Thanks to W.Wang’s World Commentary for interviewing me! I thought it would be cool to share it on my blog, too 🙂
Author: Stoneygate
Playlist of the Week (2018/21)
This week’s POTW is KevOz’s Pianoscapes, on Spotify, which features (wait for it…) piano-centred music.
KevOz is an independent musician that has been heard by millions of people, because some of his music is used at Tokyo’s Disneyland. His music is difficult to categorise – it has a quirky mixture of styles and influences, but it is based around synths and keyboards and there is an 80s influence evident in many of his tracks, but always with a twist. KevOz’s music is not synthwave, but it’s clear he has dipped into that particular pool of inspiration. Style-wise, there is a fair overlap with my own Stoneygate music, but with his own very individual stamp.
The Pianoscapes playlist features a range of artists, and KevOz has been very kind and included my Spiralesque track amongst the tracks featured. This one should be a good one for playing whilst you get your work done if you use music to help you focus.
Survival – New Album!
With Dad doing a lot better and dropping hints that I have my own life to get back to, I’ve felt able to concentrate a lot more on finishing my started music – punctuated by a few medical appointments that I’ve provided transport for and just keeping an eye out to make sure things are as OK as possible.
A couple of days ago, I submitted my second album to the distributor after a very intense few weeks, fixing the odd issue with the mixes and mastering the tracks. The next stage of ‘inspection’ has been done by the distributor and I’m writing this whilst I proof-listen to the tracks in order to give my final permission for them to go ahead and release it EVERYWHERE – i.e. the point of no return. The official release date when it will start becoming available to the general public is this coming Friday, 18th May.
This is the first time that I’ve released a project I mastered completely by myself. I can tell you categorically, having gone through it, that doing your first ‘official’ mastering on a 15-track album is nothing short of stupid! I had thought I might release a self-mastered EP first, as that’s what I was learning on, but ended up concentrating on the bigger project because I thought I had, ahem, mastered it enough. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
Mastering a single track is relatively simple – you don’t need to think about how the sound relates to anything else apart from reference tracks that you’re using as a guide. You just make sure it sounds as good as those, adding a bit of polish, and ensuring that it is at the right volume level.* With every additional track in a project, however, you are adding a layer of complication, because they all need to sound right together. That meant that I had significantly more attempts at mastering each track than I would have had if I’d been releasing 15 singles separately. There was also an element of still being on the uphill part of the learning curve, which would have been fine if I was releasing a 4-track EP, but it made releasing an hour-long album more ‘interesting’ when working to a deadline I’d by now committed to. Perseverance and overcoming stress is really important for releasing music!
And just to prove it, before I get all the way through proof-listening to the whole album, there is some kind of technical fault – the distributor website suddenly can’t load my audio files. Maybe they have a server down or the site is overloaded at present – tracks I already listened to won’t load either, but the internet hasn’t gone down (this time! it’s been really wonky for a couple of days). I’ll need to come back later and have another go, by the look of things. At least it’s fallen over on the most appropriately-named track, Ominous Hopeful!
*OK, so it’s a bit more technical than that, but that’s the short version and it all boils down to using your ears and a few meters to get the best possible outcome.
Playlist of the Week (2018/20)
This week’s POTW is a bit different from previous ones, which have all so far been Spotify playlists. This one is a Musicoin playlist, run by artist Juxta via the Atom Collector Records website, with a little help from another artist, Self Suffice, aka Rapoet. Musicoin doesn’t have playlist features built into its website just yet, so Rapoet took the initiative to work out how to do it from his own website, and passed the information on – a great example of indie musicians working together to help each other out!
The other unusual, if not unique, thing about this playlist, is that when you listen to it, the independent musicians you hear will directly receive a small amount of cryptocurrency for every track you play. (Check out my article What alternatives are there to Soundcloud? (Pt 5: Musicoin) to find out more about Musicoin and how it works). It is very difficult to make a living as an independent musician, therefore many of us have been experimenting with different outlets such as this, to see if we can make it work for us.
To listen to this week’s playlist of the week, click here and follow the instructions on screen.
Playlist of the Week (2018/19)
This week’s POTW is compiled by the obscurely named ‘The X Reposts‘. This is actually a selection of tracks that this Spotify user found via the Atom Collector Records site, which I’ve already mentioned in a couple of posts, but is not one of their playlists.
A quick look at The X Reposts’ website shows that they have made the playlist to promote independent artists – just one of a number of ways that they are doing this. As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve been following this series, indie musicians are pretty passionate about supporting each other and getting the word out about each others’ work. It’s no surprise then that The X Reposts is run by an independent artist, Newen X, who produces mainly electronic dance tracks, including some pretty powerful dubstep. His own music hits the nail right on the head for the club scene, with big anthemic tunes and classic drops. It’s the polar opposite mood-wise to many of the tracks on this list, however, including my own Silver Bird.
