Music Banter

I mentioned the Ten Tracks Project in a previous post, and said I should really say more about this. It’s a fantastic initiative, one of those interesting new ways for a fucked music industry to somehow connect and reinvigorate a music-buying audience.

Here’s what they do: they’ve convinced record companies to offer us monthly bundles of ten tracks for a quid. That’s ten pence a song. Not bad, eh?

Everyone knows the situation the music industry’s in- thanks to the internet, last.fm, spotify, myspace, youtube and a million other legal-and-otherwise portals, no-one’s buying music. Interestingly, a lot of really good music is still being made. I have to say, I feel that my local music scene is getting better and better, and friends of mine across the UK are saying exactly the same thing.

It’s also true that more and more bands are keeping their musical projects in the realm of hobby, not career. That’s often a pragmatic decision, more than anything else. After all, how is anyone going to make any money doing this?

Here’s one way; make the music you offer, cheaper. And that’s what they’ve done here.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but the truth is that the cost of production has gone down. People aren’t buying physical copies of albums any more, because they feel like a rip-off. No-one who knows anything about the way the internet works thinks that £12.99 or whatever a CD costs these days (see, I don’t even KNOW!) is a fair price. As a result, no-one buys anything at all.

Well, this is a way forward. It’s something of a win-win situation- the record companies get to package new artists they want to push along with bigger and more established names, we get to hear new music which we may or may not like, and we get a lot of it for a decent price. The artists benefit, too- we’d only be downloading their tracks for free, otherwise, if we heard them at all. It also fills an interesting loop that something Spotify misses- it’s easier to find new music this way, as that’s what a record company wants to push your way. I’m fine with that- I can live with the fact that a record company wants its artists to be heard. I want to hear them too, as long as it’s not a rip-off, and they’re not being forced down my throat through advertising.

The end result is, I’ve just downloaded 15 tracks for less than the price of a pint. Record companies have put new music in front of an enthusiastic listener without paying out for adverts in the NME, bribing and schmoozing their way onto some radio playlist or other, or anything else.

I’ll listen to these tracks. If I like the bands, I might buy more of them. If I don’t, well, they already got some cash from me. Now, what am I? Nothing, really. Just one person. But when this grows, well, the sky’s the limit, isn’t it?

Much as it may seem unlikely, I actually do sometimes venture outside from time to time, beyond the comforting boundaries of my flat, forsaking coffee, blankets and easily available Spotify access to see real music.

This Sunday was one of those days, and was very well spent indeed, enjoying the sights and sounds of The Hidden Door Festival, a weekend-long event held in Edinburgh’s Roxy Art House, an old church situated in the middle of Scotland’s fair capital and one of Edinburgh’s best kept secrets.

It was a remarkably adventurous event, blending artists’ installation spaces and traditional artwork, within a sort of strange maze which led this way and that, and was like a gallery, but not so. My fiancé, with her Art History background, was really fascinated by the standard of art on display, and the concepts in everything. Me, I just thought it was pretty.

What’s this got to do with music? Well, there were bands performing there too- mainly bands associated with the innovative Ten Tracks project, who I really should tell you more about. I didn’t catch everyone, but bands like The Leg, The Pineapple Chunks and Action Group were apparently very good, as indeed they always are. But we knew that already, or at least I did.

What I didn’t know a THING about was the wonderful sound of lipsync for a lullaby, a wonderful four-piece who consist of drums, cello, violin and double-bass. As one might expect in this post-Godspeed world, they sound like apocalypse itself.

What marks them out from a lot of these post-rock bands is that they have a singer, Atzi, whose voice recalls someone like Matt Bellamy of Muse in its acrobatic scaling of the heights of melody. I personally find Muse a little overblown, but that kind of vocal styling works really well with the grand sweepings of a string- based band. Overall, the effect is impressive, expansive, grand and sweeping. You allow the histrionics, because it’s good histrionics, which succeed in making you feel the visceral blast of emotions they’re depicting. They even just about get away with their last song, ‘tiger tiger’ which is a re-telling of ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake. A bit pretentious, maybe, but that’s the sort of atmosphere they’re going for- a sort of heightened, almost hysteric sense of emotion, wild storms of mood. To my mind, that was a little bit much, but the rest of their set was so good I can forgive them this.

I loved them. I suspect that if you’re any kind of decent human being, you will too.