Yes friends, my second album will be a truly independent release. Just Music, the record company who released my first album, have decided that they don’t feel they can market it.
To be honest, I agree with them. They are a chill and downtempo label, and my music has been moving increasingly away from chill. In fact, my aim with this album is to incite people to do the exact opposite of chill. I am hoping to inspire people to action.
The album is not just an album, and it’s not just about me. It’s a call to action – all about climate change, sustainability, the need for political and economic change, and our need to reconnect our spirit with nature. We are living in the biggest crisis, and the most exciting age, that humanity has ever experienced. I’ve been banging on about this in my blogs and at gigs for ages. Now, finally, it will be reflected fully in my recorded music.
Last time I had press, radio and online promotions people helping me out. I had people with their fingers in important and tasty pies all over the place. I had people who liked having meetings in Soho, having meetings in Soho on my behalf. I had people who knew their way around the music business making their way around the music business for me.
This time things will be a little different. I’m a tad daunted, but mostly just excited about doing this on my own. Well, I won’t be entirely on my own – my manager Lauren at Backstage Vancouver will be helping out.
I’ll also be relying on you guys to – PLEASE! – help me get the message out there. Word of mouth (and word of mouse) is going to figure quite strongly in the promotion if it’s going to make any kind of splash at all. Which is great, since that’s the most authentic way of going about things anyway.
The latest, and probably final, title for the album is In Defence of the Wild. I have decided not to pursue another deal for this release, at least for now, to leave me free to do some fairly unconventional things without having to argue with anyone about it. I shall tell you more about those things another time. But the key thing is I’m hoping to make it as zero waste as possible. The medium is the message.
I’ll be posting some music from the new album very soon, and will be documenting my solo journey much more regularly from now on. I figured it might be interesting for people who are looking to release their own stuff to see how I do it, and how I do. I learnt a fair few tricks from doing it with a label the first time around, so let’s see how this goes!
Monday, 22 March 2010
Saturday, 29 August 2009
PADMALAND
For a while now I've been a bit frustrated at being so dispersed across the internet. It doesn't feel very neat. So I just took a couple of days to pull everything together into a fully integrated, firing-on-all-cylinders, Rolls-Royce-of-the-internet type web experience that is PadmaLand!
From now on my blogs will be posted there. There's also a section for video, Twitter updates, links to articles I've written, gig schedule, music, ah man it is a work of art.
So please head on over to PadmaLand for the latest news, ramblings, cogitations, videos, 140 character Twitter haiku ... you name it, it's there.
See you at PadmaLand soon! (It's like Disneyland but without the attitude police and the expensive cuddly toys).
Padma
From now on my blogs will be posted there. There's also a section for video, Twitter updates, links to articles I've written, gig schedule, music, ah man it is a work of art.
So please head on over to PadmaLand for the latest news, ramblings, cogitations, videos, 140 character Twitter haiku ... you name it, it's there.
See you at PadmaLand soon! (It's like Disneyland but without the attitude police and the expensive cuddly toys).
Padma
Thursday, 16 July 2009
BRAIN DUMP
Greetings all
Sorry I'm being a terrible blogger at the moment. Got so much on with life and recording demos and writing the book that there isn't much time left for other things.
So, quick brain dump for you:
1. I've been thinking about the future of the internet. I think right now the internet is really big but, like life in general, it is going to get smaller. When Myspace, Youtube and a million webzines etc have to pay royalties for the content they stream, eventually they will become subscription based. We will choose a package of sites that we subscribe to, kind of like people do with cable TV now.
2. I've been thinking about peak oil. That and eco-villages. That and the fact that Padma does not play well with other children. I have always been weird about groups. Neurotic individualistic singer-songwriter. But community is the way forward. Gonna have to learn how to be more well adjusted.
I interviewed two of the world's leading speakers on co-housing the other week. It was fascinating. I got back to my apartment and found out that my video camera had run out of space for the first time ever, so the interview was lost! Hrmmpph. One of the guys was called Charles Durrett. His electricity bill for last year was minus 83 dollars. (Solar panels). The other guy was the Jan Gudmand-Hoyer, the founder of the cohousing movement.
