We currently live in a clubbing culture that is obsessed with secrecy and ID requests…Admittedly this heightened level of mystery is very useful when it comes to hyping things up, and actually if you rewind to the vinyl only days of the 80s and 90s secrecy has always been one of the DJs primary weapons. Back then not everyone could afford 1210’s, and promo’s were generally vinyl only, as a result unless you were well financed and well connected you had to settle for travelling to see your favourite DJ spin the record you desperately wish you could own. Today, however, despite labels and DJs best efforts, this level of secrecy is no longer that affective due to iPhones, YouTube and Soundcloud always threatening to prematurely spill the beans. So why bother trying to disguise your latest tune with ‘???’ or revealing the name but not providing a stream if its going to get leaked anyway? Answer is PR…
The difference now compared to way back when is that we do have the internet, and therefore like J-Zone somewhat cynically but accurately expresses in his record ‘Im Sick of Rap’ – “it’s all about blog love, if you aint on the blogs you aint relevant”. Therefore rather than an exclusive record being covertly shipped to a top club DJ to help build the hype, we find that unless said DJ is on the radio, its all about securing an exclusive stream with a prominent online music publication – such as I-D, Thump, Mixmag, Boiler Room, among others. Securing such a spot is like getting picked first and not last for the school football team, ensuring plays and credence among your peers. Yet despite the guaranteed exposure and plays you can’t help but feel that these exclusives potentially suck all the anticipation and excitement out of new music, resulting in their impact live being diminished by over exposure and accessibility. The truth is a record undoubtedly sounds far better when you haven’t heard it for ages and its played live on a proper rig. So what to do if you’re sitting on the latest club banger thats going to be more keenly sought than a Pokemon Go legend?
Well in our humble opinion we believe that a combination of attributes from the vinyl only past and the digital present is the way forward and to demonstrate this point we’ll use Bicep, Trikk and Doc Daneeka as illustrative examples, all of whom have mixed both methodologies. Take Bicep’s remix smash of Isaac Tichauer’s – Higher Level, no exclusive streams, just placed in the hands of a few select DJs alongside an exclusive appearance in their own end of year mix ‘Synthol Hit’. As a result ID requests piled up, and by the time release day arrived the record hadn’t become over saturated and therefore demand was still high. Trikk like Bicep adopted a similar approach for his recent record ‘Proto Rhyt‘, apart from an embedded spin within a Dixon curated mix there was no stream to be found anywhere, again allowing the record to build its own momentum and demand, and like ‘Higher Level’ interest was still high upon release with both these records eventually finding their way into the Resident Advisor Top 50 most charted tracks. Doc Daneeka on the other hand went for an even more traditionally focused strategy with his ‘Never Wanna Lose You‘ record eventually only getting released on limited vinyl due to the overwhelming number of ID requests it was receiving when spun live. Again like Bicep & Trikk a Soundcloud stream appeared just before release. All of which brings us to Bwana ‘Generation Nostalgia’.
Well, like the artists discussed above, apart from a couple of embedded mixtape appearances (see below), there are no exclusive streams yet to be found. Consequently like Bicep et al ‘Generation Nostalgia’ presently has the potential to become another significant and impactful 2016 release, assuming of course it can also avoid the pitfalls of over exposure…
Bwana – Generation Nostalgia