Playlist of the Week (2018/18)
This week’s POTW is a compilation focussing on mental health, a slightly surprising topic for a playlist, but it turns out it works rather well. Fighting the Monster – mental health awareness is full of tracks around the topic of mental health (and maintaining it), but it’s not in any way a depressing listen. There’s a broad range of genres and moods represented, from in-your-face rock to dreamy ambient, and if anything it’s quite a thought provoking set of tracks, as there’s not always an immediately obvious connection with the subject of mental health.
Fighting the Monster – mental health awareness is curated by Verity White, an independent British rock artist, whose recent Break Out tour has seen her perform in venues in Manchester, London and Cardiff. Verity’s voice sometimes sounds like Stevie Nicks, but it can also be far edgier, and both sides of her vocals can be heard in the excellent Exhale, the leading track on this playlist.
(Disclaimer: there are, very occasionally, tracks on this playlist which contain swearing – please use the skip button if you are offended by a track.)
Playlist of the Week (2018/17)
This week’s Playlist of the Week is The Monster, which I mentioned in passing last week. This playlist is technically Simon’s Mini Monster‘s big brother, as it has multiple tracks from a larger selection of indie artists than feature on the smaller list, whereas the mini-monster is from a subset of these artists, with one track each.
As well as being big brother to a mini-monster, The Monster is the brainchild of Jon Magnusson, whose introductory Steemit blog describes him as a ‘borderline crazy Swedish indie folk artist who became a networking master in the independent music scene’. (I’ll second the ‘networking master’ description but he seems pretty sane to me. I don’t know him all that well, though!) Anyhow, before I start digging too far, Jon’s music can be heard on Spotify or, better still, on Musicoin, where you can still listen for free, but Jon will be paid considerably more for each song you listen to*.
Now, I should warn you, the Monster playlist is simply enormous – the clue’s in the name – and at over 40 hours long you’ll only be able to dip into it (unless you stream it everyday at work for a week) so… please give the people at the bottom of the list a fair chance and put the ‘shuffle’ setting** on before you hit play!
*If you read that and are wondering ‘why aren’t you featuring a Musicoin playlist, instead of a Spotify one, if the artists stand to benefit so much?’, hold that thought. The Musicoin site doesn’t, as I write, allow users to build playlists, although that’s a very likely future development. A tech-clever rap artist named Self Suffice has already worked out how to build playlists on external websites, however there isn’t a solution which works within WordPress just yet, where this blog resides. That won’t stop me featuring Musicoin-based playlists from other sites though – it just means that I can’t build my own Musicoin playlist.
**If you’re unfamiliar with the Shuffle setting, it looks like a wavy ‘x’ with arrows pointing to the right and is on the far left, near the play/pause button.
Playlist of the Week (2018/16)
This week’s playlist of the week is Simon Irvine’s Simon’s Mini Monster. Simon, aka Stuffamebobs, is an artist in Brisbane signed to Pink Dolphin Music, an indie label based in West Bromwich, in the UK. Simon’s also a member of the Climatronica Collective, a group of musicians and producers who are concerned about climate change and fundraising jointly with an album to support the charity Solar Aid.
Simon’s/Stuffamebobs’ music is electronic, synthy and occasionally moody; do check out his latest album Metaphors, which came out on 8th January – I think you’ll like it if you enjoy my music. My favourite track from the album (so far) is Pursuit, which sits at the sonic junction between trance and synthwave, but a close second is the ambient chillout track Birds – Crest of the Syndicate.
Simon’s Mini Monster playlist is a smaller collection of tracks by artists who feature on a much larger playlist, known as the ‘Monster List’. (I think I can see what he did there!) All artists featured are independent (or with indie labels). There may be a couple of Stoneygate tracks that have snuck in towards the end.
Playlist of the Week (2018/15)
This week’s POTW, The 100 – Electronic is another from the Atom Collector Records stable, and exclusively features independent electronic artists, some of whom you will have already heard in previous weeks’ POTWs, if you’ve been following the series so far. There is a broad range of genres within the list, even though it is restricted to ‘electronic’ music.
Support such as this is invaluable for getting my music heard by new audiences, and the same will go for the other artists who feature: we all really appreciate a helping hand. At the time of writing, this playlist is still a way off the 100 tracks planned, so do go back to listen again if you like what you hear: providing it doesn’t reach 100 in the meantime, there will be more tracks for you to discover later.
Playlist of the Week (2018/14)
Morning all! Time for another POTW. I promised that Susan Moss’s name would crop up again, and here she is with another MoonDreams musicplaylist. This time we have some seriously chilled out tunes with a playlist called Dreamy Ethereal Soundscapes.
There are some fine mainstream artists in this list, such as Radiohead (Daydreaming), Nils Frahm (Ambre), Florence and the Machine (Long and Lost) and Sarah McLachlan (Possession). I’m honoured to be one of the indie artists who have snuck into this list, along with GJART, Røverann, Leg Puppy and others you may not have discovered – yet.