They’re Back… Antibalas Treats Us to Their First Album in 5 Years

Formed in a Brooklyn warehouse in 1998, this band was born to a very proud Martin Perna. It took its first baby steps on May 26 that year at St. Nicks Pub in Harlem at a poetry night organized by renowned visual artist Xaviera Simmons. Since then, it has been credited with introducing Afrobeat to a wider global audience, influencing countless musicians and developing a live show that is the stuff of legend.

Did you guess? We’re talking about Antibalas, the 12-piece ensemble that has just reunited with Gabriel Roth, former member and producer of the band as well as co-founder of Daptone Records! The collective has announced it is all set to release its first album in five years on August 7 through the very same Daptone Records.

Inspired by economic meltdowns and global uprisings, Antibalas piled into two rooms at Daptone’s House of Soul Studios in Bushwick, Brooklyn to cut an explosive new set of afrobeat classics. Lead singer Amayo — a native of Lagos, Nigeria and senior Kung Fu master — guides the band through cathartic workouts of call and response, dynamic instrumentals and eruptive solos.

Get a taste of the album right now by listening to the self-titled album’s track “Sare Kon Kon” on Rolling Stone. You wont stop grooving, that’s for sure!

While they were “gone,” the band wasn’t exactly lazying around on an abandoned beach somewhere… Several members contributed to the Broadway hit FELA!, as part of the crew that penned foot-tapping music for the show as well as performers in the house band. Some band members have also recently collaborated with Iron & Wine, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Mark Ronson, TV on the Radio and The Roots.

Now what we’re all wishing for is a tour! Don’t worry, you need not rub the lamp and wait for a genie to emerge to grant you this wish. Antibalas is confirmed to play Outside Lands in San Francisco on August 10th and they’re announcing an international tour shortly!

Take a Tour of The Orchard Lab… Shaping the Future of Young Music Professionals @ London Met

Last week, The Orchard proudly hosted the final grand plenary of The Orchard Lab @ London Met, a unique partnership between education and the music industry, which aims to boost the employability benefits of the future generation of music industry professionals.

As part of this groundbreaking initiative, 3rd year Music and Media degree students at The London Metropolitan University were divided into groups of 4 or 5 and assigned an online marketing and promotional Orchard campaign to plan and execute over a 12 week period. The groups were given defined objectives and given access to a pallet of tools within The Orchard’s Marketplace, an ecosystem of apps for industry professionals to assist their campaigns. Students interfaced with The Orchard, management companies, record companies and in some cases the artists themselves.

This unique hands-on industry experience was further enriched by a series of guest lectures given by some of the industry’s top players, in a bid to aid the student’s marketing efforts, these included the likes of SoundCloud, Spotify, Webdoc, Polydor Records and a host of others.

The program culminated in a final presentation of the three most outstanding campaigns. Three finalist groups were given the opportunity to showcase their work to a panel of music industry experts, many of whom had been guest speakers at The Orchard Lab workshops that ran throughout the semester. Given The Orchard’s deep involvement in guiding and monitoring the students’ work closely throughout the module, it came as no surprise that the quality of work demonstrated by the finalists was nothing short of impressive. It was perfectly evident that the students had an innate ability to work in a digital environment and were successful in identifying the strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement of their respective artist’s online activities.

Two groups in particular, those working on artists Mike Viola and Rachel Sermanni, were successful in gluing together some of the disjointed elements of the artists’ social media presences partially by integrating apps such as FanRx, Songpier, Thinglink and Bandsintown with the artist’s social media platforms. Likewise, the group working on singer songwriter Judith Owen were exceptionally good at grasping who the artist was and what would appeal to her fanbase; in this case it was a content driven campaign, completely free of gimmicks that might have failed to capture the attention of her more mature audience.

