New music on its way – Title Suggestions please

Am currently adding the finishing touches to a few tracks I’ve been recording recently. Loosely themed around some of the wonderful 60s and 70s British TV sci-fi which I grew up with, the music is intended to evoke the atmosphere of such serials as Quatermass, UFO, The Tomorrow People, Survivors and Doomwatch. As you would expect, Radiophonic music is a big influence on this, but also the less heralded music of Barry Gray (of UFO & Space1999 soundtrack fame), and Kraftwerk. Ambience, however, will be the prominent vibe.
The album title is yet to be decided, and it’ll be free of charge when released, as usual.

“Seasons – The Really Early Stuff”

Hello friends and comrades……..
In the absence of any actual new music from Dementio13, I’ve been trawling through my many outtakes and discarded tracks. Anyway, I thought I’d put them out as a loose compilation…of 54 tracks recorded between 1997 and 2001.
Some of the tracks are obviously sketches or half-ideas; but some of them are fully formed tracks which I’m actually quite proud of. Their lack of familiarity (to me) was a bit of a breath of fresh air…. and I had to remind myself that I’d recorded them!

Anyway, Last.fm wouldn’t let me upload an album of 54 tracks, so I’ve had to upload them as 4 ‘volumes’ (“Free leatherette binder with your first volume…”!).

So, sift through the crap and find some gems in there!
I sincerely hope you like it…..

Paul

Vol 1

Vol 2

Vol 3

Vol 4

Powered by ScribeFire.

Loads of FREE music!!!

Did I mention that all Dementio13 tracks are now free to download (albeit as 128kbps MP3s) at Last.fm and Bandcamp?
Of course, if you like your music in higher fidelity, there are 320kbps MP3s available at Bandcamp and on good ol’ iTunes.
Click on the above links to go there….

Powered by ScribeFire.

New Store For Dementio13 Tracks

I’ve just made three of my albums available on Bandcamp.com, a new eSeller and music distributor. They provide high quality downloads in a vast array of formats to suit every listener; I strongly recommend that you check them out! Also, go to this store to download Cwtch tracks. Thanks…

Powered by ScribeFire.

New Cwtch Track – City To City

The new single version of the Cwtch song, “City To City” has been released. You can download a free 128kbps MP3 at Last.fm and Bandcamp.com; or a better (320kbps) quality version at cwtch.bandcamp.com. Its a cool and laid-back piece of melancholia, including lyrics by Travvy, and of course, Paul and Marie’s sensibility for music and vocals. Please check it out.
Thanks!

Powered by ScribeFire.

New Tracks, and Video

I’m currently recording new tracks for a, so far, untitled album. It’ll be available soon-ish, depending on the weather!

In the meantime, please do me a favour and head over to my Youtube Channel and have a look at an impressionistic video for a new track called ‘Styrofoam’.
Thanks.

Dementio13 – Styrofoam

Powered by ScribeFire.

Help Me Improve My Chart Position

We’re number 10 on the ReverbNation Electronica/Dance charts for Cardiff, UK. www.reverbnation.com/dementio13 … In fact, we have been for a while. Please come and add yourself as a fan on Reverbnation, Facebook, Myspace, Virb or iLike and give us some kudos!
Thanks…

OverKill.com?

@Autorotation (on Twitter) posted a comment about whether to join “yet another” music site promising ‘increased exposure’, ‘earnings from you music’ and ‘a way to contact your fans’. The issue was that the internet/market/whatever-you-call-it is oversaturated.

I myself have joined many a site which claims to be able to give the artist a portal through which they can upload and sell their music and increase exposure; and the listener a source of free or cheap downloads.
Most sites take the form of a simple band webpage containing a biography, a photo and a flash player for songs.
Some sites go a bit further and offer somewhere to write a blog, a video player, somewhere to put widgets, etc. But they’re all pretty much the same.

The lack of originality employed in the creation of these sites is stunning. The edict seems to be “find a way of repackaging the format of a truly original concept, and then copy it ad infinitum.”
So, for a true original like Last.fm which lists and tracks listening habits and provides tailor-made radio stations, there are clone sites like Rhapsody and Lala, amongst others. For every Reverbnation, there are a whole host of sites which claim to get you more listeners and fans and get you noticed.
There are also social networking sites which ape the format of ‘the big 3′ (Myspace, Facebook and Bebo, which in turn appear more and more to be imitating each other) which allow the inclusion of your music for increased exposure. Some of the newer sites seem to be incorporating elements of all three catergories: internet radio/tracking; promotion; and social-networking.

I currently have my own band profiles on last.fm, ilike, reverbnation, myspace, besonic, facebook, virb, amazingtunes, twones, aralie, soundcloud and many others which, to be honest, I’ve forgotten the names of, and doubt whether they exist anymore! (Bandpump.com anyone?!). And judging by these sites’ membership and listener-bases, nobody actually uses them regularly anyway.

Of course, some natural selection takes place where the fittest or best sites survive. Last.fm has millions of users throughout the world and is some countries’ only portal to new music. My artist’s ‘playcount’ exceeds 30,000 only because the site is so far-reaching. I would never have got so many listeners otherwise. Some artists have really benfitted from this.
It was originally conceived as being the ultimate database of music. Last.fm’s original remit was to catalogue every piece of music ever published, and eventually, provide every track as part of a ‘radio’ stream based on on users’ individual listening habits, tastes and moods. Thus freeing listeners from the dogma of conventional radio programming. It has partly succeeded: you can now have your own radio station which plays Moby, The Stones and Beethoven all in the same ‘programme’. Last.fm benfitted from being technology-savvy, changing with listening trends and employing some great code-writers. However, as with all great internet institutions (ie Google, Myspace, etc), it became too big for its creators to manage and when the corporations came knocking with vast sums of money, Last.fm’s creators gave in and surrendered their dream to CBS. And who can blame them?!

As a result, music on Last.fm is now subject to all sorts of legal wrangling which has compromised the service it set out to provide. But its still the best service of its kind…

As technology changes and user demand trails off, what is needed in this field is true originality. What is the point of regurgitating the same old formula; with site after site providing exactly the same services as one another? And, indeed, what is the point of musicians slavishly subscribing to these sites in the hope that it will get them more exposure when, in fact, it just dilutes their listener-base? There must be an alternative out there, brewing in a creative coder-writer’s mind!

I myself have a wishlist:
A central site which allows the upload of music but which syndicates the music out to all other sites in much the same way as RSS syndicates text. Therefore eliminating the tedious process of uploading music again and again and again and again to other sites which all provide the same content anyway.

Currently I think the best option for musicians is to join one or two of the more established sites and concentrate on promoting the music/ gigs/ etc through them alone. They may be owned by corporate giants, they may be mainstream, but they are so because they have been proven to be successful. Though gone are the days when an Arctic Monkeys or a Lily Allen could promote themselves exclusively on Myspace without any corporate assistance (I’m sceptical as to whether this was actually the case anyway).

New Dementio13 Album Coming Soon!

New Dementio13 album (title TBA) coming in three to four weeks time. The usual mixture of electronic eclecticism with a twist, some new ideas, some borrowed, some blue. It’ll be available on iTunes and as streams on Last.fm. Keep your ears open…

Neil’s been at it again!

Neil McCann (muuwmuuw) has produced a series of videos for Spacek Cadet tracks. They’re soporific mini-essays and could be seen as ‘ambient video’. See it here – http://vimeo.com/5514177