Research by Marrakesh Records
15th Feb 2009: Marrakesh Records Commission Youth and Music Survey
Our groundbreaking report, based on a new survey of over 1,000 respondents between the ages of 15 and 24, provides a fascinating insight into the attitudes of this important yet poorly understood group of music consumers.
The results speak volumes. Music retains a vital role in the lifestyle of youth. We reveal it is fundamental to their existence. Curiously, we find that the majority would even sacrifice sex for music.
And yet music is increasingly becoming a commodity for which young people do not expect to pay. For this generation, free music is prevalent, easily reached and largely guilt-free. As a result, the economic value of recorded music is being eroded and the struggle against downloads lost.
We apologise in advance. These results may stir unease. Anyone within the music industry has good reason to be concerned with our findings.
- Music is hugely important to the age group. 60% of 16-24 year olds would rather go without sex than music for a week. This increases to 70% for 16-19 year olds.
- Music consumption remains ubiquitous within the age group. 75% have watched a music video online in the last 3 months, 70% bought a CD, 62% listened to music on their mobile phone, 52% bought a music download and 45% played
a music game on a games console.
- MP3 players are the most widely used device for listening to music (81% of the age group have used one in the past week), followed by the computer (80%), radio (71%), TV (68%), CD player (59%) and mobile phone (54%).
- Radio is the most important medium for finding out about new bands/artists (67%). This is followed by friends’ recommendations (63%), and MTV and other music channels (49%).
- General interest, music magazines/newspapers and blogs achieve very low scores at 21%, 17% and 14% respectively.
- You Tube has soared into pole position as the default website that this age group turn to for checking out new artists (38%). Myspace (and a band’s own website) come a distant joint second, each scoring 15%.
- 70% of those who expressed a view do not feel guilty about downloading music for free from the internet.
- 61% of the age group do not feel they should have to pay for the music they listen to. This is more marked amongst 15-19 year olds, of whom 69% do not feel they should have to pay.
- The average price that respondents think is fair to pay for a CD album is just £6.58. For a download album the average drops to £3.91 and for a download single the average is 39p.
- On average 43% of the music owned and enjoyed by the age group has not been paid for. This increases to 49% for 15-19 year olds.
- If they were a big celebrity 42% of the age group would value respect for their music and creative freedom
above all other factors. Money scores second at 20% and performing in front of massive audiences third at 14%.
Download the complete .pdf (2.4 MB)
The Music Industry in 2009:
Predicting the Unpredictable
Big hitters exclusively reveal how they see the year ahead
If 2008 put the V in volatility for the music industry, 2009 looks set to
test powers of prediction to the limit. This mighty economic force - which
generates £billions for Britain - finds itself again in turmoil just as the credit crunch starts to hit leisure spending.
What is the true state of the industry? We ask the people at the heart of the battle - people whose secrets are rarely revealed. We have designed the ten most pertinent questions and collated these insiders' telling and timely answers.
- Is the music download about to consign the CD to extinction?
- Can a radically revamped EMI regain traction, or do its investors and staff risk losing everything this year?
- Against a backdrop of collapsing ad revenues and expanding online alternatives, what is the viability of print music magazines?
- Meanwhile, web music sources like iTunes, Amazon, Nokia and Myspace battle for dominance . and face new rivals.
- The implosion of key distribution channels - including Woolworths and Zavvi - has left the industry facing real challenges. Will consumers be able even to find music on the High Street by the end of 2009?
- Online launches could be the way ahead . or was Radiohead's success a one-off?
- The 360-degree deal, where labels control everything from touring income to merchandise, faces new scrutiny from artists and managers.
- Will credit-crunched fans find their pockets too stretched to go to concerts? Will Britain's legendary festival scene find itself against the wall?
- New political debate is set to ignite about the BBC's state-funded involvement in Radio 1 and Radio 2.
- And finally . is there really a chance of a revival of dear old Top of The Pops?
All in all, the easiest prediction would be: expect the unexpected.
But in this industry, perhaps more than most, successfully foreseeing the future is an inherent part of any job description. The biggest players in the business, executives who put millions of investors' and their own money where their mouths are, reveal their fears and hopes for 2009. In this survey by Marrakesh Records the answers speak for themselves.