Cohousing is great. Community is a difficult thing to pull off but cohousing has a high likelihood of success designed in. You need enough privacy to be happy, you need a lack of ideology (just people living next door to each other) and then plenty of spaces and opportunities for hanging out together. The place where I am living recycles 95% of its garbage. Only two small bins for more than 35 people! I will write something proper on cohousing when I have a moment. It's a great solution to city living - and will be increasingly so in the years to follow.
Here's a bit of info on cohousing from Kathryn McCamant (from McCamant & Durrett architects):
3. The music is going well. I have two different things going on at the moment. One is the businessy, organisationy side - talking to producers, managers, press, and so on, trying to work out the next phase of Padma's Campaign for World Domination.
The other side is creating. Making music is so great. I sometimes wonder why I bother with the Campaign for World Domination. I could just be a little guy in my place making music for myself and having a lovely time. But that seems kind of selfish to me. One of the key things about music is it can bring us together and remind us of something magical and beyond the mundane. To connect with others on such a basis is for me the only way I can really connect.
Today I have been recording a demo of 'If Friends Were Neighbours Too'. It will hopefully be on the next album. It starts with 'Wouldn't it be nice if food just grew on trees'. I wrote that line when I was driving up a mountain track on the way to the yurt with a friend and we stopped at a wild cherry tree and picked piles and piles of cherries for all of us. They would've cost LOADS of money to buy in a supermarket, and they were organic and delicious. And at that point I thought 'how preposterous to pay for food'. And then I got that line in my head and the song just came together really quickly.
And now I'm in a cohousing community where my friends are my neighbours too!
Sorry I'm being a terrible blogger at the moment. Got so much on with life and recording demos and writing the book that there isn't much time left for other things.
So, quick brain dump for you:
1. I've been thinking about the future of the internet. I think right now the internet is really big but, like life in general, it is going to get smaller. When Myspace, Youtube and a million webzines etc have to pay royalties for the content they stream, eventually they will become subscription based. We will choose a package of sites that we subscribe to, kind of like people do with cable TV now.
2. I've been thinking about peak oil. That and eco-villages. That and the fact that Padma does not play well with other children. I have always been weird about groups. Neurotic individualistic singer-songwriter. But community is the way forward. Gonna have to learn how to be more well adjusted.
I interviewed two of the world's leading speakers on co-housing the other week. It was fascinating. I got back to my apartment and found out that my video camera had run out of space for the first time ever, so the interview was lost! Hrmmpph. One of the guys was called Charles Durrett. His electricity bill for last year was minus 83 dollars. (Solar panels). The other guy was the Jan Gudmand-Hoyer, the founder of the cohousing movement.
Cohousing is great. Community is a difficult thing to pull off but cohousing has a high likelihood of success designed in. You need enough privacy to be happy, you need a lack of ideology (just people living next door to each other) and then plenty of spaces and opportunities for hanging out together. The place where I am living recycles 95% of its garbage. Only two small bins for more than 35 people! I will write something proper on cohousing when I have a moment. It's a great solution to city living - and will be increasingly so in the years to follow.
Here's a bit of info on cohousing from Kathryn McCamant (from McCamant & Durrett architects):
3. The music is going well. I have two different things going on at the moment. One is the businessy, organisationy side - talking to producers, managers, press, and so on, trying to work out the next phase of Padma's Campaign for World Domination.
The other side is creating. Making music is so great. I sometimes wonder why I bother with the Campaign for World Domination. I could just be a little guy in my place making music for myself and having a lovely time. But that seems kind of selfish to me. One of the key things about music is it can bring us together and remind us of something magical and beyond the mundane. To connect with others on such a basis is for me the only way I can really connect.
Today I have been recording a demo of 'If Friends Were Neighbours Too'. It will hopefully be on the next album. It starts with 'Wouldn't it be nice if food just grew on trees'. I wrote that line when I was driving up a mountain track on the way to the yurt with a friend and we stopped at a wild cherry tree and picked piles and piles of cherries for all of us. They would've cost LOADS of money to buy in a supermarket, and they were organic and delicious. And at that point I thought 'how preposterous to pay for food'. And then I got that line in my head and the song just came together really quickly.
