Hello everyone and welcome back to the final Electronic Music Alliance Newsletter of 2020 - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership! We hope you have had a nice Christmas and, of course sending positive vibes for a better 2021 for all!
We send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the ongoing global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Please keep looking after each other and stay safe. Thanks to everyone for getting involved with EMA and sharing all the good vibes on our Twitter page! We've been keeping busy with more releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, the DJ Mixes and our once monthly playlists! So without further ado, let's crack open this newsletter and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
As always, thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! Here's a quick summary of how things are looking for EMA and EAR:
We're inching closer to 5,000 followers on Twitter now and an impressive number of releases which continues to grow as the EMAliens share with the world our creativity despite the current global climate. Keep those awesome vibes coming! Featured Playlists
The once-monthly playlists are proving to be very popular so we might as well include this month's Spotify playlist in our featured section also! These playlists feature tunes no older than 3 months from the EMAliens and are a great showcase of the variety on offer to fans of any genre and may give you a chance to explore more tunes from the underground scene you may have missed! Click play and welcome to the Mothership!
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the good vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Featured Artist
Each month the "Featured Artist" section of our newsletter gives us a chance to find out more about one of our EMAliens. This time, we're going to be shining the spotlight on one of the EMA Co-Founders, "Mr Bu" aka Bufinjer! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over one last time to find out more about "Gif-injer" and this is what happened!
Hey hey Mr Bu! I hope you've managed to stay safe in these uncertain times and keeping well. I'm sure a lot of EMAliens are looking forward to hearing more from you here as our Featured Artist this month! So, tell us more about you and how you got involved with music? Hey there Mr Havey, blogger extraordinaire, traveling man! I’ve always had a love of music from early on. I started out when I was probably about 8 years old, falling in love with rock music. I listened to everything from AC/DC, and Black Sabbath, to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. In the 80s I discovered hair bands and glam rock like Motley Crue, Ratt, Twisted Sister, and Def Leppard. Then in the 90s I got my hands on this new artist called Nine Inch Nails. The Pretty Hate Machine album. That changed my music style forever. That was my introduction to electronic music and I never looked back. I still listened to rock then too, but electronic was my main focus. In 1999 I was up late one night watching tv and saw an advertisement for Sony’s Acid music making software. I ended up getting it for my birthday and I’ve been making music ever since.
It's pretty amazing how just listening to one artist can completely change the direction of our musical path isn't it?! I'm sure the others will agree that we're happy you discovered the electronic side! So what kind of music do you find yourself making now with these influences?
I make all kinds of music. I don’t do just one genre, I rarely even stick with one genre in one song! Haha. I know it’s probably not the best approach as far as developing a fan base, but my listening of music has always been eclectic, and so is my music making. I make various types of electronic music, and even dabble in the experimental styles, and even rock. Haha! Yeah you do have a great variety in your tunes with the ever changing beats you put in there. Let's just call it the "Bufinjer" genre?! Speaking of which, have you got any releases or DJ mixes with your signature style on them - tell us more! In January I have my next installment of the #EMA DJ Mix Series coming. I like to keep the mixes fresh so it is still work in progress.
At the end of December, on the 28th I have my album Reflections coming out. Since the year 2020 has been an interesting one, I thought the name was fitting. Good or bad, there’s been a lot to reflect on from 2020. The album consists of all my tracks released in 2020, well my solo ones, not collaborations. Looking back at the tracks they tell a story of the year that passed.
I also have a few tracks finished that will be coming out in 2021, one for the next installment of the Future Sounds Anthology compilation.
EMAzing man! Plenty of things to reflect on for all of us in what has been a very challenging year so we're looking forward to hearing your musical stamp on it! Where can people find out more about you?
I am on most of the usuals that one can find me on and there are many other sites I forget now! Also my website http://www.bufinjer.com/ which I just redid after I decided it was time to change my logo. I’ve always loved the idea of the Phoenix raising from the ashes, so I created my logo with the Phoenix. Love that idea behind the new logo, I'm sure we can all relate to rising from the ashes, particularly this year! All that leaves me to ask is the usual question regarding EMA - although being a co-founder, it might be slightly different! Perhaps you can share more about EMA’s backstory, history and your thoughts/feelings/experiences about it all? After Nicky, Davey, and I talked more and more we all started to discover we felt the same way about music promo, what works and what we feel doesn’t work, and what could help us all in the Independent music scene. Creating a group where we all can help each other grow was always the goal. In the almost two years we’ve grown and done some amazing things. Getting artists together to collaborate is one of my favorite parts of the group. If by our compilations, or just introducing people to one another who decide to work together, has been one of the most rewarding parts of setting things up in EMA. Also I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished with the EAR label. Starting out as a simple idea to get our own music out to the world via a label, then introducing it to our members to use the label for releases, I never expected it to grow like it has. We have some great members, and a lot who have stuck with us and stay active, and for that I am very grateful, and honored. One thing I wish, was that we had more members stay active and we all could help each other more. The idea of the rising tide lifts all boats would be so much greater if more of the 160+ members could help promote each other more. I understand we all have lives to live and our own music to promote, and we tend to spread ourselves thin, but if we could all focus more on the community we’ve created and help each other more we could greatly help our members and ourselves with our releases, and even sales. I’m hoping that maybe with the new year some changes can happen in this crazy world of ours now, for the better of course, and maybe the community spirit will pick up again. Couldn't have put it better myself and agree with all you said as a fellow Co-Founder. We've seen a lot and introducing new producers of similar styles to each other or even just pushing people out of their comfort zones to produce some epic collaborations has been the shining light for me personally this year with EMA. Thanks for taking the time out of your hectic schedule for the interview Mr Bu! Be sure to check Bufinjer out on all the usual places via the icons below: Notes From Nicky
As this will be my final newsletter for a while, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's shared, read, left a comment and been involved with all the blogs I've written on the EMA website for the last couple of years since we started this venture. It's been great fun and in some cases, a little challenging to actually keep up with all that goes on with so many different projects happening from different producers in the Mothership!
