Finally! My new solo album – my NINETEENTH full-length solo release -Â PS, You Are Brilliant, is out today. You can listen to it and download it exclusively on Bandcamp – This is NOT on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play etc. You can only hear it and download it from Bandcamp (or anywhere that has the Bandcamp player embedded, like here!). You can stream the album in full and if you like it and want to buy it, it’s pretty inexpensive 🙂
Keeping it on Bandcamp is the musical equivalent of only selling your produce in a farmer’s market. It’s a better deal for artists, a better deal for listeners, and you get to choose better-than-CD quality audio if you like at no extra cost. Everybody wins!
If you dig it a lot, and want to investigate further, PS, You Are Brilliant is also available to my Bandcamp Subscribers – I recently passed the 3 year anniversary of the introduction of the subscription, a mechanism for releasing music whereby subscribers pay a flat fee per year and get everything that I release. This year so far, they’ve had 8 albums and an eBook, plus a load of subscriber-exclusive video.
The album is also included on my USB Stick of my entire catalog – that also includes 31 other albums, and my novel, Rock And Roll Is Dead in eBook format.
PS, You Are Brilliant is another exploration of how hip hop is shaping my music – it’s loaded with super-wonky beats and complex rhythmic arrangements. One of my Bandcamp subscribers described it as “like a perfect afternoon in the best modern art museum–wandering through visually and intellectually stimulating art, with light and sound textured by the architecture” – sounds fascinating, right?
The title – PS, You Are Brilliant – was inspired by a comment on Facebook by an incredible friend of mine who died this year. Roanne Dodds was one of the most relentlessly encouraging people I’ve ever come across, and her philosophy of inviting people to do what they do best, and ceaselessly encouraging people in order to bring out the very best in them is one that was both in step with my own approach to musical collaboration, and one that spurred me on in so many areas of my creative and academic life. She brought a sense of possibility to every conversation, and alongside that was so so good at actually making things happen, at organising and pulling together teams to make sure that those ideas, that impetus and all that amazing encouragement came to fruition. I think about her pretty much every day, as I do things that she encouraged me to do, as I reach to be the best that I can be in every area of my life, and pass on that encouragement to others. So this one is for Roanne…Â
On a music production level, I think I’ve spent more time listening to this before releasing it than anything I’ve put out in a long time. These tracks went through quite a few mixes before I decided on the kind of sound I wanted, and that meant listening again and again on multiple systems. That amount of focussed listening tends to transform the experience of the music, from the surprise and delight of hearing improvised performances back, to the anticipation associated with records we know and love, and have favourite bits that we’re just waiting for each time the track is playing.
Releasing music this way feels somewhat quaint in a world where a lot of artists have caved into this bogus notion that ‘no-one buys music any more’ and are instead posting YouTube clips designed as a honeytrap to then try and get you to see them play live… but this isn’t music that fits YouTube’s wow-driven focus, and I don’t think the world needs more bass histrionics. It’s mellow, drawn out, story-telling music. It’s not full of fireworks and clowning. It’s more like the soundtrack to a film you REALLY wish you could see… 🙂 Go have a listen, and let me know what you think… xxx
LAUNCH GIG!
On November 19th I’m having an album launch celebration gig here in Birmingham – this being improv, I won’t actually be playing any of the music from the album, but I will have an INCREDIBLE special guest – Bryan Corbett will be joining me on trumpet. Bryan is such a remarkable musician, and I’m really lucky to have caught a night when he wasn’t already touring. He’s been playing with the Brand New Heavies this year and is equally at home in pretty much every style of music that my musical world draws on. I’m really looking forward to this! Click the picture for tickets:
