Smart Playlists

I've blogged before about my troubles choosing music to listen to on my very short journey to The Day Job, so I decided to try something new: smart playlists.

iTunes users will be aware of Smart Playlists, I'm sure - they are iTunes' way of sorting music into lists based on certain rules. I've used them in the past to catalog my music in different ways - a playlist of all low bitrate MP3s (so I can dig out the CDs and re-rip them), a playlist of anything that falls into any one of several genres of music (usually things I don't want to listen to, so I can deselect them for syncing to my iPod) - but mostly for collation or informational purposes, rather than listening to them.

Whilst rummaging through my iTunes library, I discovered the vast numbers of songs on there that I have simply never listened to. Ever. Of course, a lot of these are ripped from CDs that I definitely have listened to at some point in the past, but not all of them.

It's maybe a flaw of digital music collections that the lack of physical product means there is no proper 'flicking through' your collection. Yes, with cover flow you can 'see' the albums as you scroll past, but that's not the same as pulling it out of the CD rack, checking the back for track listings, a particular song catching your eye, or the artwork calling out memories from way back... Maybe this is me being a touch nostalgic, but you get the idea.

So anyway, I created a new Smart Playlist called 'Things I've never listened to' which, funnily enough, contains everything with a play count of less than 1. And this is what I've been listening on my journeys to and from work these days.

For reasons unknown to me, the playlist is sorted alphabetically by album title. Maybe this was the order I was sorting my iTunes library in when I created it? Anyway, when it first started, it contained over 3,500 songs. 3,500? That's a lot of unheard music!

And so I started wading my way through it. This started months ago, and two weeks ago I got below the 3,000 songs marker.

So what musical delights has this adventure thrown up? Well, I'm still working through 'C' at the moment (in fact, I was listening to Morcheeba's 'Charango' this morning), so here is a roll call of some of the highlights, and frankly bizarre-lights of the 'Things I've never listened to' playlist so far:

A is for:

Abandonded Shopping Trolley Hotline (Gomez)

All Over the World: The very best of ELO (ELO) - I'm pretty sure this belongs to the missus...

Angel Dust (Faith No More)

Several of the Another Late Night series of compilations.

Arrested Development Greatest Hits (Arrested Development)

Attica Blues (Attica Blues) - classic old Mo'Wax album - really glad I re-found this

B is for:

11 Back To Mine albums - absolutely love these compilations. Have discovered loads of other artists through this series.

Bandwagonesque (Teenage Fanclub) - I used to have this on cassette!

Lots of 'Best of...' albums, including Bob James, Blur, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, De La Soul, James and The Small Faces!

Beverly Hills Cop Soundtrack - yeah, pretty sure this isn't mine either...

Blue Lines (Massive Attack) - this definitely falls into the category of 'overplayed CD, underplayed mp3s'

6 remixes of Boombastic (Shaggy) - actually, I seem to remember buying this...

Brixton (Pearl Jam) - a double CD bootleg from the Versus tour. Barely audible bass on the recording, but still awesome.

The Burdens of Being Upright (Tracy Bonham) - I went to a Skunk Anansie gig once just to see Tracy Bonham play. Great harmonies here.

C is for:

Cafe Del Mar volumes 1-9. No idea why I stopped at nine, nor why I've never listened to them on my iPod. Love these - Cafe Del Mar is a massive influence on my more downtempo writing, both the place and these compilations. Really interesting to listen to them all in order and hear the whole 'chill-out' sound develop year by year...

Californication (The Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Casanova (The Divine Comedy)

And that's us all up to date. Will keep you posted if this whole process turns up any more gems or howlers!

A sigh of relief, and filming videos.

OK, so I guess you're all dying to know how my studio computer is...

Good news! It's fixed! There was a VST plugin that had 'gone rogue' and was stopping Cubase from loading. Plugin identified by watching the loading messages on Cubase, then removed from the VSTPlugins folder and it's all fixed! Woop!

Of course to keep the ying and yang of technology balanced, the digital fates have now decreed that Andy's laptop won't load Pro Tools, or edit video...

