine. But I do think that the people that have done introductory first have this confidence and more like self-assurance because they’ve literally just done it with you, Holly, and you’ve quiz them for 10 weeks on mics. They know their stuff. But yeah, Joe is like, no, don’t quiz me on mics.

HR: I’m not going to quiz you, I’m not going to quiz you.

FJ: But it’s nice because I don’t know, like Hannah was saying, you see the guys in the introductory, knowing how to mic up for vocals or for guitars, but then watching them mic up a full kit, mic up a full live room, it’s just nice.

HR: Take all those core skills just on the level.

FJ: Yeah, proper cool.

HR: Very cool. What do you think, Joe? What would you say about the transition between introductory and intermediate?

JW: Again, like Hannah was saying, I think you definitely noticed the difference in the size of the studio, but then I guess you realise that everything’s the same. It’s just a bit bigger. And then it sinks in and you’re like, Oh, yeah, I did that last time. It’s quite nice to meet a wider range of people from different… We came from the introductory, and then you go in there and you meet people who’ve done music technology at college or whatever or A-Levels, and then it’s quite good for that sort of thing as well.

HR: Yeah, it’s a bigger group, so you can have a bit more diversity in that.

FJ: Yeah.

HR: I really like what you just said. You realise it’s all the same. It’s just bigger because that’s exactly it. The core studio setup of like, okay, a mic, an interface, computer, and then you just add more interfaces and more stuff, and more mics and more things.

JW: and more wires.

FJ: So you were saying, Joe, about meeting more people when you progress onto intermediate. Is the networking and the meeting people something that’s important to you on the course, do you think?

JW: I think it’s definitely important. It broadens your horizons of different environments in the studio, so you get different… Everyone has different tastes in music, so you can throw ideas around. People have different experience in different studios, so they might know a quicker way of doing something. And also it’s good to make friends with people who are also interested in music because outside of the course, it’s quite nice to throw ideas about and say, What do you think of that? Do you think that sounds all right? I think the networking part is definitely a big factor in why the course is so good.

FJ: I love that. Hannah, what about you?

HD: I’d agree with you. It’s so interesting to meet people who’ve different genres of music, who use different softwares, and it’s a great way to learn, not from the leaders of the session, but from each other as well. I remember, I think it was one of the first weeks I think it was me and Joe were the only people who used logic.

HR: That’s cool. Yeah. So you guys were the only ones using logic. Did you end up teaching anyone else on intermediate a bit about logic, or did you end up learning a bit more about other softwares? Like, how was that?

JW: Yeah, in the intermediate we did grouped sessions, working on different tracks. And there’s a few people in mine and Hannah’s group who used Ableton for a lot of electronics. So it’s helping them with the logic as well. It’s quite nice for networking because yeah.

HR: Yeah. Sharing skills.

FJ: Yeah, sharing skills. And I think it’s nice because I think when you’re teaching someone else something, you learn a lot from teaching them. So that’s like a nice way. I always like watching all the young people helping each other, guiding each other. And it’s just a really nice environment to be in. Loads of like-minded musicians who want the same thing, all helping each other learn, all helping each other get to the end goal. But these are all so different and these are all like… There’s DJs, there’s like acoustic singer, songwriters. You’ve got people who do musical theatre or pop. And it’s just such a nice, wide range of people. And it’s like people you might not have met unless you’d done the course. Just so many emerging artists and I think as an emerging artist, you need to know the other musicians in your area.

HR: Definitely.

FJ: It’s just such an easy way to meet people quickly.

JW: It’s quite surprising as well how many different people there are as emerging artists and you just don’t think about you’re like, Oh, yeah. You don’t realise how many there are that close by and who is there. Then you suddenly meet all these people and you’re like, There’s loads and loads of people that you can meet. I think going back to what you’re saying about logic, helping people with logic a little bit, I think that helps solidify your knowledge as well, because you keep going back over it again and then you’re like, How did you do that again? And trying to work it out again.

HR: I think as well, people learn different ways. I think it’s really valuable to have that peer learning happening as well as the mentors teaching because I might be explaining something and someone understands it, but then they can explain it in a very different way to someone else that then might help that other person explain it better than the way that I… And it’s like this trickle down..

HD: Yeah, definitely.

HR: -learning style, which is really cool.

FJ: Just a nice environment that’s super accessible, I think. And it’s nice to hear young people asking each other the questions that they might ask us and getting the advice from each other within the group. I don’t know, it’s just nice, seeing relationships blossom throughout and stuff.

JW: Quite nice. It’s like it does become such a comfortable environment on the introductory and the intermediate. And it’s quite nice that you have that like-mindedness that you can just feel so comfortable in that environment working with different people. That’s really helpful for the future.

HR: Yeah, definitely. Have you kept up with those connections? Do you still meet up with people?

HD: Yeah, because we all go to the inter-industry sessions that happen in the first Sunday of the month. Quite good to catch up with people there and also learn about music technology.

JW: We’ve also all been out as a group outside of the studio, so it’s nice to keep that friendship going.

FJ: Lovely, networking.

HR: Frankie, do you want to briefly fill in the gaps about what the Inter-Industry sessions are?

FJ: Yeah, so Inter-Industry is a monthly workshop that happens at The Sage and we get industry professionals to come in and they deliver a two-hour workshop and there’s time for Q and A at the end and also time to network with the group and all the group can catch up, like Hannah was saying. And we try to get industry professionals from all different walks of the music industry, not just production, because we’re trying to give this well-rounded experience of the music industry. So yeah, it’s a chance to network with other people on the course, but also these professionals as well that have come in. Inter-Industry sessions are for all of the Making Tracks young people, past and present. If you’ve been on one course, you can come to any Inter-Industry for the rest of time.

HR: Amazing. Now that you guys have done introductory and you’ve done intermediate, what is next for you guys?

HD: Probably the advanced course.

FJ: Oooo!

HR: Interesting. That’s exciting.

HD: Well, hopefully… Well, I haven’t asked my mam yet.

FJ: What else?

HD: I feel now I’m more confident going gigging. I feel like I have a lot of people who support us through the friends I’ve made in Making Tracks.

FJ: You also had the chance to gig at The Sage as part of Making Tracks and you were amazing and it went really well. So do you think that’s given you a bit of confidence?

HD: Definitely. It was nice to see all my friends there and my family who support my music.

HR: How did it feel playing at The Sage? That’s quite an impressive venue to play, isn’t it?

HD: It was scary. My leg was shaking really bad.

HR: But you did it.

HD: Yeah, I got through it

FJ: And it was really good.

HD: I enjoyed it. It went by really fast. I only did one song. It’s probably why, but…

FJ: Well, there’ll be more opportunities to do gigs at The Sage through Making Tracks. At the end of every term, we’re going to be doing a little celebration gig.

HR: That’s fun. Joe, what about you?

JW: I’ve just finished my A-Levels this year. Next year I’m taking a year out to work on my music with recording and performing. I’m trying to get a little setup so I can do a bit of recording at home and just keep it going. Now that I’ve got the experience and the knowledge, I can use it at home and try different things out and it’s good fun.

HR: Have you got a specific goal in mind for this year? Do you want to write, record and produce your first single? Or is there anything like that?

JW: Yeah, that’s the goal, is to write and record and release first single, but we’ll see what happens to that.

HR: You can do it. I’m going to hold you to it.

FJ: Joe also performed at the gig, and he’s amazing too. He has such a good voice and he plays guitar as well. But I think you’ve got some original songs you need to get on stage and sing now.

HR: We’ve talked about growing your confidence through making tracks. Is there anything that you wish you’d done differently during either introductory or intermediate?

JW: I think with the intermediate, I was right in the middle of my A-Levels, so I think I was half-focused on everything else and I wish I could have been… I was still focused on the course, but at the same time, it was revision or… I think if I could do it again, I would definitely try and just fully focus on it.

FJ: It’s the curse of the emerging artist trying to juggle about a million things.

HR: I think that in itself is a skill, though.

FJ: Yeah, it is.

HR: Because I think it’s really rare that anyone ever gets just fully uninterrupted.

FJ: Time to be creative.

HR: This is where I’m making music.

FJ: Definitely. There’s always life happening.

JW: Although I’ve managed, for once, to bring my guitar on holiday. I’m going on holiday this week. Bringing my guitar so I can just sit in the sun and I’ll try and write some songs.

FJ: Yes, I was just going to say-

JW: Uninterrupted.

FJ: -pretend it’s a songwriting retreat and you’re some really famous artist and you’ve gone to, I don’t know, where are you going?

JW: Spain.

FJ: And you’ve gone to Spain just to be inspired.

JW: That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

HR: Hannah, what about you?

HD: I was in the middle of my GCSE’s as well. I wish I could be, again, fully in it.

FJ: But you were both super committed and you’re still super dedicated. I think that’s something to take away from it that you still put the time in.

HR: Because it is one of those courses where the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. That’s my take on it, would you guys agree?

HD: Yeah, definitely. If you’re just going and you’re not really that interested, you’re not going to learn anything. It’s just a waste of time.

FJ: Especially in introductory, when you were working on a song from week one and then it was the same song every week and you were building on it and developing it by the time it’s week 10, you’ve got this full song that’s been mixed by yous, written by yous, recorded by yous, performed by yous.

HR: I think also we do cover a lot each session. There’s quite a lot of new concepts.

FJ: To squeeze in to 10 weeks.

HR: Yeah, because we do go from absolutely nothing to literally you’ve mixed and recorded a full song. There’s a lot to cram into 10 weeks. Well done.

FJ: Congrats.

HD: I’ve completed it, mate.

HR: If you think back to where you guys were a year ago on your musical journeys, before you’d done introductory, before you did intermediate, what would be the best piece of advice you could give to yourselves one year ago?

HD: Take every opportunity. If you see a thing that’s going to help you, if you’re like, Oh, I can’t be bothered. It’s on a Sunday. Just go, because you learn.

FJ: I cannot agree with that more. You’ve got to do it. If you want something, if you want to create music, if you want to do music full-time, you have got to put the work in. You might be sacrificing a Sunday, but actually you go to The Sage on a Sunday, you see all your mates, you learn something cool.

HR: I love that just as general life advice. I think me, a year ago still probably need to be told take every opportunity. That’s just such good general life advice.

FJ: Definitely.

HR: Joe, hot seat.

JW: Probably say you’ve got to dive in, put yourself under a bit of pressure, get out your comfort zone. Because it does feel a bit weird when you first come in the introduction and you’re like, I’m in a studio. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I should just put yourself out your comfort zone and just go for it.

HR: You can never grow and learn if you’re not out of your comfort zone a bit. I always think that lean into the discomfort because that’s where you grow.

FJ: Then eventually you are comfortable. Week one, you were probably like, I feel so uncomfortable. But then week 20, you’ve produced a song in blank studios yourselves. If you weren’t uncomfortable, you would never be in that position at the end.

HR: That’s such a massive learning curve. That’s so much that you’ve learnt in a relatively short amount of time. My final question, what would be your top tips generally to other young people that might want to get into music, get into music production, get into songwriting?

HD: Again, take every opportunity that comes towards you and also look out for things, like this programme. Because if I’d never discovered this programme, I wouldn’t have had an interest in music production.

JW: I’d probably say from performing as well as production, I find a lot of people that I meet at buskers nights and things like that who are my age, they wait for gigs to come to them. I think you’ve got to be proactive and get out your comfort zone. Go there, find out what you want to find out. My first ever gig went into the same pub three times. Just kept going back in with my number saying, Can I do a gig for you? And eventually I got a gig there. It is just about go for it. Just be proactive. Keep going. If you get knocked back, go again.

