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ABoF End of Year Blog: Ed Says goodbye to 2011
In the first of our end of year blogs this week, our super assistant Ed Williams, shares his highlights of the year...As the relative new guy, 2011 marked my first full year with team ABoF, and what a year it was! I got the chance to work with some amazing artists, and Paul and Claire couldn't have been more helpful, showing me how get to grips with the heady world of PR.
I'm a writer by trade, so I'm always looking for new challenges in my work, and this year for me was all about nailing the perfect press release - chatting to the bands, getting a feel about what they're about, and then making sure their press page reflects that. It's all about making it snap. I've still got a lot to learn, but that's the beauty of working in a challenging environment - every day there's something new.
At times I've wished I could pick up the phone and talk to my 16 year-old self, as they'd be blown away to learn that future me would have the opportunity to work with some of the artists that were staples on the college common room stereo. Suffice it to say, working with Rod Jones from Idlewild in his new solo-project, The Birthday Suit, and the folks from The Moth & The Mirror have been a dream come true for me. Getting to meet Jeffrey Lewis when we put on his show at The Lexington was pretty special too. To be honest, there hasn't been an artist on our roster I haven't been excited about working with - I get to listen to their releases months before they hit the shelves, and it's great to be part of a process that helps them gain the recognition that they deserve.
Towards the end of the year, Paul and Claire were brave enough to let me join them behind the decks when they DJd at the Q Awards after show party and Geek Out at The Wheelbarrow. It had been about 7 years since I'd done any sort of djing, so to say I was nervous was an understatement - I think I did them proud, though I did discover that my music collection mainly consists of old-skool hip hop and angry, angry speed metal. Might have to sort that out for 2012!
Geeking Out!
Last night we DJ-ed Geek Out at The Wheelbarrow. It was our last of 2011 and we had a great time (we'll be back next year though!). This one was extra special because Turnpike Glow and The Unkindness of Ravens were playing. Instead of going on about how awesome it was (it was very awesome by the way!), I'll just say this... if you've not already seen Turnpike Glow or The Unkindness of Ravens live then make sure you get your gig going asses down to one of their shows very soon.My camera decided to be an arse and stopped working so all photos were taking on my crappy little iPhone - sorry for the rubbish quality! You can also download some free MP3s from both bands below.
Enjoy! - Wee Claire x
Turnpike Glow - The Turn, The Pike And The Glow by abadgeoffriendship
The Unkindness of Ravens - Prototype by abadgeoffriendship
Virus / Viper single by The Unkindness Of Ravens
Turnpike Glow
The Unkindness of Ravens
Interview: Secret Rivals
Secret Rivals are an Oxford based 4-piece indie pop outfit, and their upcoming single, the double A-side Once More With Heart / I Know Something is due out at the beginning of 2012. We managed to catch up with them this week to have a chat about the new single, and generally pick their brains.
How did you guys all meet?
The band formed in 2008, after Clouds and myself moved to Oxford from Southport. We answered an ad from fellow (early) Idlewild fanatic Andrew, who was keen to start up a band in the city having recently moved from Boston. We found Reece through advertising for a drummer pretty much straight away. We've been living out of each other's pockets ever since.
Where does the band name come from?
My friend is a film reviewer/blogger, and he was reviewing cult martial arts cinema at the time. I took the name from the article he was writing about a film of the same name.
Who/what would you say has influenced you the most as musicians?
The people we love, the people we loathe, our crappy day jobs, our over inflated sense of purpose, our relationships.
2011 has been an amazing year for you guys. How did it feel getting so much attention for your single, Tonight, Matthew?
It was unexpected and totally overwhelming! We've been very lucky in terms of radio support from the off. Our debut EP, Start Fires, was picked up by Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson, who have always been really supportive of us. When we were recording Make Do And Mend, there was no big plan of action; we didn't have a publicist or a manager or even a label to release it on at that point, we just recorded it and sent it out. It was when Rob Da Bank played Tonight, Matthew on BBC Radio 1 that things really started to happen: we were approached by a London record label who released the single, Rob invited us to play Bestival (which blew us away - I literally couldn't get my head around it, I remember thinking it was a trap
Meeting and talking shop with Tom Robinson and Steve Lamacq et al is amazing, you cant put a price on that kind of thing. They're the types of situations you reflect on when you get home and think 'did that really just happen?'.
We played with Summer Camp last night, for example, whom I've been in love with since their record release. I've just been told today we're opening for Big Pink next week (whom we love!). It's all a bit silly really.
Tell us about the new single, Once More With Heart / I Know Something.
It's a double A-Side and we're really, really happy with it. We think it's the perfect follow up to our album, Make Do And Mend. Once More With Heart has been getting a great live reception since we introduced it into our set and it's probably the most fun to play. We're over the moon with how it sounds on record,
Have you got any plans to tour it?
