Ho ho! Now this is something that I have watched grow from a silly one-minute-something demo into a full-blown project of epic proportions. Introducing my good ol' pal Gareth B, whom is a fellow band-mate with me in Merthyr Tydfilian based rap metal (yes!) group Start! Start!. Mr. B is always grooving our tunes up with his mad bass skills, but he doesn't get much chance to shine on the mic. That's where Small Fortunes comes in; Gareth B shows us his unique view on the world with this swanky and professional-as-fuck four track EP.
Lamenting us through the medium of auto-tune like some bastard lovechild of Ke$ha and Nate Dogg, Small Fortunes takes us into four real life scenarios told through the exciting method of songwriting. "Baldman Beatdown" tells us how Mr. B mashed up a cider-swilling lout at his local bar, "Mr. Sunday Night" is the hilarious tale of a bloke that he met in the local chippy who didn't know what day it was, "Crows Nest" is a backlash reaction to some over-enthusiastic music critic, and "A Birthday To Remember" shares the toilet-rattling tale of getting the shits after his birthday meal. I was present for that one, and boy it was ugly!
Despite the enormously sexy artwork, this EP is burned onto CDr, although you'd never guess because Gareth B has put so much love into this little package. The CDrs are styled like lil' 5" vinyls, which is right up my street, and the production on the songs by Downtown Studios' Uncle Richard is very polished and modern. The cartoony artwork by Lauren Orrells is the finishing touch here. These motherfuckers are limited to 50 copies, so act fast and get one from Small Fortunes whilst the going is good! I also have the first Small Fortunes promo single "Caution! Wet Floor!" download card free with every Pointless Records order, so get in!
This here post is a very special one for me, because this D.I.Y. lathe cut piece was commissioned by myself last year. It contains music I made with a bunch of people that is slightly out of my normal comfort zone, but it was (and still is, in fact) a ripping good laugh to be involved in.
The Start! Start! band/project came about entirely by accident. It came about in 2009 when I decided to take my noise/grind project Fart Wank into a professional studio to record some proper tracks. On our shitty hand made releases I had played every single instrument, but to make it cost efficient I needed a full band to record live as a unit, thus saving hundreds of thousands in studio costs. Studio time isn't cheap, as I'm sure some of you are aware.
It was only myself and Tom (vocals) in Fart Wank at the time, so we enlisted two musicians that Tom had played with previously - Rich and Burra, who gladly agreed to help us out on guitar and bass duties respectively. On the day, the grind/punk nonsense was cut short as the beer flowed and the usual dickery that can only happen during expensive, precious studio time reared it's ugly head. It also turned out that we had failed to rehearse / decide on more than one song to record, so we turned to the bands Myspace page for our more listened-to Fart Wank tunes.
At the top of the playlist was a demo we had done a few nights previously called "Lady GaGa: I Would Do You". Tom had played bass on this, and it lurched horribly but rather funkily. The studio owner / producer, Chris, jokingly said something about producing a full blown dance remix of this song. Some time and autotuned vocals later, "Transexual Healing" was born. It recieved far more attention than any of the Fart Wank studio tracks and people started asking about who had made the song. Reluctant to tarnish Fart Wank's "grind" sound with such a poppy tune, we decided instead to continue in this new electronic vien and create a new group featuring the four of us as full time members. And thus, Start! Start! was born. Yes, it was all my fault.
Anyways, this here package is decievingly more than just a 7", it is a full on EP, as nestled within the hand assembled artwork is a CD entitled The Contents of Uncle Richard's Hard Drive, which is a bunch of tracks that won't be appearing on our up and coming, yet untitled album. The first two songs on the CD are both sides of the 7". The real purpose of the 7" is to act as a collectable, being a hand cut and all. The sound is cut in mono and is a lot lower in fidelity to that of regular vinyl, but I can't help but love the ultra-D.I.Y. aspect of it. Although, if I am honest, there are genres out there better suited to the sound lathe cut records can offer.
The 20 copies of this record were made in America by the simply-named Corporate Records, a very interesting project by Adam from Fuck Fuck. If you're well into your D.I.Y. shit, it would do you no harm to check out this website. Some of the records they offer are simply mind boggling, like a metal record, for instance, or concentric records; vinyl that splits into three parts. Play one part, two parts, or all parts. Sell them seperately and milk your fans dry! What boggles my mind the most that they can cut onto the underside of CDrs, taking the secret track concept to a whole new level.
As for Start! Start!'s music I can't really speak of it in the way I normally speak of other music on here, purely because I am involved in it. I do think that the b-side "Scene it all Before" is a bit weak, but for all your Welsh rap laced nu-metal needs, you cannot go wrong with side A and the CD!*