HR: I love that. Be proactive. That’s basically what Hannah said. You’ve got to just go for it.

JW: Yeah, definitely.

HR: Cool. Thanks for chatting to us.

HD: Thanks for having us.

HR: We’ll see you next time. Bye.

ALL: Bye.

 

Lisa Murphy: Hello. You’re listening to the Making Tracks Podcast, a podcast about songwriting, production, and the music industry brought to you by Access Music Production CIC, in collaboration with The Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Hello, and welcome to the Making Tracks Podcast. My name is Lisa Murphy, and today we’re going to be having a chat with Lee Robinson. Lee is originally from Yorkshire and has lived in the Northeast for a years now, so we’re going to be talking to him about his work in electronic music, using Ableton and also as a DJ, and go back over his career and talk about how he got started and his advice to anybody starting out making and performing electronic music. So, hi Lee.

Lee Robinson: Hello.

LM: Thanks for coming along. Let’s get straight into it. Let’s talk about how you started out in working with electronic music production. What came first? Was it you making music or you playing music? Because I know you’ve done quite a lot of DJing over the years as well.

LR: Djing came much later, I think. I always had music and it was around and I was begrudgingly sent to piano lessons as a child. I always wanted guitar lessons, but they were like, No, you need to play the piano because it transfers on other instruments. I was like, Okay. But I wasn’t really into Baroque fugues, as you can imagine an 8 year old child isn’t. They tried to get me on the jazz and I was like, Oh, it’s cool, but okay. But anyway, cut scene to a couple of years later. I’ve discovered the guitar and punk rock, and I’ve taught myself a bit how to play the guitar. Then I fancied myself as an acoustic singer, songwriter, which, as it turns out, I’m not a very good singer or guitarist, and you need to be both. But I started out and I got a pro tool set up. I think it was like the M-powered version. And what were the little weird desks called that M-audio used to make?

LM: Oh, yeah.

LR: They had the motorised faders, so it was quite advanced, but essentially it was eight mic pres and they weren’t very good and didn’t have pads on. So anything hot just clipped like mad. I started on Pro Tools, which is really odd for someone who makes electronic music.

LM: But why are that piece of software? How did you end up acquiring that piece of software over… Or was there anything at that time that, such as now, if somebody talks to me about they make music, there is more in the beat-making genres, like house and dance music and rap, things like that. Quite often you’ll go, Oh, I wonder if they’re using Ableton. But at that time, I guess that wasn’t around. So were you forced down the route of what software was available or what somebody else introduced you to?

LR: Yeah, I think basically I didn’t know what I was doing. I was too focused on trying to play guitar and sing badly. And I’d given up my full-time job, much to the behest of my dad, and gone back to college. And I think they just had a pro tool set up in the studio. So I thought, Right, I need that. That’s the thing. This is how I’m going to record things. I need that bit of software. I saved up and got it and I had an old white Mac mini, one of the first Mac Minis that was powered by an IBM processor. It was really old, that just about ran this software. I thought, Right, I need to do stuff in here. But I didn’t really know what I was doing or how I was doing it. It’s a Pro Tools thing, so Ableton and logic came later.

LM: So you’ve got Pro Tools and you were making guitar and vocal music, essentially.

LR: Yeah.

LM: So what moved you from that to making beats? Were you interested in synths or sampling or anything like that?

LR: No, I think I randomly went to a club and I think I was having a really odd phase in my life where I was wearing a lot of corduroy and pretending to be in an indie band. I think I went to, there used to be a club in Leeds, I think, I don’t know if it’s still there, in the same guise, but it was called Mint Club.

LM: Yeah.

LR: And a lot of my friends were going and I just was like, Yeah, I’ll go, whatever. And it just happened to be one of Pendulum’s early gigs in the UK. And I just remember it being really loud and really electronic and just thinking, Actually, what is this? This is a complete other world to what I’m used to. And I think obviously I’d heard electronic music at that point, but I don’t think I’d experienced it in that scenario before. So like 22, 23, which is really quite old to be experiencing electronic music in that respect. But then when you grow up in Halifax and Huddersfield, there’s not a big scene. So the big clubs there, you’d go in and they’d play like Usher and Little John.

LM: Yeah, something more commercial.

LR: It was, yeah, or Bon Jovi. Lots of people singing.

LM: Living on a prayer?

LR: That’s exactly what they were singing.

LM: Do you want to give us a few bars? No.

LR: No? I did say I wasn’t a very good singer, so…

LM: Okay, we don’t need to prove it.

LR: That was a bit of a turning point. I think from there, I made more of an effort to go to these different events and venues and see these different acts that growing up I’ve always quite liked.

LM: Were they playing electronic music live or were they DJing?

LR: They were DJing. This was before the Pendulum that we know now whether a full live show existed. I think this was pre-even maybe their first album. It wasn’t an intentional, ah, Pendulum, I’m going to go see them. I think it may even have been their first UK tour. I think the fact that it was Pendulum was just a coincidence. It just happened that they were very good. I think from there and there was a couple of other things that I’ve seen as well that were really good. I remember seeing Justice, who were a French duo at The Plug in Sheffield, and they did do a live show, but it was controlled by, I guess, some Akai and Ableton, and that was the loudest gig I’ve ever been to. And I just thought, this is unreal. There’s two guys there. They’ve got all this hardware. These guys are cool. I want to be these guys. And I just thought, actually, because you try and be in bands with people and they let you down or they’re not really into it in the same guise. And then I saw these two guys and I thought, actually, I can do a lot of this myself and I don’t have to rely on other people. And a drummer that doesn’t have a drum kit or a bass player that only turns up with a DI box and no bass. What are you going to do with a DI box? I think at that point, I was like, Okay, I’m going to have a look at this a bit more. I thought, right, what software do I need to make electronic music? I think doing a bit of a search on Google, it was like, Okay, I need Ableton, apparently.

LM: Literally, it was like that. It was like, I’m now getting into this music and I like listening to it, I like going to these gigs. I want to make it so I’ve got more control over my overall sound, what software do I need. Literally just Googled it and went, Yeah, okay.

LR: Then I bought, like I said, a copy of Ableton 7, the standard version. It didn’t come with any sounds or anything like you’d get in Ableton nowadays. You can add the drum machines, but no sounds to go in them. I genuinely did not know what I was doing. Obviously, I used Pro Tools a bit. The MIDI stuff on Pro Tools was just terrible. And again, that really didn’t have any software or sounds in there that you could really use to make anything. It was cool for like… It was basically a digital tape machine, which I guess it is now. I was sampling really weird things, badly.

LM: Like what, you were trying to create your own sounds?

LR: Yeah, I was like, right, I need a kick drum. Where am I going to get my kick drum? I think I sampled a kick drum off a Scottish indie band’s record. There’s a band called Stapleton who were this jangly indie thing. And I was like, right, I’m going to take a kick drum off them, or it was a snare drum or something. It didn’t work, but I was taking bits from other places out of necessity just because I didn’t have really anything to make the sounds.

LM: So you started out quite basic stuff. So you’ve got the software, but no sounds, so you’re forced to make your own sounds. But you learn a lot by doing that, don’t you? You learn a lot about what ends up sounding good. Also, I think you learn a lot about like, It’s my sound, it’s not one that… Because I think a little bit, if we fast forward to some of the modern music software, because it comes with lots of inbuilt sounds, I think we can be a bit lazy and just go, Okay, I need a kick drum. Let’s load in that drum machine. Let’s choose that kick drum, or let’s find this sample that is quite easily accessible to everybody. And those limitations, I suppose what I’m saying is those limitations that you had by only having basic software and basic skills actually might have been a positive in terms of you not making more obvious music or lazily grabbing the easiest sound that was already available in the software.

LR: I think, it certainly breeds creativity because you don’t have anything. I think with Logic at the moment, with all the loops that you’ve got, especially Logic, where it categorises them by key and by BPM, and it automatically snaps them to the grid when you bring them in, you could probably write a track in less time than the track would take to play from start to finish if you got everything in.

LM: Yeah, true.

LM: We talk about accessibility with software, and it’s a plus and also potentially a negative as well, isn’t it? So we’re at the point where you’ve got Ableton and you’ve made some sounds.

LR: Yeah. So at this point, I just wanted to sound like Justice, who were the French duo. So a lot of what they were doing were really distorted synths and overdriven things. I was obsessed with trying to find LinnDrum samples because they used a LinnDrum. So again, trying to sample Scottish indie records, thinking, Oh, this is going to sound like a LinnDrum. It just didn’t. It didn’t even sound particularly good on their record. And it definitely didn’t sound good when I chopped it up and hammered it through a compressor that I didn’t really know what I was doing anyway. I was like, yeah, the needle is doing loads of stuff. That must mean it’s doing things. Or this thing, this sidechain thing that I’d heard Daftpunk used. I was like, Oh, yeah, if I do this sidechain thing, it’s definitely going to make it sound good. So every bass sound had a tonne of sidechain on it to the kick drum. It was like, Oh, yeah, -20 dB sidechain? Yeah, cool. Let’s have that. Like really slow-release. Yeah. So if you were to listen to it in headphones, it’d probably make you nauseous. I was just really trying to figure it out, but I think the more you mess on and just fail at making things, the better you get at it.

LM: I agree. I think it’s all about trial and error and it’s all about problem-solving. And the more that you stick with it, eventually you realise why that 20 dB reduction is under compressor, why it’s sounding a bit like it’s pumping the sound in and out. And is that something you want or is it something that’s detrimental? Okay, pull that back a bit. But it is, I think, that it’s about spending the time. When you learn to play an instrument, you didn’t sit down one day and go, Oh, look, I’m amazing. It was like you have to practise and you have to try. And it’s the same definitely with music technology, I think.

LR: I think so, yeah. I think you can’t expect to be good at something straight away. If you want to be in a band, you need to go find someone’s garage and be really bad for a little bit. And it’s okay to be really bad at something, but I think if you’re keen and you’re interested in it and you try and reflect upon like, okay, I’ve made this thing and I really love it. But actually, when I’ve listened to it against, I don’t know, Daftpunk record or something, it sounds terrible. But it’s just the way it is. I was fortunate that my friend owned a club, which is a really random thing for a friend to own. Well, it was my friend’s older brother, and he’d been knocking around in the Leeds club scene for a few years as a professional bongo player, if you can be a professional club bongo player.

LM: Yeah.

LR: And he’d saved up his bongo money and bought this club. But it also meant that I could go, Can I come and have a listen to my tunes on your club system?

LM: Which actually is essential, isn’t it? If you’re making any music that’s supposed to be playing in those environments, you have to hear it in those environments because the tendency is to make it on your headphones, not really consider what the bass and the kick are doing, and then it gets played on big speakers and it doesn’t sound big. It sounds little because you’ve mixed it in a small space. So hearing what it sounds like in a club and seeing if people react to it and they want to dance to it, I think it’s really good. A good way of testing it out.

LR: I mean, we’re not at the point where there’s participants in the club just yet. This was like, Oh, yeah, I’m cleaning at lunchtime. Come down.

LM: yeah.

LR: Like, All right, okay. But yeah, I was really confused why the thing that I’d mixed on really cheap Samsung monitors with four-inch drivers didn’t sound like-

LM: Yeah. Didn’t sound big, as you’d expect.

LR: Didn’t sound like the professionally mastered stuff that I’d brought down. Why does mine sound really bassy and there’s no top end? I think clearly because I’d overcompensated… Looking back, you think, Oh, clearly I’ve tried to get bass out of speakers that just aren’t built and produce bass. But that was good. Eventually, I kept going down and he was like, Do you want to play one night? Because they had a really tiny back room that had like 20 capacity or something. It was basically like an overflow bar area, but it was a separate room with its separate PA. I thought, Actually, yeah, I’m going to have a go at this.

