Some Indepedent Music Business stories you my have missed in the Indepedent:

 

Record Label PR File: Peacefrog

By Sarah Birke

Published: 29 March 2007

 

Introduction: Peacefrog has dedicated itself to entirely different genres of music in its time. Once home to the notoriously reclusive house/techno DJ Moodymann, the label, run by ex-DJ Pete Hutchinson (pictured above), offers American folk, singer-songwriters and is now exploring contemporary pop music. A lot of the artists are American or Swedish born. Sound-engineering and mastering are another side to Peacefrog's business.

 

History: Finding himself unemployed and looking for a career in the music industry other than as a DJ, Hutchinson founded Peacefrog: "I wanted to get involved in production. I didn't really have any other idea - I was into music and wanted to make cash!" Detroit and Chicago house records made up the very early releases, but once that "exploded in creativity", Hutchinson rifled through record shops to find alternative music, moving on to American folk and singer-songwriters.

 

What they say: "What we look for is an artist is one whereby I would want to go and buy their record. If it is good, the sales side of it comes naturally. But we do sign left-of-field, avant-garde acts even we like even if they won't make money," says Hutchinson.

 

Notable acts: Past big names include DJ Moodymann. Currently, French band Nouvelle Vague and José González.

 

Top tips for 2007: Singer-songwriter Findlay Brown, who released an album last month, has been likened to Paul Simon.

 

Few labels have charted such varied waters as Peacefrog. At its inception in 1992 the label was at the forefront of putting out house, techno and electronic records. But after the mid-Nineties, Peacefrog mellowed, diversifying into more folksy and pop music.

 

So what caused the drastic change? "I found the house music scene becoming repetitive. The best records were all made in the mid-Nineties and it went downhill from there," says Pete Hutchinson, label founder and managing director.

 

"What was an exciting revolution in terms of clubs and parties was hijacked by the mainstream. It became music for dads to listen to and Radio 1 DJs to play." At that time, Hutchinson was finding most of his signings in the US: "Chicago was the home of house, techno came out of Detroit and I found the rootsy side of it was still there." Indeed, according to Hutchinson, part of what brought the downfall of the genre was "European watering-down."

 

Hutchinson, himself a former DJ, disputes that electronic music was just a fad that captured people's attention.

 

"It doesn't matter what instrument you're on, whether it's a Fender or a sampler, it has just got to be innovative. I suspect that people just wrote off house without really listening to it," he says. "We're all scared of genres of music we don't know about and at that time there wasn't the easy access to music via the internet that we have today."

 

But Hutchinson is confident of house and techno's legacy. "Punk was significant, but acid house lasted 20 years!"

 

Once the market had dulled, Peacefrog realised it would have to diversify or die. Hutchinson went to record shops and found out about the alternative country music scene in the United States.

 

Athough initially Peacefrog's acts were American, the more recent folk signings are on the UK music scene. The up-and-coming Findlay Brown is from Yorkshire and cites influences from John Martyn to Nick Drake.

 

Ever mellow, but of a different cast, a couple of years ago Peacefrog signed Nouvelle Vague. Their first album sold an unexpected 300,000 copies and gave the label a new lease of life.

 

Now, with only half a dozen artists on the books at any time, a large part of the business comes from mastering and cutting records for other independent labels as well as licensing tracks for use in advertising. Their artists' music has accompanied T-Mobile, Tropicana, Nescafé and, for the label, Sony Bravia, which launched José González into the public conscious.

 

Hutchinson's love of music goes back to his childhood. "I got into music through my older brothers. When I was growing up you got a dole cheque and with that you could get a sixteenth of hash and a record from Our Price. I bought records because I liked the look of the cover. I started collecting records, seeing DJs and making notes on what they were playing."

 

As his brothers changed taste, so did Hutchinson, which helps explain the dexterity with which Peacefrog has reinvented itself. He was exposed to Crosby, Stills and Nash, Led Zeppelin and Mötorhead early on, followed by jazz, soul, northern soul, funk, rare groove and late Eighties house music from friends.