And now I'm in a cohousing community where my friends are my neighbours too!
Friday, 10 July 2009
ARE YOU ON FACEBOOK?
At last I have sorted a musician page on facebook. A place where we can all hang out and comment on each other's statuses (or is that stati?) while being benignly observed by the CIA and other organisations with our best interests at heart.
Please join us!
Please join us!
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Saturday, 13 June 2009
WOODY GUTHRIE, A HUMMING BIRD, AND OTHER STUFF
Things have been quite busy of late.
Went to a seminar on placing your music in TV, film and computer games. A couple of music producers came up from LA to talk about their work. So I am taking advantage of being on the West coast.
I’ve always had an interest in the business side of the music business. I think I’ll probably even set up a label one day, when there's a good reason to do so (like I've got to sign this band!!!) and I've got the time. But the whole publishing/placement thing has been pretty much a mystery to me. Esoteric knowledge, like tantric ritual. I have in fact read about it a whole bunch of times, but it’s like physics, I just can’t remember it. So to sit and listen to these guys and to be able to ask a question or two was excellent.
I’ve also been outside of Vancouver for the first time. Out into the wilds. Saw a bear! Amazingly there were a couple of tourists who had stopped the car and were standing extremely close to it taking photographs. Bear attacks usually happen to tourists, apparently. In one famous incident, a German tourist put jam on her kid’s face so that the bear would lick it off while they took a photo. You can probably guess the outcome.
The reason I was out of the city was that I was visiting an eco village. It was great to see people who had actually got something going. They were due to move into their places within a few weeks. They grow their own food on one-acre patches, the houses are ultra efficient, using thermal mass and solar gain (rather than heating and air conditioning) to keep a constant temperature, and they plan soon to buy a wind turbine to generate the electricity. I love meeting people who are out there and doing it. It takes creativity, skill, patience and above all commitment to get something like this to the moving-in stage, so you can guarantee that you are going to meet inspirational people. I may well be playing a gig there on the solstice.
While I was there a humming bird flew up to me and hovered about a foot away from my chest for a moment, before realising that my brightly coloured cardigan was not going to produce nectar, and shooting off. It was amazing, hovering there right at my heart chakra, like a fairy from a Disney cartoon.
When I was living in the yurt I decided that I’d like to write a book to go with the next album. Most of the songs that will be on the album were written during that time so hopefully it will provide an extra bit of context. I met up with the record company when I was in London and they were cool with the idea, so this week I started to write it. I’m going to attempt to chug it out quite quickly., Kerouac-style brain dump. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said ‘All first drafts are shit’ so my plan is to just get the first draft out and then lovingly sculpt and tidy it once it’s on the page.
Got invited to play the Bodhi Garden festival (an excellent little Buddhist festival in Brighton) but alas I shan’t be in the country. I might try to do something there as part of my UK tour though, later in the year. They are a good bunch.
The week has also seen me in a bit of internal strife about how to approach the sound of the album. I love this period before things have really started, but it’s a painful time. It’s like being a teenager – a time filled with potential but also insecurity. Which way to jump? Who to be?
I think making art must inevitably be this way, assuming you really care about it and aren’t just trying to create something that will get played on the radio. This is especially true when you are producing as well as writing and playing the music. I miss Holy McGrail!
At the moment, the whole thing is sitting there in my heart, beautiful and melancholy, before it has been polluted and compromised by bringing it out into the world. It feels like a great responsibility to be the one whose job it is to turn it into an album.
I read something beautiful and melancholy today which expressed perfectly what I hope to achieve. I was listening to Nina Violet’s album, which I love. I supported her in Brighton when she was doing her UK tour and was knocked out. Anyway, I was listening to the album, and decided to have a nose on the internet. After a quick search on google, I found an article about her. And she was talking about how Woody Guthrie’s music spoke out the suffering of the people, and somehow made it alright:
"Think back to what Woody Guthrie did in the Depression," she says. "He alleviated the suffering of people by singing their suffering aloud. When everybody was thinking these down thoughts and then a charismatic man showed up and sung the thoughts back to them, it made their suffering real and it made it okay. Music has always been an expression from people to God, or to each other or to themselves about the things that they suffer and the joys that they feel."