Download the complete .pdf (720 KB)
Marrakesh Records is ...
a small and successful UK indie label. Our main claim to fame is that in 2003 we signed a (then) unknown band from Las Vegas called The Killers. We put out their first EP and singles, and the album Hot Fuss, which has so far sold about 1.9 million albums in the UK and Ireland. A lot of our tracks were also featured on the recent Sawdust B-sides album, which is nice. The Killers are now managed for us by Mercury Records.
More recently ...
we have signed two great new bands: Low vs Diamond, who hail from from sunny California, and Operahouse, who have spent their so-far brief lives trudging the rainy streets of places like Camden, Hoxton and Rugby. Both have albums coming out in 2009. Check them out below: we think they're really rather special and hopefully you might like them too!
If you're a band looking to work with us?
Then please note that we only sign 1 or 2 new artists per year. The good news is that this means that we can focus on giving them a really professional and personal service. The bad news is that it means that we only accept new band submissions via friend requests on myspace because it makes them manageable for us. So if you contact us in any other way then we won't accept your call or read your email, and anything that you send us by snail mail will go straight in the bin! Sorry, but that's how it works when you've only got 3 people in the office. So here's a link to our myspace page in case you need it.
And if you're Industry?
Then we're always keen to hear from potential partners from around the world who want to work with our bands. You'll find our details below - we'll do our best to get back to you just as quickly as we can.
Low vs Diamond
Low vs Diamond is, in every sense of the word, an American band - with all of the members hailing from backgrounds as diverse as their hometown cities themselves… Seattle (vocals-Lucas Field), Chicago (drummer-Howie Diamond), San Francisco (keyboardist-Tad Moore) and Atlantic City (guitar-Anthony Polcino and bass-Jon Pancoast). This melting pot of musicians was established a few short years ago when they formed Low vs Diamond.
Upon meeting in college at, Lucas, Howie and Tad found themselves with a common ground; music. Tad remembers, “When Lucas asked me to meet him in LA, I had only heard a few rough demos of his songs. I was like Count me in. I threw away the books and started playing. I never looked back. None of us have.”
Howie agrees, “Looking back would be a waste of time. I’m more interested in driving this band forward.” He does so with his volatile drumming that holds it’s own in power, as well as style.
After moving to Los Angeles, the trio eventually met lead guitarist, Anthony, and bassist, Jonny, two Jersey transplants, who brought their own richly textured styles to the table. “Anthony is much more in the know in terms of what guitars make what noises, and he brought that to the table,” Lucas observes. “And Jon’s bass playing has a driving feel that guides the songs.”
With a lineup firmly in place, Low vs Diamond began to hammer out songs that have been described as lush, languorous and beautifully, guided by primary songwriter, Field.
For Lucas it’s all about the Big Moment, the place in a song where the music swells in sync with the emotion, and it feels like time—in the space of a few chords—comes to a momentary stop. “Playing live, you get a chill, with everybody singing along,” he recalls. “It’s just this big climatic moment of melodramatic emotion. I can’t get away from those kinds of chord progressions and those kinds of melodies.”
That much is obvious from listening to Low vs Diamond’s self-titled debut, filled with sounds and hooks, putting listeners on notice that this Big Moment-loving band is on the way to bigness itself. Kevin Bronson from the Los Angeles Times explains it best writing that the band “stands precipitously between overwrought melancholy and chimey hopefulness, avoiding both excesses… the band’s music plays to an optimism that stops short of outright glee.”
While never concealing their nods to current bands ranging from U2, in scope, to the Strokes, in grit… Low vs Diamond are clearly possessed by those that passed before them. It’s these roots that define the essence of what separates this band from the rest. Low vs Diamond achieve something uniquely intimate with their attention paid to songwriting. Real songwriting. You hear the complex song styling of Serge Gainsbourg, Burt Bacharach, and even Broadway. Real songs with real stories. Lyrically, Lucas weaves in themes dealing with family (such as “Actions Are Actions” and “Don’t Forget Sister”,) and stories about saying farewell to love (“Heart Attack” and “Wasted”). Each track on their self titled debut album is as lucid and cinematic in scope.