 

"I think it's important to have been around a while," he says. "The Seventies and Eighties were important and to be successful you need in-depth knowledge of what happened 40 years ago as well as what's going on now."

 

So is Hutchinson ready to predict the next big thing? "No," he says. "It will depend on whoever comes up with something of good quality. There's a lot of mileage in electronic music if it's innovative enough and there are a lot of good singer-songwriters, but I can't predict genres."

 

But for Peacefrog, the year is more calculated - and it will be eclectic as usual. "We're working with a Swedish band called Little Dragon who do contemporary pop. They have female vocals and are very unique," Hutchinson says.

 

Then there's Aril Brikha, also from Sweden, with a techno recording due. And José González has also just confirmed that he will be collaborating on a documentary with Kylie Minogue.

 

"We've always got our ears open," says Hutchinson. "Anything is a possibility in the future."

 

 

 

'Best mix CDs should offer insight into a DJ's personal taste'

By Rupert Howe

 

Published: 29 March 2007

 

Since the dawn of disco in the mid-Seventies, dance music has been synonymous with one format - the 12-inch single. But while outsize platters of black plastic still have their place, especially for club DJs keen to show they haven't lost touch with their roots, for most people wanting to connect with club culture outside a club, 12-inches have now been superceded by the all-in-one convenience of the mix CD.

 

Established as a marketing tool during the "superclub" boom of the mid-Nineties, today the best mixes are more than just compilations. They should offer an insight into a DJ's personal taste - something as yet unavailable on any iPod. Hence the willingness to highlight eccentricity as much as technical skill, as on Fred "Lemon Jelly" Deakin's recent sprawling three-disc mix The Triptych (Family Recordings), a magical mystery tour encompassing Siouxsie And The Banshees, George Michael and French disco-house wizard Etienne De Crécy.

 

There's a similar sense of expertly controlled chaos informing DJ Food & DK's Now, Listen Again (Ninja Tune), another eclectic mix which cuts together The Human League, Aphex Twin and an infectious funk reworking of Purple Haze by Johnny Jones & The King Casuals. Informed by the magpie aesthetic of early hip-hop, their approach is also audibly hands-on (that turntable scratching is for real) and a refreshing counter to computer-sequenced offerings elsewhere - beware of any dance mix with the word "anthems" in the title.

 

Leave Them All Behind II (Modular) doesn't boast any turntablist tricks, but as mixed by Aussie hedonists Bang Gang DJs it does accurately capture the sensation of stumbling around a darkened sweatbox at three in the morning. It also boasts trendy Sao Paulo collective CSS, electro soul outfit The Gossip and some of the hippest remixes around, including Erol "Trash" Alkan's remix of Hot Chip's "Boy From School".

 

Another mix electrified by the energy of an after-hours, dive-bar party is Simian Mobile Disco's disco-rave collision Suck My Deck (New State), created for club institution Bugged Out. Weaving together old school Chicago hip house (Fast Eddie), Gallic techno (Para One) and wired new-ravers such as Klaxons, it embraces both raucous bass and moments of sublime levitation, as during the soaring, Coldplay-on-MDMA breakdown of their bleep-and-bass cut-up "It's The Beat".

 

Of course, the free-spirited, party-hard Simian/Modular approach rules all clubland's hippest dives right now. And it's hard not to imagine a sea of angular haircuts and outré Eighties fashions when listening to Mock & Toof's ebullient disco-house reworking of "My Friend Is A Seahorse" (Def Drive) by Berlin electropop duo Kissogram. Or even Mylo's foot-to-the-floor updating of Freeform Five's "No More Conversations" (Apollo), which fuses the dreamy pop house vocal to an almost comically flatulent synth riff.

 

All of which adds spice to the hipster-baiting satire of Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip's "Thou Shalt Always Kill" (Lex Records), as deadpan Brit rapper Scroobius rails against name-droppers and bandwagon-jumpers over an electro backing track. Smart, funky and funny - think The Streets covering LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge".

 

At the other end of the spectrum is a network of electronic producers who appear to have developed a fascination with rock's gothic margins.

