Here’s the official album ad – please forward the link, embed, rate, comment and enjoy!

Please also check out the newly refreshed “Disarm” microsite for more new video and audio content.

I’m off to do a little dance around the room then have a rest day in the lovely sunshine.

XX

Big thanks to Tom at Breed Media for all his help and to Steve and Xander for the video and photo respectively.

Up in Edinburgh for a couple of days work, soaking up the Fringe festivities at all opportunities. Man I love this city.

So, last Wednesday my face was on the BBC news homepage all day, as part of an interview I did a couple of months ago with Tim Masters from the BBC. Next to my face was the face of famous (and brilliant) writer Neil Gaiman, who also took part in the interview about Twitter.

How did this happen? I’ve made it clear that I’m working on all this music stuff myself, so how did the girl who refuses to pay a monthly fee to a PR company and has to cross fingers her unsolicited press releases and mailouts get opened get her face on the Beeb next to a famous and massively credible person? Why, the magic of Twitter, of course!

I recently gave a lecture on portfolio working at Leicester University (through another Twitter contact, naturally) and one of the areas I discussed with the group of music students was authenticity. It’s something that drives everything I do, and I stressed the importance of being the purest version of yourself as you can, because that’s what people pick up on. I also talked about treating people well no matter who they are – the real life example I gave was meeting Hal Ritson from The Young Punx in his studio a couple of years ago. I was there recording a topline for a couple of dance producers who were hiring Hal for the day as an engineer. Now, as the singer I could have swanned in there, given all my face time to the guys I was singing for, ignored the engineer and gone home, but because I’m not like that I got chatting to Hal afterwards, and that led to us working together, eventually performing together in front of 15,000 people at Yokohama Arena last summer. Crazy stuff.

Similarly, on Twitter I don’t spend my time looking for “important” or “useful” people to add to my stream. For me Twitter is a curious cross section of characters and experiences and I like watching that bubbling away. It’s not a place for aggressive marketing tactics – it’s all about authenticity. Tim Masters, the lovely man who interviewed me for the BBC article, had been following me for quite a while on Twitter and we’d exchanged tweets about this and that but I had no idea who he worked for because his profile didn’t say anything about work. One day I saw he’d tweeted about an actress he’d just interviewed and I shot a message over saying I’d love to send him some music some time to see if he’d like it. It was a completely off the cuff tweet which opened up an email conversation between us about setting up an interview to go on the BBC. We met at one of my favourite veggie cafes in Soho for a chat and that was that.

So, how did last week’s day of BBC fame affect me? As a result of the coverage my Twitter stream was deluged with messages from new people, retweets of the article and thumbs ups from existing followers and friends, and I gained about 200 new followers in the space of a day and a half. I replied to everyone, as is my way, so it was a pretty busy day all told.

The day after the article there were a few more messages and a whole bunch of people retweeting a key quote of mine where I said Twitter is “a bit like Facebook – but with people who actually care about you”. It’s interesting that only one person asked me what I meant by that and told me their experience was opposite to mine when I explained myself, most others seemed to concur.

The quotes Tim picked out for the article were a lot pithier than my full answers, as I tend to ramble (this is rather a long blog post…), but my point about Facebook versus Twitter is that of my 300-odd Facebook friends, all of whom I know personally, a pretty small percentage are likely to be actively supportive of my musical project and possibly less would actually choose to listen to it themselves. That’s because I’m not just friends with people who like the same music as me, plus there are a lot of old schoolfriends on there plus some family members. That’s why when I post about band stuff, or share links to my videos or microsites, I get hardly any “likes” or comments back.

When I post a link to something of mine on Twitter the response is astonishing. The Let This Be video had over 1000 views in four days largely due to people clicking on links from Twitter, and my followers always have something to say back to me. It’s great. For me Facebook is a place to keep up with what my friends and family are up to, and Twitter is where I meet cool new people and share experiences. People who use Twitter tend to be more chatty in general because of the nature of the medium. Whatever – I think it’s a great place to hang out.

The flurry of tweets has died down now and normal service is resumed, albeit with a chunk of extra people participating, hopefully, rather than just watching. That’s what it’s all about, after all.

