lunes, 13 de enero de 2014

The Apophonics

On Air (2013)



Personal

John Butcher: saxophones
John Edwards: double bass
Gino Robair: drum kit, synthesiser, energised surfaces

7 comentarios:

Caballo De Fuerza dijo...

MORE John Butcher, John Edwards HERE

Enjoy it.-

chris_c dijo...

thanks! thixs looks exceptionally interesting in both line up and instrumentation. love the blog and the shares posted therein. thx again!

Unknown dijo...

It cost me £500 to license this recording from the BBC + £1000 to produce the CD. Now you put it online for free just a few months after release. Thanks for the help and support. With music fans like you, who needs enemies ...... John Butcher/Weight of Wax

Anónimo dijo...

My goodness, Mr. Butcher. Ask for donations to recoup your costs, but...why did you decided to release your recording in the first place; especially after giving it away apparently to the BBC? To share your musical experiences with the interested public? You have succeeded. Expressions of bitterness only turn people away from your cause. This world is generally not friendly to artists of our kind, so consider not pointing blame so and instead reconsider your investments in the capitalist framework. The analog days are gone, digital information spreads like wildfire. What are we going to do? Let us know when you have an answer. Making your audience feel guilty will not engender submission to your way of doing things, at least not as much as you need in order to recoup your costs. We have to find another way.

Anónimo dijo...

Honestly, artists have to accept that there's going to be ever more free-ridership with recordings, especially now that we're (a.) living in a digital age, (b.) younger people live with, on average, greater debts and costs than any previous generation had to bear, and (c.) younger people don't like collecting physical media as much. Some of the older musicians really act as if everything is supposed to be the same as it was 40 years ago and that, back then, everyone was buying records to support artists. None of that is true. To Mr. Butcher, I must ask 'would you rather younger musicians completely ignore this work, leaving its support completely in the hands of the rich, privileged, increasingly-elderly, and ever-shrinking collectors' caste?' I've met a few of those sorts, and despite the presence of these blogs, plenty of them are still buying up all of the records in sight, hoarding massive collections of hard copy CDs, to a point where they need to assess their home storage situation. Younger people simply don't do this as much, and as such, I feel like complaints about file-sharing are effectively complaints about potential sales that never stood a chance of actually existing. As the previous poster suggested, in this over-saturated age an artist should be happy that people are paying attention to them at all. Somebody downloading this or that disc might well become somebody who buys a ticket for a show or up-votes you for artist-of-the-year at some periodical.

Would it be any different if it was the 1970s, and studying musicians were taking these albums out of the public/college library to listen to them? There's no profit element to that, and I'm pretty sure a lot of today's successful improvising musicians probably did just that when they were younger and had no money. In the 1980s, I'm certain plenty of them copied things onto blank cassettes and passed them around with no concerns for the artists. What are we supposed to do now that the funding for public resources has dwindled to a point where no records of this sort show up in libraries, etc..., where instead, the release schedules of these sorts of albums seem more-and-more retooled to suit the insatiable needs of OCD collectors with a crap-ton of disposable income.

Unknown dijo...

Times do change, of course - but remember, copying music from physical libraries took quite a lot of time, energy and motivation, compared to a couple of clicks on a computer screen.

Anyway, let's look at my situation factually. I'll mail a Weight of Wax CD anywhere in the world for a total of £10. I don't think that's unreasonable - nor to hope that what dribbles in over a couple of years will offset some of the production costs, and, most importantly, make it possible to release another recording. Weight of Wax has put out 5 CDs in 9 years - so you can see that it is a precarious situation.

People are certainly free to choose how they make their music available, and how they obtain music. For music on the margins, I'll always try to buy a CD direct from the players - as it helps their work.

Obviously the circumstances/costs of recordings vary - but if you're going to upload just-released CDs of non-mainstream music, that musicians have put their own money into - surely seeking their agreement first is a better way to go.

Anónimo dijo...

Dear John Butcher, I have so far (in the last week) purchased three of your cd's including this one solely because I heard this music via free downloads on this site and others like it. It is likely that these purchases of your new CD's would not have happened without the opportunity to listen to them first, essentially for free. From my point of view sites like this one are probably the very best advertising and distribution that your music and the music of very many other experimental and improvising musicians could wish for. Whenever I hear something exciting or beautiful I make sure that I purchase a new copy directly from the artist or their label if possible. Certainly many will listen for free and never buy anything but I suspect that the vast majority of those would never have bought this music anyway. Your audience is not a casual one, I'd guess that many of those that "get it" really get it and feel a debt of gratitude to you, the artist and then buy - just like me.
Many thanks,
David