That's a testament to all of you who've embraced the community spirit of EMA and created your own epic adventures with your fellow EMAliens, despite the global crisis. As Buf mentioned, it's been an honour to get to meet so many different people in the last 2 years but for me personally, I'll be taking a step back, recharging and re-focusing my energies - 2020 has taken its toll on everyone. Stay safe and hope 2021 is a much better year for everyone. Nicky
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance November 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
We send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Please keep looking after each other and stay safe. Thanks to everyone for getting involved with EMA and sharing all the good vibes on our Twitter page! We've been keeping busy with more releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, the DJ Mixes and our now once monthly playlists! In addition to this we also had a swathe of curated playlists and another bonanza Breakbeat and Drum N Bass night on Profound Radio! So without further ado, let's crack open this newsletter and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
A very warm welcome to all you new followers and members and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! Here's a quick summary of how things are looking for EMA and EAR:
We managed to reach another milestone this month with over 100 curated playlists reached thanks to an influx of themed playlists from Primaudia and Skaarl! These have proven to be very popular on Spotify and we will highlight them in our Featured Playlist section... oh look, here it is! Featured Playlists
Normally we just have one playlist that we feature in this section but we'd thought we would share with you the great efforts of Primaudia Record who put together a few themed playlist for various genres. These include chillout/downtempo if you just need to unwind, a bit of Techno/Dance to help get the party started, Drum & Bass to get your full on rave going and Dark Synth if you wanted to take a trip down the rabbit hole! Plenty for you to enjoy here with the best EMA has to offer:
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the good vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Breakbeat & Drum 'N' Bass Night on Profound Radio - Monday 2nd November
Back in August, EMA and Profound Radio came together to produce an epic evening of Breakbeat and Drum & Bass mixes. November saw 5 more hours of digital raving going on from 5 EMAliens at the 1s and 2s in what can only be described a feast of bass for Halloween season!
With mixes from Electrostatic Nightmare Disco, Hootgun, DaveyHub (who helped organise the event with Profound Radio), Bufinjer and Cylotron, we're sure you'll be bouncing off the walls! All the mixes are below for your streaming pleasure! We'd like to say a big thanks to Profound Radio for having us on their station and to DaveyHub for co-ordinating and organising this with them and the EMAliens!
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance October 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
We send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Please Keep looking after each other and stay safe. Thanks to everyone for getting involved with EMA and sharing all the good vibes on our Twitter page! We've been keeping busy with more releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, the DJ Mixes and our now once monthly playlists! In addition to this we also had our special Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 4 compilation which we'll have more details about later and, as always, the cherry on top is our in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Electrostatic Nightmare Disco! Alright, let's crack open this newsletter and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
As always, a very warm welcome to all you new followers and members and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! Here's a quick summary of how things are looking for EMA and EAR:
Once again, another service engineer call out required to upgrade our mothership and accommodate all you awesome folks but it's well worth it of course! The next milestone of 100 playlists is so close now! As always a big thanks to our EMAliens on the Mothership making it a fun place to be! Featured Playlist
We are focusing more on the stories behind the tunes shared by the EMAliens in our monthly playlist now so if you missed this season's Soundcloud Playlist and the tales of the tracks, then you can catch up on the blog here. The playlist features 11 melodic beats of various genres in electronic music from this talented lot and it's well worth re-sharing the glory in our Featured Playlist section this month!
Our playlists will now be kept live so make sure you follow them as the tracks will be updated every 3 months like how we are doing our Apple Music playlist. Keep a look out on our Twitter pages for when the tracks are rotated.
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the good vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 4 - October 23rd 2020
The 4th volume of our EMA wide compilation called "Future Sounds Anthology" saw 15 tracks from 15 EMAliens come together in an assortment of vibes from chill to "thrill" as genres range from downtempo to Drum & Bass! The theme this month was something a little darker being Halloween season and there's something for everyone, undead or otherwise, in this release!
