Planet Notion - The sound catchers. Various artists.

15/08/2007

Ever wondered what would happen if you got some disparate artists all working in and around the same genre into the same room for a State of The Musical Nation discussion? Notion did. After listening to DJ Vadim’s staggeringly diverse album ‘The Soundcatcher,’ we invited the man himself down to the pub, along with some other carefully selected musicians. We invited the famously eloquent British rapper, Ty, primarily for his love of

mixing things up. To bring order to the proceedings, who better than one of the grand matriarchs of reggae, Dawn Penn? Add to that Suffolk’s own soulstress, Alice Russell, and the flagrantly independent Omar. We thought we had ourselves the ingredients for a rather serious discussion. What we did discover was what life is like in the trenches for artists making great music independently. Here’s what we and the wallflowers heard...

DOES THE CURRENT TENDENCY TOWARDS DISPOSABILITY IN MUSIC MEAN THAT IT STILL HAS THE POWER TO ADDRESS SERIOUS ISSUES?

DJ VADIM: Definitely - ALICE RUSSELL: I think so. - DJV: Well, look at that song by Eminem, where he was talking about Bush and stuff. Obviously the whole media and TV are in bed with Bush and the Republican government, and the biggest selling rap artist in America has come out against it. It was just a huge controversy and people were saying how wrong he was, on TV, in forums, everywhere... He made a song about the current state of affairs in America and look what happened.

DO YOU THINK IT LED TO ANY SORT OF MASSIVE CHANGE FOR PEOPLE?

DJV: I think he is part of a movement that made people think more.

DO PEOPLE NEED TO BE MADE TO THINK MORE?

OMAR: Things like Pop Idol have really pushed the element of mediocrity in regards to pop music, and audiences are coming to accept the idea of being told they’re that dumb. - A.R: It’s just plasticness everywhere. It’s all about getting a bit of rawness instead of the overly pre-meditated stuff we hear so much of. Some people are so well packaged and thought out. That style of doing things, I hate it. - O: I loved it when So Solid Crew came out of nowhere. I loved that because you could just see people were like..... - A.R: ‘What the fuck?’ - O: Like the way they said that Lily Allen thing was because of myspace, and even Gnarls Barkley. The way it’s been sold to us was as loads of internet downloads, but the reality was an office full of people working away...

200,000 HITS ON MYSPACE DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN MORE SALES...

O: I want to testify to that! - Ty: Hallelujah! - DAWN PENN: It’s almost like a separate universe that yeah you might be successful in but does it relate to the real world? - A.R: That’s where you hope truth will out. It’s do your thing, do it right. Don’t sit down and just hope it will come out.

BUT WE’VE GOT SOME GREAT ARTISTS HERE LIKE PLAN B, FOREIGN BEGGARS AND

MANY MORE WHO NEVER QUITE BREAK THROUGH IN THE WAY THAT SOME PEOPLE

THINK THEY SHOULD...

D.P: It’s a problem if you’re an English artist rapping like you’re from America. I have no time for that. I have no idea why they’re doing this. Someone like Plan B might be lucky in that case. - O: The problem we have is a ceiling in regards to how far you can go, and you get to a certain point, where there’s a bottleneck. One of them is Radio One and Jo Wiley. If she plays your stuff, other people are going to pick it up, and if she doesn’t, they don’t, and it just shows how tight it all is. - T: But don’t you find that we’ve got this opportunity now because of satellite TV, satellite radio, internet radio, myspace, and all this other stuff, that there’s so many other platforms for you to be able to promote your music? Fuck Radio One, fuck XFM, fuck all these people that want us to get onto their playlist! - A.R: It’s like a crazy little club, isn’t it? - T: There’s no control over a lot of these other platforms though, and it is a little bit harder in a sense, but, at the same time I’m here

and a lot of music we listen to now just doesn’t seem compromised to me. Before, it was so totally compromised, someone used to say ‘play that’ and ‘it’s going to go on this program at this time,’ whereas now people are just doing what the fuck they want, you know what I mean? And some of it’s going to be cack of course, but there’s going to be a lot of good shit there too.

D.P: I think if you have some people who can open a door for you, you’re fine. If you know no-one, that’s it. But like I say, I don’t have a label, I’m not signed to Atlantic anymore – and I’m not talking about them per se – but sometimes I

see these people on TV and I wonder why their labels think they’re going to sell millions of records. There’s people who can’t even sell a thousand copies: they have the sounds, but they don’t have the money to get it out there.

DO YOU THINK PART OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE ARE FOREMOST A GUITAR MUSIC COUNTRY? THE DECISION HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE AS TO WHAT WE’RE PRIMARILY GOING TO BE HEARING...

T: Radio One is a dinosaur man, they were controlling it. - O: Listen, shit’s bigger for Radio 2 now than it is for Radio One. This isn’t a Radio One slagging fest, the point we’re making is bigger. If we’re going to talk about all these artists that should be bigger then we need to talk about the force that’s actually saying no. And a lot of people don’t know that’s there. I know a lot of these artists in different fields all have the same story. They ran up to the wall, and the door closed but the door still had a hand, shaking theirs and saying, ‘I like you though, I do like you, but can you do that thing that you did 6 months ago now?’

- DJV: You know what, one thing I’m going to say is that living in America, coming here, I’ve met so many UK artists who don’t want to do interviews, don’t want to do shows, don’t want to do shit, but they want to be selling like Eminem and

I don’t understand it. Being in Brooklyn you see people working their ass off - groups like Atmosphere selling 200,000 albums independently out the back of their house is amazing. You’ve got to be professional. T: You got to work. - DJV: It doesn’t matter if you’re rapping, singing, playing the guitar. Why is indie so big in England? Because those bands work like hell. You look at all these little bands and they’re doing like 40 shows a month, doing all the universities, doing everything. Look at UK hip hop artists, how many shows are they doing? - T: I’ve actually had an interest in my records because of people - expatriates living in the States and people being aware of Ty - but it has absolutely nothing to do with the music industry. - O: There’s another strange phenomenon there as well, because I assumed you go to the States and it’s a black thing. - T: No, no, no... O: Straight away there’s a brick wall in my face. It’s a bit weird. D.P: I think that in The States they are racist. I was born in Jamaica but I have roots. There’s a scenario where they’re trying to make out that dark skin people don’t have any soul in them, and that soul actually came from The States, singing with feeling. You’re born American, you’re expected to sing that way. In this country the powers that be are taking the people that can do it and putting a different colour scheme on people that can’t do it. T: But also the actual genre of hip hop has changed a little bit. The thing with hip hop music is that when it morphs into a particular thing and the mainstream accept it as that, it’s very hard to do anything different. And that’s what we do experience as musicians – frustration.

—

At this point Ty had to go pick up his mum from hospital and everyone else decided to start eating the sandwiches we’d brought. Suddenly I felt as if I knew what Ty meant about frustration. The expected course of events had morphed into something unrecognizable, but no less interesting. Even creative types like to get together and talk shop, bitch about the employer and get it off their chests before heading back to the front. We’re just glad we gave them the opportunity to do so before it started encroaching on their work.