Thursday 14 November 2013

Calm before the storm

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.


Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?


I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.


I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.


Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)


Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

Video of the month

This month's video is "All of Me" by John Legend. This is one of those occasions when I'll let this beautiful song speak for itself.



Who I've been looking at

With the house move likely to take place some time between January and March as things are moving very slowly at the solicitors, I'm effectively now in the calm before the storm in the run up to Christmas. As a result I started looking around more for new music and artists again than I had originally been planning - I was thinking the move would be underway by now and would get in the way. As a result, I've got a bumper crop for you - more than I've mentioned in one post for quite a while.

But before I get to them, here's an update from my previous post.

Incredibly the CD from Lori Greco has actually arrived. That now means I'm only waiting on the Cubworld CD and I'll finally be up to date with Sellaband, even though I haven't actually spent a penny on the site for nearly 4 years. Will it manage to arrive before its 4 year anniversary of funding completion, meaning only Lori has managed to take over 4 years, or will Cubworld become the second of those I funded to make it past the 4 year mark? With just over a month to go, Christmas approaching and a potential postal strike looming in the UK, this one could be close if it doesn't arrive here really soon.

I got my Poets of the Fall DVD shortly after my last post, making this the shortest turnaround to date of any crowdfunding project from the time I spent money to the goods arriving.

My  Vertical Horizon CD arrived just as I was starting this post, something like 6 weeks after the quoted shipping date. Given it is usually 2-4 weeks maximum from the USA and sometimes as little as 7-10 days based on the large number of CDs I've ordered to date, this one was starting to get to the point I was considering chasing up about it. Their Pledge music page is also starting to fill up with people asking when they're going to receive items so it seems I'm not the only one who was expecting to see something before now given they were supposed to be shipped on 1st October. I do have one confession to make though, and that's the fact that what arrived from Vertical Horizon isn't what I ordered. I didn't order the signed version which cost more than an unsigned one, but it seems I got one anyway. With 11 tracks all over 4 minutes in length (longest is over 7 minutes)  there's nearly an hour of music making it well worthy of a purchase, so it's a real shame the crowdfunding has been such a mess. They're so close to a 4 star rating in terms of how much I like what I've heard of them to date that I'll probably buy their next album, but I can't see me joining in with another crowdfunding project until I can see the lessons have been learned.

Fox Amoore's funding completed recently with over 26,000 euros raised. He's aiming to record before Christmas and release the CD a month or two before the download version. I'll be interested to see what this incredible young talent comes up with now it looks like not only will he be recording in Abbey Road, but will also have most if not all of a full orchestra along too. Not bad for an unknown artist who set a 7,500 euro funding target on just a 2 month timescale. John Williams, watch out.

As so often happens when I start looking for artists after a break, I tend to land up with rather a mixed bag which includes pretty much something for everyone and usually provides a number of leads to other artists (which I may or may not land up getting the time to look at, despite always planning to look at them at a later date). This latest batch of artists seems to have left me with a bad case of suffering from foreign language sites though, making them particularly hard work.

Poets' Corner are one of those hidden musical gems that I found on Sellaband which aren't likely to reach funding through setting a high budget and having both a lack of a decent plan and a seeming lack of fans. I actually think the first track on the Sellaband player is the weakest one they've uploaded and both Hidden Love and the instrumental track KoƂysanka being much stronger than this. The only site links I've been able to find for them so far happen to be in Polish, making it very difficult to find out anything more about them.


Dark Princess is a Russian band which belongs firmly in the female fronted metal arena. It seems they have some songs in English and some in Russian, which makes it a real shame that their website appears to be Russian only and hence particularly hard to navigate. Their lead singer Olga Romanova appears to have a page on a Russian metal site and it's there I found music to listen to. You'll find a player with over 20 full tracks about halfway down the page underneath the pictures, and it's possible to download each of the tracks (albeit individually rather than as a zip file) by clicking on the icon for each track which looks a bit like a floppy disk.

Thankfully not all the artists I've wandered past in the past few weeks have non-English sites. Jeffery Straker is a piano based singer-songwriter from Canada and whilst the front page of his website looks rather crowded, in all other respects it's one of those seemingly rare places these days of being an artist website where I can actually spend a few hours and find out a lot (including watching videos and listening to music) rather than playing hunt the needle with the entire internet as the haystack. I haven't found anything that's really grabbed me yet, but this is an artist website definitely well worth a visit.

Emm Gryner is another Canadian singer-songwriter who has apparently released at least 10 albums. You'll be hard pressed to find out much about her though as there's pretty much nothing on her website except a news article about her "best of" album, the Facebook link goes to a private page (i.e. you need both to have a Facebook account and be logged into Facebook to see it) and the only music visible on her site is basically a link to iTunes. Tracking down her soundcloud page is really what you need to do if you want to listen to music. I did notice that she's now part of a female folk trio called Trent Severn, who have a very different sound to the solo tracks I've heard, though there's no actual link from her website to theirs. At least when you finally track down this trio's website you get something a lot more useful to the music lover than the rather poor effort I started at.

Lilly Rouge are a rock band from Australia and don't seem to have a website. Instead, the link I've given you goes to their Reverbnation page where the biography will link you off to various other places such as Facebook and Soundcloud if you want to find out more. The track that initially caught my interest "Switchblade" reminds me somewhat of Girlschool, if you're old enough to remember them, but I'm hearing a different artist in every track I've listened to so far.

A warning for this next artist. If you suffer from epilepsy you might want to avoid the link to the artist's own website and instead head straight to their soundcloud page, as the animated pictures once you get past the intro video on their site are most definitely flashing. Rain Diary are from Finland which seems to be producing a lot of new darkwave artists at the moment. Bizarrely their website seems to merely be a portal to everywhere else, with the music page being their Soundcloud page, the news page being a Facebook page, video being a Youtube page and even the community page being a Tumblr page, meaning you'll be hitting the back button on your browser a lot in order to find your way around.

If you don't mind heavy metal comedy that comes with a definite language warning, then Psychostick are an interesting if somewhat bizarre diversion. They're also currently trying to raise funds on Indiegogo in order to build their own studio and release a new album and are already over halfway to their $30,000 target when they've only set funding to last a month. You'll find a link to the project here.

Finally Koobra is the last of the picks I have for you this time around. Another artist from Finland but this time in the electronic/dance/remix sector. Seemingly has no website so I'm directing you to his Facebook page. Even so I've been able to find out very little information to date other than the music on his Soundcloud page.

The sites I've been looking at

With so much music floating past, I haven't been looking at much in the way of music sites themselves. A news article on my Twitter feed did manage to send me in the direction of Band Of The Day though, as this is an app which will suggest an artist for you to listen to every day. Its current main flaw seems to be the fact you can't tailor it to the genres of music you listen to as every single user of the app will get suggested the same artist to listen to on any given day. Possibly a useful discovery tool if you listen to a wide range of music, but not quite so useful if you're only really interested in one or two different styles of music.

And finally...

I'm already making preparations for my review of the year post due in its usual spot some time over the Christmas and New Year period, when (amongst other things) you'll be able to find out my favourite tracks and albums of the year along with a story that's developing as I write this post, the impact of which I'll hopefully know more about by then. I'm aiming to try and make the post I mentioned in my previous one about what draws me towards particular artists by looking at some of those I've been a fan of for a while before Christmas, but it depends how the developing story develops over the next couple of weeks as to whether that will happen or not.