LM: But what would you have played on? Because did you know how to DJ at this point? Did you have any equipment that would have…

LR: Basically, I used Ableton.

LM: Okay.

LR: I decided what I was going to do is I was going to half pre-program a set with all the tunes that I liked. This was about the time when blogs were huge for electronic music. I don’t know if it’s still around, but there used to be this website called The Hype Machine, and you’d go on and it was like a blog aggregator, and it’d tell you what people were talking about on all the music blogs and what tracks were being downloaded, and you could see what was really good in certain genres. I used to go and scalp all these blogs for the free downloads, basically, and compile this set of music. I think I took my laptop and I had a Korg… What was it? A Korg Nano key or micro key. Basically, the ones with the faders above the keys.

LM: Yeah, it’s a MIDI keyboard, but it’s got little faders to even fade things in out on different tracks.

LR: That’s exactly. It was a midi keyboard with some faders and I assigned the faders to the faders on Ableton, so I could fade in between things.

LM: So you could real time, yeah.

LR: But realistically, it was very pre-programmed and I knew what tracks were coming where, and I put markers on the tracks in Ableton so I knew where to start the next track. Realistically, if I’d have thought about it, I could have probably just produced the mix and stood there and fist-bumped and just dance.

LM: Yeah, pretended to.

LR: But it was one step away from that. The letters come back, because I think we did it for free, basically. Me and my friend and we had a Kaoss pad as well. And obviously, yeah. So the Kaoss pad came into play. My friend Jack, we were a duo at the time, and we thought we were like Yorkshire’s answer to justice. Clearly not the case. I controlled Ableton and he controlled the chaos pad.

LM: The Kaoss pad just everybody doesn’t know where that is. It’s one of those very visual thing. Am I right thinking you put like a Kaossilator where you put your finger and drag it around and it kind of does filter sweeps and changes the –

LR: It was the precursor to the Kaossilator. Right, okay. It was an X, Y touchscreen pad thing. And you could set different parameters. So it might be a reverb or it might be a filter or some horrible bit-crush thing. I think there was some synth sounds on there. So you can make it go…And that white noise.

LM: Yeah, so as you drag your finger across it, it changes the parameters of whatever it is. Or reverb. But it’s like a real time thing, though. You’re doing it in real time as it’s playing.

LR: Yeah. And it wasn’t great, if I’m going to be honest. The effects, have you ever used a Kaoss pad?

LM: I’ve got the app. So they have an app version of iKaossilator, I think it’s called now by Korg, for iPad.

LR: The effects on this particular version of the Kaoss pad, because I think it was like a version two were extremely hot on the output.

LM: So particularly loud, yeah?

LR: Yeah, so not necessarily on the way in. So if you didn’t touch it, you could get a nice level coming in and it’d come through the system and everything. As soon as you touched it, the output from the Kaoss pad would just get extremely hot. So it was like a constant balancing act.

LM: Okay.

LR: So it was supposed to make the performance good, but it just made it unbalanced and extremely loud in places.

LM: Okay, so a bit of a challenge.

LR: But we didn’t care because we had leather jackets and sunglasses and we were DJing electro.

LM: Yeah, and you’re doing something in real time, which is more so than just pressing play on the track. You were at least fading them in and out and you’ve made markers and you had real time changing parameters and different things in the music. So there’s a performance element to that. And you have leather jackets and sunglasses, right?

LR: Yes. It was a curated performance and it was a very intentional and very calculated. Okay, this is the tracks we’re going to put, this is the order we’re going to play. And it absolutely was not very good.

LM: But what was the reaction? I mean, from the crowd to you saying it wasn’t very good, but were they thinking, Yeah, we’re into this.

LR: This is something. The crowd of 20 in the room, I don’t know.

LM: Yeah, of those 20 people. You’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?

LR: In a room that’s quite small, the crowd is fairly transient. Mostly they come into the bar. And if you’re playing a tune that they like at the time, they might stay. But ultimately they want to be in the big room with the actual-

LM: The main act.

LR: The acts whose names are on the poster. But it was okay. I think there was points where it was like, it almost felt like a challenge. Let’s see how many people we can steal from the big room and let’s keep them in here as long as possible.

LM: Great.

LR: So I think in terms of an education into what tracks would work and what tracks wouldn’t, you learn quite quickly what people were reacting to and what tracks worked well together and in what order. Not that you could really change that in Ableton. You’re stuck once you’ve programmed your tracks in the order.

LM: Was that one of the things then that made you go, Okay, we’re doing this, but there’s some limitations to this. I can’t, in real time, change the tempo of this or scratch, put it back like you would on CDJs or even vinyl, let’s say? What was the thing that made you go, Okay, I need a different setup. I need to move forward and do something?

LR: I think it was partly that, and I think partly because we were taking a lot of kit. We had like, it was really daft. We had little camping tables that we would put over the existing CDJs so that our gear could sit on top of them without actually sitting on top of them.

LR: Yeah, these little folding camping tables that we got from like Go Outdoor or something that we’ve clearly made for like a caravan. And we’re like, Okay, we’ve got lots of gear here. How can we slim this down but make it easier? But how can we be a bit more reactive? And one of the guys that was promoting the night just said to me one day, he’s like, You need to learn how to actually DJ here, because unless you’re the headliner and it’s your crowd and they’re coming to see you, you need to be reactive to what that crowd wants to hear.

LM: I see. So you can’t have a pre-prepared setlist because – Yeah,

LR: You don’t know who you’re getting in the door. And he was like, If you’re wanting to make a good go of this, you need to be able to be reactive and read a crowd, read an audience. If you’re DJing on Ableton and you’ve got these songs that you know that work to those people in the room there and then, well, you need to be playing more of that stuff to keep them there. And he said, Look, if you’re wanting to get more gigs and better gigs, the hard line of it is you need to keep people in the bar so that the manager is happy because the people are buying drinks. It’s like unless you’re doing that, then you’re not going to get booked, because why would somebody pay you to just play whatever you want. It’s like it just doesn’t happen unless you’re the headliner and people are coming just to see you. But you get to that stage by doing this other stuff. He said, Look, just come around to my house one evening and have a go on mine.

LM: They were CDJs?

LR: Yeah, they were Pioneer, CDJ 1000, which is pre-USB, pre-digital.

LM: So what has it got? Has it got a CD in it?

LR: Yeah.

LM: Of different tracks that you were then going to flip between and mix together.

LR: Yeah. Basically, yes, you could play CDs. Operationally, it was very much like the 2,000s and 3,000s, but it didn’t-

LM: Those are like the modern versions now?

LR: Yeah, they’re a little bit easier, if I’m going to be honest, to the modern stuff. They tell you the BPM to one decimal place, which makes life easier when you’re trying to beat match something. But also they pre-analyze all your waveforms and you can see all the waveforms in there. Whereas the CDJ-1,000s would give you a rough BPM to within a whole beat. So you’re like, Okay, this is okay. And the waveform would just be blocks on the screen for the length of the track, and it’d tell you how long was left of the track in time. So you need to know what you were playing, so you knew what was coming in and out when, but there was no mixing aids or anything. It’s not like there was a sync button like you get on now where you’re like, Oh, everything’s going wrong. I need to press sync. And yeah, I went around to this guy’s house, Dom, and he just took me up into the attic because his attic was converted into a little DJ mix room. And he’s like, Oh, there’s a book of 1,000 CDs there. I’m going to nip out and do my shopping.

LR: I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Just do what you need to do. I was like, No, don’t go. And he’s like, No, you’re fine. Just like-.

LM: Figure it out.

LR: Figure it out. I’ve got to go and do some errands. My housemate’s knocking around somewhere. So if you go, just let him know and he’ll just lock the door behind you. I was like, All right, okay. Anyway, like two hours goes past, he’s not come back, but I’m still going at it. Eventually, the housemate comes upstairs and he’s like, Oh, it’s sounding all right, this actually. It’s sounding good.

LM: So you’re playing out loud through some speaker?

LR: Oh, yeah, he had these enormous Wharfdale Floors standards in his loft. So his housemate, fortunately, his housemate liked, like Electronic music and clubs and stuff. And then after a few weeks of doing that, he said, Look, do you want to just come to some of my gigs with us and see what it’s like? And maybe when it’s quiet, do a couple of mixes and get used to how it feels in a club?

LM: And probably the pressure of the situation as well, like being there and having to get it right in front of a crowd, even if you’ve chose the quiet time in the room, it’s still like an added pressure from just sitting at home in your own house and having some headphones and being able to make the mistakes. Take it out into the real world.

LR: Yes. At the time, he was probably DJing out three, four nights a week in different places. So one night he might be at a Revolution Bar somewhere, and then he might be at a Tokyo bar or another bar somewhere else, and he’d just go, Come along. Come along on a Friday and Saturday night. Come for the ride. If we’re DJing at a Rev, I’ll make sure they feed you, kind of thing. And yeah, just come along. And carry my bag.

LM: Yeah.

LR: I did. And then every now and then, they’re going to be like, Do you want to do a couple of tracks or whatever? I think you can DJ as much as you want in a loft, in someone’s house, but it doesn’t prepare you for the floor moving underneath your feet when you’re in a club.

LM: And also hearing things when there’s a big crowd, I often think, because I’ve never worked in DJ or anything like that, but I often think, How are you able to be lining up your next track on headphones? Well, it’s so loud in this room with the current track and the people in here. It’s like when you, as a musician, play your first gigs, and it’s different because that room is loud and there’s people and you’re monitoring everything feels different in that moment. And rather than panic, you’re trying to go with it.

LR: I think the feeling thing, it’s a physical experience, I think, especially DJing, I think, because the room around you moves. If you’re in the DJ with normally they’re slightly raised up somewhere if you’re lucky, and it’s fairly rudimentary normally. There’s a bit of plywood or whatever that raises you up. But when you put the bass in on a track, you feel that through your entire body and it’s everything around you shakes. Yeah. And you don’t really experience that. And it’s a complete different thing to at home when you’ve got in headphones and it’s a reasonable volume and you can hear everything nicely. You don’t have someone stood next to you drunk trying to sing you a song because they can’t remember what the name of the song is. Or someone else at the other side going, Yeah, let’s have a look at what CDs you’ve got. Let’s have a look. Can you play this one? It’s like, No, go away.

LM: I’m in charge.

LR: Yeah.

LM: And how long before, from those early stages of your friend allowing you to come along and just see how it works and being part of it and doing a couple of tracks, how long before you get thrown in the deep end and you can actually do your own gig?

LR: Wasn’t that long. I’m sure it was about six months. I think one night you just said, Oh, I can’t do Friday night you’re doing it.

LM: Okay.

LR: And this was at Revolution in York. He’s like, take all my equipment. They know you’re coming. Obviously, they know you are because you’ve been coming with me for a few weeks. They need to pay you at the end of the night. You do the gig. Just give us 20 quid out of the thing for me sorting you the gig or whatever.

LM: Okay.

LR: I’ll be back as normal next week. I think a couple of days before he brought round all his CDs. Do you know the books where you can fit? It’s like 250 CDs into a book.

LM: Yeah, the CD wallet.

LR: The massive ones. He brought round, I think there was eight of those.

LM: Oh, wow. That’s a lot.

