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Do It Yourself, But Do It Together

DIY is about collaboration, a collective attitude. You and your talented friends coming together to actually make stuff happen.

Posted 22nd September 2009, 2:13pm in Features, by Peter Bloxham
Do It Yourself, But Do It Together DIY doesn't have to mean clawing your own way out of the cesspit of the Monday night pub circuit and into the cleansing light of popular recognition using solely your own guile and determination. It might be admirable, but it sounds horrible and nine times out of ten it probably won’t work.

DIY is about collaboration, a collective attitude. You and your talented friends coming together to actually make stuff happen. It’s setting up your own label to record all the amazing bands you know that don’t have deals, making a makeshift rehearsal space because they turned the old one into a car park, or putting on a better folk night because the one down the road is rubbish and the promoter is a bastard.

The philosophy is co-operation over exploitation, it might sound all warm and fuzzy, but it actually works too. Martyring yourself while you wait for someone to notice your material as a business prospect is for the unimaginative. Use what you have and push forward.

Alex Mattison plays in Thee Single Spy with Euan Hinshlewood (also from YoungHusband and Emmy The Great). The production of their vinyl single was collaborative, "Do It Ourselves Because We Want To" process, enlisting the help of friendly musicians, other bands and artists like Rosie Roberts:

"My friend Jim had been running club nights at the Gardening Club in Covent Garden, and we used to play there a lot." Alex explains.

"It's where a group of bands who are now pretty tight friends got to know each other - Goldheart Assembly, Oldwick, us - and we would just hang out there every Sunday. Jim called me and said they'd like to put out a 7", would we be interested? At the time, the idea that anyone would be willing to put money into our band was like finding milk on the moon, so the very first reaction was to feel flattered. Then question his sanity. But because I know him well and trust him totally, we said yes. The whole insane, time consuming soul-fracturing money sucking and yet ultimately rewarding process began."

"A lot of our friends lent a hand. For the songs themselves we recorded at my house and mixed them there as well. We asked our friends Emma and Nick to play viola and trumpet, and then it was just mixing, mastering and getting the records pressed."

And it's not just about musicians pooling resources to make a demo. Vibrant, inspiring DIY projects that make good use their close relationship with the arts scene are rewarding for everyone involved and make the whole thing look really, really good.

"We decided to continue our tradition of making the record case out of untreated canvas, so I made a few trips to an art wholesalers which sold us massive 25 metre rolls of canvas taller than me, enlisted the help of our friend Celia as a screenprinter, got Rosie involved to create the cover, and then we all set about cutting squares of canvas, screenprinting and stitching."

Musicians and artists that are drawn together through mutual admiration can benefit by inspiring each other to create better work too.

"I met Rosie through Celia." says Alex. "We went to see her final degree show down in Brighton, and I was immediately taken with her work. It was like a little insect that burrowed into my brain, slept there for a while, then exploded. I thought that the image would work well with the type of songs that were on the single, so I asked her to make something. Rosie seemed to understand what we were about and I love the final collaged image."

Rosie feels a similar way, of course.

"I enjoy working with friends on projects, it allows real freedom to create whatever you want. It helps working with people you know I think as they can be truly honest and hopefully end up with a piece you both really like without having to compromise on anything."

A "scene" only becomes a true community when it produces worthwhile and productive relationships between people. Such environments start from a simple, honest place – like-minded people getting together to create. For someone working with a group like DIY Womp, who promote collaborations and platform sharing between artists of all disciplines, it becomes blindingly obvious what artistically successful people feed off. It isn’t the monetized carrot-dangling that so many become fixated on, but the creativity and desire of the people around you. It's the impulse to create something special .

"Almost everything [Thee Single Spy] does is in collaboration with our friends. We rely on them so much to come to our shows, we play in each other's bands and on each other's records." It begs the question - without mutual support from people on the same level, where would most of UK artists be?

DIY is the spark that creates exciting things before the majors and the MySpacers and the bookers for T4 catch on. Anyone looking for success should know that from the moment they start out things are completely in their own hands. Waiting for things to happen is boring and frustrating. DIYers use their networks, scrape together their resources and make successes out of their projects without waiting for approval.

So yeah, Do It Yourself, of course. But for god’s sake don’t try to Do It Alone.

Thee Single Spy Official Site
Rosie Roberts Official Site
DIY Womp Official Site

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