Amen.
Went to a seminar on placing your music in TV, film and computer games. A couple of music producers came up from LA to talk about their work. So I am taking advantage of being on the West coast.
I’ve always had an interest in the business side of the music business. I think I’ll probably even set up a label one day, when there's a good reason to do so (like I've got to sign this band!!!) and I've got the time. But the whole publishing/placement thing has been pretty much a mystery to me. Esoteric knowledge, like tantric ritual. I have in fact read about it a whole bunch of times, but it’s like physics, I just can’t remember it. So to sit and listen to these guys and to be able to ask a question or two was excellent.
I’ve also been outside of Vancouver for the first time. Out into the wilds. Saw a bear! Amazingly there were a couple of tourists who had stopped the car and were standing extremely close to it taking photographs. Bear attacks usually happen to tourists, apparently. In one famous incident, a German tourist put jam on her kid’s face so that the bear would lick it off while they took a photo. You can probably guess the outcome.
The reason I was out of the city was that I was visiting an eco village. It was great to see people who had actually got something going. They were due to move into their places within a few weeks. They grow their own food on one-acre patches, the houses are ultra efficient, using thermal mass and solar gain (rather than heating and air conditioning) to keep a constant temperature, and they plan soon to buy a wind turbine to generate the electricity. I love meeting people who are out there and doing it. It takes creativity, skill, patience and above all commitment to get something like this to the moving-in stage, so you can guarantee that you are going to meet inspirational people. I may well be playing a gig there on the solstice.
While I was there a humming bird flew up to me and hovered about a foot away from my chest for a moment, before realising that my brightly coloured cardigan was not going to produce nectar, and shooting off. It was amazing, hovering there right at my heart chakra, like a fairy from a Disney cartoon.
When I was living in the yurt I decided that I’d like to write a book to go with the next album. Most of the songs that will be on the album were written during that time so hopefully it will provide an extra bit of context. I met up with the record company when I was in London and they were cool with the idea, so this week I started to write it. I’m going to attempt to chug it out quite quickly., Kerouac-style brain dump. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said ‘All first drafts are shit’ so my plan is to just get the first draft out and then lovingly sculpt and tidy it once it’s on the page.
Got invited to play the Bodhi Garden festival (an excellent little Buddhist festival in Brighton) but alas I shan’t be in the country. I might try to do something there as part of my UK tour though, later in the year. They are a good bunch.
The week has also seen me in a bit of internal strife about how to approach the sound of the album. I love this period before things have really started, but it’s a painful time. It’s like being a teenager – a time filled with potential but also insecurity. Which way to jump? Who to be?
I think making art must inevitably be this way, assuming you really care about it and aren’t just trying to create something that will get played on the radio. This is especially true when you are producing as well as writing and playing the music. I miss Holy McGrail!
At the moment, the whole thing is sitting there in my heart, beautiful and melancholy, before it has been polluted and compromised by bringing it out into the world. It feels like a great responsibility to be the one whose job it is to turn it into an album.
I read something beautiful and melancholy today which expressed perfectly what I hope to achieve. I was listening to Nina Violet’s album, which I love. I supported her in Brighton when she was doing her UK tour and was knocked out. Anyway, I was listening to the album, and decided to have a nose on the internet. After a quick search on google, I found an article about her. And she was talking about how Woody Guthrie’s music spoke out the suffering of the people, and somehow made it alright:"Think back to what Woody Guthrie did in the Depression," she says. "He alleviated the suffering of people by singing their suffering aloud. When everybody was thinking these down thoughts and then a charismatic man showed up and sung the thoughts back to them, it made their suffering real and it made it okay. Music has always been an expression from people to God, or to each other or to themselves about the things that they suffer and the joys that they feel."
Amen.
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