We Initially launched Vol. 1 on the 1 year anniversary of EMA as a special compilation but we decided to keep that tradition going every quarter in 2020. Our plans will be changing with it moving forward though as we will just be doing the compilation once per year starting with the next one on the 2nd year anniversary of EMA around 2nd of January 2021.
The Spotify playlist is below for your streaming pleasure of Vol. 4 and it's available to download on our Beatport page! Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Featured Artist
Each month the "Featured Artist" section of our newsletter gives us a chance to find out more about one of our EMAliens and this time round, we're going to be shining the spotlight on the "Cuddly Bear", Mr. Electrostatic Nightmare Disco! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about this cheeky chappy and this is what happened!
Hey hey Mr E.N.D! I hope you're all good and we're all looking forward to hearing more from you here as our Featured Artist this month! So, who is the mysterious and majestic Electrostatic Nightmare Disco? How did you got involved with music? I started listening to music a million years ago on a stone age hi-fi tower system belonging to my sister. She had a taste in music that definitely influenced me and the first album that I listened to on repeat was Reproduction by Human League. Creepy as ya Nan in a nighty but awesome and all those weird synthesizer noises. I asked for one for Xmas, what I got was the cheapest Clavinet (copy) on the market. Basically a fan that blew through a keyboard making notes that sounded like a melodica and was impossible to be Gary Numan on. I continued listening to electronic music throughout my early years while badgering my parents for a synthesizer and when I turned 13 I bagged a two keyboard organ with about 7 preset sounds for my birthday. So to please them I took organ lessons above a keyboard shop but at least I could play the real synths while I was there, but that was it for my music making days.
Listening wise, I evolved through the electronic genres going from the synth pop to electro to hip hop to house to rave to techno to baggy old Manchester before discovering Orbital and deciding that it didn't get better than that and that's pretty much where my taste is at these days, although I have expanded to other artists.
I didn't think about making music again till 2013 when I was stuck in hospital for a long time and to keep myself amused I bought an iPad, mainly as an alternative to the Kindle I'd got bored of, and discovered Garageband. Synths, drum machines and everything in between I couldn't believe it. I diddled and dabbled and made some rubbish that I thought was awesome (some would say nowt's changed there) and uploaded to Youtube my first ever track which was a ravey remix of the theme from Moon.
You used to be able to upload to Youtube directly from GB so I "released" several albums getting a little better every time but sound-wise they were terrible as I hadn't heard of mastering. They were going up raw, no mixing, no mastering, no plug ins. I needed something else so I bit the bullet and shelled out for Ableton. This was another revelation to me and after initially being daunted by it I started to learn how to work it.
Youtube was a big help in the early days but I think I'm just about getting the hang of it now. I also discovered you could buy VST synths and that was awesome. The best thing about being an adult is buying stuff you couldn't get as a kid so I finally got my first synth aged 48. About this time I started listening to a radio station on Facebook called Kindcrime. It was all dark hard industrial Techno and I loved it immensely. I'd always loved Techno but this was gorgeous horrible stuff and that's what I wanted to make so off I set to make my mark in dark sweaty basement clubs. And here we are present day.
Aha, so that's how you came to find the dark side! I'm really glad you managed to keep yourself entertained whilst in hospital and even more so that you're out and making your tunes! It's always cool to see how your productions and style changes over time from the first to where you are now - hopefully there'll be many more to come! So with all these influences growing up, what is the style of music you make now?
I make techno music predominantly, usually dark brooding industrial, all heavy bass drums and tinny hats, but I'll occasionally head off into other fields. All that gloominess sends you a bit blind and you wander off into melodic, minimal even trancey genres. I also do a bit of trip hop and downbeat. Really a jack of all master of none but mostly it's industrial techno I'm known for.
Well, it's always good to have some variety in moods to keep things interesting and glad to hear you have a "go-to" with the industrial techno! I'm sure our techno fans would love to know what releases you have coming up, can you shed some more light on that?
I'm always working on new releases. My latest track is on Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 04 and soon I'll be compiling the follow up to last Christmases Evolution:Year One with (surprisingly) Evolution:Year Two, a comp of my fave releases this year plus new versions and new tracks. After that I'll continue with a Techno series follow up to Techno Addict which reached 10 editions and a natural end earlier his year. I make 2 radio shows on Radio-Dark-Tunnel.net, an hour long techno mix on Friday nights 7.30 to 8.30 uk time (before the EMA mix) and a 2 hour techno show on Sunday nights 7.00 to 9.00.
Awesome man, great to see you're keeping yourself busy! And our final question as always is, how did you find out about EMA and come to be a part of it all?
I have no idea. I think I got lost and wandered in and you lot were kind enough to do me a cup of tea and a sandwich. Or it could have been a post on a certain websites FB group inviting people to join which I did. I was very shy at first but I think I'm coming out of my shell a bit lately. You're all very nice young people. Haha! Well, we're glad you took the plunge and decided to join in the merriment on the Mothership mate and thanks for sharing your story with us! I'm sure we'll all be on the lookout for your latest tunes! You can follow Electrostatic Nightmare Disco on the links below:
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome to the Autumn edition of EMA's Soundcloud Playlist! As we mentioned in the August 2020 Newsletter, we'll be changing the way we present these showcases of talent from the EMAliens to give each artist a bit more time to shine and share the story behind their tracks!
