The Selection Of The Artist

When we were told of our project and what we had to do we started to look for an artist that was local. We used websites, like MySpace.com, and word of mouth to find out about local unsigned bands. After a few nights of scanning the artist's material I managed to bring the shortlist down to two. These two artists we were;

We Can't Dance - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can)

- http://www.myspace.com/wecantdanceuk/

We Can't Dance are a unsigned indie pop band from Norwich. They are a 4 piece set consisting of band members Harry Dawson, Josie Steward , Tom Joy and Ash Alsop. The band were formed in October 2009 through "Access To Music", a company which has now partnered up with the Norwich Arts Centre College to help get local bands into recording and productions. This has helped them to slowly gain more and more fans with many gigs in Norwich being sold out; the latest one being when they supported Ed Sheeran at The Waterfront in August 2010, while they have an upcoming gig at The B2 where they are headlining to promte their new E.P. The band have also been featured on BBC Radio 1's Introducing Show, whilst also being featured on BBC Radio 6's Introducing Show. We Can't Dance currently have one E.P out called 'Gary Doherty' containing four tracks, with the namesake track making it into the Top 40 indie chart at 40th place. The track that we chose to use is off the 'Gary Doherty' E.P, and is called You Don't Know.

Microchip - http://www.myspace.com/microchiptunes
- http://microchiptunes.weebly.com/index.html

Microchip, aka Tom Joy, is an electronic artist in an one man piece from Norwich. He started writing music when he was 12 years old. Most of his compositions were guitar based and heavily influenced by 70s rock and roll. In aim to branch out Tom learnt to play bass guitar aswell, and played his first gig in September 2005, aged 13. After gaining his first taste of live performing, he was determined to carry on his music, and learnt to do his own recordings at home. After a few months of practicing with his recording equipment and learning keyboard, Tom's music started to take a new, interesting direction, mixing basic keyboard sounds with heavy guitar lines and a simple drum machine instead of a real drummer. Tom found that he worked better with music when he was on his own, and started his own electronic music project in November 2006. Tom's first one-man band was purely electronic, using simple sounds from his computer to make music. He thought that his music sounded like soundtracks from old video games and decided to base all of his music around this retro sound. As time went on the music gradually became less video game like and started entering new territories. In April 2007, Tom and a couple of friends formed a punk band. Having a strong influence of Muse and Enter Shikari, the band decided that they should have some synthesizer and electronics in their music, a job which was handed to Tom. After doing this for a year the band dispanded after realising that they were not very good, going on to do their own things. At this point Tom was fed up of the generic band set up, and not being able to work well with other people to try and create music that he liked playing he began a search of something interesting and new. After reluctantly being invited to a chiptune night at local Norwich venue B2, Tom found what he was looking for, and founded Microchip. Microchip has currently released two EPs, the first being 'Johan Vs Oliver' in February 2009, and the second being 'Midnight Sun' in June 2009.

I messaged both artists on MySpace.com asking for permission to use their material before we asked for feedback from an all round audience who like different genres of music. After discussing with the class after showing them the two tracks that we had chosen to do from both artist, we got feedback from the class saying which one they preferred. The feedback was spilt between the class, showing the different target audiences for both tracks. With me and my other group member being more into the indie music genre we chose to use We Can't Dance over Microchip as we felt that we would be able to represent the band and the music much better, even though we both have an interest into the electronic music genre.