money | blog of funk

Rise and Shine Album Release

DW on 19 March, 2009

Busy times at Funk Towers. I’ve been remixing, remastering and in some cases finishing the songs which came out of the pilot series (five weeks) of the Rise and Shine songwriting show (more here about the show).

The official release is 11:44am GMT March 20th 2009, which is the exact time of the Spring Equinox.

It’s been a labour of love as well as hard work. Mostly I’m happy after a break to go back to song recordings, and bring them blinking into the light with the aid of cleverness, but in some cases – especially when you’re mixing three per day – it’s a pain. You have to regularly rest your ears, or the mixes sound bad, it’s simple as that.

Funnily enough, the song I most enjoy after all the extra production attention is one which I found difficult to write at the time (wasn’t feeling too well) – Money to Burn, which lambasts our culture of insanely excessive wealth and specifically the Forbes rich list.

The reason I found this song hard to go back to was that it’s a an angry protest song, and while I get the point of such songs, full shout mode isn’t a place I like to inhabit. But, like plenty of people, I love loud, aggressive songs in the right place and time. Rage is a part of the human experience, as is outrage.

Money to Burn is well written, the performances are good, I like the intro by @Langley and it was actually great fun to remix. It’s very much in the style of Beastie Boys hip hop, with trashy guitars, nice beats and samples, and megaphone vocals ripping the piss out of super-rich snobbery.

Now of course with taxpayers money being donated by the truckload to busted bankers, it’s become fashionable to poke the rich with a sharp stick. Back in March 2008, most people still hadn’t quite cottoned on to the appalling state of capitalism.

All the songs will be up and ready for tomorrow’s official launch, and we’ll have a party in London in April to coincide with the physical release of the album.* I’m also looking forward to hearing some remixes – Lagowski is on the case.

* CD and DVD

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Music for Podcasts

DW on 17 February, 2009

I know quite a bit about music podcasting. As a writer / producer I’m in a quite a good position because when non-writers need a piece of music for podcast, which means they need to be able to provide music with the correct license applied, they have to search for it online, whereas I can sit and compose.

In 2006 myself and some friends started the UK Podcasters Association and for two and half years, I ran this small but important new media organisation. It brought me into contact with much of the music industry from the BPI to AIM to off-the-radar labels and artists, and questions which I answered on panels, in business meetings and on the telephone were consistently on the topic of music podcast licensing.

But most importantly, because of podcasting I became friends with many independent media makers from all over the world, warm-blooded mammals who are busy inheriting the new media earth from the dinosaur corporations. These people are so many steps ahead of the game. Some podcasters continue to put out quality, personal radio-style programming to large and loyal audiences, amd others have graduated into commercial activities which have transformed part-time hobbies into thriving businesses.

When in January 2007 Big Brother racism row erupted, I wanted to write about it but not to cover the same old boring ground. I couldn’t help but think about Shilpa Shetty’s accountant, and how delighted he must be with the cash windfall. That muse took me into the realms of fantasy, and so I composed and produced a track specifically for one particular podcaster, Martin Devaughan, officially the UK’s first podcaster having sparked up sometime in October 2004.

In this slow-tempo sardonic rap, the accountant of Shilpa Shetty is obsessed with the size of his manhood, having paid too much attention to spam emails, and it takes a rare moment of enlightenment and a reminder of the advice of the Kama Sutra to restore his sense of proportion – almost. Martin the cheeky sod sped it up for his podcast, but here is it restored to it’s proper languid pace.

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