Synoiz Music Blog

Posted 17th November 2012

Nearly time to say goodbye to 2012. It's been a good year but as I get older I feel like the time moves faster, feels like yesterday we were out and about filming the Shock! Horror! video and that was like 2 years now. I've tried to do a release a year while I'm busy with other things but months just seem to fly by worryingly!

If you didn't know my new remix album "Darkling" is out now! It's 15 tracks of awesome remixes of my stuff by friends and fellow artists. Now I must admit I'm not usually fussed about remixes and I've been often disappointed by "remix albums" but for this one it's pretty damn good, nice selection of stuff on there and personally I think some of the remixes actually sound better than my originals (Madeleine Bloom's version of Of Rolling Hills from Ambients, and Ark Elfs "news report" style version of The Enfield Poltergeist from the Andromeda EP. You can download the 15-track Darkling album here for pay-what-you-want or free.

Do Unsigned Artists Put Too Much Work In?

The thing I'd like to write about is something that a fellow artist asked me about the other day. They were feeling very down about their music and the feeling that no-one was listening, how hard it is to get exposure and how upsetting it is to work so hard on something and then no-one really seems interested. All fairness this is something that I've been feeling a lot lately too and it made me realise just how common it must be.

I'm not really meaning anything in a "why aren't I a big rockstar yet?" way, considering the style of music I do and how I compare to so many of the other more talented unsigned artists and musicians I know I'd be shocked by any kind of big attention! It's more whether we unsigned artists put too much work into what we do.

With my Synoiz stuff I'm doing artwork, singles, B-sides, digital booklets, remixes, music videos (you'd be surprised how much work goes into just one of them!!), then for every release I prepare large press lists of potentially interested magazines/newspapers/radio/blogs and contact each of them and send out press packs consisting of press releases, press CDs and other promotional material (such as the postcards designed and printed for the Shock! Horror! and Darkling releases); all of this is essentially just to help get attention and to give people special stuff in addition to the music itself.

The problem is that does any of this need to be done? My latest release Darkling seems to have been ignored by almost everyone and type of press it was sent to, and while the reaction from fans has been great and the release is doing well but I'm sure most of you would have been happy with just the album in MP3 with some quick artwork chucked out over Bandcamp or as a zip file on my website. If this was what I did it probably could have been out months earlier.

Obviously it makes me wonder if maybe my music is just rubbish and only me and some select few truly enjoy it, or if it's so different to what people want at the moment, or maybe I'm just not getting it out to the right magazines or crowds? So it begs the question should artists just focus on the music and throw it out there for whoever wants it and hope that someone finds it? Should artists who are not "discovered" yet stop putting effort into artwork and videos and such and wait until we've hit the big time with some random tracks we've put out? Or should we just make sure we enjoy every aspect of what we're doing and if we don't enjoy it (like press and promotion for me!) we should just not bother with it and hope someone manages to dodge all of the other millions of bands all over the internet and give a listen to one of our tracks and immediately fall in love with it?

It sounds mad doesn't it?

What do you think though, are you an artist trying to get promotion or feeling like you're not sure if anyone is listening? Would you prefer to focus on the music and not have to do the promotion or do you link everything else to your music so that you need all of it together?

Posted 22nd April 2012

And time goes by so slowly bloody fast

It's been a while since I posted a blog, I guess it's because I've been very lazy these past few months. Lots to do and yet it seems easier and better to just let the days flow by, I'm not that old yet but it feels like a lifetime since that joy of being a kid where the summer holidays lasted forever, now you face the reality that it's only a month and a bit and that's gone in a blink. There's lots to do but right now I'm kinda dreading releasing new material cos I can't stand promotion, maybe I should just finish something and throw it out there and pray someone sees it and spreads it about for me!

Update on Darkling

One thing that has frankly been pissing me off is that I still haven't finished and released the Darkling remix album. What's holding it back is that we're trying to get the production perfect and I have such a massive promo campaign planned for it that it just seems like too much work to cope with. Logically I should release it with minimal fuss and then, depending on reactions, temper the flames with extra promotion. Otherwise we get the Final Fantasy XIII effect where Square Enix released it expecting everyone to love it and already working on a sequel, then when people play it they decide it's a big load of rubbish and would prefer that SquareEnix work on something better rather than further promo or sequels.
I could be holding back on and planning so much for Darkling only to find nowhere reviews it or nobody wants a CD copy.

In other news - Neonyte!!!

Yep it's finally been announced (see the news page for more) that myself and vocalist/lyricist Shaun L'Orange have decided on our synth duo name - Neonyte.
There's not much in the pipeline yet as I'm waiting on my computer to be repaired before I can work anymore on our album, but we've got some synth-acoustic demos online on our Facebook page should you want to check them out!