LR: And he said, right, these are all organised by genre. The newest stuff’s at the front for each genre, the older stuff’s at the back. He says, what are you going to need to do for the next couple of days is you’re going to need to go buy yourself a job lot of CD-Rs and just rip all these, burn them onto your own. You’re going to need two copies of each CD, because if you’re playing a track off the CD and you want to play a different track off that same CD for the next track, you’re going to need a second version of the same CD. But I’m going to leave these here with you for a couple of days and I’m going to come back. But you can have all this music, but you’re going to need it because..

LM: That’s immense, isn’t it? Having to do that job of trying to build up your collection. Because nowadays, obviously, the way CDJs work, or the way I understand it, is you put your music on a USB, don’t you? You plug that USB and you can access the digital file. Having CDs and having to build up those collections of CDs is quite a big thing.

LR: I think just organising it.

LM: And keeping them in order way you can quickly grab them and find them. The management of files and track lists and things must have been quite a big thing.

LR: I think I could still find, if you said, a track that I had in this… I’ve still got the CD wallets somewhere they’re in… I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of them. They’re in the… I don’t know if we have a loft. But if we’d be in the loft, but if we had a loft, it would be in the loft. But it’s in the equivalent of what is the loft. But if you said, Oh, can you find a funky drummer? I’d be like, Yes, it’s in this… Right, there you go.

LM: Oh, wow.

LR: But even organising them. So again, similar thing. I think I’d seen what he did and how organised it was. And not everyone was this organised. Some people just had random CD wallets with like, scroll on the front of each CD that had like bits of sticky bits of Jägermeister on them. Sometimes they played, sometimes they didn’t. But now I was like, right, okay, if I’m going to get paid to do this, this is like a tool of the job. And if this is knacked, then I can’t play and I can’t get paid. So I printed little labels out and I had genres and I numbered the CDs. So they were like, This is House disc 54. Okay, and it’s got these tracks on it. And yeah, just I had everything super organised, and I always took the CD out and put it straight back in the place where it was supposed to be.

LM: How did you feel when things moved more digital? Well, that was digital, obviously, but when they moved towards you having digital files on USBs, so people would have had MP3s and then Wav files and things like that. Did you feel a little bit like, Oh, I’ve had to learn all this old way? Were you reluctant to give that up and move forward? Or did you go, Oh, yeah, I’m going to embrace this because I can get thousands of tracks more and this small little storage device, and I don’t have to carry around all these CDs all the time?

LR: Initially, before there was USB, you had software like Traktor or Serato, and I was always a bit dubious about that stuff just because you had to fiddle around with boxes around the back, and then you had to take your laptop and I said, No, I don’t want that. I’ll stick with CDs. If I lose my CDs, I’ll be unhappy. But if I lose my laptop or some idiot spills jäger on it, that’s done.

LM: yeah.

LR: But no with the USB stuff, I thought, actually, this is great because my back is no longer going to be bad.

LM: From carrying all these CDs around.

LR: I don’t have to carry a thousand CDs with me to every gig I go to now. So my back is going to be great. Because it’s not like carrying vinyl around, but CDs just weigh quite a bit.

LM: So outside of then you’ve been working in DJ and you’d learnt about the technology of mixing records live. So it’s funny, isn’t it? Because you came from trying to make your own original music and getting into a certain style of music and then realising that you wanted to perform that live and moving over to very much like pre-prepared, pre-made music, mixing together pre-existing tracks, how did you then end up going full circle and coming back to writing electronic music or making your own original music?

LR: I think it was the natural step. I think it’s very difficult to have a career in music, I think, if you’re one thing. I think very few people have a career who are just a DJ. I can probably think of people who have sustained careers as DJs, I probably think of one hand, and it’s basically the Radio One guys. You’re like your Annie Macs, your Pete Tongs, people that are fortunate enough to be broadcasters, and I suppose that’s the other part of their career.

LM: They did, yeah. They diversified by being broadcasters and also DJs.

LR: I think if you want to start getting booked for good gigs and you want to start building a name for yourself beyond the local scene and playing in chain pubs and clubs, you have to start making your own music and getting out there. So yeah, that’s what you start doing, I think. And I think similarly, if you’re a producer as well, it’s a logical thing to go, Actually, I need to perform this, because if you’re making good music, people are going to want to see you play it. And then if you’re playing things, people are going to want to see you make good music.

LM: And also it adds an interesting element to what you were able to do as a music maker, as a performer, but also what people are able to come and see. They’re not just coming and seeing you mix pre-existing records together, they’re seeing you add a performative element to that by either triggering or samples or integrating some of your own musicianship into it, making it into a performance.

LR: Yeah. I think at this point, the Ableton Live stuff, particularly for performance, I parked that because it just wasn’t working as I needed it to. But certainly I was using it to produce and to make things. And you can engage the reaction of things that you make from a crowd. So you might slip an odd track that you’ve made in with stuff that everybody knows.

LM: Yeah.

LR: And I think one, you recognise really quickly where production-wise, your track is not holding up. You’re like, Oh, why doesn’t my track sound as good as these are the tracks that I’m playing next to it in a club? But then also you work out what works and what people are reacting to, what works on your hi-fi at home in terms of arrangement and stuff, and what you think is quite cool, maybe doesn’t in a club. That three-minute buildup that you think sounds like unreal and really epic. People get bored and they go get drinks and other things and you’ve lost the dance floor.

LM: How quick does the riff come in? Is the riff or the hook strong enough to hold people’s attention?

LR: Yeah, and it was always a really good gauge of how strong the track is based on if you could keep people on the dance floor, and if you can do that, you’re winning. Certainly, I think electronic music is really… I’m not saying it’s not art because it is, but I don’t think it’s art in the same way that jazz music is art, and it’s not music for music’s sake. I think it’s quite utilitarian in the sense that it has a very clearly defined purpose. And it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it outside that purpose, but ultimately, it’s there to make people dance in a very specific environment and work in that environment. Going back to what I was saying before is, if you want to keep getting booked, you need to make sure people are on the dance floor and people are wanting to come in and stay in your bar. Because I think certainly bars and clubs are very competitive. Ultimately, in most towns, unless you’re in an enormous city, the target market and the pool of people that are going to these places is relatively small. And so the more of those people you can keep in your bar, your club for longer, the better.

LR: But I think that’s why I think it has that utilitarian nature to it, where it has to have that purpose beyond just, Oh, this sounds really cool, or, It’s a really nice thing to listen to.

LM: So your advice now, if you were talking to somebody starting out in, if they were interested in DJing, let’s say, would you be saying to them, Go a step further and try and make your own music, or at least make your own remixes of these tracks that you could try out on a real crowd when you are DJing. Take it a step further.

LR: Yeah, absolutely. I think if you like a track, but I think we’ve all listened to tracks and thought, Oh, that’d be really cool if it did this here, or if the was slightly different, well do it, and then try it out and see if it works. Then it’s your edit of that track that you’re playing in a club somewhere.

LM: Then that edit in itself might be able to be standalone as a release or be used for something, potentially.

LR: Potentially, I think it’s a difficult one with edits because they’re not really remixes and they’re not really sanctioned by the artist or the label. But what it does do, it makes your sets more unique to you. And the more you can make yourself a little bit more unique than everyone else, the better. I think everyone’s got the internet, everyone’s got access to the same tracks. If all you’ve done is download the Beatport top 100 and you’re playing those, well, so is everyone else. But if you’re making little edits and tweaking things and making it a little bit more like your own, that’s helping you stand out a little bit more.

LM: I agree. I think it’s interesting to see and it’s what sets you apart. Yeah. So making music, let’s talk a little bit about making electronic music. If somebody was starting out, what would be your advice to them in terms of how they could approach making music? What do you think are the most accessible pieces of technology and software?

LR: I think most doors now are fairly accessible.

LM: But do they lend themselves to the style of music? Because I’m thinking about if you use something like Pro Tools, for example, you’re quite encouraged to go in a linear fashion about your recording. You start at the beginning and you travel through to the end as almost like the piece of music is played. Whereas some pieces of software, you make a four-bar loop, don’t you? And then.

LR: Yeah, I think Ableton is great. I think for getting ideas down really quickly and just getting things going, I think particularly it gives you that instant gratification of, Oh, I’ve got a drumbeat. Okay, I’ve got a little bit of a bass groove in here and I’ve got another thing and another thing. And because you’re working with lots of small little loops that are cycling around and you can turn them on or turn them off, build up a song really quickly, and the workflow of that particular part of Ableton lends itself to being really creative and really fast-flowing. You’re not sat drawing in midi notes forever. You do a bar and then I’ve got that bar, but that bar can be an indefinite loop for as long as you want it to be. What’s good about it as well is you can hit record and it’ll put it in the arrangement view. And then you flip the screen and you’re like, Oh, now I can see everything in the linear fashion that would have taken me quite a while to programme, but all I’ve done is I’ve played around with it, got some loops in, got them going, and now it’s in an arrangement for me. And I can just go in and tweak it.

LM: Now you’ve almost turned that into a longer format song because you’ve pressed record, started triggering the loops and playing them, dropping things in and out, and then suddenly you’re going to your other window and there it is as the three minute piece of music you’ve just almost performed by turning these loops on and off.

LR: Some people will absolutely like the idea of sitting there and going, Oh actually. Can I change the velocity of that slightly. And should this come in on bar seven or bar eight? And like moving things around really gently. But actually, if you’re not like that and you just like to feel like, oh, naturally, I think you should come in here. This feels like a good place for the next section to come in. You can just do that on the fly and it will be recorded in. So you’re not thinking, Oh, should we come in on this bar or that bar?

LM: It’s also a bit like DJing, I guess, isn’t it? Where you would have been reacting to the crowd or thinking about the song and suddenly you’re like, I think this next bit needs to come in now. I’m going to start this loop that I’ve made in Ableton, or I’m going to drop the bass out here, that bass loop that’s playing in the background, just to… You’re almost performing the song by triggering the different aspects that you’ve created and then transferring them into the long format of what the song is.

LR: That’s exactly what it is. Yeah, like I say, you play with things, you perform things on the fly in real time, and if you ask it to, like I said, we’ll record it into the arrangement view.

LM: We talked a little bit earlier before we started recording the podcast about sounds and the quality of sounds as well, didn’t we? I think with modern music software, it’s a lot better these days in terms of what sounds are available just when you get the piece of software. Because you said earlier you got Ableton 7. It didn’t come with any sounds. It came with, You can record into this and arrange things in it, but there are no sounds. Whereas now if you get a piece of software, you’re often given premade loops and samples and MIDI instruments that are of a decent quality. I think Ableton, going back to Ableton, is quite good for that, isn’t it?

LR: It is, I think, particularly the soft synths and the software and the plug-ins are really cool. Wavetable is really nice. Operator is an FM synth, which is really complicated and really takes ages to get your head around. But again, you play with it and you initially make things that sound like the clangers, and eventually you might make something usable. But again, it’s that learning experience of like, if I twist this, what does that do? What sound does it make? How is this working with that? And I think loops are cool, but I think you run the risk of sounding like everyone else. I think loops are cool if you want a shaker, because if you ever try to programme a shaker, it’s not pleasant.

LM: I have it keeps moving out of time and you’ve got to put it all back in. Like if I’ve got my track at this BPM and I need a shaker, here’s a loop. It’s something that’s going to sit a little bit in the background, isn’t it? But I suppose what you’re saying is if it’s a major part of your song, don’t use a pre-existing loop, or if you do, edit it to make it your own. So do something like filter out some frequencies or add some effects to make it a more interesting sound, so you’re not just going with the pre-made, everybody could use this loop.

LR: So the Ableton pre-made loops are slightly better than some of the others. I think the Apple loops are not great. To be honest, I don’t even think they particularly sound good. The actual audio quality is not great. And you can tell a mile off, you’d be like, Oh, great, Apple loops.