The EMA playlists are selected by Bufinjer with the blogs compiled by Nicky Havey and the stories of the tunes shared by the producers themselves. So, without further ado, here is the playlist for you to enjoy, with the comments from the producers underneath! Tracklist
We hope you enjoy this new format of sharing the music and that you enjoyed the tunes! Be sure to follow the playlist and support the artists by giving them a follow as well! We'll catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance September 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
We send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Keep looking after each other won't you? Thanks to everyone for getting involved with EMA and sharing all the good vibes on our Twitter page! We've been keeping busy with more releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, along with launching our new look playlist format that has been warmly received by the community. And the cherry on top, we take an in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Gribbles! Alright, enough of the jibber jabber, let's crack open this newsletter and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
As always, a very warm welcome to all you new followers and members and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! Here's a quick summary of how things are looking for EMA and EAR:
We continually need to upgrade our mothership to accommodate all you awesome folks but it's well worth it, especially when we celebrate another couple of milestones of reaching 3,000 followers on our label account on Twitter and over 200 releases on EAR! As always a big thanks to our EMAliens on the Mothership making it a fun place to be! Featured Playlist
With the changes to our playlist structure, we are focusing more on the stories behind the tunes shared by the EMAliens. If you missed this season's Spotify Playlist and the tales of the tracks, then you can catch up on the blog here. The playlist features 19 melodic beats of various genres in electronic music from this talented lot and it's well worth re-sharing the glory in our Featured Playlist section this month!
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the cool vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Featured Artist - Gribbles
Each month the "Featured Artist" section of our newsletter gives us a chance to find out more about one of our EMAliens and this time round, we're going to be shining the spotlight on the "Wordsmith" Mr Gribbles! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about this fine young specimen and this is what happened!
Hey hey Mr Gribbles! I've been looking forward to this all month as you're a bit of a blogger like me! So, in less than 2,000 words, can you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you got involved with music?! Well, I’m 53 years old. So we can go back to the 70’s in terms of how music found me. I hope you’re sitting comfortably - we’ve about 40 years to cover… ? But I’ll not do that to you. Let’s just pick up on a few bits and bobs from the gumbo of gribblyhistory. Some random musical touchpoints/memories in how I got here from there. My early musical awakenings
I can remember the effect some music had on me in the early/mid 70s. There were tunes that just seemed to grab me - stuff that connected with me somehow, and made me feel…well, different I guess. I can remember recognising that these songs - more often then not heard on the radio - did things that nothing else did. If I hear these songs now, I still get a strong Proustian rush from them that whisks me back. I did a Spotify playlist of them a while back if anyone is interested.
My first purchase
So, from an early age music was a thing for me. Then in 1978 I was shopping in Scunthorpe with my Mum. We were in Woolworths, and she gave me enough money to buy a single. I chose what was Number 1 at the time. Abba - Take A Chance On Me. Now, for anyone who may be sniggering at the back, firstly - I was 10 or 11 and excited to be able to buy a record of my own (I haven’t mentioned the suitcase of old records my parents had and the old radiogram. 78’s, 45’s and how I enjoyed the label designs. I can still remember the smell of the rubber mat on the Garrard deck. But I’ll maybe save that for a blog post before it gets too weird). Anyway - back to Abba. Check out the b-side, I’m A Marionette - a cracking tune. (OK, I may have rationalised the latter after the fact - but it’s a tune. Really must sample that bass.)
My first obsession
A massive watershed for me came in the following year. I know it’s a bit of a hackneyed cliche, but I do remember watching Top Of The Pops in mid 1979 and being mesmerised by Are Friends Electric by Tubeway Army. I’d enjoyed some synth tracks - the usual suspects that did the rounds in the 70s - Oxygene, Fanfare for the Common Man - but this was something else. And the start of a lifelong love of Gary Numan’s music. I was in the fan club. Number 1066.
My first purchase redux (using my own money)
The first album I bought with money I had earned myself was Telekon by Gary Numan. I’d been out bush beating all day (hated it), and got home clutching the £5.50 I’d been paid in a little brown envelope. Didn’t wait to get changed - I jumped on my bike and pedalled fast I could get into town just before The Music Centre closed, and slapped down my £4.50, then pedalled madly home - I can remember the anticipation of playing the record was almost overwhelming. My Dad couldn’t understand why I had to spend my wages as soon as I got them.
Not that it was all about synths. My other big obsession of the late 70s and into the 80s was The Stranglers. Although they always were a heavily keyboard led band. But yeah - Numan and the Stranglers. They were my thing. Other influences…
Of course, it being the 80s, there was plenty of awesome stuff appearing every week it seemed. I got caught up in the whole Crass punk scene, but still fell for mainstream 80s synth-pop hard, served my time with NWOBHM (still partial to a bit of Def Leppard from before America catapulted them into the stratosphere), post punk and indie left it’s mark - I just soaked up loads of stuff. And I learnt early that I liked what I like. Never was bothered about tribes and genres - couldn’t be bothered. There was too much good music floating about.