 

Black Strobe is a side project of Parisian DJ and style icon Ivan Smagghe, once signed to Trevor Jackson's now defunct disco-punk label Output. Yet their new offering, the Shining Bright Star EP (Playlouder), sounds like a mutant fusion of Nine Inch Nails and early New Order - except when remixed by Japanese studio wizard Zongamin, whose audacious percussive layering transforms the gloom of the original into something far more beguiling.

 

Even better is the new single from New York art-rock Battles, who feature onetime Helmet drummer John Stanier and Tyondai Braxton, son of jazz composer Anthony Braxton. Newly signed to Warp, "Atlas" is like a complex mathematical equation made funk, mixing turbulent bass, hypnotic drum patterns and helium-pitched vocals into a potent brew.

 

It also comes with a blissed-out remix from Hamburg's DJ Koze, author of one of the great mix CDs of recent times: 2004's All People Is My Friends. Coincidence? Maybe not...

Kate Jackson: why The Long Blondes' singer loves stilettos and Suede

Interview by Charlotte Cripps

Published: 29 March 2007

 

The first record I bought was...

 

The Bangles' "Manic Monday" when I was six. I would never go to sleep as a child. The only thing that worked was my mum putting on the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, but the trouble was that when "Manic Monday" came on I would be wide awake and dancing. My mum took me to a record shop and bought me the single.

 

The first gig I went to was...

 

Echobelly at Cambridge Junction in 1994. I was wearing a crochet-knit coat with rabbit fur trim, knee boots and a little green handbag that got trampled on when I dropped it.

 

My favourite record is...

 

Suede by Suede. It changed my perceptions of music. As a teenager I was into rock and punk, but Suede had an element of romance, fantasy and glamour that I craved. At the time I was living in Bury St Edmunds. It conjured up the big city of London. Suede meant so much to me. If The Long Blondes can do the same for teenagers, then we are doing something right.

 

But my parents always liked...

 

ABBA (and so do I!)

 

I couldn't marry someone...

 

Who liked Nirvana. Doc Martins and baggy T-shirts. No, no, no.

 

On stage I like to wear...

 

Black patent four-inch stilettos. I have four identical pairs. I have been wearing them ever since we started. At the moment I'm also wearing hot pants.

 

I'd love to perform with...

 

Beth Ditto from The Gossip. Ultimately I'd also like to duet with Jarvis Cocker. I don't know if this will ever happen though!

 

One thing that must change in the music industry is...

 

Being a woman in a band should not be seen as a novelty and unfortunately it still is.

 

A great album cover is...

 

Suede by Suede. It shows two androgynous people kissing.

 

http://www.adriandenning.co.uk/pictures2/suede.jpg

 

On my iPod I listen most to...

 

Neil Young's On the Beach.

 

If I could have written any song it would have been...

 

Loudon Wainwright 111's "Motel Blues"

 

The worst song I have heard is...

 

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by Tight Fit.

 

The Long Blondes' 'Someone To Drive Me Home' is out now on Rough Trade

Arab Strap on misery, therapy and cathartic songwriting

 

Published: 29 March 2007

 

In a manner that has perhaps only ever encouraged wannabe Morrisseys in their glum ways, so-called "miserablist" music is often much misunderstood. Leonard Cohen, Tindersticks and The Smiths might all have been tagged as gloom's godfathers, but they thrived on gallows' humour, a poetic density and unflinching self-observation more than mere miserablism.

 

Arab Strap, Falkirk's foul-mouthed indie bards were made of sturdier stuff than your average bedsit-dwellers. Streaks of mordant wit and caustic self-analysis spiked their songs of long, hard nights on the lash and long, hard mornings after.

 

The band's split in 2006 left guitarist Malcolm Middleton to focus on his already duly lauded solo work. At first glance, his albums are a bit glum, too. His 2002 debut, 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine, documents a deluge of depression with lashings of self-hatred. Meanwhile the centrepiece of 2005 follow-up, Into the Woods, is the majestic "Burst Noel", which details a grim Yuletide.

