I don’t often act on (or in many cases listen to) unsolicited review requests that arrive via Myspace mail, but the one I received from Fuck the Facts caught my eye. Firstly, they actually bothered to personalise the message, secondly they offered to give out their tracks to anyone who would review (or in any way promote) them, and thirdly they mentioned that they were self releasing. I get countless grammatically dubious mails via Myspace (not to mention the ones via direct email, blog comments, etc.) that say something like “nice profile, hows trix check us out if you get a sec , if not that’s cool” (that’s a real one from a band who shall not be named) and expect me to bother spending time listening to, and reviewing their band when they can’t be bothered to even formally introduce themselves!

By chance I also saw Cosmo Lee’s review on Invisible Oranges so I decided to check them out. The music is an amusing mix of early Dillinger Escape Plan (minus the jazz/spazz) with elements of black and death metal (most notably Morbid Angel) which could broadly be described as Grindcore. A must for fans of Ted Maul and their ilk. It’s short, violent and to the point. Excellent stuff.

What’s more interesting is the way they are releasing it. They’re doing a limited run of  500 copies of the EP on vinyl, the packaging of which is hand made. Anyone who orders it gets a code to go download the the MP3′s for free. This is enterprising and very forward thinking and anyone who’s spent any time reading my overly impassioned musings on self releasing will know that I approve. It also has a real personal touch that will make the hard copies very collectable. The download mechanism is handled by a site called Bandcamp, which is totally new to me. You can stream your music and offer both free and paid downloads (including an option to off ‘pay what you want’) and well as generally promote your band. It’s an interesting service and one that I’m going to write a bit more about – watch this space.

So go give Fuck the Facts a leg up, because this this sort of behaviour should be rewarded!

I was in the unenviable situation this past week of not having a copy of the new Baroness album. This sort of situation is not usually a big issue, but this particular time it left me in an existential quandary that lead me to yet more pondering on the nature of music retail.

You see, I want the physical copy. Specifically I want the CD. This CD would immediately be ripped directly to MP3 and unceremoniously injected onto my iPod. But having a physical copy is still important to me. I place a certain value in this, not least with a band like Baroness who have such delightful artwork.

So having not had the forethought to pre-order and finding the HMV cupboard predictably bare I was left either having to wait a couple of days for a copy from Amazon, listening to it on Myspace, downloading from iTunes or ‘borrowing’ a copy from one of those lovely fire-sharing sites. Now, I don’t want to pay twice, and I simply cannot wait. Myspace isn’t an option as I need it on my iPod so I can listen on the go. Spotify is potentially an option, but I’ll have to use my iPhone for that, and the battery only last 73 seconds, and I need that for the making/taking calls. So I’m left with the prospect of having to ‘borrow’ it for a few days while ordering off the web. What sort of a situation is this to find myself in in the digital age?

What would be really handy is if someone would sell the CD online and then give me the MP3’s to be getting on with while I wait. I don’t want to be charged extra for this, I’ve already paid for the music. However, decoupling the music from the physical product has some interesting theoretical consequences. Let’s deconstruct this situation a little.

Basically, what I want is the music. To accompany that music I would like a physical item. In this case it’s a CD, but it could be a record, tape, USB stick, a tuneful midget with the music memorised, whatever. In the modern age, there’s no real need to have anything actually contain the music for an individual. The vast majority of people don’t need CD’s any more than they need the bottle containing the beer, it just so happens to be one medium for transporting the stuff inside.

So the situation that we’re in is that people choose to ‘attach’ a CD to their music purchase. Or put another way, they buy a CD which comes (conveniently) with some music on it. But why are obsolete (in the practical sense) music containing objects the only choice of ‘thing’ that comes as an accompaniment to the music? Why not t-shirts, posters, books, shoes, branded luxury leather recliner etc.? The record companies have a vested interest in getting you to buy stuff from them, and especially walking-billboard/culture items like t-shirts. This way they incentivise people to buy from them (rather than ‘stealing’ the music) as well as getting that person in a purchase cycle with them – which is potentially the most valuable aspect here.

So why not offer MP3 + CD packages? (and thus solving my immediate need) But also offer MP3 + t-shirt packages, or with records or hats or hat stands or gig tickets or books or comics or all of the above in a single transaction. Why not sell t-shirts in shops with a memory stick with the music. Hell, give the actual CD away with the t-shirt, but without the cover or any fancy packaging.

