The13th AÑO: 4 | NÚMERO 42
UNA R E VISTA IMA GINARIA
STANLEY BELTON IT'S OUR LIFEBLOOD!
[ Interview with Stanley Belton from Black Market Karma by Diego Centuriรณn. ]
ITS OUR LIFEBLOOD.
3 For a long time we wanted to do this interview, without a doubt Black Market Karma is one of the bands that best manifests the rebirth of the new psychedelia. Born in South East London in 2011, eight albums have been released and they claim to have five albums ready to release. We invite you to enter the world BMK hand in hand with its leader, Stanley Belton... Hello Stanley! Thank you for allowing us to do this interview. To begin, why the name of the band? I came up with that name ages back when I was about 17. I don't give much thought to it anymore but If pressed for a meaning I suppose it can be seen as attracting good karma by spreading our music from underground. How and when is the band born? It started as an outlet when I began writing my own music. By the age of 20 I became a lot more capable in being able to somewhat accurately translate the sound in my head into a recording. I finished the bands first full length album the next year, writing and producing everything myself. This is what I consider to be the real beginning of the band. Anything before that was just nascent. Thinking of psychedelia or lysergic music that makes us travel. How would you define the concept of psychedelic music? I've always seen that word as freedom in making whatever you want. I think there are a lot of preconceptions associated with it but I don't really consider it when I'm writing. I don't even really see what we do as overtly psychedelic, it's just a blanket term for a lot of good music and a quick way to roughly categorise BMK's sound to new people. I feel that lately it's become strongly tied to droney heavy music, losing a lot of it's colour and more importantly, actual songs. To almost ten years of the first recording of the band. What do you think the band has
changed? I hate those recordings with a passion ha ha. Like I said earlier I see 2012 as the true start of the band. This was when I'd started producing everything myself, getting closer to what I could hear inside my head. They have released a dozen recordings in these few years. But in 2012 they released three albums. Were they written in that year or were they already written from before? We actually released 4 records that year. One of them being written at the end of 2011 and the other 3 I came up with during 2012. "Animal Jive" (2016) is until now the last album of the band. What has changed in the way of writing the songs from that 2012 to the present? Apart from a handful of about 4 songs, I've written and recorded everything from the beginning. A flood gate opened in my head around the start of 2012 and it's been going since. It's hard to explain but I kind of feel like I'm receiving the ideas like a radio signal. Since then I've just followed my instincts, recording the music as it comes and arranging them into LP's in order. I want people to be able to look back through the discography and have it be an archive of the natural progression. It's definitely moving and evolving as it goes forward. They have been releasing an album per year. And in this 2017 have not yet published anything. And the inevitable question is a new album coming in the remainder of the year or will we have to wait until 2018? There's a lot in the pipeline for us. I've finished our next 5 albums and am currently working on the 14th. We have a collection of collaborations we've made with other artists including The Confederate Dead, The Underground Youth, Tess Parks, Les Big Byrd (joakim ĂĽhlund) and Ruari Meehan. I've also remixed and mastered some of our older albums, including a complete re-imaging of the All
That I've Made EP and a heavy re-working of Comatose. We're hoping to release some of this stuff next year so keep an ear out! Today self-management is a weapon that facilitates not losing autonomy in your products, but maybe that makes the work more arduous and constant for an independent band. But in the case of Black Market Karma, you became known all over the world. How much work has it taken for you to make a place in the preferences of the fans? It's an ongoing and endless endeavour. All we can hope to do is be sincere in our work and stick true as it grows. You have your albums in free download. This is something that is usually a topic of discussion. What is your policy regarding people downloading their albums? We're going to end this very soon. We don't
have the backing of big money and labels, any celebrity friends or famous parents. Giving our music away free was a way to encourage people to give it a listen in amongst the massive over saturation of today. Also, people can get hold of your work for free no matter what and this way we've at least been keeping direct contact with the fans and building a huge mailing list. All this aside, people still pay for digital downloads of our albums on sites such as itunes and amazon as well as buying physical product like Vinyl and T-shirts. The main problem is painfully low streaming revenue for artists. If this was raised, even by the tinniest amount, it would make a huge difference to us all financially. A few months ago they shared the stage with an Argentine band, Hurricane Heart Attack. What do you know about Latin American music?
That was a great night in Paris at Le Supersonic. We'd been speaking online with those guys for almost ten years but had only met very briefly at Cosmosis Festival in Manchester the year before. It was nice to get to know them properly and kick up a noise together at a sold out show. You are about to travel to Japan, are there shows? Yes, I'm playing a solo gig at Red Shoes in Tokyo. Just acoustic guitar and harmonicas, something I've been doing more often lately. It's all BMK songs but at a different pace. If you look up the tracks "A Few Simple Rules" and " Course Fixing" you can get an idea of the style. I've always wanted to see japan so I'm over the moon to be going.
How was this 2017 for Black Market Karma? Productive. We had some great shows touring through the UK, Spain and France and as I mentioned before, I've recorded a huge amount of new music that I'm really proud of. I absolutely cannot wait to share it with people and start playing it live. And what are the plans for the band? Get these new albums pressed and released, play the best we possibly can live and keep being creative in the studio. We really appreciate this opportunity. We leave this final space for you to say what you want.
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Thanks for your time and helping to spread the BMK feeling. It's our lifeblood! ยกThank You Stanley!
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The13th U NA R EVISTA IMA GINA RIA