Demos: three tracks, links only

I joined the label this summer as label manager, and I have now read the whole demo inbox. Here is what we ask for.

Send three tracks as a private streaming link, with no password. There is no need for a forty-minute live set, a press photo or a biography. Replies only go out if we are interested. I would rather say that plainly than leave people waiting a year on a polite message. In England "not quite for us at the moment, do keep in touch" means no.

Most of what we release sits between 118 and 126 BPM, but this is not a rule. Tobias Wendt sent something so slow and so empty that Tom Ashby played it to the mastering engineer twice to confirm it was all there, and it came out last month.

Tom listens on small monitors and then on a kitchen radio, and pays most attention to the low mids. Mark Neilson listens standing up while packing orders. I listen for whether the second half of a track knows something the first half does not. Plenty of tracks have a good idea at bar 9 and the same idea at bar 200.

The voice note

Last month a woman I had never met sent me a voice note. It was forty seconds of a track playing out of a car stereo in Belleville, with the indicator going, and at the end she says "bon, c'est moi qui chante, c'est moi qui produis, rappelle-moi". There was no link and no biography. The Rhodes was audible through a Renault's door speakers.

Please do not take this as a method, as it worked because of the song. Her name is Margaux Delorme, she has signed, and "Rue des Cascades" is due at the start of next year, pressing plant permitting.