NATURAL ORDER

Now their manager is reasonably confident that he can use it to score a deal with a particular record company, but the band have progressed over the year and now feel that the demo doesn t represent the band at their best. They reckon they have some great new material as yet undemoed through lack of finance.
So what do they do now? Do they put their trust in their manager but risk losing a deal by not putting their best feet forward or postpone discussions until they can afford to record the new stuff, which they feel needs a lot of money spent on extra musicians and production costs? Yet if they delay, the record company might have lost interest.
It s not an unusual dilemma, but not an easy one to solve either. But one aspect of their predicament worries me. If the new material is as brilliant as the band think it is, why does it need so much money/musicians to record it? If the songs are that brilliant they can be demoed with a guitar and a couple of voices if necessary, so I question whether the new songs are all they are cracked up to be.
A practical option for a band in this situation is either to put down simple and cheap versions of the new songs anyway. They can let the record company hear the old tape but emphasise that there s great new stuff and see if they can persuade the record company to fund adequate demoing of the new material. That way they get to demo the new stuff AND keep the company interested. But it may not be easy.
After one look at the magnificent photo sent in by Stoat I had to listen to their demo immediately. This raucous three-piece is made up of two Wexfordmen and a Russian (allegedly). They plough a freaky furrow of rock with noisy, jagged guitars, rumbling bass and thrashing drums, all rampant with energy and a great sense of good fun.
The demo only features two tunes, Randall (a hilarious song about a local lothario who drives a Hiace van) and Everybody Wants To Be An American , the latter somewhat reminiscent of The Feelgood s Wilko Johnson at his most machine-gun manic. The overall impression is of a band that should be fun to see live and who exhibit influences ranging from Supergrass to The Pixies and the wackier end of bands like Green Day or Woozer. The fact that the drummer and bass player met at auditions for a new boy band only add to the sense of zaniness. Check em out.
At the other end of the musical spectrum DJ Gord has produced two superb demos, the most recent of which opens with the eight minute Tearman and the shorter Mata-Rhoades . On both tracks he courageously avoids lifting other peoples samples and opts to write, play and record the whole shebang himself. On Acid Break he dabbles with some samples he picked from the Acid programme as well as material collated from sample CDs.
Gord was formerly a guitarist with a couple of Dublin rock bands but in his new incarnation he comes across like a dance artist with a clear vision of what he wants to do and an instinctive feel for the technology that will help him realise it. But I think he ll have to introduce something fresh into what he does, otherwise he ll simply disappear into the black hole of dance artists who mastered the machinery but had little new to offer when push came to shove.
A playable version of Drums, Tambourines and Whispers, the new demo by That Icon Of Loveliness has finally arrived and proved to be well worth the wait. I Know You Well glides along powered by a fuzzed guitar, a cutely relaxed melody, some warm vocals and a catchy chorus. Their take on contemporary pop owes more to the Teenage Fanclub wing of that faction and eschews the more irritating Britpop clichis being picked up by too many unthinking new bands. Furry Animal packs an even meatier punch and sets you up nicely for Hi-Fi On The Run which is a real blast. Still don t like their name, though.
Their fellow Corkonians Junkyard have produced an equally worthwhile demo, although there is little similarity in the musical styles of the two bands. Junkyard have a more sombre sound, and on Everything And Nothing they build on it to turn out a big song with all the bombast, if little of the subtlety, of Queen. Dylan Fitzgerald has a rich and powerful voice but the intent of the song seems to get lost somewhere.
Died On The Inside is a more direct affair, but the production is too cluttered and there s too much of nothing going on for it too really work as well as it might. S G Minor proves why its predecessors don t work so well. It s far sharper in its approach, the production doesn t suffocate it, it s got a decent chorus, some nice harmonies and it builds terrifically to a really intense climax. The final track only confirms the problems with the first two tracks, so what we have here is a problem of track sequencing.
This fortnight s lesson: Always put your best recordings first on a demo. Industry and media listeners often don t get past the first track if they re not impressed.