(Although I must admit to playing up the punk part. Donkey Jacket, skin tight jeans and Doc Marten boots. Somewhere there are photos. As there is of me with a perm, black shirt with white skinny tie and trench coat from a few years later. Thankfully all are lost to the ether, I think…I hope…) Pre internet info sources…
I was an avid Melody Maker and Smash Hits reader. Actually, that places me quite well. Serious music and pretentiousness in MM, and pop culture and silliness in SH. But I loved it all. I was as taken with the journalists and their writing styles as much as the musicians sometimes. I remember seeing The Sisters of Mercy in Leeds and being as pleased to see Everett True up on the balcony as Eldritch & co doing their thing. Or at least I thought it was Everett True - and in a way that’s all that mattered. And I still have a massive soft spot for Mark Ellen & David Hepworth, nurtured through their writing in various organs over the years…
Too many to list
I’ll not do a dull ‘travelogue’ of bands that I liked/loved - there are many. So many. Music has been pretty much THE mainstay in my life (alongside video gaming, but that’s faded in recent years). But of course, there are key tracks that either got me into a new band or signposted a new direction for me to take - I may do another playlist…
Musical training (Ha! As if!)
Let's jump sideways into playing music. I’d taken piano lessons when I was at primary school, but never made it as far as taking my Grade 1. Played flute in secondary - but again not for long (though I’ve had a hankering recently to have another go. Weird). But my first love was bass guitar. This was entirely JJ Burnel of the Stranglers fault. The Stranglers bassist was a huge early influence. My parents bought me a no-name bass, and big chunky guitar amp (they weren’t to know - and neither did I at that point). I set to learning the bass line to Peaches, and the lovely descending intro to Goodbye Toulouse. Bass slung low in my room in front of the mirror. God I looked cool. To me, anyway
My first band
But, strangely, the first band I was in I didn’t play bass. I sang. This would be around ’85. I was part of a Methodist Christian Youth Fellowship (which I actually later went on to lead), and we got a band together. One of the chaps in that band became a long time friend and musical collaborator - we ended up doing the quiddity stuff many years later if anyone knows of that. Anyway, as is usual for first bands we did a mix of covers (Tainted Love, Hanging Around) and our own originals.
We were - er - inexperienced, naive and full of ourselves. Of course. But we had fun. And it certainly gave me a taste for playing in a band My first proper band
After 70x7 (for that was what we were called) I dabbled with some local covers bands that didn’t really do anything, then got the chance to audition for a new band that were looking for a keyboard player.
Bearing in mind I hadn’t played keyboards in anger for quite a while (I had a couple of home keyboards and a little DX100 that I played about with), I turned up not expecting much. All the guys were older than me, and they just said that they would bash out a tune and I should just jump in. I’d never jammed in a band in my life. Anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound. I can’t remember much about the actual music - but I must have done something right as I got in. There and then. And so, I became a member of The Guild of Thieves. And, by God, we got good. I mean, proper good. We had a cracking songwriter in Paul Brittain, who led the group - and the band could play. I found out that they’d been playing pubs and clubs doing covers for the previous year - over 200 Gigs. You get good when you do that. And that made me stretch myself and get good too. I loved being in that band. That’s where I leaned my chops. But we were based in a small market town in Lincolnshire. We chucked tapes out as was de-rigour in the late 80s/early 90s (and a rejection from Factory records got pride of place in the rehearsal room), played local gigs and did a couple of showcase gigs in various cities. We got compared favourably to big name bands in local press, and we spoke around the subject of maybe moving to London/Manchester/Liverpool for a bit to have a proper try. But we never really discussed it seriously and we sort of fizzled. Families happened, jobs came up out of town - and that was that. I still think it’s a shame. <Intermission>
And that’s really where I was at for the next 15 years or so. I moved away, started a family - still an avid gig-goer and music lover, but playing live just…stopped.
I have seen the light!
In that time, though, there was another revelation. Me and one of the chaps from 70x7 had stayed in touch, and still went gigging together. He’d got into EDM and its ilk, which I liked (it was synths, after all…) but didn’t grok it in the way that he did, despite him sending me mixtapes and stuff to try to get me understand.
Then, along came Reading ’96. Thanks to the Stone Ross being abject sh*te on the Saturday night, I found myself in the Big Top tent. I was quite looking forward to seeing the band that was headlining, as they’d garnered some interest with their last single and had caught the attention of many folk, not least of which because it was a key track in a popular film. The tent was heaving. I elbowed my way to the middle with Dan, and noticed someone climbing one of the big central scaffolds. They got close to the top, and unfurled a banner. “Underworld”. Then the next couple of hours or so was like the church scene in The Blues Brothers for me. I saw the light. Lordy. It was special. We both spent most of the night with big sh*t-eating grins on our faces. Rez/Cowgirl from that night remains one of my favourite live moments ever. That got me dabbling in making music again. Crikey - I seem to have written so much, but missed out tons.
