2021 Thank You’s
It's been an interesting New Year for me. My Electronica 'not-trying-to-give-a-fuck-or-at-the-very-least-pretending-to' alter ego, Invisible Squirrel had the temerity to release his first album on the 1st January. Some may say it was a cynical attempt to get one of his/my tracks first dibs on yearly playlists by people like Old Indie Kid etc and those people would be spot on. You're cynical but very astute too. Although the Indie behemoths, The Heavy North did it too, so if you've got a gripe with that, you can tell that hairy bunch you're not impressed with such mercenary behaviour as well ;-) and there's 5 of them and they all look like they could be very handy in an arm wrestling competition.
Out of the New-Music ether came a wonderful review of 'Sonder' by Mr Moby Tanner. The new director(?) of operations of In Your Ears Music (To be honest everyone at IYEM is a team player but Moby is probably right now taking up a bit of slack by the stalwarts Lewis + Dan who've been hard at it since early 2020) I might have to get him a special plaque for his desk/battle station/studio for what he wrote, as he has penned a pretty enthusiastic piece on this 12 song release. Rather than me explain what he wrote, I urge you to have a gander at his marvellously worded blog.
https://therebirthofcool.news.blog/2022/01/03/invisible-squirrel-sonder-album-review/
Whilst we're on the subject of Playlists by Mr Old Indie Kid, or as I know him, Danny 'Daft Pom' Milner, it is worth looking back at his 2021 playlist.
As someone called it, 'the sort of playlist you bury in the garden of Blue Peter'. A time capsule for the generation of New Music artists sharing their art throughout 2021. It reached the incredible tally of 2020 songs which, for the sake of any latent OCD sufferers, was one short of the perfect tally. If you get to read this Danny, I strongly suggest you go back and add one more track. To make the circle perfect. I look forward to in a decade, reading who exactly leapt out of the obscurity most of us inhabit, into at the very least, a brief period of 6 Music A-listing. My money's on either Dictator, Sky Diving Penguins or Novelty Island purely for the fact they comprehensively walk the walk and talk the talk with brilliant live performances backed up by stellar studio output. Danny's playlist below.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50QsPU8tdNuLHvqpgQR9nj?si=78907f23eaba4168
Finally I want to pass on a massive thank you to Lean at cooltop20.com who does the reverse concept to Old Indie Kid of keeping a playlist small and introducing a small amount of competition to proceedings. She updates every Saturday her, you guessed, Top 20 of unsigned recordings. I had the honour for a few weeks of reaching the top spot with "Be My Coastguard" from my album 'Found Ourselves' which is ironically a lyric that describes the relationship New Music has with those that support it. Lean is one of those who has a massive speedboat and lots of life-jackets for people like me flailing about in the Ocean of streams. Obscurity is so much easier if you get the occasional spotlight cast upon your art by people like CoolTop20. Link to their site below to an interview I had with Lean late last year.
https://cooltop20.com/2021/11/19/in-the-spotlight-joe-adhemar/
So to the handful of people who subscribe to my blog, hello and Happy New Year. I have about 4 'producer' projects in the pipeline, one of which is a collaboration with Silver Haar which will be coming out on the 14th Jan called 'Mountains'. It's got a Scottish vibe to it: origins of Mogwai and Snow Patrol with Tom Brogan's stamp on it. Tom has brought on board Deliberator Records (hello Cammy!) who is a man who converts his passion into action with his new Record Company. The future looks bright for Silver Haar and I'm looking forward to working with this talented bunch of lads this year a LOT.
Finally as a non-gigging studio monkey my heart goes out to all the acts trying to gig and finding Omicron impediments put in their way. Stick with it people. I, like a lot of people, intend to watch live streams this year so plug those guitars in, hit live stream and get playing. The audience will be there when you emerge again. All you need is a matched pair, a decent laptop and a geeky cousin who can explain how to get a decent audio into the interweb. If you're gigging you should at least have a PA desk. A couple of overheads for the drummer and you can live stream a set, surely? Bring your audience along for the ermmm.... journey!