As a unit, Low vs. Diamond possess that rare abstract quality that says, “If you don’t hold on now, this whole thing may disappear forever,” bassist Jon concludes. “We’re just a band. All we want is to be able to get out there and play this music that we’ve worked so hard on together. We’re very happy to have the chance.”
Low vs Diamond are already receiving critical praise by media and music tastemakers alike after being chosen by iTunes as one of their favorite up-and-coming bands of 2008. As part of their "Next Big Thing" program, iTunes offers fans an opportunity to purchase the band’s upcoming self-titled album months before its release this summer. Several Low vs Diamond tracks have also been featured on the CW’s hit show, “One Tree Hill” as well as being singled out in Rolling Stone’s Hot List, Filter Magazine’s “Getting To Know You” section and LA Times “THE LIST.”
Operahouse
Given the opportunity to describe their own sound before that particular right is taken away from them by a swarm of hyperbole employing critics, Operahouse guitarist Alexander Kaines – who shares these duties with his fellow songwriter and lead singer, Johnny Lloyd – chooses to describe it thus: “A big, epic, sci-fi thing.”
Big and epic is about right. Released by Marrakesh Records (a label set up by the people responsible for unearthing The Killers), the band’s debut album ‘Escape from the Sun’, due out on April 6, is a heroic, barnstorming entrance worthy of the Pyramid Stage on a Saturday night. Produced by Richard McNamara from those similarly minded peddlers of BIG anthems, Embrace, and mixed by magic-fingers himself, Dave Bascombe – a veteran of albums by Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel and Tears For Fears – the record was made with all the urgency, passion and craft of a band who know, says Johnny, that “you just don’t get a second chance at this thing.”
Operahouse have built a sound that towers over their young Britrock peers just like Babel would’ve done over Eiffel – and if that sounds preposterous it’s just what Johnny and the band want. “It’s got to be fucking out there,” he says. Their educational building blocks were Radiohead (listen to the ‘No Surprises’ squiggles on ‘Machine Palace’), The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Blur (the lairy ‘Down in Electric’) and Velvet Underground. These foundations are strengthened by a rare kind of ambition and total, indefatigable belief in what they’re doing. It means that when the band are asked who they wouldn’t mind being compared to Johnny immediately fires out names such as Thom Yorke, John Lennon and David Bowie (“Just his greatest hits, mind”) without even a hint of sarcasm.
“If you don't have dreams and ambition,” he says, “what's the point of doing this? We could go and start another band tomorrow and not put the effort in, but only if we were happy gigging at The 333 every night. We’re realistic about where we are. We know we're not the biggest thing in the world. But we want to be.”
“There’s a lot of indie pop out there,” adds Alex, “like The Wombats and The Enemy, and it’s all, like, two-chord verse, four-chord chorus. We try and sculpt songs and make them more like a piece of work, more like a piece of modern music. Not just another indie pop song.”
Much less dramatic than their fizzing, euphoric rock would suggest is the band’s formation. The story goes like those of a hundred British bands before them: Johnny met Jimmy Cratchley (on bass) at school in Rugby before hopping on a train to London where he met Alex in a north London café and the three of them, now in their early twenties, set about following their dreams. Ben Niblett, only just out of his teens, was brought in to wield the sticks, while mutual friend and keyboardist Dan White was drafted in more recently.
They’ve already built an impressive live reputation, stealing the show when they toured with The Automatic at the end of 2008, and their early singles were hailed by Zane Lowe. But Operahouse are really only just arriving. After an initial burst of interest in early 2008 they took stock of things. Johnny and Alex realized that they didn’t want to be “just another indie rock band.” In fact, being called indie rock pains Johnny; it’s something he thinks has become a capture-all misnomer for any young band with a guitar, no matter how big their dreams.
