Thursday

C20

Si Begg is giving his latest ep away for free. The man himself says, "Major labels and the bodies that represent them, such as the BPI in the UK and the RIAA in the USA would have us believe that sharing music is destroying music and the musicians that create it. We contend that the truth is, this cartel of major record companies, distributors and publishers have been systematically fucking musicians and the people that love and buy music for about 50 years. Creating, amongst other things, huge profits for shareholders, a rigorous, brutally industrialised method of music production, Hannah Montana and an inherently average, uninspiring, mainstream music scene. This traditional industry model is so close to death that we dare not entertain it here. Instead we leave it up to you to help determine how far this E.P. travels".

Its a novel idea and also one that could be used by other artists going forward. Radiohead famously had us pay what we felt appropriate for their last album and more and more musicians are looking for ways outside of the norm to get their music to us.

Remixes for this ep will come from Jimmy Edgar, David E Sugar and SCB but you can pick up the 4 original tracks in WAV format here, and, if you want you can pick up the special edition "hand-made in hackney" boxset of the release here.