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Home > Archived Issues > 1998 Issues > Issue 5
Disclaimer: This, and every issue, has been slightly modified from it's original
version to fit the format of the new Underground Music Monthly site. Also,
these issues are 10 years old or older. These links are likely no longer
active. Enjoy the silly reading.
Joe's Grille has total process
package
At
JoesGrille.com, you can find many things to help you take your music production
from the studio to the consumer. They offer CD manufacuring, radio play,
and a place for people to buy your CD. In other words, they have a
complete process package.
I'll
start by talking about their CD Manufacturing. There are several reasons
why maybe you should manufacture your CD with
JoesGrille.com, and you can read about
them in more detail at their site:
- They are always on time. They have never missed a release date.
- Their Manufacturing plant has the highest ISO certification rating available
- When you manufacture with JoesGrille.com, you get placed in their store for
free.
- There are no surprises at Joe's. That is, they are upfront about their prices.
NO OVER-RUNS!
- Their Blue Plate Special goes out to 500 college and public radio stations.
When you manufacture with Joe's, if you are chosen to be on the Blue Plate
Special, it is FREE.
- Their graphics look 50 percent better than major labels.
- They have the best insert quality available.
- Joe's helps people find your music by having "like artist" search.
- They are opening a CD-ROM store soon.
Of
course, after you manufacture your CD, you want people to hear it and buy it.
Let's start with where they help you in the hearing process. If they
choose you to be on the Blue Plate Special, you are very lucky indeed.
That's because it is heard on over 500 college and public radio stations.
Five percent of those give it heavy rotation, 23 percent give it medium
rotation, and 72 percent give it light rotation. As part of the Blue Plate
Special, they have a contest. When someone hears the Blue Plate Special,
they can vote for their favorite artist. From those votes, Joe's Grille
has a random drawing. The winner gets to see their favorite indie artist
perform live. Joe's Grille pays for airfare for 2, and hotel accomodations
for two nights, along with backstage passes for the winners.
After people hear you on one of those 500 radio stations, they will want to buy
your CD. As you all know, it's hard to find indie music in regular CD
stores often times. That's why JoesGrille.com has an online CD store as
well. They have a couple of different ways to shop. The first
is the most popular form of online CD shopping. You can do a search.
Included in Joe's Grille's search options are artist, like artist, album title,
and genre. There is also a top ten list, and a Joe's pick section.
This makes it attractive to online shoppers to go on their site, and come back
every week. They don't have a browsing option as far as I could find,
unfortunately. However, if people are looking for you or a band that
sounds like you, they will find you, and your CD will sell.
As
well as manufacturing CDs, they manufacture CD-ROMs. Both require you to
fill out a form to get a price quote.
To
summarize, Joe's Grille offers assistance in many ways to get your sound from
the studio to the hands of the consumer. Included are manufacturing, radio
play, and a form of distribution with their online CD store. They are
adding new sections all the time, so check back with them often. Like this
site, there are many sections to Joe's Grille, which makes the navigation
slightly more difficult, but by no means unbearable.
How To
Circuit-Bend And What It Does
This information comes from articles I received from Q.R. Ghazala's
Anti-Theory Workshop. You can check out their website at
www.anti-theory.com.
Circuit-bending is the art of deliberately short-circuiting audio
components in search of interesting sounds.
In the article, I found a step-by-step process which I will now share with you:
- Select a piece of electronic gadgetry (for saftey's sake the device you pick
should run on a 9 Volt or less battery) such as a walkman.
- Remove covering to expose circuitry inside. Obviously, you'll need a
screwdriver or other tool to get the covering off.
- Turn device on, so it starts to make whatever sound it is designed to make.
- Take a separated segment of insulated wire and begin touching the exposed ends
to points on the circuit board, shorting the circuit between each pair of
contact points.
 If you find a really cool sound doing this, you should make a
note of it, or if you have a mini-studio in your house, or have ready access to
a studio, or even have a high-quality tape recorder, record the sound to keep
forever. You could come up with quite a bit of interesting sounds to throw
into your next album. The reason I say record the sound instead of just
jotting it down a paper is simple. The same exact shorting on the same
kind of electronic equipment might not produce the same exact sound. If
you record the sound, then you don't have to worry about reproducing it later.
It's also easier to have the sound than to try to describe it in words.
After you have done the four basic steps, you can get into the
process more deeplly. You should find ways to make the best of the
connections accessible to your circuit-bent electronic device. There are a
couple of different approaches to doing this. Approach 1: Wire the
desired connections up to switches and knobs on the casing of the instrument.
Approach 2: Place "body contacts" on the face of the instrument casing.