Starting again, they hid away in McNamara’s Halifax studio and worked on a vision that’s got wider and more glorious, taking in the off-kilter punk-pop of the Pixies, Britpop sing-alongs, a cosmos exploring Klaxons, the swinging, angst-ridden anthems of Modest Mouse and Bright Eyes, and the ecstatic, soar-away songs of Arcade Fire. It’s a sound that has already had remixers Jagz Kooner, Sam Vandal and Filthy Dukes using its rich palette of possibilities.
But what did Alex mean by “sci-fi thing”? The clue is in ‘Change In Nature’, a song about both climate change and the first monkey to be sent into space. As you might expect from a band with such wild, untamed ambition, it’s not for them the confessional, kitchen sink drama.
“We love sci-fi films and books,” says Alex.
“With everything that’s going on in the news,” continues Johnny, “like global warming, Richard Branson trying to come up with a way to save the planet, it’s everywhere, man. We’re genuinely interested in it. It opens people’s minds. If you hear about a new topic on the news that might sound a bit sci-fi now, then the people watching will already be starting to think outside the box, which is only good for the future.”
Cue a photo shoot at Leicester Space Centre with Andy Wilsher, a video for their next single, ‘Genius Child’ (released March 30), that sees them getting knocked about the heads by pretty ladies dressed as Barbarella and, of course, a brand spanking new, fully interactive, futuristic website, www.escapefromthesun.com. Involved in its making, the site is cryptic and warped just like the band’s lyrics, comprised of games, sounds and images inspired by their songs. It’s an attempt, says Johnny, to offer a bit more.
“We want to offer people more than just the record. It’s not just about buying music anymore it’s about buying into the band in different ways,” says Johnny, who explains how the site works in lockstep with their music: “It offers escapism, sort of futuristic, looking for better and weirder things. The whole idea is to do something that holds your attention for more than five minutes – you get into the band and then there’ll be lots of different things for people to come across and experience.”
New experiences are coming thick and fast for both Operahouse and their legion of fans who are yet to see them play live. In February they make their US debut, playing shows in New York and Boston, then it’s SXSW in March, followed in April by the place Operahouse seem most excited about – a place that will suit their ridiculous aspirations well – Los Angeles.
And so, even in these grim times when every band and their dog are singing about deserted and violent British high streets or economic ruin Operahouse are heading in just one direction – upwards. They promise, says Johnny, to offer a diversion from the inescapable this year.
“We want to set ourselves apart from all these bands singing about recession. That’s just so depressing.” Thank goodness for that.
Chris Parkin
January 2009
The Killers
The Killers Will Kill You
Las Vegas's premier rock group has never suffered from low self-esteem
By Jonathan Garrett | miaminewtimes | April 19, 2007
Back in early 2003 the Killers were just another name littered in the demo piles of A&R departments across the country. Few people in the music industry knew much about the Las Vegas-based rock group, or if it would amount to anything beyond a four-man band with a heap of potential. That's not to say that around Vegas, the group, which features Brandon Flowers as lead vocalist, didn't show loads of promise. But both promise and potential are a far cry from the chart-topping, multiplatinum success the Killers rapidly achieved with their 2004 debut, Hot Fuss. Still, along the way there were signs that hinted at the band's destiny.
In September 2003 Braden Merrick was an A&R consultant for Warner Bros., responsible for identifying talent in eleven states on the West Coast. Thanks to a contact in Vegas, he saw the Killers' name on a Website that spotlighted up-and-coming local acts. He expected a much different sound than their simple, New Wave-style British-influenced rock.
"I thought it was an Iron Maiden tribute or something," Merrick says. "I listened to a demo, which was an early version of 'Mr. Brightside,' and thought it was great."
But it wasn't until January 2004, after driving from San Francisco to watch them perform in Las Vegas, that Merrick decided he wanted to manage them. Their first step was to record a proper demo. At Merrick's suggestion the band flew to San Francisco to record with Jeff Saltzman, Green Day's former manager. In four days they laid down seven tracks, three of which made the final cut: "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine," "On Top," and "Mr. Brightside." It was then, Merrick says, that he understood the band's full potential.
"When we listened to those demos after they had been rearranged and whatnot, we all looked around and smiled and just knew it," he says. "We had this feeling it was going to be fucking massive."
