Maple Sky - 'Wearing Red' Single Review

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Maple Sky - 'Wearing Red' Single Review

As the first track on their self-titled EP, ‘Wearing Red’ is the perfect sonic epitome for the smooth jazz inspired outfit, Maple Sky. The track sets the pace and the grand standards the group has built as a means of reinventing the lounge jazz sound with modern approaches and mindsets.

From as early as the introductory descending piano sequence, ‘Wearing Red’ conjures up an inviting and seductive smokey cabaret nightclub in which the listener watches as well as listens. Maple Sky paints this vivid imagery by borrowing the romantics of 50s and 60s lounge jazz such as the more upbeat cuts like ‘Happy Talk’ and ‘Little Unhappy Boy’ from Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly’s collaboration from 1962.

The track’s stylistic lyric video (available, here) uses more cozy coffee shop imagery like a steaming cup, a laptop, and sketched illustrations; certainly a more modern take on a jazz setting. Romantic and warmly illustrated imagery in the animated video acts as a perfect display of the track’s dreamy lyrics.

This group has been giving Jeeni’s jazz channel substance and flair since October last year, with their light-hearted and accessible variety of smooth jazz. Their sweet name is a perfect title for their dulcet, honeyed melodies and musicianship and we can’t wait to see what they do next. If you're a jazz artist, consider joining ranks with the likes of Maple Sky and become a part of Jeeni's jazz channel, where we can promote and support you as a blossoming artist.

Check out ‘Wearing Red’ now, on Jeeni: https://jeeni.com/m0xmhvftkita/

How can Jeeni support artists like Maple Sky

JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience.

• We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make.
• We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way.
• We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect.
• Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team.

Check out Maple Sky’s Jeeni showcase here: https://jeeni.com/showcase/maple-sky/

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12
Mar

An Emerging Poetry Renaissance

The last couple of years has seen a rise in artists publishing poetry collections. In 2018, two years after his death, 'The Flame' was published. A collection of the unpublished work of Leonard Cohen, became the 13th book of poetry for the Canadian poet and musician. Was this the point an emerging poetry renaissance took hold, or has it always been there and we were just waiting for the mainstream to catch up? At Jeeni, we welcome it. Leonard Cohen poses for a portrait in April 1972 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns) Over the years we've grown up with the talents of Patti Smith, who celebrated 50 years of performance poetry this year. Smith marked the occasion with a spectacular take over of Piccadilly Circus, London for New Year's Eve 2020. We sympathised with the turmoil in PJ Harvey's tortured lyrics and Tom Waits' social commentry, but there are more varied artists now dipping their inked quills into the genre. Black literature and music are blessed with plenty of talented wordsmiths, including Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Gil Scott Heron, Maya Angelou, Tupac, and Robert Hayden. Plus, the next generation of artists who include, Vanessa Kinsuule, Malika Booker, Raymond Antrobus and the moving performance at President Biden's inauguration of the American National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. Her performance, many claimed was the highlight of the ceremony. Amanda Gorman - American National Youth Poet Laureate There has always been verse and when music was added, the verses became songs. The emerging poetry renaissance seems to be more about an artists collective work being published as a complete and independent body of work. Individually dropping poems onto an EP or a social media post is a starting point for many and Jeeni is pleased the Poetry section of their platform is being used by many to showcase their work. Uploaded personal performances allow them to earn and reach out to an engaged audience and fanbase. The words 'cathartic', 'soul-searching', 'lost love', 'healing', 'political', 'social voice', 'mental turmoil' have been used many times to decipher the minds and thoughts of poets. Throw in a global pandemic, coupled with international lockdowns and the perfect storm is created, enticing many to put pen to paper. Facebook and social media pages have members flocking to groups such as Poetry UK, Just Poetry and Arts Group and Spoken Word Artists. Meanwhile, sites such as the Poetry Foundation offer a platform of varied works, themes and history. The best works of 2020 included, Lana Del Ray with 'Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass', which she also released as spoken word. Halsey released 'I would Leave if I Could', a body of work dealing with love, longing and the nuances of bipolar disorder. Courtenay Marie Andrews - Photo Jordi Vidal/Redferns For 2021, we are looking forward to the release from, Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan - 'Leaving California', a collection of 76 poems following on from his well received grunge memoir of last year and Courtney Marie Andrew's collection entitled 'Old Monarch', to be released in May. The Alt-Country singer has created a collection in three parts and draws on the themes of childhood, family, leaving home, falling in love and becoming an adult. www.jeeni.com