LM: Yeah, there was a piece of software a few years ago that everybody bought it all at once. And then there was a… I had a number of conversations with people where they were like, Oh, that has been made in this piece of software because basically everybody was just going like, Oh, that’s a good drum loop. I’ll use that in my song. That’s a good synth riff. I’ll use that in my song. And then you had all these pieces of music that sounded very similar. I think in all types of original music, we would like to hear your originality as an artist. We’ve talked about it there in DJ performance and where the crossover is between DJing and performing your piece of music or creating your own edit or making it your own, it’s the same, I suppose, with using those things that come with music software as aids to get you started and as inspiration and starting points, but then taking them on a journey that this piece of music now sounds more unique to you.

LR: Yeah, and I think the same goes for things like Splice as well. Splice is really cool, don’t get me wrong.

LM: So that’s a website where you can get samples and… Well, many samples yeah?

LR: Mostly samples. I think they’ve branched out into software and stuff like that. But predominantly it’s samples. And I think the idea is you pay a nominal fee, might be 10 quid a month, and you get X number of credits and they roll over and you can exchange credits for samples. So it used to be that if you wanted a sample pack, you’d have to buy a whole pack and it was however many pounds and you wanted one sample, but you got 300 that you weren’t going to use. I think I like the idea in that respect that you’re getting exactly what you want from each pack. Realistically, if you’re, let’s say, house music, for example, if you’re buying the same or downloading the same sounds that everyone else is downloading, you’re not making yourself unique. If you’re, let’s say, like Defected Records, really big house label. If you download a Defected Record’s sample pack, you’re going to make a track that sounds like Defected Records or a certain producer of that label, which is cool. And if that’s what you want to go for, that’s fine. And you might get it signed and it might get released.

LR: But if you think about longevity of career, particularly within electronic music, but in any music, unless you’re curating your own sound, you’re only going to get so far because the other 300,000 people that were also releasing tunes that week in the UK or wherever have also got that sample pack. They’ve also got that cool little drum groove that Mark Knight made and put on there or a bass patch number four.

LM: There’s many opportunities to hear the same thing from other artists as well, isn’t there? Similar sounding. You’re not so unique that they are desperate for the next thing you’re going to put out because they can get it elsewhere for the people they’re using very similar sounds and very similar setups.

LR: The labels, they’ve often produced the sample pack that you’re using as well.

LM: Yeah.

LR: So they’ve got the sounds before you even arrange them in. It’s like a jigsaw. You make music by numbers a little bit less so, I guess, than if you were using Apple loops or the built-in sounds because you’ve at least had to go and find these. But I think if you look at any of the really big electronic music artists, if you look at the Chemical Brothers, for example, or Daftpunk, Basement Jaxx, any of the really big electronic music acts that have had sustained careers over decades, they’re not using sample packs from Splice. They’re just not.

LM: They’re making their own sounds and their own samples. This is like almost stepping through the journey, isn’t it? How do you start? How do you progress? And where do you go if you want longevity of your career? Ultimately, you start with the tools that you’re given in the software, you learn how to use the software, and then from that you find ways of making those sounds more your own. And ultimately you move in the direction of trying to create your own sounds from scratch, because then you are more unique and more people will be interested in you for your sound, not just from you sounding like other people.

LR: Yeah, I think trying to make music that sounds like other people, I think particularly early on, is a really useful learning experience. If you want to make a track, that sounds like… I mean, like I did when I was like, I just want to sound like Justice. I want to sound like these French electro guys. And that’s really cool. But I think you learn a lot about the fundamentals of creating music by that. Because like, okay, how have they got this bass sound? Or what are these drums? I need a Linndrum. What the hell is a Linndrum? Right, okay, I’ve got these sounds. How do I even make these? Because they’re not just the standard sounds, so they’ve done something with these. How do I make that sound like that? I think that’s an important learning process, so you understand the processes that’s going on in the production side of music making. But there comes a point where you need to think, Right, okay, I need to try and find out what my sound is. And it might not be the same sound that everyone else is making, or it might not be the sound that is a mainstream sound. But I think that’s okay. Ultimately, I think you need to make music that you like for you. And if other people like it, cool. But if they don’t like it, similarly, that’s cool as well.

LM: And that is how new genres and sounds are born at the end of the day, isn’t it? By breaking the mould a little bit and moving in a new direction, fusing different influences and genres that you may have been interested in that bring you to create your own sound. I think that’s great advice to somebody starting out how to start, but then ultimately try and make it your own and make music for you. Yes, you want people to dance to it, so you are going to be influenced a little bit, specifically in this genre, you’re going to be influenced a little bit about, is it going to get played in a club and has it got the right vibe to get people up and dancing? But also, are you making something interesting and unique? Is it still relevant? Is it in the electronic music field?

LR: Absolutely. If you’re making music that you would want to listen to when you went out and you’d be like, Oh, if I was in a club and this played, I’d really love this bit or I’d really like that bit, because ultimately you’ve got to play the thing. If you’re going to get booked, you’re going to need to go and play these tracks. The last thing you want to do is have made a career of music by numbers or making music in a genre to fit a certain sound or style. Then after going to go travel around the world playing things and you’re like, Oh, not this tune again that everybody likes. But it’s not really for me.

LM: Yeah.

LR: I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s probably better than not travelling the world and playing music to people. But still, you’ve got to live with these tracks forever and play them, so you might as well enjoy them and like them. I think it comes across as more genuine as well.

LM: Absolutely great. I think this has been really interesting and insightful to hear your journey, to hear what you recommend that people do to get in there, started in making their music or in DJing. It’s always really interesting to hear someone’s story. Just before we finish, have you got any golden nugget of advice that you would like to share with us?

LR: Try and be a bit tenacious. Don’t wait for people to ask you to do something, because in the music industry, if you wait for somebody to ask you to do something, you’ll wait a long time. So if you want to have a go at something or you really want to play somewhere or you want a gig or you want to find something out, ask. But also, I think if you’re just starting out, try and curate your own scene. And I think this is important with any genre and any aspect of music, but I think especially so for DJ-based music is try and get a bit of a scene going and don’t think, Oh, I have to play Tech House because that’s the big thing at the moment, for example. If you like a different genre of music, the chances are there’s at least 20 other people that do as well. So start a night in a really small space for those 20 people.

LM: I like that, yeah.

LR: And if it’s good and it works, more people will come. And eventually then you think, Oh, I actually need a bigger space, and you get a space where 100 people can fit in. And eventually you’re building your own scene. And I think off the back of that, then you can start booking people that are else from other places in that scene and they’re coming in and you’re then making connections with those people because you’re booking them to play your events and you’re building genuine relationships with people in the industry rather than just cold dropping emails, I guess.

LM: That’s brilliant. I really like that. And thank you so much for your time to share in all your great information and experience.

LR: Yeah, you’re welcome.

LM: We hope you found today’s podcast interesting and that you’ve got lots of takeaways that you can use in your own music making practise. Join us again for another of our Into Industry Making Tracks podcast very soon. Bye-bye.

 

Lisa Murphy: Hello. You’re listening to the Making Tracks Podcast, a podcast about songwriting, production and the music industry, brought to you by Access Music Production CIC, in collaboration with The Glasshouse International Centre for Music.

Holly Rees: Hi, I’m Holly Rees, and I’m here with Frankie Joblin.

Frankie Joblin: Hello.

HR: We are talking to Bradley from Singing Light Music.

Bradley Kulisic: Hello. You all right?

FJ: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself.

BK: My name is Bradley Kulisic. Singing Light Music was born in 2019 in Newcastle, Ponteland , where we were all based. It is a hybrid music management company. It’s artist management, label management, artist services, distribution, marketing company.

HR: So everything?

BK: Not touring, not accounting, not PR or publicity, although obviously that blurs somewhat into marketing. But yeah, it wears many similar shaped hats. We work with quite a lot of artists in the region, artists nationally and internationally as well. Management clients include Holy Moly and the Crackers, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs. Yeah, a number of other artists in the region as well. And a singer songwriter from London called Eleni Drake, and then also do distribution and marketing and consulting, for want of a better word, for probably a couple of hundred other artists, including the wonderful Frankie here.

FJ: Including me

BK: She’s pretty good.

HR: She’s all right.

FJ: This isn’t about me, guys.

HR: How did you start?

BK: Start which bit?

HR: Well, this is what I mean. Where did you start in all of that?

BK: I was very lucky in that my family lived just south of London, basically. When opportunities came up, my first work experience I had when I was a kid was at a guitar shop in Dorking in Surrey, which its claim to fame, was where the members of Queen all met.

FJ: No way.

HR: That’s such a cool claim to fame though.

BK: I was just sorting all the sheet music and stuff like that. I had no idea what it was. I was just interested in playing the guitar, really. I did that and just started going to gigs in the mid 90s. Went to university in Manchester, did a music production and business studies course. I was terrible at music production. It’s really hard.

FJ: You should have making tracks back then. You might have been in a different place.

BK: The gear that we had, we do have a HD24s as the recording devices. I don’t know if you know what those things are.

FJ: I have no idea.

BK: Basically huge hard drives. We were on very… The Yamaha Digital Desk which was fine. It was full automation, stupid, awful effects inside them. Some people were really good. I was really bad at engineering. Good at ideas, but bad at engineering. I thought I quite like the business study side of it. I was like, Oh, maybe I should start a label or something like that. Then went back down to my folks and I was just like, What am I going to do? I need to find some sort of job. Just started finding my way through the music industry. Because I was in a punk and hardcore scene, you would share a lot of information through fanzines and chat message for forums on websites and stuff like that. People are like, Oh, there’s a job opportunity here. You’d just go and take it and just meet people.

HR: What kind of jobs were they that you were in?

BK: Warehousing, like lugging around boxes, basically. Tidying up studios, that stuff. You just make friends along the way.

FJ: Just trying to get your foot in the door kind of thing.

BK: Yeah, getting foot in the door. You say yes to stuff. Sometimes it can be backbreaking horrible. But I like engaging with people one on one. I’m not very good at holding court in a social situation where people go, Do you want to do this? And you have a chat and stuff like that. You can make… You learn a lot and you can make a nice positive impact and stuff like that. That was my way forward. Then a company I worked for in the warehouse had a label manager job come up, which was basically in theory, it was coordinating with the labels that we were working with in North America, getting their releases, or domesticated, domesticised, for want of a better word, into UK and Europe, getting the sales notes together. How many units like CDs and vinyl were we going to sell into stores, see how we could put together the marketing plans and stuff like that. I didn’t get that job. I got offered the sales and marketing job, which was basically calling up the distributors across Europe and saying, Hey, The National are coming. We’ve got their debut album. No one knows who they are. Do you want to buy some CDs? Then the distributor in the Netherlands would go, No, thanks. Then did that for two and a half years. Yeah, it felt like a lot longer. We did about a thousand releases.

FJ: Wow, that’s so many.

BK: It was cool. It was a trial by fire. I left in 2004, but the music industry had collapsed at that point. It was the end. It was end time. Because it was all based on CD sales and stuff like that. Itunes didn’t exist at the point as a store to buy stuff on. So it was just like everyone was just pirateing. Sales were gone and thus loads of companies and distributors went as well. I’ve just been since then and now learning stuff, working with people. Lots of people fell out of their record deals through that process as well in the mid-2000’s. Labels were being bought up by bigger labels and people getting dropped through those processes. I was like, Oh, I’ll help you set up a record label. Just giving them the tools and the processes that I’d learned and the confidence that they could do it. And yeah, it seemed to work pretty well. Did that for a little while. Got into artist management as well from 2008. Got nagged into it by a friend. I was glad I did do that because they were really good. They’re a two-piece brother and sister band. They were just so amazing. Just a fantastic live band. Quite hard to sell. As a record, people were just like, Oh, it’s fun, whatever. It was never going to change the world. But yeah, as a live thing, it worked really well. People were really into it. I just had to get out of the way of it, really and just not ruin it. They ruined it by making a not very good second album. I didn’t like the fact that I told them it wasn’t good enough.

