In The Biz

I was sixteen when I first decided I wanted to set up a record label. I didn't know how to start one, how to promote one, or how to run one, and I didn't really know what I would put on it, but I did have a name: Rubber Ring Records. It sounds pretty crap now, and it probably sounded pretty crap then, but it seemed to convey what I wanted to put out, which was music that changed your life.

I didn't really have any friends in bands (or any friends at all), so I scoured all the unsigned music sites I could (MySpace wasn't really on the map at the time) and emailed all the artists I liked the sound of, pretending to be cool and professional and generally appear like I knew what I was doing. And amazingly, some people fell for it. I was almost literally inundated with responses, almost all of them wanting to put something out, or be on a compilation, or something. Quite a few people sent me CDs through the post, and I ended up getting quite a lot of good music for no money simply because I promised something I couldn't deliver.

Anyway, it soon fell through because I decided it was too much like hard work, and I mention it only because that was the last time I recieved a promo of any kind through the mail, until this week. This week I got in the post the new Kotki Dwa single (plus press release), the same as probably every radio station and music mag in the country did. Only I'm not a radio station or music mag, I'm just me. And again I promised something I couldn't deliver: I'm on the mailing list cause of me and Roz's clubnight, but in fact the night in question is no longer a going concern (aside from one...thing which I will type about soon).

So because I'm not really in the strongest position to Make Kotki Dwa Their Surely Deserved Millions, I thought I would do a Single Review. It's fifty words in the style of a young critic's first piece for a middle-brow Sunday supplement reviewing a quirky indie band:

Buckinghamshire 3-piece Kotki Dwa may sound like a foreign proposition, but there's nothing alien about their effervescent debut single "Robin's Clogs", which plays like Alice dreamily abling into a bizarre toytown of casiocore mathrock. A "Honey I Shrunk The Arcade Fire" take on anthemic pop, this miniature gem is worth purchasing for the artwork alone. EJ.

Hope that helps. "Robin's Clogs" by Kotki Dwa hits a couple of record stores on December 10th. (They don't really sound like Arcade Fire.)