The video editing thing is a bit of a problem, since we're in the process of creating a video for our track 'Has To Be Done'. This is a far cry from the last video we made, but instead comprises of Andy and I filming a lot of stuff in the dark.

I've mentioned before about how important YouTube is as a source of information these days and this is definitely true of emerging artists. However, it's often easy to be lazy about such things and post up videos of songs with single still images over them. We're guilty of it ourselves, but with such a wealth of material that we want to make available on YouTube, we have to cut corners somewhere.

In order not to cop out completely, we like to make sure that there are proper videos for some of our tracks every so often, so that's where this video comes in.

Hopefully it will be ready in the next couple of weeks (if we can get a video editing computer working again...) so keep an eye out for it then!

What's in a name?

Isn't the internet big?

One of the great things about having a name that's a bit different (with apologies to the two bakers shops also called Eat More Cake) is that if you're googling for information about us, the chances are you'll find information that is actually about us (or those two bakers. Oh, or a World of Warcraft guild, whatever that means...).

I often feel it must be a disadvantage for a band that has a less distinct name. Especially if that name happens to have geeky connotations - of the 20% of the Internet that isn't porn, I reckon around 15% must be geeky stuff. Take for example a band with a name containing 'Header', 'Banner' or 'Tag'. Have a search for 'header myspace' and see if you can find anything that isn't a reference to how to add custom myspace code...

Of course, Jim Header and DJ Header may be multi-platinum selling artists for all I know, but I think in some ways a name is especially important for bands that are 'up and coming' in these days of information overload.

It's a pastime of mine (and Andy's) to Google ourselves every so often. I mean, everyone's Googled their own name just to see what's out there, right? Googling 'Eat More Cake' at the moment gives a good assortment of information - our websites (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), YouTube videos, reviews of Red Sky, gig dates, etc. Here's a selection of some of the highlights at the moment:

Eat More Cake Interview on The List Mag (San Diego entertainment magazine)

Red Sky at #100 in the Swiss Dance Charts!

Eat More Cake's remix of Kandi in top 100 tracks of 2009 on Stop Me's blog

Urbantorque Transmissions page for our 1 hour mix - if only for the comments!

Enjoy!

EPK!

Electronic Press Kit. It's a perfectly simple concept: make available the information you would wish to present to press/venues/agents/management in an online format.

Strange, then, that there is such a wide range of EPK variations around, with completely different concepts and that very little useful information exists about what to include, and how to go about it. Google gives you millions of results for people who want to help you build your EPK (for a price), or will do it for you (for a price), or will host it on their EPK-generating website (for a price), etc.

So we decided to make it up as we went along (nothing new there).

We've been working on a video biog/epk for a while. It's been really difficult to get round everybody we wanted to in a suitable location (everywhere's so noisy these days!), to interview them about their involvement. However, we have finally crowbarred the whole lot together with a whole load of live and studio footage to come up with this, our video biography:

The rest of the web EPK is made up of stuff we think is useful: a written biog (also downloadable), a load of photos (also downloadable), some previews of songs, links to our YouTube content and contact information. Personally, I'm very pleased with the result having taught myself a lot more web-type stuff to get it working properly. Let's hope it proves useful for those that use it.

For your pleasure, here is our Electronic Press Kit:

www.eatmorecake.com/epk

Shoot More Video!

I think it's amazing just how many people turn to YouTube as a first source of reference. It's become secondary only to Google as a site I turn to in order search for information about stuff.

And I'm not just talking about films/tv shows/bands - things that translate easily to the medium of video. I regularly use it to find software tips and tutorials, product reviews, I even search it to find videos shot in venues we're playing at to get an idea of stage layout, etc... And with the number of people playlisting music these days, it's a fairly practical alternative to services such as Last.fm for finding new music as well!

So it goes without saying that anyone attempting to promote anything these days should have a presence on YouTube. We've been posting tracks on YouTube for a while now - mostly with static images to accompany the music (as many people do). More recently, Andy shot our own low-budget video for Red Sky, which we were both very pleased with. We've also uploaded some videos of our live performances as well.

