stevelawson.net

It’s kind of in the job description, for Lobbyists to try and limit the parameters of any discussion to the ones that concern their particular paid interest. Lobbying is high-dollar stuff and getting into time-wasting concepts like ‘fairness’ and ‘seeing things as they really are’ are not what good lobbyists get paid for.

They get paid for ‘conversational hegemony’ – taking over the parameters of any discussion, so that even before they put their point across, the fencing around the subject is skewed in their favour. Thus recording industry lobbyists, like the BPI in the UK and the RIAA in the US, have successfully made so much of the discussion about ‘music’ – particularly at a policy/government level – about their particular set of economic concerns. Namely:

“how do we protect the virtual monopoly that we’ve had until now on defining ‘success’ for recording artists, controlling the avenues of manufacture, distribution,  promotion and publishing/licensing, and thus leave in place our usurious terms of engagement with the artists whose recordings we exploit for financial gain?” [Read more →]

Just put another tune up on Soundcloud, this time from Nie mój cyrk, Nie moje małpy.

It’s called ‘Supernatural‘, and the lyrics are taken from two of Artemis‘ older songs – Supernatural and Beside U.

COMPETITION TIME:

This has been running on Facebook and Twitter today, and so far, no-one has got close, but if you can work out how I made the raindrop/sonar-like sound at the beginning with my bass, you’ll win a free copy of the album (which is otherwise only available as part of the full FingerPainting set, available on Bandcamp

Here’s the tune. Please feel free to share the link around, comment, like, repost etc

My internet bandwidth at home is taking quite a battering today, as I upload gig 3 to Bandcamp, in preparation for sending the download codes to all those who’ve bought the Dropbox/Bandcamp versions of the FingerPainting full set. At the same time, I’m putting some of the tunes from gigs 2 and 3 on Soundcloud, so you can hear what you’re missing

The album of gig 3 is called “Nie mój cyrk, Nie moje małpy” which is a spectacularly brilliant Polish phrase that means ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys’. Here’s why: [Read more →]

As you know, I’m in the middle of mixing and mastering 11 hours of new music. It’s taking a long time, but the results are some of the best audio work I’ve ever done. So let’s have a chat about audio recording.

My thesis: The received wisdom of how and why things are done is, it seems to me, based on a resource equation that exists in a paid studio environment.

The factors are time, budget & complexity.

The assumption is that if a project is simple it’s because the budget is small and therefore time will be tight. Thus mixing from the multi-track to 2 track without getting too fixated on the final version maximises time in the studio, doing what studios do best. You make it sound as good as possible through the speakers there & don’t worry too much about continuity between tracks, consistent leveling etc. Those wouldn’t be a productive use of mix time. [Read more →]

Just had a rather extensive twitter-rant about art, commerce, indie, labels, work, commerce… that sort of stuff. Here are the tweets: [Read more →]

It’s probably worth noting that most of the time, I can’t get arrested, press-wise. For myriad reasons, more people are apt to talk about what I do than write about it… perhaps I’ll explore my hunches as to why in a later post, but for now, I get to celebrate one of those rare weeks when this isn’t the case at all!

Torycore ::

So let’s start with Torycore. I’ve just got back from a weekend playing a sold-out show with Torycore at Glad Cafe in Glasgow as the finale of the Behaviour festival. [Read more →]

Antidote To Everything: (hit play)

So, imagine this – it’s a year since we’ve last seen each other, we’ve just released a recording of a show that, to us, sounds impossibly wonderful. Listening back to it elicits a feeling of ‘did we REALLY play that? wow!’ Such is the joy of improvised music.
[Read more →]

Today’s the last day for the ‘awesomenessftw‘ 10% discount code on orders for the new album…

Here’s how to apply it.

• Click ‘buy now’ on whichever USB or CD package you’re wanting (if you just want the download, it’s ‘name your price’ so feel free to knock 10% off what you initially thought you’d like to pay, and type that in instead )
• note the minimum price for the package you’ve chosen (indicated to the right of the ‘Name Your Price’ box).
• Click on the invitation to add a discount code (circled in the pic below)

• type, or cut ‘n’ paste ‘awesomenessftw’ into the box that appears and click ‘apply’ – type the code without the ‘ ‘ at either end. Keep all the letters lowercase.
• You’ll then see that the price to the right of the box where you type in the amount you’re wanting to pay has changed – it’ll be 10% lower than it was. You can now type in that amount (or any other amount above that, though the discount code seems unnecessary in that case ) As you can see in the picture below:

So there you go!

Buying the whole set at this stage helps us to pay for the time it’s going to take to mix and master all the recordings and then to press the CDs and load up all the USB Sticks. It also means that you can get immediate access to the dropbox folder with the daily updates in it (there are three tracks from the 2nd gig of the set in there now), and/or each gig sent to you via a Bandcamp download code every time they’re finished being mixed.

How To Upgrade Your Purchase:

PLEASE NOTE – if you’ve already bought the download on it’s own and want to upgrade to either the CD or one of the ‘get the whole set’ versions, please just email me and we’ll sort that out. The full amount you’ve already paid will be credited against the upgrade. No problem.

Finally, after weeks of preparation, two preview tracks and a lot of sweat and tears over the mixing and mastering, FingerPainting – the new album from me and Daniel Berkman is out now!

[Read more →]

The release of the album is immanent, so here’s a 2nd preview track to whet your appetites - this one features Artemis‘ beautiful voice. She was on the entire California tour with us (and organised it!) and sang a tune or two with us at the end of every gig. They’ll make an amazing album in their own right when collected together, but for now, it’s here as part of FingerPainting.

Enjoy Invocation ::