Yeah, we'll definitely be putting together a string of dates across the UK.
What else can we expect in 2012?
More gigs, more releases, more shouting! We've already started writing the next record and we'll more than likely tour at the start of the year before recording an EP prior to the Festival season. We want to hit the festivals hard this year. (We'd love a jolly abroad as well).
Finally, a meteorite is about to hit the planet, destroying it completely - you have one hour. What album do you listen to?
What! an hour! Why, what's going on? Why am I reaching for a cd...? Can this not be stopped!? Quick, someone do something!!!!
Once More With Heart / I Know Something will be released via It’s All Happening! on 16th January 2012.
Interview: Turnpike Glow
This week's interview is with ABoF roster newbies Turnpike Glow. They're about to get very busy in 2012 with singles, an EP and an album planned next year.
1. Where does the band name come from?
A dEUS gig setlist was hanging in my room like a trophy at the time and that's where we got "Turnpike" from. "Theme from Turnpike" is a song of their second album.
However, we soon discovered the name was already being used by a Swedish techno DJ. So we flicked through the dictionary and and saw the word 'Glow'. The two words put together seemed to have an evocative imagery, we thought. It did make a lot of sense when we came up with it. Not sure it still does. We totally appreciate this anecdote lacks in glamour but since then we've become even less sophisticated
2. Do you still bust out the giant sombreros from time to time, or is that part of your life over?
These are tough times so we prefer to cling on to our sombreros. They work great on rainy days, too.
3. Two of your members are Italian, How do you find the UK music scene, compared to Italy's?
Unlike the typical London venue, in Italy you’re likely to get a few drinks and some food after the show. That’s not bad. There are actually many willing indie bands but the scene is pretty small compared to the bigger and squalid mainstream pop market. And so it’s tough to get your voice heard. Unfortunately there’s a lot less interest for up and coming bands where we come from. Sometimes we do miss our friends in Rome though.
4.Who or what would you say has influenced you the most as musicians (doesn't necesarrily have to be another musician)?Some records had a big impact on what we do: The Flaming Lips' “The Soft Bulletin”, Broken Social Scene's “You Forgot it in People”, U2's “Achtung Baby” and dEUS' “The Ideal Crash”.
5. "The Turn, The Pike And The Glow" is your first release - are you nervous?
Not anymore since we're on valium. Joking aside, of course we're eager to see how people are going to react to our music. You put so much into this and then you can only wait and hope people will enjoy it. Should no one take an interest in what we do, we can always fall back on our sombreros.
Turnpike Glow - The Turn, The Pike And The Glow by abadgeoffriendship
6. Have you got any plans to tour?
The idea is to do a mini-tour in March following the single release. We’re on the case!
7. Who are you guys listening to at the moment?
Bon Iver, Caribou and The National.
8. Can we expect an album in 2012?
That's the plan. We're constantly writing new material. Probably going to release an EP first and then hopefully an album later in 2012.
9. Finally, a meteorite is about to hit the planet, destroying it completely - you have one hour. What album do you listen to?
"A New Day Has Come" by Celine Dion. It would make death a more appealing option.
Blog of the Week: Last Year’s Girl
This week's Blog of the Week is the fantastic Scottish blog Last Year's Girl.
1. You manage to juggle writing the online content for a law firm alongside writing about music, and whatever subject piques your interest - how do you find the time?
Short answer... with increasing difficulty! And resource to lunch breaks. I tend to devote one day each weekend to sitting on the computer catching up with what I haven’t been able to get around to during the week, as well as plotting out a rough approximation of my content over the next week – it’s a routine I’ve only gotten into relatively recently, but it’s certainly helped to make my blogging more regular.
2. Tell us how you got started - we noticed on your site that you've been blogging as long as blogging!
Yes, but I have to stress that I would never have referred to my online ramblings circa 1999 as ‘blogging’..! I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a writer, and I kept diaries through much of my childhood and teens. I can’t remember how I originally stumbled across the phenomenon of keeping a diary on the internet, for other people to read, but it seemed like a logical step. I started writing on a site called deardiary.net I believe before moving to Diaryland, then LiveJournal, and ultimately my own site (where I’ve been since 2005).
3. With so many music blogs out there, how do you keep your content fresh and different?
I think you touched on it a little in your first question – Last Year’s Girl has never been exclusively a music blog, although given it’s one of my biggest passions it’s a niche I seem to have stumbled into and the ever-growing Scottish music blogging community have been happy to embrace me as one of their own (perhaps everybody’s blogging grandmother?!). I post two, maybe three, music-related posts a week alongside other projects like my attempts to review every cake place in Glasgow, coverage of the thirty things I’m trying to accomplish before turning thirty and the odd piece of political rambling. The worry is that you tend to find the same bands sending the same things to each of us at the same times, and it can be difficult to figure out how to cover something you really like without replicating what one of your peers is planning around the same time. It’s happened a few times, particularly with band interviews. But I think every blogger in the ‘community’ has his or her own tastes – you won’t find the same raving about Bruce Springsteen or Ryan Adams on other Scottish blogs, that’s for certain.
