Business End enables you to have your demo reviewed by a panel of producers, songwriters, musicians and managers. If you want your demo to be heard by them then please mark it 'Business End' and write on the outside of the package the style of music that best describes your work. This month's industry panel is drawn from the MPG (Music Producer's Guild).

	'Track 01' (1.4Mb)		MP3
	'Track 02' (1.4Mb)		MP3
	'Track 03' (1.4Mb)		MP3

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Mana Erg
Recording Venue: Home
Main Equipment: Pentium II PC running Steinberg Cubasis VST MIDI + Audio sequencer

Matt Fernand (MF): "In the Coen Brothers' movie The Big Lebowski there is a band called Autobahn who are supposed to be like Kraftwerk and this sounded like the album they would make!

"I thought the production was brilliant but the creative side of things needs a bit more of a push. The vocals and lyrics aren't driving the songs along, so you end up listening to the production. I wanted to skip to track three because he didn't sing on it and that gave me a chance to hear if the problem was just a poor vocal performance. In that track it sounded like the singer was a little bit in awe of working in a studio, but he needs a singer who is going to say 'this is what the vocal needs to do' and that would help him get away from the technical engineering and more into the creative production.

"There are some nice sounds and beautiful touches in the production where the backing is worked around the vocal. He's obviously trying to write songs so I also think he needs to find someone who understands song construction.

"The DJ culture is a big thing at the moment so its worth getting in with some of those guys because they are always looking for collaborators. I know two people who got themselves jobs working for TV companies: one of them is an engineer who gets his commissions by meeting producers, and the other got a job as an accountant because when a project gets commissioned the budget lands on his desk he talks to the producer straight away. Another alternative would be to get a job in a buzzing place like Soho and see who wanders in."

Penny Ganz (PG): "This could be a viable project in all sorts of ways, although not necessarily in its current form. The traditional way of using music on a record is not necessary the be-all and end-all; he could look at this in terms of music rather than records. There are lots of ways to sell music, two examples being computer games or even as short bursts of audio on web sites. I can also imagine this music being pushed towards that MTV2 video thing given some work on the song structures."

"If he wants to promote this there are a number of dodgy, and some less dodgy, American promotors out there who will look after songs and music for six months or so and if something happens then they capitalise on the earnings they have generated. Other than that it's just a matter of finding a publisher."

Matt Verovkins (MV): "I found this entertaining, mainly because of the range of samples and sounds that he used, but the vocal didn't seem to do the music justice. It's got a very dark and moody feel to it so I think it would be very suitable for creating that initial mood you need in films. The tracks we heard did sound similar to each other but as a whole he seem to have a unique sound so it would be worth improving the vocal parts.

"He should start contacting synchronisation companies if he wants to get into film. It's worth approaching students who are doing a film course because those sort of collaborative experiments might lead to other opportunities."

Jona Lewie (JL): "I found it quite dark. If you look at the Lennon and McCartney songwriting team, for example, McCartney added the lighter side to the darkness of Lennon, but this demo is all Lennon at the moment. If he can add something lighter as a backdrop for the darkness it would be more complete, but it still has a lot going for it even at the moment. He's got a very fine sense of mood change which was apparent when going from verse to chorus — I think it was track two or three where there was a big change into the chorus — but the darkness was still there. It reminded me of Peter Gabriel as well as Kraftwerk but he is bringing something new to the table."

	'Track 01' (1.4Mb)		MP3
	'Track 02' (1.4Mb)		MP3
	'Track 03' (1.4Mb)		MP3

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Jazzman
Recording Venue: None listed
Main Equipment: PII PC running Steinberg Cubase VST v5.0 MIDI + Audio sequencer; Roland MC303 groovebox

MV: "The first track just droned on from when it started and it didn't seem to lead anywhere — it was quite basic, but I quite liked the vocal idea when it eventually came in.

"I liked the mood of the second track and I thought most of the samples fitted well. The third track was nicely chilled-out — a bit like electronic dub. He chose synth sounds that were quite flattering and they grabbed my attention, but overall it provided nothing new."

PG: "I quite liked the way the first track created tension by using the trick of dropping in and out, but then it became a little bit irritating and it needed to move on. I didn't like the second track and I didn't understand where he was going with it.

"After the spoken sample at the beginning of the third track there was a nice little groove that kicked in and that was the first time it grabbed my attention but it didn't keep developing and it didn't build into anything else. He does have some nice mini-ideas but overall it needs more development."

MF: "This demo shows lots of promise but I would file this as one to watch for the future.

"The first track contained one good idea after another but the ideas were disparate, they didn't flow or hang together. I did like the use of vocal samples. I wouldn't put the second track on a demo unless I was specifically targeting a really savvy dance label because I don't know where that one was going and it didn't grab me.

"If I was in A&R I would have been skipping the start of that track looking for the tune. I don't know if it eventually does get going but if so it needs an edit.

"I loved the groove in the third track when it got going but again it didn't really deliver what it promised."