The human body will conduct electricity, and the small, low-voltage currents in
these battery-operated devices won't hurt you or cause any discomfort.
There you have it. What circuit-bending is, and how to do it.
If you would like more information on circuit-bending check out
www.anti-theory.com. There you
should be able to find examples of circuit-bent instruments, and other cool
things.
CDBaby
Has Small Independent Feel
CDBaby.com is an online CD store which definitely caters to the independent
musician. As opposed to CDNow.com and Amazon.com, they are easy to get
into. You don't have to negotiate or have power in order to register with
CDBaby.com. Actually, the submittal process is quite easy. From
http://CDBaby.com, just click on the linked text
that says submit music, and follow the directions from there. There is a
simple, brief explanation of how to submit. If you want to skip that, you
can go to CDBaby.com/submit.htm and be thrown directly into the process.
It guides you step-by-step through the submittal process. The first thing
you do is fill out the submittal form. It takes 5 to 10 minutes maximum,
depending on typing speed. After that you send five copies of your
CD, and a check for $25 to the following address (which they post after you go
through the submittal form):
CDBaby
18 Juniper Lane
Woodstock, NY 12498-1208 USA
The
$25 gets you several things, though. First of all, it gets you into the
store, which is well worth the money, especially if you aren't in an online
store. If you've ever checked to see how much accepting credit card
payments on your site costs, you'd know what I was talking about. It also
gets you a small webpage on their site, which includes a picture of the cover, a
description (which you provide) of your CD, and streaming RealAudio soundclips
of four of your songs, and of course, an easy way to buy your CD. They
send you coding for a button which links directly to the page where they can buy
your CD. That way, if you submit your CD for review, in say this magazine,
then the editor/writer of the article can include the link. Very
helpful for those of you who get glowing reviews. It also gets you $20
worth of promotional materials for your site. To be more specific, you get
100 postcards that say "You can buy our CD online at CD Baby!" and newsletters
from Guerrilla Music Marketing, and great articles on how to boost your record
sales.
Onto
how they pay you. CDBaby gets $4 per CD sold ($1 of which goes to the
credit card processing company). They recommend you price your CD at $10,
so you make about $5 or $6 per CD sold. They pay by certified check for
every 4-5 CDs sold, then you send them a new batch. If sales are going
well, they'll have you send 10-30 CDs at once to save postage. On top of
the $10, there is a shipping and handling charge of $2.25 per CD, and the
average shipping time is 3-5 days. If you have any more questions,
email submit@CDBaby.com.
From
how CDBaby caters to you, the artist, to the consumer. There are several
ways to buy music at CDBaby.com. First, you can search by looking through
a list with the artist's name and a brief description of their music. The
list is in reverse alphabetical order. This method is kind of boring, but
quick and informative. Secondly, a consumer can browse the store by
looking at album covers, kind of like they would in a real CD store. This
method is much more eye-pleasing, so is probably more popular. Browsing
the CD covers is definitely beneficial to those with wonderfully graphic CD
covers. It's also slightly slower because the graphics have to load, but
not much because they do pop-up pretty quickly. Third, they have a top
five list, which is helpful for artists to keep sales in the top five, and makes
the most popular bands easy to find for the buyer. Fourth, one can
check out the CD Of The Week. I'm a very big fan of this feature. It
gives a band each week more exposure than they would get from just being on the
site, which gives them the potential for being seen by an online music
publication. The CD Of The Week feature also gives buyers a reason
to come back every week, which increases overall sales. Finally, a buyer
can do a search by any of the following: Artist Name, Song Name, Genre,
Adjective, or Similar Artists. This method gives a quick list of results.
One
last note about CDBaby.com. They have useful links on their site as well,
including EZCD.com, which you can read about in the next issue of Underground
Music Monthly, coming out in January.
Update on
UMMusic.com
There isn't a lot to update you on this month. However, the
distributor section is finished. If you are looking for distribution,
whether it's on a local, regional, national, or even international level, please
check it out. I think you'll be satisfied. If you do use
it, let me know what distributor you use, and why. Also, let me know what
you can about them. That is, how professional they seem, how good their
customer service is, etc. and I will add that information to the page I have on
that distributor. In the next month or so, look for the independent radio
station section to be done. Used in conjunction with the distributor
section, this will be a very valuable tool.
That's it for this month I believe.
Letters to the Editor:
Hello,
I am writing you this message because I think you can help me out. I host a
radioshow at a station located just below Amsterdam in The Netherlands. In this
show I want to pay some more attention to new music from around the globe. New
and especially independent music is hard to find around here. Perhaps you are
able to send me promotional copies of your (or your artists) music. I will
guarantee to give it some airplay on our station and write a small review on our
website.