That's alright, you kept under 2,000 words as the original request (1,845 if anyone wants to go back and check) ? But wow! It seems like you've had a rich and varied upbringing from this detailed account of how you ended up where you are now and I'm glad the Underworld experience helped you see the light! Would have loved to have been there for the epiphany! You mentioned your band and influences here, how has that shaped the kind of music you make now?
In the main, I guess, a sort of laid back electronica. I’ve always loved synths and synth music (though not exclusively - as I think I’ve mentioned, I like what I like. See here . So, I’m happiest when surfing presets in real or virtual synths and seeing what lands and where it takes me. I am rubbish at putting what I do into genres. No idea where I fit - if indeed I do and my stuff jumps about a bit. I can easily tag some of my tracks as ambient. But others - just dunno. I don’t really know what makes a techno track different from trance, don’t know my EDMs from my IDMs - I just make the music that bubbles up out of me. And there’s plenty of conscious and subconscious influences from the last 40-odd years to bounce around as I write. I’ve been making music solo ‘properly’ since about 1999. Underworld gave me a kick, but that’s a handy narrative to hang off me starting to writing music again - In truth, I’d never really stopped dabbling. Whether playing my guitar, bibbling on my PC or whatever - making music one way or another has always been at least background radiation in my life. At the back end of the 90s, I ...ahem... acquired a copy of Acid Pro, and started to dabble with it. The result of that was the ‘found sample' mashup album that is Version 0.1beta. It was very Skint/BRA. I was particularly pleased with this - still am of parts of it - but I didn’t really do anything with it. Just passed it around friends. It’s here if you fancy a giggle! (The last track - Amb0 - is actually a live piece played on a Roland SP808 using samples I didn’t use on the album. It weirdly had a bit of a resurgence on Spotify recently…) A little later, I had a phase with recording as quiddity with my mate Dan (who was in that first band with me). This was long distance recording - I was in Halifax, he was in Hull. So we swapped stuff online with the occasional trip down the M62. The stuff we did was squarely in the EDM mode (so we were told) - closest I can think of in terms of sound is maybe The Black Dog - but we did get one rather pleasing comparison - “Underworld and Fluke have a Warpy face-off’. Yeah. Nice. See what you think here.
We also had a couple of cool videos done for us by Elizabeth S. of Eyeless in Gaza. After a couple of albums and a handful of EPs, quiddity got hard to sustain (life again…), and I reverted back to solo stuff. Which is sort of the track I’m still on now.
Like a lot of my contemporaries, I write what I write. I find it tricky to write to a style - things just seems to wriggle into the shape they want to be. Though I recently cracked out a couple of reasonable psytrance tracks for inclusion in Llamasoft’s latest game, Moose Life. But I wander all over - from minimalist ambience, through chill out, with a nod to old skool synth tunes and along into more upbeat dancey stuff. There’s little anomalies like Kinsque - a theme to a lost kids show. And my last release was pretty much a synth pop song about unrequited love between two flowers. I do sometimes wonder what my muse has been drinking. But I do like to think that I can nail a reasonable tune now and again? Nicely done man! That's quite a feat to have your tunes on a game and it sounds like you should just create your own genre called Gribbles! Sounds like you can hold your head up high there and you're creating more than just reasonable tunes, flowery or otherwise! Maybe you can tell us a bit more about some of your latest releases? I tend to release singles or EPs - I’m comfortable with that, but do have a hankering to record a longer form project. I keep coming back to doing an album of tunes loosely inspired by my childhood in Gainsborough. Be nice to try something in a hauntology/Boards of Canada sound. But it won’t turn out like that. So there’s a fair lump of stuff in my ‘back catalogue’ - but recent releases from the last month or so have been a mini-album of the tunes used in Llamasoft’s Moose Life game - both my solo stuff and some old bangers from quiddity. Jeff from Llamasoft was listening to a lot of psytrance when writing the game, and the mad particle filled psychedelic onslaught reflect this. I wrote a couple of tracks specifically for the game, and I think they turned out well.
My last release was ‘Apple Jack & Rosemary Brock’. Verging on synth pop territory here. It's a song about the unrequited love between two flowers. I know. But you have to go where the muse leads you! It came about from a note I made while in Regents Park a few years back. I was down there for one of Frank Turner's Lost Evenings festivals in Camden, and me and my lad had decided to have a little Sunday morning head clearing stroll.
Whilst wandering through the gardens in Regents Park, I noticed that the names of a couple of flowers on either side of the path sounded like people - so I scribbled a note down in my notebook. Earlier this year, I had a nice little tune brewing, and I thought that it could do with some words. It's not often I add my own words and sing in my songs, so was a little stuck for inspiration. I started flicking though my notebook, and came across the names. That got me thinking and in a few minutes, the story of Apple Jack and Rosemary Brock was written .