Digital versions will be available on a pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth basis from 1st September, with a special live EP available for donations of £10 and upwards (extra generous people get more stuff!).

Four different physical packages are also available, with the CD, DVD with a whole heap of video content and an exclusive making-the-album studio film, a live EP download and a gorgeous photo / lyric book up for grabs, plus one-off hand decorated photo postcard sets, badges and whatever else I can cram in, lovingly tied with ribbon by my own fair hands.

Click here to listen to the tracks on Bandcamp, read more about the four packages and make your orders.

Thanks so much for your continued support – this really is a completely independent project, funded and driven by this one busy lady and her passion to make music and art and great content for you lovely people. Enjoy – and please sign up to the mailing list to keep up to date with all the forthcoming video releases, too!

As always, check out the She Makes War website for all the latest video content, photos and contact details.

* SUPPORT INDEPENDENT MUSIC – PLEASE TELL A FRIEND ABOUT SHE MAKES WAR!! *

If you haven’t seen it yet the video for “I Am” is online now, check it check it check it.

Also remember to make sure you download all the free music from my site – album tracks “Got Milk” and “NIMN” and my Warriorgrrl remix of “I Am”.

I just watched this very elegant speech Amanda Palmer made recently at Harvard on the subject of artists being unashamed to ask for donations for giving their work, well worth a watch and not just because I have something to plug today:

I’m off to America tomorrow, see you on the other side of the Atlantic!

I realise I’m constantly flinging links and content out in to the wilds of the web but hey, that’s just me I guess – and so much is happening to share with you! I have two pieces of news about my latest She Makes War video, “Scared To Capsize” that are making me smile on this lovely sunny day:

UNO: The latest blog to feature “Scared To Capsize” along with some of my recent photos (taken with lenses lent by Canon via 1000 Heads) is the excellent CanonCameraBuzz – view the post here, and big thanks to 1000 Heads for organising the recent lend of lenses and CanonCameraBuzz for featuring the video.

DOS: If you like the video you can vote once a day for me to win £20,000! An almost inconceivable amount of money for an independent musician, potentially supplied by Pepsi Max via its Max It Challenge. The video is on their site now waiting for your votes so please have a look – vote for unicorns everywhere to get their boats on the water once more. I promise gifts galore for my lovely fans if I win.

Sneaky TRES: STC was shot on the mighty Canon 5D Mk II by super talented director Judy Jacob of Beggar’s Velvet, whose credits include visuals for Pixies, Peter Gabriel and many more, and our next 5D collaboration – the video for July single “I Am” – is also nearing completion…exciting times…

If you’re not on the mailing list (and why not?) you can read the latest newsletter here too for lots of linky goodness.

Microsite and Making Of to follow on Friday…in the meantime please enjoy this video and share with your friends!

I did find time for some fun birthday outings last week though, the highlight of which has to be seeing The Pixies at Troxy on Friday night. I can’t imagine them being any better back in their heyday, they were so brilliant, and it was lovely to see Joey Santiago playing the guitar hero card and Frank and Kim joking around on stage. Thankfully, being thrown around inside my backpack for an hour and a half in a sweaty moshpit didn’t harm the precious SMW album stems I had just loaded on to my external hard drive…good to know for the future that sometimes “rugged” really does mean rugged. Thank you Lacie!

My first article for The Hospital Club went online last week. Entitled “Unicorns & Paper Boats: Or, The Day I Made It”, it’s a brief, conversational piece on my experiences of using social media to promote my music, how it’s going so far and what I think is important. You can read the full piece here – let me know what you think…

I’ve also started taking part in Project 365, taking a photo a day for a year and uploading to my Blipfoto page and to Flickr. Here are my images so far:

Night all, sweet dreams.

More pics on Flickr.

Thankfully it stayed dry so I managed to get all the shots I needed, and the video should be completed this week.

Tomorrow I’m the other side of the camera to make the “I Am” video with Judy Jacob at Green Lens Studios, a newish facility in Harringay. It sounds fabulous – we’re to be greeted with a vegetarian breakfast before spending the day creating strange and beautiful effects with (eco friendly) lights. Hurrah!