Unfortunately labels didn't share the feeling. Although the EP and Merrick's relationship with Warner earned the band a private showcase in front of label brass, Warner ultimately passed on the band. It was a process that would repeat many times over in the coming months. Ironically it was their first brush with rejection that may have played the most vital role in the band's later success.
"A month earlier at South by Southwest, I met Alex Gilbert from 14th Floor Recordings in England, the label owned by Damien Rice," Merrick says. "I gave him the Killers' demo during the conference. He happened to be in Los Angeles when he heard the Killers were doing a showcase [for Warner] and asked if he could get in. My boss said no, because it was a showcase meant for our label only. But he kept pestering me, so I snuck him in. He was really impressed, and when he got back to England, he passed along the demo to Ben Durling [an A&R rep for Lizard King records]."
While everyone was enthused about the band's music, there was far less certainty about the band's commercial prospects. According to Dom Hardisty, owner of Lizard King, it wasn't until the Killers played London that those fears disappeared. "We absolutely loved [the EP], but we thought it might actually bankrupt the company," Hardisty says. "They played four London dates, and the number of people at each show doubled every night simply through word of mouth. We had done no marketing whatsoever. We knew that every single person who'd gone to see this band had told all their friends. From that point on it was simply about maintaining that momentum."
The band members themselves never doubted their potential. "When I asked [Brandon] about what kind of band he wanted [the Killers] to be, he always gave the same answer," Hardisty says. "We're the next U2. We're going to do twenty albums, and we're still going to be touring in 30 years' time.' I think deep, deep down, he's always believed he's a star."
Sarah Lewitinn, a renowned blogger and owner of the indie label Stolen Transmission, championed the band early on. She recalls Flowers's confidence with some amusement: "I was writing for Spin at the time, and I did a 'Next Big Thing' on the band. [In the piece] I called him a fallen Mormon. He called me up and said, 'My mom's going to kill me if she sees that. I can't show it to her, but thanks for writing about us.' I apologized and he said, 'It's okay. I'll just wait to show her [our] next article in Spin. '"
The band's hubris was apparent when it opened for Stellastarr* on its first nationwide tour. As the first act on a three-band bill, during an Atlanta show, the Killers played to only a handful of people at the now-defunct Cotton Club. As far as they were concerned, though, they might as well have been the headline act at Madison Square Garden. With amps cranked to maximum volume and Flowers caked in makeup, the band robotically gyrated to future hits like "Somebody Told Me" and "Mr. Brightside" in hilarious fashion. It was a preposterous display of conviction, even if it seems oddly prescient in retrospect. "Sometimes there's a thin line between madness and self-belief," Hardisty says.
Maybe the real lesson of the Killers' ascendance is that it helps to have a little bit of both.
Kissy Sell Out
Someone was playing their borthers DJ hype mix CD. It was an epiphany. I shaved my hair off, started body building, wore reebok classics and knock-off armani jeans. I worked my way up from the gay scene. I was gettgin slack for being a grunger. I was into Nirvana and Swans. You get paid loads, you drink Champagne.....Then you go have sex with some model.
A blog-raphy of Youth.
I was born in Huntingdon, a village outside Cambridge and from the time I was two it was just my mum and me and we’re really close. She had loads of records — John Martyn, Cat Stevens and folk. I used to love all the guitar effects. When I got into DJing I couldn’t afford new records so I just used to mix my mum’s — experimenting from the start.
When I was 13 I found out what dance music was. That day I walked into the common room and someone was playing their brother’s DJ Hype mix CD. It was an epiphany. It wasn’t even the music, I just couldn’t believe that it was mixed! I started to make my own tracks by overdubbing records, making crude bootlegs. It took me a long time to get any good at it.
Living in Cambridge I wasn’t very popular. Most kids I went to school with came from 2.4 children families. I just had nothing in common with them so a lot of my friends were the kids from the estates and we used to get in trouble all the time. When we moved to Colchester I made a conscious decision to fit in. I was so jealous of the people who had lots of friends. I was so shy and I never had the confidence to talk to girls! Plus I was getting slack for being a grunger because I was into Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins and Swans.
