Arcadian Family Portrait: Frankmusik

Ok, I'm going to admit something you regular readers already know. *silence*

There are artists and bands who get preferential treatment at Arcadia.

Yup. I know you can't believe it.

Total shock. I mean it's not like you've seen Klaxons, Late Of The Pier, Simian Mobile Disco, Heads We Dance, Black Ghosts or any other bands getting thrown into multiple posts (or frequently put on in their own post)... you never could have seen it coming, could you? It's ok. We'll get through this together...

By doing it more. That's always right right answer :) Doing it more!

Hehehehe... no but seriously? As a Blogger (or at least this blogger) you spend enough time writing songs/DJing/listening to music/doing a radio show/going to shows that eventually the line blurs pretty hard and people who are your idols become accessible (and in a best case scenario they become your friends). Then you want to take care of those people when the time comes, and your blog is the best way to do it.

Sidenote: In this brave new blogger world, this is the element that makes music "punk rock" as you can get... you the reader are only one step away from me (completely accessible), and two steps away from these artists (who more than likely are elated to have you as fans, and would treat you well if you met them in person). Example... I often tell artists what you guys have said about their tracks, shows, remixes etc... your input is going straight back to the source, which probably wouldn't have happened 5 years ago... but anyway... I digress...

One of the people I've been happiest to become acquainted with in the last couple of years is Monsieur Vincent Frank (aka Frankmusik). It's been difficult for me to talk to Vincent like a normal human being at times because I'm so overwhelmed by how good his music is (but then usually by the time I email him, all the air has been let out of my happy balloon, and there's no way I would talk to anyone *other than my wife* as if they were a superhero lol. This keeps me talking to him like a person thankfully). In my opinion, he is the future of honest, ingeniously produced, fresh as fuck pop music.

So, I may have said it before but, Frankmusik will never wear out his welcome here. I will always post what he has to offer, and undoubtedly will think it's amazing. He is, probably more so than anyone else, a major part of what I referred to the other day as the Arcadia Family (this is reflected in the fact that if you search for him on Google, Arcadia is the first page about 5 links down). I'll probably throw up links on the side to let you know who those people are if you hadn't figured it out.

For those of you who are (somehow) just hearing of Frankmusik, I promise it is totally more than worth your time to a) invest in Frankisum which was his first EP, b) go to www.theheathsofthornton.co.uk and join his club to get some free music, and c) track down the Black Ghosts remix of "3 Little Words" (I still don't know if this got official release outside of the Black Ghosts Mixtape album. I'm not posting my copy because I never heard of an official release). I think your life will be greatly enriched if you were to do so.

Here's a little taste of the new stuff...


Incase you missed out on the last few posts here's his bio info from All Music Guide...

"Frankmusik is Vincent Frank, a vocalist, producer, and erstwhile beatboxer from Croyden, England, whose compositions nod to the Crystal Castles' chiptune-fueled mania and Imogen Heap's intelligent, bittersweet electro-pop. His debut EP, Frankisum, was released on Apparent Records, a label he co-founded with David Norland, in the fall of 2007. He was signed to Universal/ Island soon after, boosted by the buzz generated by that disc. A full-length album was in the works for 2009."

Frankmusik is still a few months away from a new "official" EP that you can buy via iTunes... so you're probably wondering why I'm posting outside of being a friend/fanboy of his. Well, again, the aforementioned 'Heaths Of Thornton' site has new tracks that you can download for free... so that's worth posting about... but Frankmusik sent me a little glimpse of the EP coming this fall/winter and it's super fresh. I mean super fresh. The original point of the post was to try to get permission to stream it but... it looks like that will be saved for another day. Instead I'll give you a little blast of rad from the EP over at www.theheathsofthornton.co.uk.

Frankmusik- "Ice Box" from the Chasing Shadows EP

There's only 7 days or 100 downloads on that so hurry... or go cop it at his site.



And please, again I implore you when an artist like Frankmusik gives you free music, if you like this new stuff buy his new and old stuff... cop the tracks he did with Baby Origami... because that's the only way this blogging thing is going to work. Trust me, a lot of labels don't have the budgets they used to signing new artists... unless you're in Coldplay you're not driving a Phantom these days. It's people like you and me who are keeping our favourite artists from having desk jobs (which seriously impedes writing music, let me tell ya). If the labels see that letting bloggers release tracks helps sell records it will allow artists to keep making the shit we're all cranking from our iPods.

P.S. I'm going to be doing a guest post for my wife's new blog Polkadot Gumball about sneakers. Be on the lookout for that :)

P.S.S. I'm still trying to figure out the advertising here. Anyone know how I can get the banners at the bottom of the page up at the top? My HTML is ok but I can't figure this out and I need to get them up there. In the meantime try to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see what you're missing. See you all soon!