My next release will probably be out by the time this piece goes up - it’s called ‘I Was’. This song sprung from a short acoustic guitar riff my son sent me one day. I popped it into my computer, started to work with it and this turned into one of those times when the song just appeared. I didn't so much feel I was writing it as just guiding it into existence. A downtempo, trip-hop feel with melancholy soft synth lines aligned with the forlorn "I was a fool" sample gives this chilled track a sad air, but initial feedback had been very positive. I’m looking forward to this coming out.
Also looking forward to the release after that. One of my most popular tracks is one of my early ones. Existence sits firmly in the chilled bracket, with a super sample from Bertrand Russell. It’s been picked up by the awesome Stick Up Boys and ‘evolved’. They’ve done something wonderful with it - again, can’t wait for folk to hear it.
Awesome stuff mate, we'll keep a look out for those upcoming releases with eager anticipation! As always, we love finding out how those in EMA found out and got involved with us so how did you come across the community? I became aware of some of the movers and shakers behind EMA from being on Choon. Followed a couple of folk, and I think I sort of remember EMA starting up on there - but didn’t do much about it because - well - to be honest I didn’t think I was in their league. Choon imploded, and then I remember seeing EMA pop up in my Twitter feed. I loved the idea of the community - and I must admit the tweets and threads felt a lot more honest and human to me than most groups that pop up. I can’t be doing with the usual hyperbole and BS that infects many music communities. I eventually just thought ‘in for a penny, info a pound’ and reached out. Best. Decision. Ever. Immediately welcoming, constructively supportive, generous with opportunities and just a thoroughly nice bunch of folk. It was invigorating - I’ve got to know some great musicians, been able to do some cool collaborations and I definitely think my music - and the ‘project’ that is gribbles in general - is the better for it. I genuinely feel lucky to have found them. Ah thanks for the kind words and we're really glad you took the step to get involved and have benefitted from being a part of it all! That's exactly what we set EMA up for - to bring like minded producers together and have a place where epic collaborations can flourish! Keep making the most out of it my friend and thanks for sharing your journey with us in this month's Newsletter! You can follow Gribbles on the sites by clicking here.
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome to this edition of EMA's Spotify Playlist! As we mentioned in the August 2020 Newsletter, we'll be changing the way we present these showcases of talent from the EMAliens to give each artist a bit more time to shine and share the story behind their tracks!
The EMA playlists are selected by Bufinjer and Nicky Havey, with the stories shared from what the producers have written themselves about their tracks to help you connect even more more with their music. So, without further ado, here is this month's Spotify playlist for you to enjoy, with the comments from the producers underneath - let us know if you're enjoying this new format in the comments! Tracklist
We hope you enjoy this new format of sharing the music and that you enjoyed the tunes! Be sure to follow the playlist and support the artists by giving them a follow as well! We'll catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance August 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
As always. we send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Thanks also to everyone for the continued support and sharing all the good vibes on Twitter! We've had another blockbuster month with an epic Breakbeat and Drum & Bass evening with Profound Radio, a 9-way EMAlien Heliocentrism collaboration and plenty of releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label. On top of that, we have a new schedule we'll be telling you about later on AND we take an in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Vaporous Skies! Oh enough of the hype already! Let's open this newsletter up and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
Firstly, a warm welcome to all new followers and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! The EMAlien community has been steadily adding to the playlists and release catalog this month! Here's a full run down of how things have shaped up this past month:
As always a big thanks to our EMAliens on the Mothership, keeping everyone's spirits up and making it a fun place to be! New Playlist Schedule
Since we launched EMA in January 2019, we have been doing regular weekly EMA curated playlists across various streaming platforms featuring tracks no older than 3 months from our members to bring you the latest tracks. However, we've listened to the feedback from everyone in the community and we'll be making a change to the way we do our playlists.
We are going to reduce from 3 to 1 EMA curated playlist each month, starting from September 1st 2020. September will be a Spotify playlist, October will be a Soundcloud playlist and November will be YouTube playlist before going back to Spotify in December and so on. We'll leave these playlists up rather than create new ones so you can follow it and we'll update when we change the tracks, rather like how we are doing with the Apple Music playlist now. Featured Playlist
There have been many playlists shared in the EMA Mothership this month and it's been really difficult to pick one to feature but we thought we'd pick a curator who hasn't featured before in this section. Our very own Llama Lady, Skyline Tigers shares a truly epic playlist with us called "Adventures in Space and Time" in what she describes as a "musical voyage of the best indie, rock and electronica from unsigned artists" - plenty of music to melt yourself in to here from various artists across EMA and Atom Collector Records:
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the cool vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow with a record number of 13 awesome releases this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Breakbeat & Drum 'N' Bass Night on Profound Radio - Monday 24th August
On 24th August, the EMA DJs teamed up with Profound Radio and put on a digital rave for all the breakbeat and drum & bass fans across the world in what was a truly special night! 7 DJs, 7 hours of high octane beats and a buzzing chat room made sure that this was a night to remember!