JL: "I think some of this could work to picture. What I liked about the first one is that the intro became the chorus when he repeated the main themes of the intro later in the track. It is extremely laid-back and very ambient, and even though the first track brings in other influences it still has an extremely laid-back intro. In a way the laid-back approach became his problem because by three minutes we all got a bit restless. If he'd been a bit more consolidated in his approach then maybe he could have got something going that would have made a complete statement inside three or four minutes.

"He is able to create grooves which is very important."

MV: "I suggest he puts the third track either first or second because it was the one that got me into the mood of the music."

MF: "It's always a good idea to get other people to order tracks for you because when you are close to a demo it is really hard to pick the best.

"I would like to get people to listen to a whole stack of demos in an A&R environment becase the first time I did that it really changed my attitude to the way a demo is presented. There were phones going and emails coming in and I was trying to listen to music.

"Some people call their CD an EP so they can send out four tracks instead of two but you sell an EP, and send a demo and there is a big difference. At OneMusic we get people to nominate two tracks from their CDs and quite often they pick something like track four and seven and you wonder why they didn't put them at the start."

JL: "When you listen to your whole album chronologically track four and seven can be set up by the previous tracks so that over the whole album you are responding to those contextually. A musician or songwriter is going to like all the stuff they do so they should get someone else to pick them."

PG: "The more tracks that are on the demo the worse it is, because it is obvious that they haven't really thought about which ones are the key tracks. They should be asking 'what am I really about? What defines my music?' It's so important to do that."

	'Track 01' (1.4Mb)		MP3
	'Track 02' (1.4Mb)		MP3

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Coy
Recording Venue: Home
Main Equipment: IBM X22 laptop; Fruity Loops loop sequencer; Novation K Station synthesizer

MF: "The music was excellent and really well put together, I really enjoyed the details like the crunchy noises sitting back and driving it along. I got a little bit bored with the cymbal swell sound that seemed to crop up every eight bars in every track but apart from that I thought the production was flawless. The sound quality was exceptional so they could put that out. The third track lost it a bit so they obviously realised that the game was up by then.

"In terms of the performance, again I wasn't crazy about the vocal. It was limited by that three-note-line style where it doesn't really stray very far out of a range and doesn't do anything you don't expect it to. They could have made a lot more of it."

JL: "I wonder if they are perhaps an album act rather than anything else. They fell down a bit in the third track and it was good that they just cut it short. The third track reminded me of the opening of Pink Floyd's The Wall for some reason.

"I think they are really into what they are doing and are very caring in regards to the production and sounds but the vocals didn't seem to get very far. Overall it doesn't quite go far enough for me, although I think it's the sort of thing people can enjoy given the right mood."

MV: "I did enjoy it. The first track had a really nice beat and you can hear influences from everywhere including early house. I recognised the strings in the first track; I can't say where they are from but I think from an early house track.

"The vocal again seemed to have a three tone limit to it and it is very similar to another Norwegian artist, Erlend Øye from Kings Of Convenience. He's already signed so Coy have got to consider if they are offering anything new. When it comes to the vocal they definitely are not but the music and production was really good — and there were lots of interesting samples in the background."

PG: "I really did like the vocal although I do agree that it needs breaking up and used possibly more as an instrument than a vocal to bed it into the sound picture. I liked the textures they created within the tracks and I liked the overall sound too. It sounded at a level that it could go out on record.

"When the second track started it seemed to be more of the same and they were beginning to loose me in the third."

This Month's MPG Panel     Working as assistant engineer and technician for Hilton Sound and Dreamhire, Matt Fernand helped build studios for recording projects such as Radiohead's OK Computer. More recently he started work at Radio 1 editing and mixing show trails. He currently produces content for OneMusic, Radio 1's web site aimed at anyone wanting to get into the music industry. The content includes interview with artists and producers and a series of industry guides. Matt is also a home-studio musician and a drummer with a Brixton-based jazz collective. Award-winning songwriter, musician and producer Jona Lewie began his career back in the late '60s, when he played with Arthur Cudup during the British blues boom. He has had numerous solo worldwide hits, most notably with 'You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At parties', 'Seaside Shuffle' and the perennial Christmas favourite, 'Stop the Cavalry', for which he won an Ivor Novello Award. Jona operates his own studio facility and is a member of the MPG and BACS. Penny Ganz is a music lawyer and manager, coming from a music and engineering background. She now runs her own company, having earlier been with EMI Records for many years, and subsequently with West End music lawyers The Simkins Partnership. Current clients include record companies of all sizes, a variety of artists and many producers. In 1998, Matt Verovkins set up the events management company Hyponik, specialising in breakbeat-orientated events such as Beak Party and Rebel Break. He also DJs at London nights: Critical Breaks, Eclectic Heist and the Sunday Break. Matt acts as label assistant and logistics director for Source Records, and together with Fin Greenall, he runs the independent label Tyke, for all types of electronic music. Matt is currently taking a BA(Hons) in Music Industry Management Marketing. Many thanks to Jona Lewie who hosted the session. The MPG's web site is at www.mpg.org.uk

 

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