Spotify boycotts ‘alienate fans’

As we’ve previously written, many independent record labels are boycotting Spotify. It seems that someone from Universal claims this is a bad thing.

I’ll tell you what’s a had thing, Mr Universal Man. The big labels owning equity shares in Spotify, for a start. Then, Spotify refusing to be open about what it pays those labels compared with the insulting, immoral, pittance it pays smaller labels.

The fact is this: for a solo artist to earn the equivalent of minimum wage in the US (not a lot!) from Spotify streams, they need a little over 4,000,000 streams a month. Count those zeroes. How many would a band require? Multiply that number by the number of band members.

Here are the details:

How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online?

That’s why many labels have withdrawn their releases. Musicians are being robbed by the big labels, just as they always have been.

Back in 2003, the Licensing Act, brought in to make hosting gigs easier, actually achieved the opposite as so much of our hastily thrown together legislation does. It practically killed small-scale live music in the UK.

Finally, they’re about to simplify the law and make it possible to have amplified gigs with fewer than 200 people in the audience without having to apply for a licence.

Here’s a BBC news item that provides more detail than I can be bothered to type out here:

Live music red tape likely to be relaxed

Hazrat Inayat Khan

The last episode of our podcast was super popular with a good increase in listeners…..here’s another episode and let’s hope you all like this one just as much!

As ever, you can find it here:

• iTunes
• Libsyn
• MixCloud

Tracks

1. Straight Street
   Omar Effendum
   http://offendum.bandcamp.com/
2. Secret Path
   Rishiraj Doss
   http://soundcloud.com/rishirajdoss/secret-path
3. The Warrior Path
   Living Stone
   http://soundcloud.com/livingstonesound/livingstone-the-warrior-path
4. Desert Virtue (Patience Mawal Dub Mashup)
   Crypt-O
   http://soundcloud.com/cryptomar/desert-virtue-patience-mawal-1
5. Damascus
   Omar Effendum
   http://offendum.bandcamp.com/
6. Ancient Method
   Living Stone
   http://soundcloud.com/livingstonesound/ancient-method
7. The Sands of Grime
   Kalya Scintilla
   http://www.addictech.com/p/90747
8. Soldier of the Line
   Secret Archives of the Vatican
   http://www.brokendrumrecords.com
9. Rises in the East
   Kalya Scintilla
   http://www.addictech.com/p/90747
10. Voodoo (Beats Antique Remix)
    Bassnectar
    http://beatsantique.bandcamp.com/track/voodoo-beats-antique-remix
11. Indo Loops
    Deceptikon
    http://soundcloud.com/dkon/indo-loops
12. Nana (The Dreaming) (Fish Finger Remixed and Reedited)
    Sheila Chandra
    http://soundcloud.com/crossroadsrecordsmusic/sheila-chandra-nana-the

No Stranger Here

Every now and again, an album comes along that stands out from the crowd by its sheer imagination and brilliance. No Stranger Here is one of those albums.

Philadelphia based poet and spoken word artist Ursula Rucker, producers Business Class Refugees (Patrick Sebag and Yotam Agam) and renowned Hindustani classical singer Shubha Mudgal, have created a diverse and graceful album based around the poetry of Kabir, an Indian mystic and poet. Kabir was associated with the Bhakti Movement (500 AD – 1700 AD). This movement pressed for spiritual renewal and broad human understanding for several centuries in India. Bhakti proponents eschewed the rigid ritualisation of religion, raising a radical call for love and spirit beyond human-made boundaries. Kabir, as both thinker and figure, leaps nimbly across faiths, caste, cultures; legend has it that Kabir was the son of Brahmins, but was raised by Muslim weavers. His spare, often blunt words have had a lasting impact on the Sikh faith and sparked a religious following that now numbers in the millions. Apparently.

The album brings together the elegance and controlled emotion of Indian classical singing, Western orchestral music, modern electronica, and Ursula Rucker’s unique voice.

