When’s your album coming out Shlo?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
People have been asking me this for years. It’s difficult because I’ve never really seen what I do as a recorded art – it’s something you have to witness live to really understand.
When I first started out, I spent some time in the studio, but was always getting too hung up on whether or not the listener could tell that it was all done with my mouth, with no cheating.
A few people have attempted to make a ‘beatbox album’ but have often struggled with this exact same problem. It wasn’t until I worked with Björk that I felt I had done a true musical collaboration featuring my beatboxing: she was not remotely bothered about conveying the fact that it was all from my mouth, she just wanted to make some music.
Since then I have been using beatboxing as a tool to collaborate and to make original music, and despite doing a lot of appearances on other people’s records, and occasional music for film or tv, I have not done much in the studio with my own music.
The main problem is this: I personally think that since the birth of the internet, the idea of releasing music for commercial profit is a dead one.
So right now I am planning to give away all my content for free, using this website. This means live tracks, videos, podcasts and anything else I create. That way anyone in the world can hear my stuff, enjoy it, and send it to their friends without it having to sit on a major label record exec’s desk for two months while they work on their ‘marketing strategy’ and search to find its ‘natural home within the marketplace’.
The only temptation now to make a recorded album is with the Vocal Orchestra. All I need is a budget and I can fly them all out to Iceland for a month to shut out the world, and make some incredible recorded art. Any rich readers get in touch !
