Music is virtually free and with ever-advancing technology, most consumers are comfortable with downloading a track or an album off the internet, rather than buying a CD at the store.
Some artists are already using this shift to their advantage.
P.O, front man of the urban afrocentric band, Kwani Experience, has just released the first single from his upcoming solo album as a free downloadable track for marketing purposes.
But it’s producer extraordinaire and musician Peach van Pletzen, aka Yesterday’s Pupil (YP) from Pretoria who’s taken this further and created an interesting concept for the release of his second offering.The first part of his second album called Singularity is out now and made up of two singles, Too Tired to Disco and Goodbye.
The album will be released in five different parts with two to three month intervals between each part – every part for free download.
Each individual part will have two brand new original tracks accompanied by an artwork for each song, as well as the lyrics and artist notes. When the five parts are out there, they will be all compiled into a CD with four new songs.
There’s no doubt about the hard work that goes into such a project and Peach could have just released this in one big download, but he has his reasons.
“It was an easier way to get it out. Music is free anyway, I just want people to get it directly from the artist. I want to deal directly with the fans.
“Also included with each part are 20-second clips on YouTube explaining a bit about the music.
“When I was young before the MP3 age, I listened to each song on a CD, dissecting it. Nowadays people don’t want to listen to a full song, they skip some songs on a disc. The five mini albums leading to the big one give people a chance to follow the series. I sat down with the tracks and tried to pair them to certain themes,” says Peach.
The other advantage to this idea is that more people will go to his shows knowing the music, so he won’t have to fret about introducing new songs. “When I sampled the music in Cape Town and Pretoria, people already knew the words and were singing along,” he says.
The new material comes three years after Yesterday’s Pupil’s debut album, Errors of Enthusiasm in 2008. YP is Peach’s outlet as a solo artist, where he gets to dabble in electronica with his own approach.
He’s a one man band here playing around with looped electronics and incorporating live instruments like guitars and such.
And in his live sets he’s a mad scientist who moves from tweaking on his computer to playing a live instrument. His electronica is structured yet experimental and it has an organic core.
“Whatever work on the compu-ter is always the same, but when I come in with instruments it’s always different. That’s why no live set is ever the same.
“I love organic music, I’m a drummer and doing electronica allows me the space to mould music the way I want to as a solo artist.”
Too Tired to Disco and Goodbye show off his growth as an artist in that they’re softer and the music is allowed a chance to breathe.
But what’s distinct are his vocals which are stronger, cleaner and not tampered with. Too Tired to Disco has a slight romantic mood while Goodbye (in which he worked with Marco Benini from Isochronous) is an epic electronic ballad. The new album is more vocal than the first.
“What grounded me was waiting three years to do this. But in those three years I was super busy with other stuff. All of that experience added to the production growth that’s prevalent in the new work.
“It’s definitely more vocal and I found my voice in making it. I’m used to writing in certain keys, but here I wrote for the vocal.”
He’s been “super busy” as a producer for the Afrikaans rap group, Bittereinder.
He produces for Isochronous as well. He’s reworked the second solo album of Tumi Molekane (of the Volume), Whole Worlds, for a live band and studio wise the two work on each other’s projects. Tumi features in the new YP in the parts that are still coming.
Peach is also part of the duo, Oorlog Frankenstein with Francois Van Coke – a spin-off from their 2009 Aardklop and KKNK musical play – which has a theatrical slant.
He’s also a drummer for The Queen Experience which includes Joseph Clark, Nathan Smith, Richard Brokensha (of Isochronous) and musicians from England.
On his hopes for the new album, he says: “Industry moguls should download and take it as an actual release. This is the best I could produce so the aim is to spread it.”
Download Singularity for free at: www.yesterdayspupil.com