I shaved my hair off and started body building, wore Reebok Classics and knock-off Armani jeans. The guys liked me because I had this essence of being quite hard which wasn’t the real me. I’d go paint during lunchtime and not tell my friends!
I was always drawing. At age nine I wanted to be a graphic designer. But when I was commuting from Colchester to London, studying at Central St Martins and working as a designer on POP Magazine, all I wanted to do was design album covers and make music.
I thought, I’m just going to give it a go so I wrote ‘Her’ named after a Swans song. A six-minute instrumental techno track, it’s not really related to what I’m doing now. I’d always thought there must be a better life that I’m never going to have and ‘Her’ summed it up somehow — it was like meeting the girl of my dreams. Then I did a tune called ‘Permanent Record’ and pressed them
both on a white label. I literally walked around Soho convincing stores to take them off me!
I started getting radio play from the first remixes I did for The Loose Cannons and people like Touché, Headman, Simian Mobile Disco and Mark Moore picked up on it really quickly. I worked my way up from the gay scene, DJing electro at The Cock or places down in Brixton at 4am. That’s where I learnt you’re there to give the crowd what they want, not show off. That’s why I go down well in Ibiza I guess. The old Ibiza way used to be you get paid loads, you drink champagne, mix ten records because they’re so long and then you go have sex with some model! I came in as one of the kids from the new generation where you do everything yourself. When I first went over there I said, I don’t need to prove I’m a serious music maker, let’s just have a party!
When I got the monthly 2am Radio One slot back in 2007 [In New DJs We Trust], I wanted to do the best job I could. I was really lucky and so proud to be able to say to my mum I worked at the BBC. I never thought in a million years that I would have my own weekly live show. I’m one of the only DJs at Radio 1 who picks and mixes all the music by myself.
But being a DJ wasn’t really what I intended. I badly wanted to make more records, it’s definitely the thing I enjoy most, I thought it was the best thing! I could have just boshed out a club album but I wanted to do a record that people will remember in years to come and tour a live show with just three people that’s sonically quite different to the LP. I started writing with my cousin Dan [aka Danimal Kingdom, formerly of Bolt Action Five]. I’m an only child so cousins are quite important — we’ve never fallen out ever. I really like Dan’s voice: it’s punchy and quite staccato. I don’t like indie-ish singing where everyone’s just moaning!
YOUTH is really personal and I’m so proud of it. On the one hand there are lots of anecdotes from my childhood like ‘Essex Boy’ or ‘This Kiss’, which is a straight ahead pop song about when I was 14 and kissed one of my mate’s girlfriends — actually the guy who had the DJ Hype CD! It was a horrible experience.
But then there’s other stuff on the album that reflects what was happening to us while we were writing it. It was hardcore and it took over our lives, spending 14 hours in the studio each day. ‘Bethnal Green Café’ is about our girlfriends at the time turning on us. They just thought we were being lazy musicians, skiving and avoiding real jobs, but what was really happening was Dan and I were fighting so hard to stick up for our vision in the face of a major label — literally men in suits trying to tell us what to do. ‘Go Explode’ is also a bit about that, I was under pressure and I wished the world would leave us alone.
The title track really sums up the album. Even though it’s an instrumental it reminds me of being 16 and partying with my friend Rob and having to run across town to make it home for 12am curfew. We ran and ran until we made it back home, then we both lay there on my lawn, so exhausted, looking at the stars and I remember thinking, fucking hell, I’m so lucky to have had experiences like this. I was thinking about that when I came up with ‘Youth’s’ spacy synth melody. The first half of the song is more like my remixes, playing with tempo, but it encapsulates my ambitions for the album by being the most melodically complicated thing I’ve ever done.
One of the things that will always keep me from getting a big ego is what I’m known for doing is actually me. My radio show is the music I listen to on my iPod and the album is about my life, so if people don’t like it, it’s like they don’t like me. It’s tough but it keeps things in perspective.