No Stranger Here explores the universal sense of strangerhood, that mysterious alienation that haunts both our contemporary lives and echoes in centuries-old poems, according to the record label. ‘None of us are strangers to that feeling,’ remarks Sonya Mazumdar, CEO of record label EarthSync, which has released this album. ‘Yet it is the very feeling of not belonging that highlights the intensity of love. We use silences a lot. The use of silences for punctuation is very important to what Kabir is saying,’ she says. ‘We really don’t know about him, what was actually written by Kabir and what was changed by his disciples. But by singing it today, we become part of a much longer continuum’

Ursula Rucker agrees: ‘Just being a poet, no matter how many centuries separate you, is a connection. I use other elements, but my work is really about God and love, even if you have to dig and read between the lines. It’s a continuing thread that goes throughout time’.

Quite. So – what does it actually sound like? The Eastern musical elements, the Western orchestral contributions and the transglobal electronica beats work seamlessly together; Shubha Mudgal‘s Indian classical vocals and Rucker‘s distinctive drawl complement each other superbly. It’s a fairly chilled listen; there’s enough detail and high quality musicianship to keep your attention but it’s mellow enough to just soak up if you don’t want to focus on it. There’s no mention of jazz in any of the PR blurb but I can hear a subtle hint of it in one or two of the rhythm tracks. Not enough to be annoying, I hasten to add. It’s an album worth absorbing slowly – I think you’ll find new things each time you hear it.

• Release date: 14 February 2012

Have a listen for yourself here on YouTube.

http://secretarchivesofthevatican.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/album-review-mehraab-by-loga-ramin-torkian/

It seems it’s only being released now, 31 January 2012! Not sure what happened there, people! Maybe it was different parts of the world or sumthin’.

It also seems to have a different cover.

Either way, it’s a stunning album. You should buy it. Release date 31 January 2012.

There’s a free download of a track called Your Bewitching Eyes (Chasme Jadu) which you can find HERE.

Rock album sales hit their lowest level for eight years

It seems that rock music suffered its poorest album sales for eight years in 2011 according to the Official Charts Company. Good.

Seven of the top ten best-selling albums of last year were pop records, with Adele and Bruno Mars both selling more than a million. There’s nothing wrong with good, honest, pop. Only two entries in the top ten were rock and indie albums – Ed Sheeran‘s + and Coldplay‘s Mylo Xyloto. Overall, rock music albums accounted for 29.4.% of total music sales last year, down from 31.2% in 2010.

Rock, of course, has been creativity bankrupt for probably twenty years, with absolutely nothing to say and devoid of any excitement. It regurgitates its golden years over and over again, reselling the same old pre-packaged, tame rebellion to another generation of young spotty white morons every few years.

The real creative music is to be found among a legion of artists in many countries making a myriad of genres of ever-evolving electronicia on modest equipment. They self-distribute or work through netlabels.

If you want to remember what it was like to be excited about discovering new musical artists, that’s where you need to look.

We’re pretty regular with podcast episodes right now; there is so much good music out there that you need to hear! None of ours in this episode but we’re still hard at work in the studio writing new material.

As always, you can find it here:

• iTunes
• Libsyn
• MixCloud

Tracks

1. Basscharma
   Ethnicalvibes
   http://soundcloud.com/ethnicalvibes/basscharma-ethnicalvibes
2. Strange Tongue
   Elonius
   http://www.soundcloud.com/elonious-funk/strange-tounge
3. Goblin’s Assembly
   Bymski & Fumie Hihara
   http://soundcloud.com/unexpected-audio/bymski-fumie-hihara-goblin-s
4. Assassin’s Creed
   Double Dragon
   doubledragon.bandcamp.com/
5. Honey & Jam
   ZioNoiZ
   http://soundcloud.com/zionoiz/honey-jam-1
6. Sacred Stones feat Cyra Morgan
   Stizreth
   http://soundcloud.com/stizreth/sacred-stones
7. Chinese Japanese
   Datax & Bymski
   http://soundcloud.com/datax/uap-005-side-b-datax-bymski-chinese-japanese
8. Medina (Eccodek’s Veil of Dub Mix)
   Dub Colossus
   http://realworldrecords.com/news/dub-colossus-the-ezana-stone-sessions-week-
9. Dragon Slayer (Bx2 Remix)
   Mongoose
   http://mongoosemusic.net/album/dragon-slayer

