SubMachena

Just got asked to put together an interview/op ed piece on SubMachena for someone, which I’ve spent this morning doing. Then, being something of a lazy swine, I thought to myself something akin to ‘Lo! It would be meet to publish this on mine own blog, thusly freeing up more time for Friday arsing about and suchlike’. Well, I do get tired, after all. Having the blog done before midday would be a relief. So, here you go – genuine SubMachena propaganda and spin fresh from the coffee-overloaded noggin of yours truly:

SubMachena

Personell: SubMachena – Robin Taylor-Firth (Olive, Nightmares on Wax), Rawle Bruce (Olive, Mil i Maria). SubMachena are sometimes joined by Sara Garvey on vocals (Nightmares on Wax, Ella May, BudNubac).

About the band

Between them, Robin Taylor-Firth and Rawle Bruce have played thousands of gigs over the last twenty years, from 50-seater bars to 50,000 fans at the Glastonbury and Reading Festivals. Their first collaboration, Olive, led to one of the best-selling records of the 90s (‘You’re Not Alone); whilst Robin’s work as keyboardist with Nightmares on Wax is a staple in the club scene, with platinum-seller LP ‘Smoker’s Delight’ its best-known work.

About the music

SubMachena Electro-dance with dub effects, Caribbean basslines, dark, heavy beats. Influenced by two-step. Ranges from a very traditional-style Jamaican dub reminiscent of Lee Scratch Perry to an intense, more contemporary take on trip-hop/bassline electro. Live show modifies the studio tracks with a focus on filling dancefloors.

SubMachena’s studio work is gradually building a reputation via dancefloors, remixes and social networks. They’re one of those ‘bands’ bands’ that insiders know about and respect, but that hasn’t quite crossed over into the public consciousness yet. They don’t have a PR company building up a superficial hype and ramming it down the public’s throat, nor do they have their music on streaming sites or any of the other now-hackneyed routes to viral publicity. Taylor-Firth, who over the course of his music career has sold tens of millions of tracks, prefers not to go frantically chasing the ‘band as a brand’ paradigm (by which new media is used to create publicity and devotion around an act, rather than its music, somehow hoping to monetize that aura of goodwill in increasingly undignified ways).

‘It’s not that we don’t know that stuff exists, or that we want to turn back time to the 90s or something. It’s just that none of it does anything except put the music into the background. You look at that MIA video, where there’s a bunch of kids running around in front of a bunch of cheap pyrotechnics, and bodyparts getting flung around, but the music is really weak. For a big label to survive now, each product it puts out has to make three times the amount of hype that it used to, just to break even. You’ve got to count on a third of the people listening to your music hearing it through a streaming site, another third via illegal downloads and, if you’re lucky, a third of them buying it legit. So you can either become part of that race for attention, or you can ignore it, work on your repertoire, and trust that the people out there who can figure the difference between a polished turd and a rough diamond will come find your music.’

The whole SubMachena approach reflects that ethos. There won’t be an album or a release schedule; nor will there be a pre-release publicity buildup.

‘Those things really aren’t necessary any more. The album industry was built upon the idea that your record was pitched towards being one of the three-to-five albums that the average person bought in a year. It had a shelf-life, somewhere in the region of two months, and got no push from your label beyond that window of opportunity. That’s not how people take their music now. Eventually, if we can work out the logistics to do this, what we really want to do is upload SubMachena tracks direct from the studio, the second they’re finished. Some months there might be four or five new tunes, others there might be none. It really doesn’t matter’.

The buzz that is building around SubMachena is slow-burning, subtle. Drop the name in an Ibiza superclub like Pacha, and it’ll be met with blank, dilated-pupil stares. Drop the name at one of the hipper Ibiza house parties though, and the reaction is different, but just as wide-eyed. The band has done remixes for the likes of Guts, and Gelka; is featured on George Solar’s cult ‘Comfy Dub’ compilations; fills the dancefloors at the hangouts of the dance music cognoscenti in spots like Formentera’s Blue Bar. Dropping a SubMachena track into your set is something of a display of credibility, the anti-hype equivalent of being in Laurel Canyon in 1972 and having a stash of Crosby weed to offer around.

The under-the-radar approach can’t go on forever, and the music will eventually be available to buy, but like most things SubMachena, there doesn’t seem to be much point in rushing it.

‘If I’m honest, it’s not been a deliberate policy to make things difficult to get hold of. Every artist wants their music to reach the maximum number of fans. But they have to be fans though. One of the problems right now is that music is just everywhere, ubiquitous, free. There’s no effort on the part of the listener to seek it out, and also, for the listener, it’s like a busload of screaming kids sometimes, all shouting “pick me, pick me!”. There’s no harm in making your music a little bit difficult to get hold of, asking people to try a little harder to get hold of it. Nothing is ever valued that’s too easy. If you put a penalty past Edwin van de Saar you’d value it a lot more than if it had been your seven year-old kid. It’s the same with music. No one sits down, lights a candle, cranks up the volume and then just clicks on a Spotify random playlist, do they? Music’s too important to just become background noise, and the funny thing is that it’s the Lady GaGas and EMIs and Spotifys of this world that are doing the best job convincing people of that, despite themselves. There are only so many more event videos that the majors are going to fund before they realize that people just aren’t really interested any more. The backlash will take the form of kids just going out and picking music because they really love the music – not the costumes or the political messages or the hype. We’ve put a couple of tracks onto YouTube now, just as a place where people who’ve heard of us can go listen. It’s not really fair to only let djs get the tracks. There’ll probably be some vinyl EPs coming out – nice heavy double twelve-inches, one track per side, real booming bass. Simple stuff, not those godawful “luxury box-set, limited edition, comes with a bottle of the band’s blood, fifty-quid-a-piece” ripoff crap. Just the record. We’ll get the tracks onto the BlancoMusic website too, probably decent bitrate mp3s or wavs. As for iTunes and streaming sites and the rest? Really prefer not to.’