With mixes from Hootgun, Bufinjer, Cylotron, Electrostatic Nightmare Disco, DaveyHub (who helped organise the whole event with Profound Radio), Jansky and Nicky Havey, we're sure you'll be bouncing off the walls! All the mixes are below for your streaming pleasure! We'd like to say a big thanks to Profound Radio for having us on their station and to DaveyHub for co-ordinating and organising this with them and the EMAliens! The Heliocentrism Project - 9 EMAliens, 9 Tracks, 1 Universe
DaveyHub was on form this month as he summoned the remixing assistance from 8 other members of the EMAlien Mothership to come up with another global collaboration (or should that be cosmic collaboration) with the Heliocentrism Project.
Based around the planets in our solar system, this EP saw 1 original track from Davey remixed 8 times and each with their own unique spin on as Nicky Havey's blog highlights here. It's a great showcase of the variety on offer from the electronic artists who are part of the Electronic Music Alliance and there really is something for everyone - well done to all involved! You can stream the EP below: Featured Artist - Vaporous Skies
Each month the "Featured Artist" section of our newsletter gives us a chance to find out more about one of our EMAliens and this time round, we're going to be shining the spotlight on the "active stepper" duo Vaporous Skies! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about these fitness fanatics and this is what happened!
Hey hey it's the "stepmasters" Vaporous Skies! We're all looking forward to finding out more about you both in this month's Featured Artist(s) section. So, tell us a bit about yourselves and how you got involved with music (and doing all those steps)?!
First I want to say we are extremely honored to be selected for the newsletter ... thank you so much! Vaporous Skies consist of two Artists collaborating that were formerly known as Dinksteriznangel and EZ B. Dinksteriznangel was born in California and EZ B was born in Pennsylvania.
I’ve (Dinky) always had the love for music ... I started to produce music in November 2016 and learned a lot as time went on ; creativity , and telling a story with each track . Any genre I can do but prefer liquid drum and bass, this is my passion. Artists who influenced me are Justin Hawkes aka Flite ; Hybrid Minds, Seba. I have family who have made it in the movie / acting industry , and always told me to work hard at what I do .
With the fitness challenges, about 3 months ago I started stepping (walking) ; realizing time is short so I’ve decided to stay as healthy as I possibly can. I also am on stepbet to keep my steps done daily! Ez B - I have about 30 years of experience as a Drummer/Pianist/Guitar/Vocals and into DJing and Mixing too. As long as there's anything with substance I like it but I have a real problem when hearing tracks that mean nothing and/or have no content. I can listen to George Michael to Fear Factory to DNB to rap to RNB to Smooth Jazz! And when I’m most happy I’m usually mixing it all together. Constantly trying to reinvent music. I’ve been in every situation you could imagine, And as an artist you never know what I’m going to do next, I believe this gives the listener a true musical experience .
That's certainly a great way to be, variety always keeps things interesting and you folks are definitely putting my 2,020 km challenge to shame with the stepbet challenges haha! So with all these influences from DnB, I guess that's the kind of style you go for with your tracks?
We can pretty much do any genre , but liquid drum and bass is the closest to our hearts. My heartbeats 174 beats per minute (bpm) :)
Haha! Ditto! I think having such a high heart rate helps making liquid drum and bass! So what releases have you got now or coming up? Can you tell us a little more about “Abscond”, your latest release with EAR on the Future Sounds Anthology Vol 3 in July ?
Abscond is a very chilled instrumental track, great to listen to to relieve your stress after a hard day after work. Next Release will be Flow in the future ... Recent Releases are Stratosphere, Ethereal.
Ah lovely chilled vibes with all of these tunes that I'm sure everyone will enjoy listening in too! I guess the final question, like always is, how did you get involved with or hear about EMA/EAR?
If I remember correctly through a mutual friend :) Well, we are all glad you both decided to join in the fun and games at EMA and looking forward to hearing your latest tunes and collaborations! You can follow Vaporous Skies on the platforms below - click or tap the icons to go to their profiles:
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community on YouTube – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments! Artists Featured
Primaudia Record
Miss Efemby Hegstraction Crimson Medici The Institute '91 Electrostatic Nightmare Disco DevAstral Nicky Havey Adrian Earnshaw Awaking the Elements Bad Bat Records Trip Jacker Gribbles Eonlake DaveyHub Bufinjer
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community for SoundCloud – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments! Artists Featured
TRiPmusic
Cylotron Primaudia Record The Coherent Alliance Hootgun Andrew Gabriel Miss Efemby E1GHTH PLACE HEGstraction mAncient Electrostatic Nightmare Disco Nicky Havey Bufinjer Stick Up Boys
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community on Spotify – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments. Artists Featured
Greenmamba
Gribbles Stick Up Boys James Black Nicky Havey Andrew Gabriel ØLSKXX DZM Cylotron Hegstraction Electrostatic Nightmare Disco Crimson Medici Skeebo Adrian Earnshaw Bufinjer Skaarl Reminiss iconDARK Andrulian Trip
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA Founders (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey) |
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