BK: So I got the sack. But it’s fine. You have to learn how to deal with these things.

FJ: Yeah, the cutthroat business.

BK: Yeah, it’s a complicated business because it’s commercial decisions mixed with people’s emotional elements. You have to be really respectful of that. I guess you have to get ahead of bad situations before they happen as well. Oh, we’re going to go in the studio and record it really badly. I probably should have said, halfway through the recording, we should try and tighten this up now before it got to the end.

HR: Yeah, the things you know in hindsight.

FJ: Yeah, exactly.

BK: And when you’re younger as well, and I was deferring to them because they were older and more experienced, their dad was quite a successful manager and stuff like that. I was just like, Oh, they obviously know what they’re doing. No one knows what they’re doing 100% of the time. It’s just, particularly in this business, you’re trying to just figure it out.

FJ: I feel like you just learn from everything you do wrong with music.

BK: It’s a good educator.

FJ: Everything seems to go wrong, but then after that, it’s like, Well, I’ll just never do that again.

BK: I mean, sometimes they’re the best lessons that I’ve made. I’m not doing that again. You could make the same song 10 times and only one time it might work, right?

FJ: Yeah.

BK: It depends on how people connect with it. There’s so many different variables out of your control.

FJ: Yeah, exactly.

BK: Around the early 2010s, a thing started to occur which was called label services, which was basically distributors would have infrastructure and they’d have knowledge and expertise inside them and they’d go, Oh, right, we can get your music out to Spotify and Apple. I could go into Spotify launched in 2008 or something like that. We can get your music out to that and we can help you plot together marketing campaigns. We can make sure your tunes are registered with all the rights companies like PPL and all that stuff. Get this information sent over to the official charts company. If you need some money to pay for these things, we can advance you that. And that start to… Instead of those being like snap-on services, people started to do that as an enhanced percentage. You pay the distributor like 30 % or something like that, and they would do all these services for you within the percentage.

BK: And that became formalised as label services. I was doing that since 2002 anyway at Southern Records, which was the distributor. I was working with… We were doing that work, but it was never formalised in that way. But I noticed that I was doing that with the other artists that I was working with, helping them set up infrastructure and stuff. I was like, Oh, I should probably figure out what is going on with this area. I went to work for a company called Kartel with a K in Hackney. Between 2014 and 2018, I was the head of services, their artist and label services there, helping just make sure we were just providing the best possible service we could, upgrading all our digital distribution systems and just, I don’t know, I’m a bit picky about quality of service. I think music industry is quite easy at saying, Yeah, I’ll do something for you, and then just not responding to your email. It’s because people get busy and, like you were saying a bit earlier, you get distracted by the new exciting thing you want to work on. But I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit too emo about it, but I feel like it’s nice to follow through on your commitments.

HR: I don’t think that’s being too emo. I think that’s quite like. It’s just being pretty standard.

BK: Standard, nice. Obviously, it’s a business at the same time. But when you’re working on commissions, which is the unifying factor of where I am at the moment, artist management is commission business, distribution is commission business, you’re taking a risk the whole way through. I may never get paid, but then obviously the artist won’t get paid as well, so we have to find some way to go through it. I could charge people fees, but I’m fairly sure people would stop working for a couple of months because they’re like, I’ve run out of money and it takes years to get something going.

HR: On that one, you’re looking at an artist and obviously it’s commission-based. So how do you choose whether you’re going to take a punt on them?

BK: Great question. I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, that’s changed a lot over the years. If I had income from a paid job that I was doing and I knew it was going to last X amount of time and there was a project that was coming through that was going to take a bit of time to set up or whatever, or it was going to be a certain amount of work a week for a certain amount of time, then you could probably run it alongside just based on love and see where it goes. Obviously, success is a fuel of its own, isn’t it? Regardless of how much money comes through, if something’s going, you feel like, Oh, great, people are liking this, and that can turn into a motivating thing. If people then come on board elsewhere, like publicists or other media people or booking agents or whatever, that also gives you more to coordinate, more people to bash ideas with and stuff like that. That didn’t really answer your question. At this point, because I’m running a company and I have responsibilities because I’m a middle-aged guy, I have to be a bit more cutthroat, I suppose, commercially minded.

BK: I’d like to work on everything I possibly could and just add, spread good vibes, but obviously I need to make sure I’m as appropriate on each project as possible. It’s also good to equip artists with the tools, to tell them the basics of how it should work and what they need to deliver and stuff like that, but it is ultimately on them to get out there and make the sales in a way for want of a better term, because they’re the best salespeople for the project. Someone can go out in there and go, Have you seen this thing? But the artist showing them what it is, there’s no cleaner connection than that, I don’t think. If I get approached by artists for management in particular these days, I have to look at the wider team or lanes where I feel like we can turn it into something that’s going to turn into a business for them and for me. It’s a bit gruesome.

FJ: Certainly for me, being an emerging artist, I thought for so long like, Oh, I need a manager. I need a manager. I’m not going to be able to achieve anything. But I think with people like you in the industry, giving the advice and doing things like this, actually, if you just get told what you need to do and then you learn how to do it, it’s actually really rewarding when you start to do it and like, Oh, I can do this all on my own and look at all the things I’ve learnt along the way. It’s quite cool. I think you just need the people available to you to be like to show you what to do and to like… I don’t know the word I’m looking for.

HR: Give you the skills to do it yourself.

FJ: Yeah, and just like

HR: DIY.

HR: Which leads me actually to my next question. What would you define DIY as in music?

BK: It can be very purist about it, but everyone’s got some form of structure, whether it’s their accountant or someone actually scrutinising what they’ve done or using a distributor. I think where we’re at now, you can’t really use the old definitions of DIY because everything is through major corporations. You can’t just have a small business where you make you a couple of thousand CDs like you’d be able to do in the past and just sell them out the back of your car. This is just not happening. People go, Can I stream it on Amazon? You don’t have any choice but to engage with these things. You can write the song, produce it yourself, deliver it through that and work with these companies. But you can do an awful lot yourself. I think people should, relating to what Frankie was just saying, there’s something about artists being equipped with information that actually helps them become better as artists and as potential people to protect their interests as well. I keep saying it whenever people ask me what my end goals are with the business. I haven’t got like an off-ramp, really, aside from death or retirement. But it’s not a very good thing, I think, for information to be hoarded.

BK: If I was, say, with Pigs, for example, if I was the only one that was the custodian of all the information, then if I get run over by a bus because I’m playing on my phone when I cross the street, I think that’s a terrible position to put people in. I think people should have some way to scrutinise their team. Even as they’re going. They shouldn’t have to wait until we find out that there’s a mistake to go, Have you done that right? They should be able to know to an extent as they go. But that’s just me personally.

HR: No, I totally agree with that.

BK: But yeah, DIY. I don’t know. I mean, some of the best artists know quite a lot about what they’re doing and they use their team. I think people like me and all managers in general, we’re employed supplementary elements. We’re not in charge. The artist is in charge ultimately. We’re your employees. I think people should look at it around that way and I think these people should be adding value, not just being a secretary or going, Oh, I don’t know, I’m going to go just bumble about and see whatever. They should be adding value and you’ll need to know how to kick the tyres on that.

HR: Yeah, I think being able to kick the tyres comes from having that knowledge about how it’s works already.

FJ: That’s what we want to do through Into Industry. Stop the gatekeeping around the industry and give people the tools and the knowledge that they can be like, Yes, this is what I’m going to do and this is what needs to happen.

BK: I get equally as frustrated as artists when I see panel discussions or whatever and they go, Oh, we’re going to have a chat about current marketing trends or whatever, and then they don’t actually talk about any execution or any costs or any ideas. They just go, Yeah, you can do this. I was like, I could have read that on a blog. I’ve sat here it’s boring.

HR: Yeah, give me actionable things that I can do.

BK: None of it’s proprietary information. It’s just like I had an idea, I plugged it into the system, I tried it, it worked or it didn’t. Just share the idea. It’s not difficult. I find that super frustrating. I’d rather if there was some way to just download all the information and plug it into people’s heads and say, Here’s everything. I think that’d be great.

HR: Picking up from that about artists gaining the skills to do it themselves, essentially, do you think if you looked at the trajectory of an artist’s career, that there’s specific moments where it makes sense for the artist to stop doing it themselves or stop doing certain things themselves and bring on hiring PR or go looking for a manager or a booking agent?

BK: Yeah, I think there’s inevitably a time to stop handling everything yourself and trust other people to get involved. It has to be done if you want something to scale and be artists do at a certain point have to look at themselves as businesses. They have to pay for rehearsal rooms, they have to pay for equipment, they have to pay for sustenance, get into gigs, everything, paying tax ultimately. That all that stuff has to be done by merchandise. It all becomes transactional. So having some form of help there is going to be useful for pretty much anyone at a certain point, whether that scales into half a dozen people that you call on regularly or even as part of the core team, or just one other person that helps share the burden and scrutinise the decisions and help you open up the creative ideas. Because the admin stuff does cut directly into the creative energy you’ve got available, but it’s also a business and you also want that person to be reliable, so they need to be invested in it and know that they can actually make a difference. To cut a long story short or long answer short, yes, but when is that moment is when you were asking, isn’t it?

BK: I mean, they do start to… I think they feel obvious to me and they do, but that’s probably the decades of seeing how it goes and maybe running at the wrong time and stuff like that. I think the temptation is to bring on a publicist quite early because you feel like that would actually help achieve quite a lot. But the reality is the publicity, once you’ve started it, you need to keep them on for good because you don’t want to have that gap in communications with people whilst you’re trying to build advocates at media and stuff like that. But also the value of publicity is very diminished in terms of who’s reading the articles. They’re more useful to go, I’ve had this co-sign from this publication, rather than, look, someone’s going to become a fan off the back of this article because no one’s reading it because they’re on social media.

HR: Yeah, well, I’ve talked about this before. It’s like actually, whenever I’ve got reviews or something, it’s more just an excuse to have something else for me to post on my socials rather than expecting new fans necessarily from that.

FJ: It’s like building your musical CV, isn’t it? These people have said these good things, so you will probably like me.

BK: I think it’s a great way of looking at it. It’s a costly risk to take on. You have to give the publishers the tools to get the best out of it. Going single by single is going to be quite hard compared to having a… That’s why a lot of people are doing EPs because you’ve got a destination at the end of it. You’ve got quite a defined aesthetic. You’ve got new photos, new logo, and it is all part of the theme. You can make a bit of noise for three, four months and then have a bit of a break and then restart. Hopefully, the narrative of what you’re selling has gone up because you’ve got bits of press here and so on. You can use that additional enhanced CV to shop to festivals and stuff like that. And then I suppose it gets into getting a booking agent and stuff like that. But they’re a commercial entity as well, so if they’ll want to see that you’re selling tickets regionally and then they’ll try and do that nationally and see how you get on internationally and stuff like that. It’s just really slow, steady work.

BK: But think of the things that your fans of. Your fans of them in a deep way. You’re interested in probably quite a lot of stuff. You’re like, Oh, it’s cool what this artist is doing. But you may not buy a ticket to every single thing that they’re doing or buy merchandise and stuff like that. To become a fan is quite slow going. It takes quite a lot of ongoing connection with that person and you becoming more and more interested in them being active and giving you what you want. I think it’s easy for me to say I should be patient about it, but it is a slow business in that regard.