Before replying to this message asking for more information, you can visit our
website at: http://www.tracksonline.com
there you will also find our snail-mail address if you already want to send
material. If you still have questions please contact us by sending mail to:
info@tracksonline.com
Thanx for your attention,
Jeroen Roeper
Tracks Online
http://www.tracksonline.com
Jeroen,
Thanks for the email. I have already forwarded your message to all the
bands I have reviewed, and obviously have posted this in the letters to the
editor section so that any artist who reads my magazine has a chance to get
exposure with you. I hope that helps, and good luck to you in the future.
Thanks again,
Gary Milholland, editor
 Is Creative Anarchy
by Rachel Miller
A band consisting of musical super-geniuses has once again created
art work that will astound and amaze all who are witness to it. MBM’s latest,
Actual Sounds and Voices, is an extraordinary collection of fiery techno hits,
with a backbone of synthesized drums laced with haunting sound effects that are
sure to conjure every existing demon dancing out of the depths of the human
soul. Meat Beat delivers a startling variety that evokes thought, inspiration,
and raw, savage desire.
 The man named Jack Dangers is responsible
for the sparse vocals that pepper the dance-friendly songs on the album. It is a
true talent to mix words into the synthetic brew of impact sound. Each syllable
uttered compliments it’s electronic, instrumental counterpart and takes the tune
to a higher level of consciousness. Dangers reveals his reason for incorporating
phrases: "Non-sequenders inspire me. Conveying idea without being too
literal. Making people think. …..I hear a sound and that inspires me. The lyrics
come from my particular mood or something that has been going on in my life or
in the world recently."
Once the album is in motion it creates instant atmosphere.
Disoriented letters coagulating on a plane of thought and forming words,
floating through an ash-blue oblivion of sound. The music is thick enough to be
sliced and served to our starving imaginations and the taste is quite pleasing.
The songs on this album are sporadic dance moves, beats summoning sweat from the
pores on our skin as we are drawn to our feet in celebration. The music in
effect creates a world worthy of it’s existence without boundaries or
limitations. Meat Beat has made an ode to human essence that boggles the mind
and excites the soul.
 
Meat Beat has earned the admiration of such noted musicians as the
Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails. They have established a respected reputation among
their peers as a force to be reckoned with. As a band, they are indeed among the
endangered breed of musical innovators who refuse to acknowledge restrictions on
their personal expression.
Their recent album consists of fifteen fresh tracks. "Everything
is Under Control", the first song on the record is a lulling collection of
voices basking in the glow of a distant breeze that carries change and
innovation. "Prime
Audio Soup", which follows on the shirt tail of it’s predecessor, raises the
energy level and quickly descend from the chirps of an ancient computer to the
rhythms that rock underground dance clubs all around the world. "Wavy
Line", a tune that reluctantly leads the listener to the close of this
incredible album, is full of frantic drum dribbling , seemingly the remains of a
bitter quarrel between intuition and destiny. As a whole the album is amazing,
an accent to any collector's wares, whether his/her tastes lie in the bizarre,
the exotic, or the unbelievably fantastic. If the opportunity presents itself,
be sure to check out their live shows in your area which promises a
hyper-kinetic multi-media extravaganza. Songs are remixed live to create a
completely euphoric musical experience.
 Meat Beat Manifesto withholds nothing from
it’s fans. It offers brutal reviving sound and wakes this sleeping world from
it’s boredom induced coma brought on by the typical and the overplayed music of
this world. Meat Beat breaks us free of the chains that bind us to limitation.
Everything that springs from their industrial, syncopated womb is blooming with
life, excitement, and indescribable music splendor. Their songs grant the common
listener oppressed by todays society a chance to be themselves. Congratulations
to Meat Beat on another job done extremely well.
Intra Moenia-Freaky Fun Grunge
Revival
By Rachel Miller
Spitting In the Mirror, a fine and up to date album contributed to this world by
the talented band Intra Moenia is the redeeming factor of today's new and
upcoming music. It is clear from the first crashing chord of teen angst and
adult retrospective that this band is not afraid to take risks. Riveting guitar
combined with throaty, yearning male vocals transports the listener to the hay
day of Seattle grunge, when Kurt Cobain was still doing bar gigs and Music
television was actually about music. More than the flannel-clad punk will
appreciate this album's timelessness, though. The tracks are a healthy variety
of crank-it-up car tunes and memory provoking guitar ensembles that appeal to
anyone with a fond recollection of the days of true unadulterated rock and roll.