Needless to say that the judging panel of a dozen industry specialists, from D2C expert Owain Kelly (Fanfare Media), to digital savvy artist manager Erik Nielson, who works with the likes of Elton John and James Blunt; openly commented on the high quality of work presented by the students. Further praise came from the usual suspects at The Orchard: Colleen Theis (Managing Director, UK & EU), Chris Tams (International Marketing Director) and founder of The Orchard Lab himself, Scott Cohen, who told the audience that the level of work presented was “virtually indistinguishable from the types of campaigns run by music industry professionals.” Record of The Day, Music Ally, MusicMetric, SoundCloud, Spotify and Webdoc representatives sitting on the panel also agreed that the standard was exceptional.

The program is an eye-opener for all those involved, so much so that one wonders why collaborations such as The Orchard Lab @ London Met aren’t common practice within the music industry, when numerous disciplines such as Science for instance have been partnering with related industries for decades. The Orchard recognises the benefits of narrowing the gap between academia and industry. Not only can it aid research, discovery and experimentation in a business that is no longer formulaic, such collaborations can also help companies identify their future workforce. Yes, there were areas of weakness and naturally some students showed greater promise than others but overall one cannot deny that it is the duty of the present generation of industry leaders to nurture the talents of the next generation of entrepreneurs that will breathe new life into this rapidly evolving industry.

Welcome, Matt!

Introducing Matt Valerio, Technical Account Manager

I joined The Orchard family when the IODA merger happened, and I oversee deliveries to stores. I grew up in New Hampshire and spent pretty much my entire 20′s living in the Bay Area recording and touring as part of the Anticon label. I started working at the SF IODA office in 2007 and relocated to the IODA NY office at the end of 2010, where Erol [another fellow IODA-ian turned Orchard-ite] and I used to sing Journey songs to each other to help the days go by faster.

I love weird movies, outsider art and 80′s synth (among many other things). I also run an MP3 blog… who doesn’t these days? and just started an hour-long podcast, although I’m shy on the mic. Check it out here if you’re so inclined….

I’m happy to be on board. Everyone seems pretty awesome.

*Also, a little known fact…. Shepard Fairey was standing next to me when this picture was taken.

15 Ways Technology Has Impacted Our Business… For Better or Worse

A lot has changed since The Orchard opened its doors 15 years ago. Whether it’s the way music is delivered and played, or how it’s marketed and shared, there’s no tip-toeing around it: without technology, we wouldn’t have created the opportunities to develop the way we have.

Here are 15 technological advances that have marked us, in good ways and bad (though we like to think we took the bad and turned it into something positive!):

1. Computers
2. Internet
3. Evolving Formats of Music and Music Players (from vinyl and MP3s to Walkman and MP3 players)
4. P2P/Torrents
5. Streaming
6. Cloud/CDNs (Content Delivery Networks)/FTP
7. Prosumer technology
8. UGC
9. Watermarking/Fingerprinting technology
10. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)
11. API technology
12. Social networks
13. Smartphones/Mobile/Apps
14. Mobile payments/Micro-transactions
15. Pin Codes/QR Codes/USB Drives

And in more detail…

… Continue Reading

The Orchard: Killing It At NARM Once Again…

The 2012 NARM Convention was a huge success this year for The Orchard in terms of business closed, deals announced and goodwill spread — and the Physical Team was no exception.

In addition to meeting with top accounts, from Amazon, Transworld, AEC, Hastings and Super D to the all-important indie stores and their coalitions (including Spencer Hickman, the manager of the soon-to-be open Rough Trade Megastore in Brooklyn), the team found time to “socialize” with these same accounts as well as some of our label personalities like Michael Nobrega from Volcom and Curtis Casella from Taang! Records.

On Wednesday night, the Physical Team attended the Dodgers/Giants baseball game (where for some reason they still rooted for the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies anyway), then we headed back to the Hyatt Regency lobby to find more old friends like Liz, Andrea and Reg from CIMS and Luann Myers from AIMS. Our favorite car music at NARM this year? A tie between the new albums by The Shrine and Kadavar (two great driving albums on Tee Pee!).

Another exciting win for the team last week: The Orchard announced the acquisition of Iris Distribution!

Check out the pics of what went down at our high-level meetings with NARM veterans such as Mark Hudson from Transworld, Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton, and Larry Mansdorf and Carl Mello from Newbury Comics. There was some steak-eating, refereeing, bullying and cheering… You’ll wish you were there.