TOTALE

seaninsound:

(Image via marathonpacks)

DiS stopped worrying about covering new-new-new music a long while ago. We now focus on finding and celebrating quality be it a band who formed three years ago and had a nano-second of instant hype but, given time, actually got rather brilliant or an act releasing their 3rd or 9th album (which seems to be fine if your name is Animal Collective) or just sometimes, someone brand new who is exceptional and hasn’t needed to put in the 10,000 hours required for greatness. Having an album out or not having an album out perhaps isn’t the greatest or fairest filtering process, and although there are many other ways an act gets covered (Wendy’s singles, for instance or various popular threads on our boards) there has to be a cut-off point. Being on a label I already love and trust bumps a CD up a pile. Coming from the handful of PR people that I know knows what I like and includes a personal note helps too. Getting mentioned by journalists (or bloggers) I sometimes agree with and/or respect, helps too but there is no real method that works perfectly.

It is widely reported and accepted that there is just too much music around. For journalists, bloggers and music fans in general, there is no real way to justify listening to one thing over another - let alone actually finding someone appreciative to write about it and not dilute attention given to one record, over time and space dedicated to something else. I listened to around 550 albums last year (I don’t really remember half of them) and probably checked out tracks by another 1500-2000 bands (of which I remember about 7 I quite liked), and all the while this pulled me away from records I was really loving and slowly becoming obsessed with, and yet still I barely made a dent in what was in my inbox. There are roughly 500 PR companies/labels who contact DiS, on average 3 staff work at each, each working about 5 records per quarter - which in theory is something like 30,000 records - probably half it, allowing for multiple single releases and acts who rumble out a couple of re-issues a year. That’s still approximately 15k albums, singles and demos, how and who on earth has time to plough through all of that? Admittedly we don’t get sent promos of a 10th of that but still, you get the point… 

Back to the topic of neophilia… There was a time when DiS was covering a new band nearly every day. This was back when we had a five-man full-time team - one of whom is now reviews editor at the BBC, one manages Sky Larkin & Gold Panda and two of them run No Pain in Pop, whilst writing for various mags, working at labels and managing acts like Joy Orbison. Some of the interviews with new bands, like the first ever online interview with Santigold, were well read (at least 3 times more than the biggest crowd the band ever played to, at the very least) but a few only got 50 hits, despite the fact we get half a million people through the site a month. This didn’t feel like it was a good use of time or resource, nor that it was particularly benefiting the band, to be just another band getting just another bit of coverage, with no real value attached to it. 

So much of the blogosphere and new music coverage in general feels like an endless but incredibly desperate fight for scraps. You’d for forgiven for thinking every last morsel of rock’n’roll’s cadaver had been gnawed, yet every day another Forkcast exclusive is mass-mailed out and interview time with bands who’ve done a session for a BBC 6Music evening show is offered up - I have no idea anymore what I’d ask some band who I’ve never seen live and only heard two songs by, just feels insulting - to them, especially.

I sometimes find it hard to remember why I started foraging for music and putting my passion into words on the web. Then something comes along like the sprawl of Blondes or the far-too-special new Bright Eyes album and all these ornate textures become dizzying and I find words I’ve written in tweets or blogposts that I don’t remember writing. Then again, I haven’t found the solution for what the best thing DiS or anyone else could do for new music but it probably explains why I and many others have shifted from producing a lot of hot air to putting out records, I just wish the latter wasn’t such a financial challenge…

See also: Bukowski’s So You Want To Be A Writer…

Moondance by BLONDES >