New single - The Cables

 Hi folks,

I've got a new single coming out on the 23rd of April. 

Here's the smart link for pre-saving and all that bollox: https://ditto.fm/the-cables

It'll be on all the usual streaming and download platforms as you'd expect. Plus a few that none knew existed.

But if you're one of those wonderful people who populates the Bandcamp world, then you get a sneak preview because it's out today on that platform.

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/the-cables

It's a song about deep sea data cables, possibly quite topical given certain Russian sub activity at the moment. This track started as a sketch for Jamuary but I felt it had legs so it's been worked up into something worthwhile. Hopefully.

It's a stand-alone track and won't be on the coming album.

The Last Damn Time - new single out today

New single out today. If you like early Billy Bragg or Max Garcia Conover's solo stuff, this might be up your street.

Jailbreak! Revenge! Angry guitar!

Bandcamp: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/the-last-damn-time

Streaming: https://ditto.fm/the-last-damn-time

Also rude word warning.

This is a standalone release and won't be part of the next album.

Celebrating indie* music

 Regular visitors to this site, both of you, might have noticed a couple of tweaks to site layout.

Firstly, at the top of the right-hand column you'll see a little widget called We Bring The Music.

This is an old-fashioned Web Ring. Click on the forward or back arrow and you'll be taken to another musician's website. Somewhere on that page you'll find another instance of this widget when you can step on to the next site in the ring. Or hit random and jump to some cool new music at the touch of a button.

Which brings me onto the next feature, directly below the Web Ring: The Indienet.

This is simply a list of websites or linktrees for a whole bunch of great musicians, mostly folks I've met on threads but there's some IRL friends in there too.

So next time someone bemoans the lack of new music, or that they just can't find it, point them to this page and let that do the heavy listening.

And in the meantime, just click a link and see where you end up.

* And by 'Indie' I mean really independent, not some post-brit-pop guitar-based sad boy pop.

Not that there's anything wrong with that of course.

Return of the Superhero

 Well, I appear to be out of Spotify-bot-jail and my stuff is being shared again so it's time for Superhero to be re-released on all the streamers.

Smart link thingy: https://ditto.fm/superhero_b25dc403

Get yourself some politically-relevant orchestral funk in your life.

You know you want to.

Further thoughts on AI and being a DIY songwriter

This started as a post on Threads but as usual I rambled on a bit so I've consolidated it all here:



A couple of things happened over the last couple of days that got me thinking about AI and music in a slightly different way. 

Firstly, I dropped into my free Spotify account to check a couple of things and left it running for a bit. Track after track of AI music. Utterly predictable, utterly forgettable, mindless background noise. All relevant to my genre and preferences but as interesting as a plate of boiled white rice.

Then yesterday I opened Tidal while I was at work and put on a new release playlist. Again, mostly in my genre or area of interest, no AI content that I could immediately recognise but, with a couple of honourable exceptions, equally uninspiring.

The voices all sound similar. The guitar sounds are all generic. The rhythm never varies from its grid-aligned 4/4 tempo. The subject matter is always the same.

Polished to a perfectly smooth grain of boiled white rice.

And sure, on some of these tracks the chord progressions might have a bit more variety, and on an individual level the there might be a bit more variety in the song structure. But as a collective it was as bland as the AI stuff. 

Music by numbers.

Written by a committee.

Aimed at a playlist.

Finished in a factory.

Sold as a commodity.

Before I go any further, I'm not one of these folks who thinks that good music stopped in the 70s or that there are no great artists and performers out there nowadays.

There absolutely are across the whole range and scale of music spectrum. But we know them because of their humanity, their personality, their genuine attitude...

And this is, for all of us, good news I think.

It's good news because all of us have these things. We are all unique individuals with personality, attitude and humanity. We have our own experiences, tragedies and triumphs. We have our own stories to tell.

Which means the solution to a diet of anodyne, factory fresh, noise-masquerading-as-music is simple, and available to everyone. 

You don't have to change platform or pay extra.

Just find an indie / DIY act and put their music on. It might not be as polished, maybe not be as perfectly performed, it might not make you part of a social movement, but it will provide that honest human connection.

Music, as Tom McRae has said, is an emotion transfer machine. But that can only work if it starts with emotion in the first place. Otherwise we're filling our bellies with the all nutritional content of a bowl of boiled white rice.

Stuffed full and starving to death.

The good music is out there. Honest, human, flawed, and overflowing with real emotion and experience. It's on your favourite platforms, just waiting to be found, just waiting for the story to be told. (You could start by looking at any of the musicians in the Indienet list on the right of this page).

This turned into an essay, sorry about that but the TL:DR is that AI isn't a threat, not really. No more than the major labels have been for the last 20 years. 

The only threat is getting sucked in. 

Don't. 

Go be you.

