Kowalskiy's Free Monthly 5-track Scottish EP #17

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for KEP#17!  I may be biased, but I think it's an amazing line-up this month, and I'm over the moon to feature each of these five artists.  So I'd like to say a huge 'thank you' to them all.  Just click on the artwork above for your free download.  Hope you enjoy it... 

Bloody better!  I've come out my sick bed to post this.  Anyway, before you get your free EP, here's what they each had to say about their tracks... 

1.  IndianRedLopez - Life Back In Me (demo) (Kicking things off this month with a brilliant new demo from one of my favourite bands of the year.  Short, but amazing!)

"It's just a demo that Darren and I did in a morning. He had this really nice arpeggiating keyboard line, and a few other lines that he wanted to work on. It happened quite naturally really. We're chiseling it out now, but I think the intent is there." - Mike Chang (IndianRedLopez)

2.  Rose Parade - Midnight Wine (...closely followed by another!  This'll whet your appetite until they release their debut album.)

"Midnight Wine is going to be the first song on our debut album! The song is about a relationship between two people that is falling apart, bad habits and the dark art of recovering from these situations. It was recorded and produced by Paul Gallagher in June 2011. For more tracks, gigs and updates check our Facebook page here as we will be coming to a basement near you very soon!" - Rose Parade x

3.  Graveyard Tapes - Bloodbridge (Ghosts version) (A stunning track from Edinburgh's Graveyard Tapes featuring a certain, übertalented, ex-Kays Lavelle frontman.)

"Graveyard Tapes is Euan McMeeken and Matthew Collings. The pair met when Matthew moved from Iceland to Edinburgh in 2010. Coming from very different musical backgrounds but sharing a love of many of the same artists the pair have been working together on recordings ever since. Approximately 16 tracks are currently in various states of disrepair with the duo working towards a 2012 release." - Euan McMeeken (Graveyard Tapes)

4.  Minor Delilah - All I Ever Wanted (an amazing track from their debut EP... available now from all good online download stockists.)

" 'All I Ever Wanted' is a song written in praise of the underdog and anyone who despite all the doubters looks at themselves in the eye and says fuck it I am going to do this" - Nick Scroggie (Minor Delilah)

5.  Jack James - Top Of The Hill (An exclusive track from Jack's upcoming third album Leaving Town.  On the back of this and his other free track, it's gonna be great!)

"Top of the Hill appears on my 3rd album which is coming out next month. The song, and also a large part of the new album, is about escapism. The track is also quite sparse, although there's pretty much a full band there of acoustic guitar, bass, banjo and drums. Like all my songs though, it starts out with a single guitar and vocal take that I then build around, only adding extra parts when necessary." - Jack James

Not bad eh??  Well, as always, the EP is free for you to download and do with what you will... presumably listen to.  So head on over to my bandcamp page now to get your download.  There's 16 more while you're at it.  Enjoy!

Next month, on the 16^th, there'll be more of the same.  Maybe even a Christmas song thrown in for good measure.  If you'd like to design the artwork, fire over your entry (at least 350px by 350px) to kowalskiy2@gmail.com by the 13^th December.  Best of luck!

...Jack James!

For the last week or so, one man's music has dominated my playlist. His two cracking albums are available (just click the covers above!) as name-your-own-price downloads, yet I didn't know much about the man in question, Glasgow singer-songwriter Jack James.

All his personal and album info seems to be "written by a friend". So I thought I'd ask him about himself and his music. Here's everything you need to know straight from the horses mouth....

Kowalskiy: First of all, I can't help noticing your About Me's are all written by a friend. Who is Jack James in your own words?
Jack: I find it weird writing about myself. Also, I think a lot of low-profile artists write these bio things things themselves in the 3rd person, then they maybe draw attention to that fact to add a bit of humour. So I decided to get a good friend of mine to write something for both albums, and I think reading that alone probably tells you all you need to know, I was really happy with what he came up with. But if I were to write something about myself I'd probably start talking about how I want to write cliché-free music, but already that's making me sound a bit pretentious and it's feeling weird.

Kowalskiy: You have 2 EPs up for grabs on your bandcamp. Can you describe them for us?
Jack: Well, I'd describe them as albums for a start!
Kowalskiy: My bad!
Jack: Everything was recorded at home with a fairly basic set-up. The vast majority of the first album is just guitar and vocals, which were done together in a single live take. In the second album everything is built around this exact same structure - a guitar and vocal live take - though I added a lot more instrumentation, such as banjo and some percussion. Whenever I record anything I'll use as close to the first take as possible, in fact some of the songs on the albums are my first take. Neil Young is a great believer in recording like this, I've also heard Ben Folds talk about similar things and how your perceived mistakes can become great parts of the song. It's an honest way to record I think.

Kowalskiy: What made you put them up as a name-your-own-price download?
Jack: I'm a big fan of music-sharing, especially online. People shared music before we had computers, and you're not going to be able to stop them now. I read something about the "Listen, Like, Buy" model, which just makes total sense to me. Who is going to buy music, without first listening and then liking it. Personally I think the best way to get people to listen to my music is to make it readily-available, and this means free streaming/download on places like bandcamp and last.fm. If people like it enough that they want to pay for it, the option is there for them. But I'm definitely not doing this to make money, music isn't my job, it's something I love spending time doing.

Here's my favourite tracks from his debut "Lights Off, Headphones On" and recent release "Quarter-life Crisis". Listen, Like, Buy!