HR: I love that actually, thinking about it in terms of the longevity of that. Fan connection.

BK: I mean, there’s some stuff where you just got bloomin’ heck, and it just knocks your socks off. Gosh, I sound like an old man. You know what I mean? But it’s very rare, isn’t it? I think something just comes along and it’s like a swinging wrecking ball and you’re like, Whoa, I wasn’t expecting that. You’re suddenly interested. Like Wet Leg, when that first single came over, I was like, Okay, because I don’t know what it was about that. I mean, it was fun, it was cookie, strange, well-produced. There’s a certain amount of… Just weird. There’s so many things that worked about it. But I mean, how often does that happen?

FJ: I know, yeah.

BK: Very rarely. There’s a couple of pop songs that do that a couple of times a year as well, right? Then when you break that down versus the 200,000 songs that go up on Spotify a day. Yeah, exactly. That’s a very small amount of wrecking balls. The rest of it is like –

FJ: Hard work.

BK: Yeah, it’s hard work and building faith. There’s nothing more powerful, I don’t think, than word of mouth. It really does work. I mean, when was the last time you clicked on an advert on Instagram and went, I’m a fan of this thing now. I guess the last thing I was, was some mould cleaner for the bathroom. This thing’s great.

HR: I kept getting like fleeces. I’d be like, Buy these fleeces.

BK: Yeah, but you’re looking at it because you’re freezing cold.

HR: That looks warm. I don’t need to pay my heating bill. I’ll get a fleece from Instagram.

BK: I can’t use my fingers because they’ve snapped off.

FJ: No, that makes so much sense. I think there is that thing of building momentum when you’re an emerging artist and always trying to grow your fan base, and it is super slow. But I think when you’ve done something a lot and you still getting the same results or if you’re playing the same venues or to the same number of crowds, I think that’s when you start to think like, Oh, how can I take this to the next level? That’s maybe when you would start to be like, Who else can I get involved to help me now? Because this is what I’ve done. This is where I seem to keep getting stuck.

BK: Yes. Momentum is a strange intangible thing, but momentum is… An audience really engages with momentum as well. If you think about an artist like Self-Esteem, everything that occurred with her over the last couple of years, she was grinding away for years and years and years. The album she put out a few years ago is a great record, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t quite reached her fully formed form. Then she’s really just stuck at it in those two years that this album’s come out. She’s been non-stop, just relentless. Who knows how it’s translated outside the UK, but in terms of the UK, she’s just really captured lots of people whose hearts and imaginations. She stands for something. People are caught up in the… Part of the fandom, I think, is people getting swept up in the momentum of what she’s helped achieve.

FJ: Like watching a global thing. Being on the journey.

BK: yeah, it makes you feel more fond of it in a way.

HR: Definitely.

BK: Better say it’s hard to achieve and music is a cultural element as well, isn’t it? And it’s not an essential, I’m sorry to say to everyone that’s listening. It’s not like water or anything like that. People take it very much for granted. Us three in this room and everyone listening are strange by the comparison of most people in the country. They don’t engage with music anywhere near the way that we do. But if we switched off all the music in the world, everyone would be like, What the hell has gone wrong? This is weird. We’re offering a really powerful, amazing, beautiful thing, but it’s intangible, strange. It fits in different ways. We have to accept that it’s not going to, for most people, it’s a thing that we do. It can’t be everything.

HR: I just want to loop back to that momentum thing because I think there’s something really interesting there about once you’ve gained momentum, you’ll gain momentum and it’ll keep looping back. When I did my Canada tour, which was just a thing that I decided I was going to do.

BK: How many people do that, though? It’s amazing.

HR: It’s a bit weird. I just went and booked this insane 50 date tour across Canada and then came back and I had such momentum off the back of that back here. Even though I hadn’t played 50 shows in the UK, I’d played 50 shows somewhere else where nobody in the UK saw it except for my Instagram posts. But because that felt like momentum, my next show back in the UK sold really quickly because people were like, Oh, she just came back from Canada. Actually, probably I was a better artist after having done this massive tour, but I wasn’t like a different artist, but I was like the momentum carried itself and it was just weird.

FJ: I think if people see you doing well or if you can put it across to them that you’re doing well, they want to be a part of it and they want to be like a piece of the journey and they want to interact with you in that way and people being the first fans of someone and being like, I saw them when they were like

HR: When they were this big.

FJ: Yeah. I think that’s part of it as well, which is really nice, I think that people…

BK: Yeah. I guess from your perspective, it was hard for you to be able to judge how much better of an artist you’d become, but it would have been… There would have been quite a bit of progression and lots of skills enhanced. Even if it’s like, Oh, you have to change is something like two degrees left or right, and suddenly it clicks for people. It doesn’t have to be much and you don’t even know if you’ve done it, but you can tell when people start reacting.

HR: Yeah. I think for me, when I was on the tour, it was just like, It was the fact that I was just gigging every day almost. It was just that routine. I’ve never had another period in my life for that such a long period. It was a nine-month tour because Canada is massive and I went Coast to Coast. But it was just like every day I would wake up, I would know what the plan was. Okay, I’m driving to three hours to this city. I’m going to set up. I’ll go get a shower and then I’ll go play the gig and then I’ll go back to the van and then I’ll do it all over again. And that repetitiveness of really having the time and space to just be doing music. I was just writing and I was posting about it and I was talking on interviews. It was just this weird experience where I got to just be Holly Rees, the artist full-time.

BK: That’s great.

HR: But that meant that I could practise all of those skills, like all of those. That was the first time that I had brought on another team member. I got a lovely PR agent, Krista, from Jasmine PR, who was based in Canada to help me because we had loads of releases that were coming out while I was doing that tour. But it is that thing of like, Oh, that felt like the right moment that I needed just another person in the Holly Rees team, especially because then when I came back, I worked with Krista a little bit back here, but not really to the same extent, because when I came back, I also had my band. So then you’ve got Ryan, who’s my bassist, was a really good extra person to fill that.

FJ: Yeah.

HR: That was tangent.

BK: No, it’s a good one. It’s maybe a bit too deep stuff. But thinking of you hiring a publicist when you’re in Canada, I think that’s the perfect time, if and when people are looking to do overseas marketing as well. The world’s become quite a lot more insular over the last decade. You used to be able to just go, Oh, I’m working with a Canadian artist and I’m going to get some radio playing, just ping out the CDs to Radio One and six music and stuff like that, and you would just get some plays, but it’s just that’s slowly closed. They’re looking for local relevance, as are the publications and radios in France and Germany and North America and Canada and stuff like that. The fact that you were in the market and you were doing a 50-day tour and doing releases, it makes Krista’s job so much easier and they could achieve a lot more because it says, What’s the local relevance? Well, the fact that this person is grinding through this massive country. The fact that most artists in the country that live there don’t do that sort of thing. Like, Who goes to play in Regina? No one.

HR: That was a really good show there. I really loved that.

BK: It’s a wild place.

HR: I’ve dropped my pic on stage and some man came up to me afterwards and just gave me his little pic case so I never would lose my picks again.

BK: That was in Regina.

HR: That was the Regina show.

BK: That’s a strange little coincidence, isn’t it?

HR: I know. Anyways, for the listeners at home, I just showed a little-

BK: With an R, everyone.

HR: A little pick case, key ring that I got given.

FJ: That’s mad.

HR: I know. Anyways, right, I’m going to transition away from my mad tour and pick the industry again.

BK: Oh, great.

HR: What advice would you give to artists that are just starting out and also to artists that are maybe in the middle? They’ve done emerging and they’re trying to step up from emerging. I guess, well, maybe we get rid of the word middle, but just be like, so maybe you’ve plateaued at some point. How do you break through that plateau?

BK: Well, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to, I suppose, is a reality that you have to come to. But I’m not going to be the fastest runner in the world. In fact, I’ve found my limit and I’m pretty slow. So emerging artists have got an amazing opportunity that they get once, which is to present themselves locally and more widely in the local area as a new thing. New things are shiny and exciting and people are interested in that. So you get, as you know, from various discussions with your family and all that, you get one first impression. So you need to do that well. And where we’re at, which is in a media content heavy era, is that you’re going to need quite a lot of things to follow up that process. You might get very lucky and you might have a swinging wrecking ball, but even then someone around you is going to know how to capitalise on that gathering wind. More than likely that’s just not going to happen, particularly if it’s your first ever band or whatever. It’s just with Wet Leg again, that was their third or fourth iteration of music projects they’ve done.

BK: That’s not me being shady, but they knew at that point how to ride the horse. That’s all the better for them. That’s the bright moment for that to happen to them in that sense. Lots of assets. I think it would be useful. Quite a clear, defined idea of what you want it to look like and what your personality is. You have to get used to the idea you need to tell people stuff a dozen times.

FJ: We were just talking about that.

BK: You have to find a different way of going, I’ve got a gig on the 13th. Do you know the gig is on the 13th? The 13th is 13 days from now. You have to say it.

FJ: I was Googling other ways to say big things coming soon.

HR: Did you get a list?

FJ: Thesaurus for exciting things.

BK: Yeah. Just get ChatGPT and go, Big things coming soon in the style of Wordsworth.

HR: I want to know what was the list.

FJ: Oh I can’t remember now.

HR: Big things coming soon. Soon, there’ll be some big things.

BK: Restructure the sentence.

HR: Big things, Come back soon.

BK: But yeah, you need to do that because I haven’t got any statistics to hand, but I would assume that most of the time a social media post would be seen by 10 to 15 % of your followers or something like that any one time.

HR: I think that sounds about right.

BK: So that means if you were trying to get it to 100 % assuming at some point all those people were definitely going to be online, you’re going to have to keep going quite a lot. And you can do carousels until you’re blue in the face. But you also don’t want to get people to be fed up with you. You’re going to need to be creative. People are choosing a business where they’re putting themselves up on stage, metaphorically or actually. So don’t shy away from that. We’ve gone away from a period of mystery. Whilst you can be mysterious and have a bit of fun, like there’s that metal band, Sleep Token, around at the moment who wear masks and stuff like that, who seem to have exploded and come out of nowhere. But I think it’s a deliberate mystery as to who they are.

BK: I think I imagine if you do three seconds of digging on the internet, you could find out. I think people just want to play along. I think that’s a nice thing that people want, giving people threads to either follow or worlds to imagine and stuff like that. I expect they’ve got quite big budgets for that process. Lots and lots of assets to work with. Obviously, the more… I’m sorry, it’s a very reductive term as well. I don’t mean that to reduce anyone’s art. But yeah, lots of recordings, play out as much as you possibly can, if that’s an applicable thing. Make sure you’re engaging with BBC Introducing and local press and stuff like that and keep them updated as to what you’re doing. Just because they didn’t respond the first time doesn’t mean they’re not interested. It’s just that their inboxes inundated. And any publicist will tell you the same. One of the reasons why they want to keep working with you is one, for the fee, but also secondly is because they’re trying to chip away and find the fans. And if they send out, I don’t know, to Clash Magazine, five different campaigns, like here’s the single, here’s the single, here’s the tour, blah, blah, blah, here’s the EP, but nothing comes through.

BK: The fact that someone at Clash has seen the name is still an impression of someone who can make a difference, hopefully, to you down the line. You can do that thing DIY as well. You obviously want to be nice and respectful and give people very easy tools to work with. And then hopefully it will continue to grow. I mean, it’s hard. Good quality recordings and mixes and stuff like that will help more ears be interested in it and find it easier to find better placements for it. But of course, that then costs money. So it’s a tricky balance. There’s always something that people can do within their skill set, I think, that can add some unique proposition. But far be from me to say what that is. I have to have a chat with them one on one and pull that out.

