People, people, people – I am overwhelmed. The support I am getting for my debut album, “Disarm”, both in link sharing/Tweeting/Facebooking and orders (physical and digital) is amazing. I am so appreciative and over the moon to hear people are loving the tunes. This has been a lot of work and time and effort and I’m just happy to have people listening.

If you haven’t listened / downloaded / ordered your homemade physical package please click here for all the options.

My wrist is hurting a little this morning after I spent last night writing lyrics on to postcards (handwriting is so old school!!) but I wanted to take a moment to say: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

I’m staying at my parents’ place for a few days and it’s been interesting explaining to them the costs involved in something like this. As the sole funder of everything, paying for stuff myself from whatever freelance earnings I can muster, I have full control over the purse strings in a way an artist on a label does not. Marina & The Diamonds has some wicked videos, but did she agree to spending £20,000 of her money to get just one of them made? My folks thought I was spending an obscene amount of money on all this until I told them about that…

True, my album could have cost a lot less than it did, had I recorded it myself along the lines of the home recorded EP I released in 2009, but I made the decision to make it in Myles’ studio instead because I wanted to do it once and for all, and I wanted to show people that indie artists could make a product with a quality of sound and aesthetics on a level with or better than those with label backing, at a fraction of the cost. By being prepared for the recording sessions (the songs were all written and arranged) and getting down to work in the studio rather than wasting time playing pool and drinking coffee you can get a professional sounding album made for a reasonable sum of money, and I’m happy I chose to work with Myles rather than added the pressure to become a good quality engineer to my already full plate. It made it worth all the not going out drinking and not going on holiday and not buying clothes to be able to save up for all this, too.

My videos so far have cost between £450 and £1000 apiece. While I save a lot of cash because I direct / creative produce and edit all the videos myself, I also try to pay people a decent amount of money for their time filming me, letting me use their warehouse and lights and making me look like a tree. There are still favours happening, and I’d like to be able to pay everyone more, but I think the great people I’ve been working with understand the situation I’m in and know that I hire people based on what they do and how they do things. I’ve experienced those freelance jobs where the client micromanages and takes away your autonomy so much that you wonder why they didn’t just hire a robot in to do the job, so while I know what I want to get from a shoot and (as with the album recording) I plan and design things beforehand to make sure that happens, the idea is that everyone gets a crazy little holiday away from the real world of work, gets to add their touch of flair to proceedings, gets the praise they deserve for being brilliant and walks away feeling proud and happy they were involved.

As artists, musicians and videomakers we have all the tools at our disposal now and absolutely no excuses not to use them. Gone are the days when bands could get away with saying “That’s not my job, I just make music” and expect to be handed opportunities. I prefer it this way having been stuck in a stingy record deal in the past with all rights removed, no say over the spending of money and told off by the label boss for asking too many questions (thankfully I hadn’t written the entire album of songs that got lost in the ensuing band / label split…), but hey, since I was a little girl I always wanted to be in charge.

The late nights and early mornings in front of the computer and the money spent on printing, videos, ribbon, glitter and suchlike is all time and cash well spent, in my opinion, in the quest to create my funny little world of art and music, and feels even more worth it when the reaction from the world is this warm.

You’re all brilliant, and I thank you, and please keep telling everyone you know they’re also invited to the party. Viral may be a wanky marketing term, but peer to peer recommendations have always been the way I found the best stuff to listen to, from the mixtapes my friends and I made for each other at school to the blogs I read now. If you like what I’m doing please tell a friend, or two, or ten, and let’s continue to create something interesting.

XXX

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

Read the full post here.

Read the full post here.

“She Makes War…ends the night on a high as she effortlessly switches between guitar and ukulele to deliver a beautiful set of addictive melancholia and soaring vocals.” – Elizabeth Martin, The Girls Are.

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Last Sunday night I had the pleasure of curating an evening of female centric music as a collaborative effort between my female musician’s group My Big Sister and DIY label Genin Records.

Named Re-Dress and held at Ryan’s Bar in Stoke Newington, the bill consisted of magical looping loveliness from Lobelia, gnarly rock from Dana Jade, quirky riot punk from German touring band Two Tears For Barbarella and a set of Telecaster, ukulele and vocals from yours truly. There was a real family atmosphere – I’ve honestly never felt so much love from an audience before! – I’ve played at a lot of DIY nights but just shifting the male/female balance in the room and encouraging people to give their attention and respect to the excellent performers made a massive difference in how it all felt. We had clapping and screaming, singalongs, dancing…it was quite a Sunday night!

The lovely folks at The Girls Are sent a reviewer and photographer down to cover the night – you can read the whole piece here (and do check out the rest of their excellent site).

As I told the audience throughout the night, us DIY performers need YOU! If you see us play and like it we need you to look us up when you get home, click “Like” on things, mention us to a friend or two, send us an email or a tweet and just generally share.

My huge thanks to all the performers and audience members who came to the first Re-Dress and made it so special – I now encourage you to click on all the links in this post and check out the songs, videos and blog posts all the artists who joined me on stage last Sunday have to share with you. I’m talking to them all about putting a podcast together from the audio I recorded throughout the evening and who knows what future collaborations may bring…there will certainly be more nights like these coming your way – be there!

I leave you with my uke and loop cover of PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” – an example of the magic than can happen when your looper fails (damn you, Digitech!):

Hardly Wait (PJ Harvey cover on uke & loops) by shemakeswar

Photo by Balk for The Girls Are.

This Reality Podcast #130

Thanks to Bren and Sophie for being so friendly!

See the question/answer photo set here and download “Olympian” for free!

“Weighty issues and edginess form the crux of her eagerly-anticipated debut LP – Disarm (out next week, and buyable here) – which contains a plethora of diamond-sharpened grunge songs documenting love, loss, betrayal, homicide, genocide, crap friends and animal urges. If you imagine the grainy tumult of Blood Red Shoes fortified with an intriguing blend of Telecaster, ukulele and loopology, then polished off with an angsty ranting rasp, you’re close to the proverbial bone.”

Read the full post here.

Read the full review here.

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.