The album is a true outlet for distress as well as a pleasant
compliment to the rainy afternoon. Fantastic till the last drop, guaranteed to
pacify even the most terminal case of road rage with it's exciting riffs and
catchy, inescapable choruses. It's truly an entertaining experience from track
to track. Each tune pulls the possible fan further into the album, an ascending
and appealing spiral of heart-wrenching lyrics wrapped tightly with a hard-rock
funk groove that motivates even the most reluctant wall flower to the floor to
join the mosh pit.
Intra Moenia belongs in a distinguished league of leaders in the rock
movement that has yet to see a fitting deliverance since the early nineties.
Radio-friendly tracks dominate the charts, while true talent continues to
dominate our hearts. For the lovers of variety seeking a relieving breathe of
fresh air from overplayed rap tunes and exhausted hard core beats will find what
their looking for in Spitting In the Mirror.
The opening track "Who We Are" asserts the bands motive to thrill as
well as to captivate. It is impossible o walk away from these passionate songs.
Visions of flashing lights, a sweat soaked stage and a gathering of numberless
youth are provoked with each effortless pluck of the lead guitar. "Bobby's
Dead", at one time featured on the soundtrack to the film Babyface, is a truly
raffish yet piercing song with a wide range of provocative verses. It's an
intimate album full of twists of despair interweaved with implied hopefulness.
The hours of hard work that must have gone into each composition is evident in
the lasting aftertaste of satisfaction that lingers at the end of each song.
"Lovesong for the Insane", the ending track, gives this album exactly what it is
deserving off, a blessed,honey sweet, rose red benediction.
All the praise this band receives it is certainly deserving of, and
it may add anyone who bothers to give them a chance to a long and growing list
of admirers. They are an inventive collection of lively youth, out to deliver
the tunes that are a fitting soundtrack to the hectic lives of the people who
adore them. Spitting In the Mirror is a maelstrom of irresistible hits, Intra
Moenia is destined to be the influential forefathers of the underground
revolution.
Ernesto Diaz-Infante...
by Rachel Miller
An exotic name for an immensely talented man with the ability to
soothe, calm, and transform the human spirit with his immensely entertaining
works. A solo piano, one soul amidst thousands of others, singled out for the
sake of both simplicity and unadorned beauty. The album, Tepeu, named after the
Mayan god of creation, proportion and order, is just the latest master piece
from Diaz-Infante. It is his second effort, following his rightfully successful
first CD titled Itz'at. With a seemingly endless list of accomplishments to his
unique name, coupled with a Masters in Fine arts Music Composition, Diaz-Infante
is ready to takeover where the masters Mozart and Bach left off. The torch could
not have been passed to a more deserving artist.
 The music on Tepeu as well as Itz'at is improvised, a
wonderful blend of organic sound, flowing freely from beneath his fingertips as
easily as waves lap ceaselessly to the sandy shore. The tunes he creates are
relaxing, providing a much needed relief from the hectic world in which we live.
Diaz-infante's compositions transport the listener from the blaring stresses of
daily life to a peaceful, nurturing glade set aside in paradise, with willow
trees dipping over a golden citrus-kissed river, their branches dancing
seemingly in sync with Diaz-Infante's hypnotic piano offerings. The songs are
not individual choppy pieces like most contemporary albums intended to be sliced
and served as singles on the charts, but instead Diaz-Infante defies the norm
and creates art for the ears which is pleasing to be appreciated as a complete
and undivided whole. In his works there is a liberty that is not found anywhere
else in music, an opportunity for the burdened and the oppressed to relax and
appreciate the simpler, slower, kinder things in life.
Tepeu begins with an appropriate track, "As
above, so below" that is not blunt or abrupt but rather a gentle nudge, an
understanding hand of guidance that politely leads you into the imaginary world
of piano bliss created by Diaz-Infante. The next piece "Thesis"
does not distinguish itself from it's impressive predecessor but rather allows
itself to be overtaken, both songs notes and measure mixing as if stirred into
some blissful melody soup. when combined they form a music meal fit for a king.
Diaz-Infante's music is about mood.
 It is easy to lose sight of reality and it's hassles while
under the influence of his intoxicating sound. Things really pick up with the
title track, "Tepeu".
The calm symphony of sound is now more alive than ever before. The listener is
propelled to stand and dance. The human body is swept up in a torrent of
positively divine piano chords blended with Diaz-Infante's own touch of personal
spice, guaranteed to be hot, fresh and satisfactory.
Diaz-Infante adds a sprinkle of contemporary spunk to this classic
and time honored instrument. Jazz fans, piano lovers and those seeking a little something
different to fill stockings with this holiday season should really give a chance
to either one of Diaz-Infante's extraordinary albums. There is nothing left to
lose and only pure pleasure to gain from the works of this brilliant modern day
composer.
You are now done reading the December issue of Underground Music Monthly
Let me know what you think or
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