4. When you first started was there anything special you did to spread the word about the blog?
Nah, in the late 90s there were only a couple of dozen bloggers and we all read each other for want of anything better to do. I think it’s fair to say that my audience grew organically through the first five or six years, across various sites, so when I set up on my own I already had a pre-made audience. And I was already fairly established by the time the blogging ‘explosion’ happened proper in about 2005/06. I know that’s a rubbish answer, but there’s really very little I’ve done to promote myself in the traditional sense beyond becoming a reader of other blogs, linking to them and leaving comments and hoping that the owners of those blogs will reciprocate assuming that they like my content.
5. With Twitter now a prevalent social media tool, has this changed the way you blog and promote the links on Last Year's Girl?
Well new posts are automatically sent to Twitter, which I think is the bare minimum that anybody does. It can be quite satisfying to see posts almost instantaneously retweeted, for example when I post my monthly mix CDs. I think the other thing that Twitter has changed is making it easier to share posts that you’ve maybe not had as much of a response to as you anticipated – if, for example, nobody saw a post you worked really hard on because it was the middle of the night you can reshare it in the morning when there’s a different audience around without looking as if you’re desperate.
I have quite a large following on Twitter, which again I think has more to do with me being an early adopter of the service than anything else, but it gives me a place to share links and other bits and pieces I find interesting that I would maybe in the past have chucked in on the end of a blog post they weren’t really relevant to just for a place to share them. My posts are certainly much more self-contained than they used to be. It’s also really heartening to see bands and artists you love sharing links to things that you’ve written on their own Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.
6. How do you go about tracking down new music?
Does it make me sound like a terrible person if I say I wait for a lot of it to come to me? Well, that and there are a fair few blogs I read and podcasts I listen to whose tastes I know overlap with my own and keep me clued up on stuff I might otherwise have missed. I download a lot of random mp3s I then forget about, whether from other blogs or my own inbox, and listen to a lot of music on shuffle when I’m working in the office or at home. It’s a system that means I often catch up with new stuff a good bit later than others – but I suppose that helps keep my content different, right?!
7. Are there any ABoF artists that tickle your fancy at the moment?
The Moth and the Mirror are, quite rightly, generating massive buzz at the moment – I’d go out on a limb here and happily say that Honestly, This World is one of the best albums I’ve heard by a Scottish artist this year. I rather shamefully haven’t yet listened to the promo you guys very kindly sent me of Rod Jones’ Birthday Suit project, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a cracker.
8. Who can you see making an impact on 2012 (signed or unsigned)?
Franz Nicolay (ex-Hold Steady) will be releasing his third solo album thanks to some Kickstarter funding early in 2012, and I’m really excited about it – which also gives me ample opportunity to shamelessly promote my first foray into gig promotion, which will be taking place in Glasgow on 2nd December when Nicolay plays the Old Hairdressers’ with Chris T-T and Dave Hughes (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/205970). Kathleen Edwards, a Canadian alt.countryesque singer-songwriter who is one of my all-time favourites, will also be releasing a new album in January which I’ve been lucky enough to hear and it’s brilliant – it’s a bit desperate that the fact it’s produced by Bon Iver might finally be enough to get the indie blogs to sit up and take notice, but if that’s what it takes...
I also blog for the Scotsman’s Radar new music blog, and we have recently announced the winner of our second annual prize for Scottish unsigned music as the incredible Edinburgh band Sebastian Dangerfield. I also managed to call runner-up for the second year running in the form of shoegaze-folk act Bottle of Evil. Roll your eyes at the genre mash all you want, but it works.
9. Finally - top tips for running your own blog?
You need to make sure that you’re doing it because you really want to blog, not because you think it’s going to give you clout or get you freebies. The truth is there are so many bloggers these days that it is unlikely what you’re doing is going to be particularly new and different but don’t let that dishearten you – it doesn’t mean it can’t be great fun, and that you won’t get to meet some fantastic people.
On a similar note don’t worry about constantly being seen to be ‘cool’ or whatever because those zeitgeisty bands are likely to be getting covered elsewhere. If you write about what you love, with real passion, then you’ll find that likeminded people will want to come back.
Be social – link to other blogs, comment on others and join in the chat on Twitter!
And finally, get organised – if you can set aside some time to specifically devote to blogging a couple of times a week you’ll get a lot less stressed when you realise you haven’t had the time to post anything for a couple of days. The thing is (particularly if you’re a music blogger) if you’re not getting out and doing things you’re really not going to have anything interesting to write about, even if you have all the time in the world in which to do so.