HR: I think what you just said about pulling on other skill sets that you might have is really worth talking about because I think when I started, I was very keen to be like. This is my music and no other part of me is to do with that. I don’t want to talk about it because before I got into music, I was a fine art painter and I made paintings.

BK: Cool.

HR: Yeah, it’s cool and I can talk about it. But at first I was like, No, otherwise they won’t think I’ll be able to do music. I can only do one thing. But then more recently, I’ve just chilled out about it. And when we launched the big crowd funder to raise a load of money to make this daft music video, I put a painting up as a reward because I was like, Why not?

BK: Amazing.

HR: And it sold. And that’s really why we were able to fund it, because the painting sold for quite a lot. But it’s like, yeah, I would say not to shy away from other things that you can offer. Because especially now in the world of media and social media and everything, there’s so much out there that if you can bring extra things to it and to your presence online, I think it can just help you stand out a little bit.

BK: Yeah, you’re going to want to have to try and stand out in some way. Sorry, Frankie.

FJ: No, it’s okay. I was going to say I feel like people respond well and relate to you being as authentic in little quote marks as possible and just being like you and people can see that and relate to it because they’re like, Oh, like in some ways. But then obviously then the mysterious thing is cool as well.

BK: I think there’s a time and a place for the mysterious and I think it can be something as simple as just not telling the world who your partner is or something like that. Maybe that becomes part of the thing. Maybe your partner is an important intrinsic part of how you want to present yourself and how you want people to engage with you and all that stuff, and that’s completely fine. But the biggest artists that you’re fans of, they’ve probably got such a rich variety of things that they’ve done. I think some of them are going to be amazing illustrators, some of them are going to be producers, and that’s a skill that they can bring in. Maybe they’re really good at just creative ideas and networking with other people and all those stuff. They feel like they’re connected to music. But in using Holly’s example, if you’re trying to delineate and just say, I just do this, then you are just… Yeah, it’s quite hard to get people connected. I think people like and feel there’s quite a lot going on with the person and you can connect with them.

HR: Every single person is pretty complicated and has all of this chaos and everything to them that I think if you share a bit more of a little bit of the extra chaos. It feeds into what you were saying. If people respond well to…

FJ: It’s going back to that thing of connecting and something like… It’s not just the music, I guess at the end of the day.

BK: I do think there’s an interesting connecting back to the idea that everything’s going a bit insular. The UK has always been pretty good, I think, at delineating out the regional scenes and stuff like that, obviously Newcastle and the North East has got quite a strong, either industry or very Newcastle United theme. That can be a blessing and a curse because it can taint you in one way or the other. But whilst there’s interest in that thing and if you’re proud of where you come from or if you’ve got some connection to it, I think that can be a really helpful thing to help build up regional connection. Similar with people from Sunderland, obviously, that’s a powerful thing. Yorkshire has never been afraid of that. Music in the northwest, like Liverpool and Manchester, obviously the classic music cities and stuff like that. London doesn’t really have that because it’s just if you live in the Southeast, you end up going to London.

FJ: Yeah.

BK: It doesn’t really have any… People don’t go, Wey Brighton. It’s just like, I tell you, Brighton, because you’ve got an extra piercing.

FJ: Do you think it’s trying to build a really strong identity and brand? Do you think that that’s useful for artists?

BK: If they have their own brand?

FJ: Yeah, I guess just, yeah.

BK: I think so. Yeah, I mean, this is a horrible terminology, of course, but you are in conjunction with your creativity and you’re putting yourself out there in your business aspirations. You are a brand as well. I know it’s tempting to want to kick against that and I don’t like it necessarily either, but that’s the world we live in. I do like it as well. I think it’s a good creative challenge. It can hem you in, I think. But at the same time, similarly with how you build, you can also bridge out of it or extend that universe for want of a better term. I think that does need to be done. Whether your brand is we are a four-piece blood band that drinks and that’s what we do, or, You’re a hyperfeminist, or something like that. It does give clarity to the message, clarity to, for people to understand who you are and how to engage with you and stuff like that. I don’t think it should be shied away from. I think people are just so short of time and there’s so much choice out there. I think you need to guide people to what you’re trying to say. I think being a collective for an eclectic sake or being mysterious for mysterious sakes, I think, is at the moment, I don’t think we’re in that zone.

FJ: Yeah.

HR: I think that comes back to as well the thing we were saying earlier about having to just say the same thing a lot of times in different ways. There was this thing I have heard years ago and I’ve held on to because I hate posting on social media, but you have to tell people about anything. But it was just that you are the only person that sees all of your posts. Actually, you think you’re posting a lot, but most other people on the platform have not seen all the posts that you’ve posted.

FJ: Yeah, that’s really, Yeah.

HR: So it’s fine. So keep posting because you want them to be able to see it and there’s so much noise.

BK: There’s a zillion different ways of doing it as well, isn’t it? If you’re selling merch, you wear it yourself, do a couple of photos like you do with your tote bag, Frankie, and then very nice. Then you can get other people to wear it. You can place it around the place. You don’t put it in every single post. You mix it up with other social messages, don’t you? But it does seem like it’s overkill, but maybe there’s one that’s fun as well. Yeah, and it works. It gets the attention and people come to the gig going, Oh, I know that there’s going to be some tote bags to bring some extra cash.

FJ: Yeah.

BK: Maybe that’s the idea. This is going to sound a bit capitalistic and I apologise for the anarchists out there. But part of the fan process is getting people to stop clicking play or not just clicking play and having a commercial relationship with you. If you’re making merchandise or CDs or vinyl or something like that and people want to buy it, they’re stepping into the next level of potential fandom and you then have an obligation to treat them with respect and honour that relationship and stuff like that. I made that sound super scary, but I think that’s an amazing opportunity. The fact that someone would do that I think is a beautiful thing. That shows that you’re heading into the middle, for whatever that is.

HR: Whatever the middle is.

BK: yeah, undefined middle.

HR: My next question was what timeline would you recommend for campaigns and releasing? But that seems like such an out-of-nowhere question.

BK: I think it maybe needed a hand-break turn.

HR: Okay, hand-break turn. Let’s talk about PR campaigns.

BK: Cool.

HR: For the listeners who maybe haven’t put out anything yet, so they’ve got their first single, it’s ready, and I think it’s nice and they just want to get it out. They just want to put it on SoundCloud and release it. What would your advice be?

BK: I think that that should be part of that. You’re going to need to plan it out to an extent. I think there’s always going to be a balance with artists, and I think rightly so, where they need to balance the energetic, creative urgency with what makes sense for their greater goals. They might not know what their greater goals are until they start doing the work anyway. And songs are new to anyone in the world. Before the point they’ve heard it. There could be some songs. I mean, you just look at TikTok, there’s songs from 20, 30 years ago that are doing the rounds. A friend of mine manages a band, a song has gone viral on TikTok that they own a recording of and it’s from about five, six years ago. That whole band’s having a new lease of life and stuff like that. It’s interesting. That was a tangent. So what would you do? Yeah. I think they need to get to the bottom of what they want to achieve. I think that’s sometimes quite hard. I have quite challenging conversations with artists sometimes in slightly competitive ways. I’ve had one with Frankie, I think.

BK: We were like, What exactly do you want? But not because I’m not interested in finding out, just to help them get a bit closer to having that discussion with themselves. Because a lot of the time people go, Well, all I want to do is get the music out and play a couple of shows. I think levels of ambition you unlock as you progress. I don’t think with the Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs. They thought that they would be thinking about album number five at this point and doing a third tour of North America next year and going to Australia at the end of this year. I just don’t think that was ever really… They might thought that would be cool to do, but I don’t think they thought that was part of their business plan or even the plan that was realistically feasible, particularly the type of music they make and the scene they come from. So… Yeah, I think you have to just get the music out there, keep defining and refining the proposition. But yet I don’t just whiz them all out aimlessly. I think that would be the best guarding advice I suppose I’d give.

BK: If people at BBC Introducing and stuff like that are digging it, they know what they’re talking about and they know what they’re listening for. If it gets levelled up for want of a better word to Radio One, then you can tell that people are interested. I think at that point, maybe we reflect a bit and go, Right, okay, so we’ve actually got some cards to play here and we need to think about what we want and being a bit more tempered about that, I need to get this song out because it’s driving me mad.

FJ: I think it links to what you were saying about it being the long game. It’s like if you’ve got all this good stuff, spread it out because you need to keep giving the fans something every now and then and building it. If you’ve got all the good stuff, just think about a nice little-

BK: Yeah, I think you have to feed the beast and starve it as well in terms of fans and also industry and stuff like that. I think you can be too present sometimes. But I keep thinking about Blur playing Wembley Stadium recently and just when they knocked it on the head, they got to… Oh, no, sorry, they played Wembley Arena, didn’t they? Which one is a big one? Stadium is a big one, isn’t it? I don’t like sports.

FJ: I don’t really know.

BK: I do like sports. I just don’t play them or engage with them. So do I like them? They played the big one, which is the stadium, and they played two nights there. When they knocked it on the head, like what was it, about 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, they were probably at the stadium size, the arena size, sorry. By them being absent and people having a deep relationship with them over those 20 years and stuff like that has made them play two nights in a place that’s five times bigger. I mean, I think that’s testament to the quality of the relationship that they galvanised through that period of time. And yes, they probably look back and they look at it and go, We did that in a chaotic fashion. Yes, and someone’s going to be going, Look, of course that happened because they had major label money and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, that can’t be denied, but they were obviously good and they iterated and went with what worked for them. They’re obviously ambitious. They pushed towards directions and stuff like that. Nothing, that’s all completely fine and valid if that’s what they want to do.

BK: But yeah, if it was all flimsy and worthless, then there’s absolutely no way 100,000 people would have spent 100 quid on them each. I think it’s just, yeah, it’s fascinating to think. I think all music has that power to transform you. I wouldn’t have thought dance pop from ’93 would be basically top of the charts again at the moment. It’s kinda cool.

HR: Cool how things, like cycle.

FJ: Yeah, everything goes round.

HR: That’s really interesting.

BK: Yeah, rock music never really goes away. Funk and Soul never goes away. Hip hop doesn’t go away. Classical doesn’t go away. None of it does. I think once people have got an emotional connection with it and it’s an emotional art form, I think you can really… But of course, it’s a vulnerable position to be in. I sit behind a spreadsheet all day long, so I don’t do it. Well done to all of you for all of you for doing.

HR: One last question.

BK: Sure.

HR: Any top tips that you would give to artists or maybe not even just artists, but young people that maybe want to get to where you are and get into the industry in that way?

BK: I would say be persistent, be friendly, but keep knocking on people’s doors. Show your value. Expect to have some value as well. Don’t just say, I can’t do it because of X. Just find ways to make it work. It’s a very personable business and most people are slightly weird. This is where we found more of who we are within this. So whether that’s engaging with people, we might find that quite difficult. Yeah, just go out there, be persistent, be friendly, be honourable, be nice, make connections. You might not be able to do it amazingly to start with, but just make good impressions with people. Say yes to opportunities when they come through. I was going to say don’t take them all, but take as many as you possibly can that are relevant to you, refine your craft and just keep going. Persistence is the only thing, really.

HR: I love that, I think that’s very true.

FJ: Very true, yeah.

HR: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

BK: My pleasure. I hope it was useful

FJ: Very, very useful.

HR: It’s been so good. Thank you.

BK: No problems.

HR: We’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

Everyone: Bye.