P.S.1 Someone commented on Threads that a lot of people think that a 'professional' production is one that is polished or perfect. But if you try this approach you'll often end up with something sterile and plasticised. A real pro takes all those rough edges and highlights just enough of them to let the magic come through.

P.S.2 The corollary to this is about who your real audience is. It can be easy to think that if, like me, you make very middle-of-the-road music then AI might be stealing away your listeners / royalties.

I posit that it isn't.

Because much as we songwriters, musicians and composers would love that it wasn't so, most people just don't care that much about music. They really don't.

Which means the folks who are happy with AI music chugging along in the background were never going to be your fans.

They were never going to sign up to the mailing list of an unknown artist. They were never going to head out to a toilet-circuit venue on a rainy night to see you play. They were never the people you should be focusing on. Sure if you have some success they'll come along for the ride. Until the ride stops, and then they'll find the next thing. 

So don't worry about them. 

Not one bit.

A milestone and a few thoughts on streaming

Music streaming gets a lot of shit. And a big helping of that is very fairly earned.

But it's important not to forget that there is a positive side to the new paradigm as well.

As someone who teetered on the brink of getting into the old world, and failed (twice), I have a bit of perspective.

A few years ago, couple of decades maybe, we talked hopefully about 'the democratisation of music'. And a lot of what we hoped for has come true.

Capable hardware and software is cheaper than ever, and a website and Bandcamp page are all you need to share your message and sell your music.

But the biggest challenge remains the same now as it was then: how to get your music in front of potential fans?

And obviously this is the bit where we've effectively built up the same systems of gatekeeping, twisted incentives and dubious companies with unethical practices.

Who'd have thought?

But this is about the positive side of things.

This week one of my songs tipped over the 10,000 plays threshold on Spotify.

Small numbers for some, but for a DIY artist on the wrong side of 50, with zero marketing budget, this is actually quite a big deal.

That's thousands of plays, to over a thousand listeners, that simply never would have happened in the old model.

That song might, maybe, with a lot of luck, made it into and out of a studio as a demo track.

But then it would have withered away on a batch of unsold CDs in a gig bag somewhere.

Instead it's been out in the world, living its best life, slowly racking up plays over the last 10 months. And hopefully giving a few of those people one of those special moments only music can provide.

Yes, the streaming model has serious flaws, but sometimes something is better than nothing.

And here's a link if you want to make it 10,001

https://open.spotify.com/track/5Jc22YCGEGxMx9H3lNcEVP

New Single - The Vessel

 Well, after the distributor shenanigans mentioned in the last update I can now confirm that The Vessel is on track to be released to all streaming services on 27 November.

Superhero will probably follow in the new year, but for now, here's a little bit about how The Vessel came to be...

I was at a songwriting retreat a few years ago and one of the exercises we were given was to write a song about our identity.
As a middle-class, educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, white male who grew up all over the place I realised that I didn't identify as anything.
Basically I'm so vanilla I'm beige. Average height, average weight, average male-pattern hair loss...
I am the default and the western world is designed for and around me.
This is the song I wrote about that...
My good friends Martin Walker and Eddy Deegan join me on this one to add some actual talent, and Martin took on the mixing duties.

EDIT: And here's the smart-link thingy for the streaming platform of your choice: https://ditto.fm/the-vessel

Of bots and takedowns and unbalanced connections...

 If any of  you have jumped onto your favourite streaming service over the last week or so, hell bent on streaming Superhero, then you'll probably have wondered where the track has disappeared to.

Well on 30 October I received a message from my distributor* saying that some suspicious streaming activity had been detected and giving me three days to provide an explanation whilst they investigated.

I replied saying that I had no extra insight and that appeared to be sufficient for their investigation as the next day the track was taken down.

Now I'm going to go ahead and guess that the platform that was affected by the dodgy streams** (almost certainly bot-related) was Spotify as that's where almost all of my listeners are. However my distributor has removed the track from all platforms.

The whole process is draconian and punishes third parties (the creators) but removing the track from other services seems particularly unnecessary.

This is, by the way, not in the least bit unusual. Music communities on social media are full of stories just like this and by now I would suggest that this has probably happened to more artists than not.

But right now, not only has Superhero been taken down, but my account has also been suspended. So The Vessel is unlikely to be released on 13 November. And that brings me to the crux of my bitching today.

And that's the fact that my distributor took less than 24 hours to take my music down but has so far taken 5 days to completely fail to respond to my questions or my support ticket. 

Fairly basic questions like:

How long with the track be blocked?

Will my next (in progress release) be blocked? And if so for how long?

When will my account be un-suspended?

And so far... 

::: crickets :::

This is vexing. The distributors (for there are a few that engage in this behaviour) are so keen on maintaining the relationship with their partners (Spotify et al.) that they've forgotten who their actual paying customers are.