Until next time! WATCH THE SKIES! (or something)

Posted 11th December 2011

Posted 7th December 2010

Hello there! It's been a little while hasn't it? Thanks to everyone who has downloaded a copy of the free Halloween single Shock! Horror! from my website, I'm so pleased with how it has done. It's become my most watched/tweeted/reviewed/downloaded single yet which makes me very happy. Is everyone doing okay with all this snow? It's bloody terrible up north here in England, totally snowed out!

Due to being a bit overworked I decided to take November easy so I set myself no targets and deadlines and just had a bit of a rest (even found the time to play some Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and get back to Wii Fit!). Now it's December I'm back into the thick of it and have loads of stuff to do.

At the weekend I was with Ewan McNulty from Ragnarok Radio recording some guest vocals for his own project "Darker With The Day" which hopefully should see the light of day sometime early next year. On Friday I recorded some backing vocals for Preston Reset's remix of my track "Getting Safer" for the upcoming Darkling EP.

For the rest of the month I'm going to be working on my own remix for the Darkling EP (it's still not finished), a special remix for the upcoming single release of "Committal" from Instant Pyrolysis as well as a brand new dark ambient track for inclusion on the Chernobyl 25th anniversary compilation that is being released by Ambientaria Records next year.

What else is there? Oh yes, I've been chatting to a group of North East filmmakers about the possibility of me writing some original music for their upcoming horror film "Nightmares". They've sent me a teaser trailer which uses my track "Shock! Horror!" to great effect, currently I'm not sure if it's public yet so I can't link you up but hopefully this will be another nice little project to be involved in and looks to be a lot of fun.

Phew well that's all I can think of for the moment, hope you're all doing well and thanks to everyone who showed support for the new demos for the next album that I've been posting sporadically on Twitter, if you missed them then you can listen to each of them on the player below:

Hope you like them, more news coming soon I expect, I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow to get some shopping done for Christmas and visit my brother, See ya!

Posted 12th April 2010

Well it's finally here! The new single from my debut album "Ambients" is now out for the world to hear and download. 

"Ever Emptiness" is a dark brooding cello led piece that builds up slowly into an industrial Nine Inch Nails style peak and decline. It's one of my favourite tracks from the album and it's one where the sentiment strikes much stronger every time I listen. 

It also includes the 10-minute epic B-Side "Silhouettes" which is my attempt at a dark wave film soundtrack, both sinister, uplifting and thrilling over the course of its several movements. 

The single is available from loads of different online stores. The cheapest place to buy it is Amazon (£1.38 / $1.78) and iTunes (£1.18) which is not very much for nearly 14 minutes of music. It would really help me as an independent artist if you bought a copy of the single and left a positive review on any of the stores. 

To find out more and to see a list of other stores that stock the single, check the website by clicking here.

Watch the Ever Emptiness video

If you haven't seen it yet, please check out the official "Ever Emptiness" music video produced by local company 12 Ft Beast Productions. It continues on from the first two music videos and concludes the tale of "the man" against the masked chiaroscuro.

I hope you like what we've achieved here by managing to make something pretty dramatic and suitable for the track with almost no budget and a lot of help from dedicated fans and our friends.

Thank you to everyone who was involved, you can watch the video and see a full credits list on the YouTube by clicking here. 

A Special Message from Synoiz

Also available on the YouTube is a special message from myself mentioning the new single, ways to buy it and a little bit more background info on both the track itself and the exclusive b-side "Silhouettes". You can watch it by clicking here to visit YouTube.

Update on "Darkling EP" for remixers

Thank you to all of the artists who have sent in or are working on remixes for the upcoming Darkling EP. The stuff that I've heard so far is amazing and it's the biggest rush to hear how someone else has changed and reinterpreted a track of yours. I've decided to postpone the deadline. Initially the deadline for submissions was going to be mid-April (around a week from now) but I've realised now that I've gotten into the project deeper and heard the quality of the mixes that are coming through to me, I want to spend a lot more time with this. The EP will be released later on this year however I'd prefer not to rush the last release from my debut album.

At the moment I'm thinking about providing a 10-13 page PDF booklet with full artwork and including short biographies and details of each artist included on the digital release. This way I can allow these people who have been so amazing to me to get just a little bit more promotion and also get to be included alongside some pretty funky artwork.

Because of this there is still time for new artists to apply to appear on the EP, if you like to work on a remix of one of my tracks, please get in contact at remixes@synoiz.net