People could just go to iTunes and buy the album, but why not just buy a t-shirt and get the album for ‘free’? Of course you could make more money by selling both, but don’t kid yourself on how many folks would bother buying a t-shirt once they’ve bought the music, and if you ask me, a t-shirt sale is more valuable than a music sale.

In the end I ‘borrowed’ the music and the bought the album on vinyl, which costs more than the CD that I would have otherwise bought. I’m struggling to see where Baroness lost out here….

I found myself recently lecturing a non-metal fan, who harboured a preconception that metal is a narrow and one-dimensional genre, on what a diverse bunch we metalheads are. And boy does this show on this, the first ever Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape. We have Classic Metal, d-beat punk, brutal thrash, doom, grunge, industrial, and even Nu-Metal.

Despite the overall washed out homogeneity of mainstream metal, the underground once again proves itself diverse and challenging. There’s something for most tastes here and perhaps a little something to broaden your horizons.

All tracks can be streamed in their entirety and most can be downloaded via the Soundcloud media player. Please post comments on what you thought of the tracks as I’m sure all the bands would value your (constrictive) criticism. Also, the Soundcloud player has a commenting function that allows you to comment on particular parts of the song that you liked (or hated).

Anyway, enough of this pointless chatter. Go forth and consume of the mixtape and feel your life infinitely enrichened.

The Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape Volume 1

This may be a “sure we all knew about this Alex, we were just keeping it a secret from you” moment, but it came as a surprise for me that there are no less than 2 rich digital media formats being touted to reinvigorate the ‘dying’ album format.

I hadn’t realised that the album had was dying – I still buy but most of my music either on CD or download whole albums. However much of the rest of the music buying world doesn’t – the trend is towards buying single tracks, and some bands have even opted to become singles only zones and eschew albums all together. After all, what’s the point of recording an entire, well packaged, sonically aligned collection, when most folks only ever download track 9 because they heard it on the radio?

It is for this reason that AC/DC refuse resolutely to (officially) release their music on digital format – we record albums, they say, not single tracks, and they’re made to be consumed that way. It’s not hard to see why they, and many other bands, feel this way.

The album frequently marks an epoch in time. “Here are 10 songs that represent this moment in our lives”, a distillation of their microcosmic zeitgeist if you will. All the best albums are comprised of tracks that feel like they really belong together, and they wouldn’t have sounded right on the previous or subsequent album. A poor album is often one that doesn’t gel. These are often albums made up of a mix of ‘singles’ or filler, and it’s perhaps these types of albums that no-one it mourning the death of.

Many albums are aligned on theme (Muse’s Absolution), tone and style (Death’s Sound of Perseverance, anything by Earth) and concept (Leviathan, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son), not to mention countless other configurations (try Flora by Chord for a rather obscure one). Even the track ordering is, for many bands, considered a fine art – Radiohead nearly split up over the ordering of OK Computer!

Some of the best albums released recently have been exactly that: albums, not just collections of good tunes. People downloading single tracks from Mastodon’s concept masterpiece Crack in the Skye surely miss the point and musch it’s beauty and power. Opeth’s Watershed and Baroness’s Red Album may not be ‘concept albums’, but the tracks belong together – they gel.

And it’s not all about the music. CD packaging is getting better and better and vinyl is still going strong. Putting together an album isn’t about recording a bunch of tracks, batching them up and putting them out, it’s an art form in itself, and one that many bands and fans alike still care deeply about.

So who thinks the album is dead? The bean counters of the record industry, that’s who.

The idea of repackaging the music download is not a bad one. The download market is one that never really lent itself to the album, and if people want to download an album, I can’t see any problem with making it a richer more rewarding experience for them. Packaging video, cover art, lyrics and (oh dear god no!) ringtones with the music is a way to help extend the album artform, and replace some of the value of the music that is lost in translation to download.

However, this whiffs of a cynical ploy by the music industry to sell more downloads to recoup revenues since those dastardly, party smashing plebeians, the public decided that they wanted freedom to download music however they damn well want. Given this motive it has the potential to pervert and cheapen the album art form out of recognition.

This is perhaps a moot point, as do people really want or need this? CD sales may be declining, but this is merely a symptom of the passive music fans who never really wanted whole albums anyway, but were forced to buy them, moving to another format. CD’s and vinyl are still the format of choice for real music fans. Given that music is now easily exchanged, bands are forced to put out much higher quality packaging and extras which, over time will become more valuable, collectable and will be truly cherished by fans in the way that these formats used to be.

So is the album format dead? Hell no, It’s stronger than ever!

(If you need any evidence that the CD Album format is alive and well check this out)