And this is the unbalanced connection (pun very much intended). They can forget this relationship because, as in so many cases in the creative industries, the power equation is fundamentally imbalanced.

Just as literary agents can ignore their inboxes and never reply to the bulk of their applicants (who would become their source of income) because they control access to the publishers, so too can the distributors ignore their paying customers because they control access to the platforms.

Which leaves us, the creators, with only one option. Remove our content from those distributors and try and find an alternative that better understands the importance of serving their customers.

So expect to find certain tracks unavailable at various points over the next couple of months as I go about trying to find a distributor with a more balanced operation.

I'll provide an updated release date for The Vessel when I have one.

* You can't go direct to companies like Spotify and Tidal to add your music to their platforms, you have go through this wonderful gatekeeping mechanism called a distributor. 

** A dodgy actor loads up some of their own tracks (probably AI generated these days) sticks them in a playlist and then randomly adds some other tunes as 'filler' to make it look a bit less suss, then they point a load of bot accounts at the playlist to goose their royalties. I find it hard to believe that this actually makes any money but there seems to be enough people doing it that it must pay back in some form.

G. Stoner Hilcot is not AI

 It's an interesting measure of how fast these things change that when Manifesto was released in 2021, people recognised that G. Stoner Hilcot is a pseudonym and an anagram of, and homage to, the late Gil Scott Heron. But no-one suggested that it was an AI model.

Four years on, with the recent release of Superhero, the default assumption seems to be that it's an AI creation.

So, to set that record straight, I can confirm now that G. Stoner Hilcot is a real person. That's not his real name obviously, but he's a real person. Who just happens to be able to do a pretty mean impression of the original GSH.

Some people have asked for a bit more detail about him, but he's chosen to remain anonymous so obviously I'm not going to betray that. But he is real. He feels, he breathes. And he gets pissed off by what he sees around us. 

He just does it in a very particular style.

Superhero - now on streaming and download sites

It's another State of the Nation piece from me and G. Stoner Hilcot.

Superhero is now on all your favourite streaming services. 

And the ones you hate. 

Smart link updated to be much more useful with more services: artists.landr.com/057829500310

Superhero - new single with G. Stoner Hilcot

This one won't be on the next album, it's a standalone track that feels pretty appropriate right now.

This might be the quickest I've gone from idea to release (about two weeks from idea to release) so I expect there's some rawness in there that's accidental - but it'll fit with the deliberate stuff as well.

G. Stoner Hilcot returns...

And he's still pissed off.

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/superhero-feat-g-stoner-hilcot

Currently on Bandcamp advance release but will be hitting all the streaming sites in due course.

Colm Cannon's Call - new single out now!

 The second single from the next album has just dropped on all the usual streaming and download platforms on Wednesday.

It's a bit of weird mix of Americana and spoken word that tells the tale of a couple of lads playing truant from school.

It may, or may not, have some autobiographical properties...

https://ditto.fm/colm-cannons-call

BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Humberside

It's all go around here isn't it? Not only do we have an actual, real-life gig coming up in June but we're also on the radio on Thursday.
Yep, thanks to BBC Music Introducing and BBC York Maggie Carter and the Angels will be beaming through the airwaves to your very room. (Certain territories excepted).
Between 8 and 10.


Obviously you could just go and stream it now but you'd miss out on all the other good stuff they'll be playing.


I'll add listen-again links when they're available.

Gig news!

A gig you say? An actual live performance of music in front of an audience?
Is such a thing possible?
Yes indeed it is!
On the 5th June, we'll be supporting FIR at the Samuel Worth Chapel in Sheffield.
It's a lovely venue and should be a cracking night, but it's also pretty small so you'll need to be spritely with the tickets.
I say 'we' above because fortunately I'll be joined by Alex the Crazy Dane on guitar and Dr Jones on cello. Which means we'll sound good.


The venue: https://gencem.org/venue-hire/the-samuel-worth-chapel/
FiR: https://www.fir.band/

EDIT

And here's the link for tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/sheffield-general-cemetery/the-samuel-worth-chapel/fir-wolfman-and-the-laterals-and-drew-stephenson/e-ddpdej

Maggie Carter and the Angels - New Single Out Now

 It's new music day!

Maggie Carter and the Angels is now on all your favourite streaming platforms. And the other ones, we don't discriminate round here.

You used to be able to add links to pictures in blogger but I'm bolloxed if I know how to do it now, here's the smart link thing that you need: https://ditto.fm/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

Maggie Carter and the Angels now on Bandcamp

 Whilst I work on the next EP, here's a little single to keep things ticking over. Inspired by a joke originally from Hancock's Half Hour.

On all the big platforms next week, but all you lucky bandcampers get it early!

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

For your streaming pleasure...

