Crimson City News #2

JK: It’s really tough starting a band from scratch, it’s a second job you don’t get paid for. There’s lots of hard work involved, practicing instruments and vocals, writing music, writing words, throwing the words away and writing better words, band practice in rooms that are either too hot or too cold, walking across Cardiff with 40kg of crud on your back. 

But by far the toughest part is trying to promote yourself and get heard in a pretty noisy world, the music industry and conventional wisdom is insistent that social media is critical, we need to make relatable, authentic, content. We’re encouraged to become experts in marketing and PR. Have a “release plan”, “goals”, “strategy”, “a team”. 

Some people are great at this stuff, and good for them, but it’s not us, so we’re still very much working out how we find and speak to people who we think might find our music a positive addition to their lives.

It seems sometimes that the whole industry is based around everyone getting paid except musicians, small promoters, and venues that care about new music. 

But that doesn’t interest me at all, never has, and it’s why we can’t thank enough the people who’ve taken a chance on us, the small promoters, indie venues, and more importantly, you. 

People who’ve listened to the music, and come to our shows - in a world where the competition for your attention is cutthroat and brutal, you chose to give us some of your time, so thanks. For us, the art only exists when we’re communicating with people, and you’ve been a part of the work, probably the most important part.

SHAUN: I just want to get really famous and rich so I can have a personal assistant. Like, how great would that be? “Hey, go get me grapes.” And suddenly: grapes. And if you didn’t like the grapes, you could be like “These grapes bore me, remove them from my sight.” So yeah for me it’s always been about fame and money first, and art second. Possibly even third, because grapes are probably second. Anyway as a band it’s such a relief that we’re all aligned around my vision, which is clearly the most important and necessary.

JK: On to the news!

THE NEWS:

We’ve not been idle, in the time since our last newsletter where we released our first single Revenant King (Link to listen on Bandcamp, Link to listen on Spotify) we’ve released a music video for that song…

…and our second single Queen Foul!

We’ve also added some performance vids of us doing play throughs of Queen Foul and Revenant King to our youtube channel - check it out.

WHAT’S NEXT:

First, in the next few weeks - we’ve got a music video coming out for Queen Foul. Maybe making these vids is an extravagance, but i’ve always loved music videos, and Elle is so good at shooting and editing them, we can’t resist the artistic challenge.

We’ve also recorded an EP, it’s a really interesting collection of songs, building on what we’ve done already and going to some new places. We've got a few little extra bits to record which we’ll do ASAP, then get into the mixing. I expect we’ll lead with a couple of singles and then release the whole thing proper. I’d love to do a CD/Tape/Vinyl? of the record, maybe with the first two singles included in some way, but we’ll have to see - let us know if you’d be interested in that!

Keep on Keeping On

CC