So now we're turning our hand to some other video work. Last weekend, we headed down to Docklands to shoot a video for our next FREE single, Fear No Evil. As with everything like this, we pulled in some favours to make this happen - an old friend of ours, Graham, is shooting and editing the video for us, and Dhiraj of Primal Pictures was kind enough to let us use his space at Limehouse Town Hall.

In true non-rock star fashion, there was much self-conscious shuffling when I was asked to bop away and lip-synch to the track - there's a reason Andy is the front man of this operation! I was much more comfortable behind my trusty QS7 playing away... However, thanks to everyone involved, I think we're going to end up with something pretty special for this video.

On the subject of video, we're also in the process of recording and editing our own electronic press kit at the moment. We've been collecting video footage for a good while now and it's great fun looking back over old clips of rehearsals and recording sessions to find stuff for the EPK. This is a much more personal video - a genuine look at the how's and why's of what we do.

And so our video presence grows, and hopefully people coming to YouTube as a first point of reference for Eat More Cake will find our channel useful!

www.youtube.com/eatmorecaketv

So this is Christmas... and what have you done?

It's that time of year again. It's hard to describe - on the one hand, it's great to look back at what has without doubt been our most successful year to date, and on the other hand it's a time of year that always leaves me feeling a bit empty...

This year, I had a bit of a panic when I realised I'd only bought a couple of albums in 2009. I can't work out if this is because it's been a particularly bad year for music, or if it's because of current trends to 'listen' to music, and not 'buy' it. I mean, I've come across a lot of new stuff (mostly that I don't like) either on YouTube, or MySpace, or radio, but I can name the albums I have actually gone out and bought this year on one hand.

As a result, I've been looking through people's 'best of the year' lists - from the music journalists' ultra-art lists, through metacritic-style aggregated lists, to random bloggers top tens. It's had the effect of condensing everything I 'missed' in the year into one really concentrated period of music digestion.

After a pretty intense year of listening to pre-mixes, more mixes, further mixes, enhanced mixes, pre-production mixes, post-production mixes and final mixes of our album, listening to other people's music was somehow dulled as an experience, and seemed almost chore-like. Not to mention that you become so uber-critical about everything, that it's difficult to listen to something without analysing every tiny little detail...

But now I somehow feel free of that burden. Our album is finished. Complete. Mastered. Done. And now listening to new music is making me hungry for more. Every time I listen to something I've not heard before, I want to make a beeline for the studio and write. (Of course, this has its own problems, since we don't really have a studio at the moment, but that's another story.)

Of course, the fundamental problem is how can we build on the successes of this year in the coming year?

This year saw our most prolific period of gigging, with what is now an exciting, settled and amazingly talented line-up. Venue highlights have included the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Camden Barfly, 93 Feet East, Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, the Lexington, plus Glade and Hamswell festivals.

There were remix opportunities as well - our remix of Relation's Your Tiny Mind had originally been made the year before, but we got an opportunity to revisit that after it was pulled back out of the bin by Urban Torque and resurrected for the single release. We had two remixes released on singles by One eskimO as well, Hometime and Kandi, and our Kandi mix was even included as part of their US-released EP.

Although it has taken longer than we'd hoped, we now have a very strong album which has retained an excellent balance of styles, now all held together coherently thanks to the work of our producer Richie, rather than the hotchpotch of disjointed tunes that we started with. The transition from two-piece, bedroom-studio electronica to studio-recorded, live instrumentation electronica has worked better than I could have hoped, and gives us huge scope to push even more boundaries in upcoming tracks. Already, we have a whole host of ideas floating around and as soon as we can find a studio, we can get them down!

The studio problem has been a real low point. Whilst we both have our own project studios now, not being able to write/create together has really slowed things down in the last few months. And most of my equipment is in storage... Hopefully this is something we can resolve sooner rather than later, although I do recall that it was while we were both writing separately before that we had our most prolific period of creativity, so who knows? It may even spark a time of more 'grassroots' songwriting - something we have shunned in favour of technology and myriad plugins in recent times.