Apparently you can do stuff with these links, like pre-save a track... that's going to be released globally... for no charge... Why would you do that anyway? But you can!

https://ditto.fm/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

And it'll be on Bandcamp a bit earlier for all the wonderful people there too.

New Single coming 19 Feb

 Quick heads up that the new single will be out in just over a fortnight on all the usual platforms (and a bit ahead of that for all you wonderful bandcamp people)

Retrospective - Digging for Bones

 It's been a long while since some of these were released to I've decided to work through my back catalogue and re-introduce the old stuff to any new listeners.

I think it must have been in 2006 or '07 when a couple of people approached me after a gig and told me they were setting up a record label, and they wanted me to be one of their first artists.

Now the obvious reaction to this would be, "pull the other one, it's got bells on," but I did actually know one of the chaps. He was a local promoter and had a small live sound business. So it was a bit more credible.

The chap he introduced me to had been running a studio in Leeds but he and his partner had to move when the building owner sold up. 

Cutting a long story short, the studio duo were linking up with the promoter (and his protégé) to form a new label and they were looking for a couple of acoustic acts to start their roster. 

Which is how I found myself going along to Sleep Safe studio just outside York and recording my first EP with SOUP records. About which I shall tell you a bit more below.

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/digging-for-bones

Track 1 - Cirencester. OK, let's get this out of the way up front. This song has nothing to do with Cirencester. Nothing at all. It ended up with this name because the drummer in a previous band misheard the first line, "The silence of the siren's sister…" and referred to it as 'that Cirencester song' and that's what stuck. The title I would have chosen is 'Axum Bridge' because the basic idea behind it was of a couple of people following the journey of the Ark of the Covenant to its apparent resting place in Axum, Ethiopia. The subtext being that even when we're travelling down the most quiet and abandoned of roads, we are still staying within the boundaries of what is already known. "Segosa madela" means absolutely nothing by the way, it's just a nice sounding collection of syllables that fitted the end of the track. Because of the musical simplicity of this track it's been pretty much the first thing I've taught every band over the last 15 years so there are at least three different versions of this track out there in various formats.

Track 2 - Lost. The lyrics for this were mostly written on the train between London and York; there's a big white building - it might not actually be a house - near the railway line at Retford that can be identified even at high speed. The second verse then references some of my memories of growing up in various countries in the tropics, Kipling's 'high-ceiled rooms that the trades blow through'; and how sometimes those memories aren't so helpful.

The middle 8 was inspired by watching a documentary on the disappearance of the Aral sea, and how some of the locals (who had lost their living as fishermen) had taken to salvaging scrap from the old chemical / biological weapons testing facility. It had previously been an island but was now just another part of the dried sea bed and was walkable.

Recording this was tricky as, for some reason, I always played and sang this very quietly - I think we ended up with 8 microphones being used! I've only sung it live once at a gig with a particularly special audience. 

Track 3 - Mugged In Spain. Probably the song that did more to get me signed than any other. It's essentially a song about a terrorist committing and getting away with an atrocity of some kind by making himself into a credible victim of an unrelated crime. It was written not long after the Madrid bombings and I was channelling quite a bit of anger about that - which is probably why I stood out from the usual singer-songwriters at the time. We laid down the core of the track and then the drums were added later when I wasn't there. I think it was the first time I went through the whole 'oh my god what have you done?' to 'actually that's pretty cool' cycle. This is something I still go through every time anyone adds something to a song I've written, and frequently when I'm adding things myself.

Track 4 - OK. Everyone has an ex-girlfriend song (or ex-boyfriend if that's your preference), I had a dead girlfriend song. This was one of those tracks that shouldn't really have worked live but with the above short intro I was generally playing it into a silent room. The working title for this EP was Five Short Songs About Death, this track might have had something to do with that. But it is actually a happy (ish) song.

Track 5 - Stressed. The opening and closing lines are from Ganges Pilot, a poem expanded from Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed. It's kind of about dying at your desk and not being too bothered about it. I think when I was first signed the label had an idea that this first EP would be five tracks of voice and guitar and that would be about it. I soon disabused them of that notion and made the point that if they were going to have all these cool toys in the studio then I was definitely going to use them. A bass player friend of mine has mocked me about the radio bit for years now, I've never really understood why though.

The cover photo was by kind permission of Heather Zibbel.

And that was it, my first professionally recorded music. The epilogue for this tale is that about a year ago I went to the tip with the remaining hundreds of unsold CDs and scrapped them. Kids, make sure you know your audience before investing in physical goods.

Rough to Release - complete series

 Well, I've now completed my 'finish your damn song' blog series, complete with a full worked example at the end, and you can find the full series here:

https://roughtorelease.blogspot.com/2024/12/rough-to-release-index.html

I hope some of it is of use to some of you.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays all!