Red Light Company
Why would you start a band to be ordinary? Growing up in a ever shifting set of family homes as his father pursued his career around the globe, Richard Frenneaux, the mainstay and lead singer of Red Light Company found his solace in a bundle of alternative music and a fascination with the culture that pervaded his favourite bands. Whether it was the alien qualities of David Bowie, the glacial cool of Echo And The Bunnymen or the street fighter politics meets high art ideals of The Clash, the young Richard, whether in his native UK, the heat of Australia or the now lush greenery of New Zealand, was obsessed with the idea that pop music could meld high art and widespread appeal to make something truly subversive.
Growing up around the world widened Richard’s mind, he readily admits that ‘It was amazing to see so many places growing up’ but left a sense of dislocation that will be familiar to anyone that has moved schools frequently. This meant that translating his vision of a band that would emulate and surpass his teenage heroes was very much a solo exercise for Richard, there was no enlisting friends from down the road. By the time he was ready to launch the group, and it was always a group that had been in his head on those global jaunts, it is little surprise that members were recruited via the internet.
The band that those members applied to join was a fully formed group, complete with songs that had been constructed by the music technology graduate at home on his computer. As to how those members would come about, the question never really occurred to the singer and songwriter. Richard may sound arrogant when he states, ‘the most important thing for me was this idea that people would come to London from wherever and have the commitment to be in a band... and all on the strength of my material’ but the tone is that of a man convinced of the rightness of the situation as opposed to his genius.
The concept of Red Light Company went beyond the music. With a stated aim to replicate that subversive approach to the mainstream, the lyrics hid a reflective, shadowy riposte within their seemingly uplifting and anthemic melodies, an approach that was very much in Richard’s mind from the off, ‘There’s this juxtaposition between lyrics and music that I have always liked. You can get away with having a pop song with really dark undertones’. In the best sense, the newly formed Red Light Company were the vehicle for Frenneaux’s desire to burn brightly whilst challenging the listener, with musical influences buttressed by a love of the films of David Lynch and a self confessed ‘mild obsession’ with Christian F’s 1981 arthouse classic ‘Wir Von Bahnhof Zoo’.
“I watched that before I put Red Light Company together. It’s about a group of teenagers in Berlin who are all heroin addicts, really young children wreaking havoc. There was something really dark, but also intriguing about it. It had Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ as its soundtrack and it was just very exciting. Obviously, it couldn’t have been glamorous, but I guess it’s the idea of looking at the darker side of life as voyeurs, which is what I want people to connect with by us having big melodies.”
These ideas came together to form the debut Red Light Company album, ‘Fine Fascination’. Early reactions to the album and its clutch of radio approved singles, ‘With Lights Out’, ‘Meccano’ and ‘Scheme Eugene’ vindicated Richard’s planning and his beliefs in his music as a great vehicle for smuggling dark matter into the heart of daytime with support across the board from the likes of Radio One and The Sunday Times Culture who hit the nail on the head when they suggested that Red Light Company ‘offer a compelling reminder of just how visceral so-called big music can be’.
The success of that debut album with a Top 20 placing on week of release has added to Frenneaux’s already unquestionable belief that Red Light Company exist for a defined reason. The concept of making high art accessible to all, of challenging the listener and offering a world of excitement and possibilities continues to drive the songwriter as he looks beyond ‘Fine Fascination’ to continue his chosen mission of kicking against the ordinariness of too many currents artists.
‘There’s a real lack of that untouchable quality, where the band feels a little bit elevated and they create a world of their own. I love it when a band can create this bubble- we can gget in but we’re not allowed in. It’s the idea of the enigma’.
As it was since he was a teenager, the fire that propels Frenneaux and, by definition, Red Light Company burn as brightly as at any point since the idea of this band became a reality in his teenage head. ‘Fine Fascination’ is only the prologue to a story that is constantly being written in Richard’s head, and to which he adds daily
‘It drives me nuts not to be writing and moving on. It’s like being starved of oxygen. I need that to exist – I’ve got to be constantly moving with my life’.
Contact Marrakesh Records
Marrakesh Records Ltd
The Media Village
131-151 Great Titchfield St.
London W1W 5BB
Telephone: 0203 178 2294
Email: info@marrakeshrecords.com