And then there's the constant underlying problem of sustaining the project. The studio crisis is a great example - now that we don't have anywhere for free that we can put the studio, can we afford to put it anywhere else? How much longer can we continue to shell out for transport costs? Rehearsal studios? Flyers? Equipment? The answer, of course, is that we will keep finding a way whilst the desire is still with us. And at the moment, the desire is very much still with us!

So with Red Sky Part 1, our debut single, already out there and Part 2 to follow in January, a new free track soon after that, a second single in the pipeline, and an album all wrapped up and ready to go, it looks like 2010 is set to massively outshine 2009!

Thank you to everybody who has been a part of it this year, either by buying the single, watching/rating/subscribing/following/tweeting/reposting or anything else online, coming to gigs, emailing us and telling us you like our music... So here's to 2010 and, with your continued support, a great year for Eat More Cake!

And from us, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

The new home for Eat More Cake blogging!

So this is the new improved Eat More Cake blog.

What's changed, I hear you say? Well, the address for one. Also, it's now a collective blog, not just Matt's. So you'll still get the long-winded wanderings down memory lane from him, and now the added bonus of the crazed ramblings of Andy as well!

We're just too good to you.

Anyways, keep an eye out here for gig announcements, free download info, release dates, etc. - subscribe via RSS, if that's your bag - and enjoy!

Oh, and if you haven't already, head over to Facebook and become a fan! Already a fan? Tell your friends to become fans too!

iPod selection dilemmas

Now that I've moved closer to my day job, my walk to work only takes me 15 minutes. Before, my walk was around 45-50 minutes.

This is mostly great, of course, but the one problem I've found is that it's even harder to pick something to listen to on the way to work now. Before, I could pretty much get through an album on my journey - now I only get 3 or 4 songs!

Since this new problem has arisen, I've been panic-choosing. After all, if I take 5 minutes to choose the first track I want to listen to, that's a whole third of my potential listening time gone! For example, yesterday morning I listened to Soulwax's Conversation Intercom, followed by Kielbasa Sausage by Tenacious D, then Geek USA by Smashing Pumpkins. None of these were tracks I desperately wanted to listen to - in fact the only relation between the songs, and the eagle-eyed of you might have already spotted this, is the artists' names close proximity to each other in the alphabet (song ends, quick scroll through artists, panic again, play).

This morning, however, I knew straight away what I wanted to listen to and put on the Pixies greatest hits collection Death To The Pixies. It took me a while to realise why I'd chosen this album, but it would appear that subliminal forces were at work: I noticed Gigantic somewhere in the background on the telly last night, yesterday I read a review of The Pixies gig at the O2, and our label-mates Relation have just made available a download of their reworking of Here Comes Your Man.

So there we have it - maybe I just need to be more easily influenced by the subtle signs around me throughout the day. Or maybe I just need to be a little more decisive...

A new start - a new blog...

So I've decided it's time to start a blog.

The Eat More Cake studio is finally shutting down, you see, and I wanted to have some kind of record of the breakdown of the existing studio, along with the setting up of mine (and Andy's) project studios. It's part diary, and part geeky vanity...

It's a good time for Eat More Cake - the album is finished, we've been remixing, gigging and things are generally on the rise. Consequently it's not a brilliant time to be shutting our studio, but circumstances mean that we no longer have a room to put it in, nor money to get another room.

The other problem, of course, is that we have to keep working. Ideally, we still need to be able to write, remix and produce, although this now is likely to be in our own individual bedroom studios. It's not something that's completely new to us. After all, we finished the first 'album' while Andy was still at Uni in San Diego, and we had to send CDs to each other via Air Mail to share ideas!

So that's a kind of introduction to this blog. I'm hoping to share my experiences of downsizing, along with maybe any tips I come across, equipment I really miss, music software that helps bridge the gap, and all other things Eat More Cake related in the build-up to our album release next year.

And maybe we all might learn something too...


-M