 

But there's alchemy in Middleton's mordant magic, as there is in the best downbeat music. Salvaging great, grainy pop from a mire of self-doubt, the results register at least a partial triumph over misery via song, hitting their peak on his recent third album, A Brighter Beat.

 

Contrary to what Arab Strap's black humour might lead you to expect, the title isn't entirely ironic. Middleton nods, chatting shyly over a beer in a west London pub. "If you analyse it word for word, I'd like to think it was 'a brighter beat', because the beats are more energetic and the title track is about having hope. It's about wishing you could do things differently, because if you do, they might turn out differently, so you can socialise more. It's about not having a brighter beat, but wishing that you did."

 

This pep-talk pop marks a departure, in that "A Brighter Beat" is the first song he has written with his audience in mind. "The idea," Middleton expands, "is that the first half is written as 'I' and the second half is 'we'. I was lifting myself out of just writing about myself. I've had lots of feedback from people, saying that the first album helped them through a bad time. I don't want to sound cheesy, but it matters to me that something I've done in a negative state has become something positive for someone else."

 

If Middleton's debut was downbeat, it's not something to hold against him. He was on anti-depressants in 2001, after a lengthy Arab Strap tour, pancreatitis and a relationship break-up, and the album's tragi-comic, confessional study of his suffering and subsequent survival is a thing of bruised beauty.

 

Middleton thinks "catharsis" is too strong a word for his songwriting, but it clearly serves some kind of function. "The first album was like therapy," he says. "I made it to give myself a kick up the arse. The idea was that if I wrote down the worst of what I was feeling, I could laugh at it and say, 'Don't be so pathetic.' I always write to express myself but the enjoyment of that for me is turning it into a song that has a melody and a hook. Turning a negative feeling into something brighter that has some use, rather than sitting around thinking about something $h!t."

 

One practical application of Middleton's medicinal muse occurred when a friend, a nurse who worked at a hospital for the mentally ill, played his music to her patients. "She played a song called 'The Devil and the Angel'. I don't know if it was therapy but the patients enjoyed it, which is amazing to me. It seems like something good came from it." After a pause, he deadpans: "I'm not sure it cured anyone, though..."

 

Middleton began building a body of work from life's brickbats when he was 16. A friend's band needed a bassist, so he snapped two strings off his parents' acoustic guitar and learnt some bass runs. In a cruel twist worthy of his songs, said friend then employed another bassist, though not without prompting Middleton to form a band out of good, old-fashioned competition.

 

Later, as "a loner spending too much time at home listening to heavy-metal bands", Middleton bought a teach-yourself-guitar book and joined numerous local indie and punk bands. He knew Aidan Moffat, Arab Strap's mumbler-cum-singer-to-be, from clubs and bars. Amusingly, they formed Arab Strap as "a joke side-project" to their "proper" groups.

 

"We'd go out and then, the next day, write songs about the night before," Middleton grins. "And this is the band that got signed!"

 

Critical acclaim couldn't save the Strap, though, and they bowed out last year with the compilation 10 Years of Tears. "It felt like we weren't compatible anymore." Middleton shrugs. "We had a good run, 10 years. I don't regret anything." And after a pause: "Well, maybe I regret the first five years," he laughs. "Being young, being in a band, being stupid. Eventually, you realise you can't do that forever..."

 

Happily, Middleton's solo career is developing momentum. He's just supported Badly Drawn Boy on tour. Bright Eyes, the indie-Americana scene's boy wonder, has invited him to take the support slot on his forthcoming dates as well. The "bigger waves" of depression he used to feel haven't hit him in some time, too, so it seems like his songs might be his saviour.

 

"A lot of the stuff I've written has been about wallowing in misery," he says, being typically hard on himself, "rather than trying to fix myself. I don't want to be negative all the time. The new album isn't a fix, but it is more aware of not being miserable. The songs still all come from the downside of life, but it is something I'm trying to change."

 

With a grin, he quips: "I've always said that I would like to make a record about the depths of happiness." If that happens, depression's loss will, assuredly, be pop's gain.

 

'A Brighter Beat' is out now on Full Time Hobby