10
Jun

Mel's bedtime story

Once upon a time, I created a platform called jeeni.com which is where independent artists perform their music in front of new fans, and get rewarded for their efforts. On a Saturday night we ran a live global music festival featuring 18 acts from both sides of the Atlantic. The oldest performer was over 70, the youngest was under 10. They were brilliant, each in their own way. We broadcast over social media and websites. There were no adverts, there were no fakes, there was no hype. It didn't cost us a penny to run. Everyone had a ball. We are part of a revolutionary process that is killing a corrupt and rotting music industry which has held both audience and performer to ransom since the 1890s. So if you will indulge me, I'd like to tell you how, and why ... I'm an old hoarder, I hoard old music recordings, and when I say old I mean really old. Upstairs, in what was once a studio but has turned into an Irish Setter leisure lounge, there are several hundred wax cylinders from the 1890s. Each cylinder is a unique recording from an age before duplication was possible. If Miss Florrie Forde wanted to sell a hundred copies of Hold Your Hand Out You Naughty Boy to her adoring public, then she had to keep lubricated and trill the bloody thing into a brass horn a hundred times and record it onto wax in real time. But to me the beauty of these cylinders is not that each one is a unique recording, but that each one is mercifully short, rotating at 120 revolutions a minute and lasting a meagre two minutes, because that's all a wax cylinder can hold. And so the two minute pop single was born. At the start of the twentieth century discs replaced cylinders, but not a lot changed. I have another room full of shellac discs that spin at 78 revolutions a minute. When it came to pop singles from artists bringing joy to the world throughout the first half of the twentieth century, they had just under three minutes to do it in. And if they were any good, just under three minutes was plenty. I feel personally to blame for what happened next, because in the hour of my birth in 1948, the microgroove vinyl disc hit the market, spinning at what my Irish chums call dirty tree and a turd revolutions per minute. I have an entire wall of vinyl albums, with their glorious covers and sleeve notes. And yes, they are arranged in alphabetical order by artist and date-order of release. Their storage capacity is approximately twenty-five minutes a side, which is usually twenty-two minutes too long. And on the opposite wall is where all my CDs sulk, each one capable of storing seventy-four minutes of audio, and not one of them played since the turn of this century. Why? Because a hacker called SoloH went and ripped the source code of something called the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder and spread it all over the internet for free. Thanks to SoloH, I can not only digitise my entire collection of recorded music without any restrictions on playing time, I can access the entire library of everything that has ever been recorded, for ever. My phone weighs exactly the same as my 78rpm copy of Little Richard's single Tutti Frutti, which runs for two minutes 28 seconds of total perfection. My phone holds 21,417 tracks in MP3 format, some of them complete symphonies, which are pretty good, some of them prog-rock drum solos, as used by Viet Cong torturers to break the spirit of the enemy. My desktop hard drive and cloud-accounts contain too many tracks to keep track of. I declare that my motivation for amassing this ludicrous collection of music was that one day it would bring me comfort in my old age, when my body and brain become enfeebled and I feel the need to keep hold of past pleasures while dying. As it turns out, I started playing my collection early, during lockdown, and wished I was dead by the end of day three. The singles were great, but the albums were mostly insufferable. Which is when I realised that the music album is stone dead, and the nightmare of a lifetime of audio padding is finally over. Then the real truth hit me. The recorded music industry is dead too. Thanks to COVID19 there has been an explosion of new creativity. Everyone is now a record producer, anyone can run a broadcast music channel, and that's exactly what everyone and anyone seems to be doing, including me. The spongers and leeches and shysters have been exposed as completely unnecessary, as have most of the agents, publicists and managers. They are no longer able to milk performers in our new world of social distancing, because they have lost their power. It's the remote audience that now has the power, and this audience wants instant gratification, not a load of overhyped, overwrought, overlong, flimflam. Jeeni.com is my final project in a very long career. I'm giving my artists three minutes per track to nail it, because that's what my old hoard tells me is right. And I hope you agree that in order to shine, three minutes is all that anyone should ever need.

01
Aug

4 reasons why the current music-streaming model is not working.

The global pandemic has exposed major problems in streamed music. Musicians couldn't tour or give live performances, so they have become reliant on revenue from their recorded music. Now, a shocking inquiry by the UK Government shows that even successful, critically acclaimed artists cannot live off their streaming revenue. But there is an alternative. Jeeni is a platform that puts control back into the artist's hands. On Jeeni, performers and creatives keep 100% of everything they earn, and thousands of artists are already on board, with an audience outreach that has grown to over two million. In fact Jeeni's growth has been so successful that they have turned to crowdfunding to expand their capacity to meet demand, and raised over £61,000 in a few days. The Government report reveals 4 reasons why the current music streaming model is not working: 1. Even successful artists get pitiful returns from streaming Fair reward is a performer's right to share in the recording revenues of a song by law, regardless of their royalty rates and their outstanding debts. However, streaming means that performers are paid according to the terms of their record deal. Depending on when they started out in their careers, their royalties can fall to as low as 2%. At Jeeni the artists get to keep 100% of everything they make, no limits. 2. Pay disparity between song and record rightsholders The current revenue share from streaming gives the record label the majority of a track's revenue. This comes from a model that applied to physical sales, where labels had overheads such as manufacturing, storing and transporting CDs, cassettes and vinyl. This leaves songwriters and publishers with the smallest share of revenue, even though they are vital to the creative process. Music creators and publishers are furious with this model. It's outdated and unfair because these overheads don't apply to digital music production. 3. Just three major music companies control the majority of the market Digital piracy and new technologies like streaming have disrupted the traditional music industry, and led to a state of play where three major labels now have a 75% share of the UK recording market. They also dominate music publishing, which is the part of the industry that deals with the rights to the words and music of a track. Jeeni's CEO & Founding Director Dr Shena Mitchell says, "Although technology has moved on, the approach is still the same as the bad old days, where streaming platforms act more like A&R agents and only select the music they like, dictating what listeners get to hear. At Jeeni we are very proud that our vision is based on democracy, where we give all artists the opportunity to post their videos and showcase their talent, for us to market them to a global audience". 4. 'Safe harbour' and copyright infringement 'Safe harbour' lets tech companies that host artist's content get away with being criminally and financially liable for copyright infringement. This allows users to consume music for free, and it creates a so-called 'value gap', because revenues for music from ad-funded services are significantly less than those from paid-for services. Here at Jeeni we refuse to take any advertising unless it's by an artist for their own tracks or services, and we make sure our artists retain all copyright and ownership of their own tracks. If you like the sound of what we do, then check out Jeeni's campaign HERE and join the list of supporters and celebrities who are flocking to the cause. You can invest from as little as £10 to claim your share, be part of the Jeeni success, and say NO to creative performers getting ripped off. *Capital At Risk

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