Crap concert venues

I’ve always thought (but not necessarily very deeply) that most places I’ve seen live music were godawful holes, from the old Marquee Club in London where I saw a lot of progrock bands in the early 80s, which was a sticky-carpeted, cigarette-smoke filled, stinking hellfest, through to sterile, joy-killing monstrosities like the South Bank Centre, also in London, or the Fairfield Halls here in the Cronx. The smoking ban improved things a very small bit but the fact remains that most live music venues were never built for comfort or acoustics. Or humans. Most gigs are in pubs and clubs whose sole purpose is to part people from their money rather than to provide a beautiful environment for excellent musical entertainment.

Which is why many smaller artists now perform at house concerts. If you’ve not heard of these, they’re concerts – in a house. The clue is in the name. In some cases people sell tickets but many are free with a hat going around at the end for voluntary contributions. I’ve only been to one. It was amazing. The hosts had provided a stack of great food, there were about 30 or 40 people crammed in, the music was intense and intimate and there was a very full hat of cash at the end. The band most certainly got more money than they ever would in a crappy London pub or club where you pay to use the PA system.

At a house concert, the audience is there to hear your music and meet like-minded friends, not just to keep a venue’s beer-shifting quota up where the brewery is happy. It’s the way music was back in the days before recorded music became the norm. Certainly house gigs lend themselves to acoustic genres or to not-too-loud electric bands more than, say, very loud, neighbour-infuriating heavy metal bands, so maybe they’re not appropriate for all artists.

Electronic artists

I’m unaware of any full-on electronic artists doing small house gigs. Do you know of any? What did they do? How did it go down? If you know of any, please leave a comment. Thanks!

We’ve known DJ Pathaan for quite a few years, from back in the 90s attending his Stoned Asia nights and buying his compilation releases, to more recently listening to his most excellent but sadly now cancelled BBC Asian Network show, Pathaan’s Musical Rickshaw. Last year we supported him with a DJ set in Manchester.

We also know Indian Electronica‘s Qasim Virjee. We had a couple of Secret Archives tunes on a great compilation he released called Indian Electronica Volume 1. It’s well worth buying!

So, two top gentlemen with impeccable global beats credentials.

They have just launched an excellent online magazine called Globetronica, which covers a lot of the globally influenced electronica we all like. Hence the cunning title. The website also has many album reviews.

Qasim says this on his Facebook page:

Get your ears into the first episode of the Globetronica broadcast people – available from the website or directly at Soundcloud to listen and download: http://soundcloud.com/globetronica/globetronica-episode-1

The Globetronica website says this:

We are on a musical journey of discovery and endeavour through Globetronica to keep the door to our path open for you, an audience across the planet keen to experience some of the world’s best music and learn about the people who create it.

• Libsyn
• iTunes
• MixCloud

Tracks

1. Creator
   Urban
   http://soundcloud.com/gamma-audio/free-gamma-claus-free-ep-click
2. Waters of Nazareth
   Partyson
   http://soundcloud.com/gamma-audio/free-gamma-claus-free-ep-click
3. Book of the Dead
   State of Bass
   http://soundcloud.com/unexpected-audio/uap-009-state-of-bass-book-of-the-dead
4. Titan the Grip
   Alert
   http://soundcloud.com/alerttm/titan-the-grip
5. Mashala Dub
   Tara Putra
   http://soundcloud.com/tara-putra/tara-putra-mashala-dub
6. Golemic
   Alert
   http://soundcloud.com/alerttm/golemic
7. Dragon eats Phoenix
   Datax & Bymski
   http://soundcloud.com/unexpected-audio/uap-012-datax-bymski-dragon-eats-phoenix
8. An Abyssinyan Who Could Kiss Fire
   Muslimgauze
   http://www.muslimgauze.org/releases/baghdad.html
9. The Gelding of the Devil
   Secret Archives of the Vatican
   http://www.brokendrumrecords.com

Bring all the wine that’s left!

When we’re dead and wandering Paradise,
we won’t find a place more beautiful
than this stream called Ruknabad,
by the gardens with their roses
in the town of Shiraz.