The anatomy of a LorD and Master EP release
I’ve got some things coming out soon.  I’m not going to lie, I’ve been sitting on them for a while.  To be perfectly honest with you (and why wouldn’t I be?) I’ve had my feet up for months doing nothing while I wait for you to get over the very fact that I gave you three albums in as many months towards the end of last year. Â
OK, that’s not true.  I’ve been very busy with one thing and another, but with the new album, Witness, coming out in May, preceded by two singles off the album, combined with the fact I can’t sleep means I’m going to waffle on for a bit about what makes up an EP release.
You keep using EP and single interchangeably, is that allowed?
As well you might ask, imaginary bold-type person.  In the land of music (can you imagine such a place?) a single used to be a 7-inch vinyl disc with your main song on side A and a bonus track on side B.  Same goes for cassette tapes.  If you’re not sure what a vinyl disc or a cassette tape is, bear with me, the history lesson is brief. Â
I’m not sure what a vinyl disc or a cassette tape is.
That’s OK.  For the purposes of this blog article, I’m already done with them.
You kinda made a big deal out of them, really. Â I thought I was going to learn a bit more about them.
No, that’s it.  I’d have glazed over them, had you not interrupted.
So it’s my fault, is it?
You’re not going to be like this all the way through, are you?
You don’t love me any more.
No.  I don’t.  I shall repurpose your bold-face type for formatting later.  Goodbye.
Where was I? Â Vinyl discs and cassette tapes. Â Then came CDs. Â You can fit a lot more on a CD, and a CD with 74 minutes of music costs the same to manufacture as a CD with 10 minutes of music on it. Â So, this allowed for singles to not be singles any more. Â They kind of became something in between an album and a single. Â EPs had existed prior to CDs, but were, to my mind, at least, fairly non-standard; exciting collectibles to be found by the ardent fan, rather than the casual listener.
Anyway, anyway, anyway, CDs made the whole A-side/B-side thing a bit redundant, but you’ll often find the “I’ve never heard of this” bonus track as track two.  And most still refer to it as the B-side.  If you’ve never really explored your favourite band’s singles beyond track one and that remix you shook your tits off to in that club that one night when you lost your phone and snogged that bloke, then B-sides can be beautifully delicious undiscovered bounty.
I had a few vinyl records when I was younger (and inherited a rather special vertical, front-loading, automatic-mechanical-doored record player in my teens, which wowed me every time) but CDs were de rigueur when I actually started making purchases myself.  And loving electronic music as I did, the remix was omnipresent, about which more, later.
EPs, then, are what I release.  But I call them singles because I’m usually talking about one digital package of artwork, A-side, B-side and remixes.
So here it is, then. Â The anatomy of a LorD and Master single:
Artwork’s a funny bugger.  For an album, you want to have a strong image that you can pick ideas from to make a theme for the singles.  I don’t have a logo, so there’s no way of incorporating that into anything, so it’s generally just an image of some description.  Check out my Wiki page for all my artworks, mostly done by me with my designery hat on (it doesn’t fit particularly well, that hat) and some, like the one above, done by Dr Peter Nugent, who’s a dab hand with a quill and parchment, I tell you.
Artwork should, obviously, say something.  Since each song has its own meanings and messages, there’s not a lot one can broadly say about artwork, except that I like them to be engaging and, hopefully, beautiful in some way.  They usually have the title of the song and artist on them, but iTunes rules state that they don’t have to have these things, but if you are to have text on the cover, it should be nothing other than the artist name and the title of the release.  I’m sure you’ll find releases that fall foul of this rule, but hey, I’m only saying what I’ve been told!
Or single.  The A-side is a song off the album, sometimes edited down to around three-and-a-half minutes, sometimes left as-is, deemed to be really, jolly smashing.  One of the best off the album.  Bravo, A-side!  A winner is you!  Please do note, though, that sometimes, people pick the wrong singles.  It happens, doesn’t it?  You listen to the album and wonder why oh why wasn’t album track seven a single?!  It’s criminal!  I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this.  Do write in.
Or bonus track.  Now, there are a few possible reasons your B-side is a B-side. One is that it complements the A-side.  Look at Pet Shop Boys In the night, the B-side to Opportunities (let’s make lots of money).  Perfectly matched.  Another reason might be that your B-side song didn’t gel well with the rest of the album once you’d finished the running order, or that it was finished a little while after the album had been finalised and couldn’t be crowbarred in without jeopardising the artistic integrity of the project.  And finally, the B-side might be a B-side because, and I’m sorry to say this, B-side, but you’re just not as good as the rest of the material on the album.  That’s not often the case.  Is it?  Or is it?  OK, I hold my hands up, I’ve put crap songs as B-sides because I didn’t want to trash them.  But you know what?  You rediscover them when they play on your phone when you’re walking in a park and you think, “actually, yeah... this is still a B-side.”  I learned my lesson.  I’m stricter now and I’ve grown.  No more will I be scared of putting something away, never for it to be seen again.  It’s fine.  I’m over it.
So, remixes are great.  If you don’t know what a remix actually is, here’s the bare bones of it: all songs are made up of bits.  Like LEGO blocks, all stacked upon one another to make the song.  The vocals, the backing vocals, the bass, strings, guitars, drums, synths, piano, everything.  The joy of electronic music is that you can separate these blocks out, send them to people and they can make something entirely new out of your blocks.  They might only use a few of your blocks - just the vocals, say - and make the rest of whatever-it-is out of their own blocks that they’ve made themselves.  That’s the remix. Â
There’s something really joyous about remixes, I think.  To me, when you hand over the bits of your song (known as the stems) to someone else for them to be remixed, it’s like putting a cake in the oven.  There’s so much anticipation and, knowing my cooking abilities, you’re never quite sure what’s going to come out of it.  Remixers can change everything about a song, from the technical side of things like the tempo and chord sequence, the structure and even the time signature, to the visceral; remixers can change how a song feels and what it means.  And just as I love having my own work remixed, I love remixing, too.  Which is why you’ll often find two LorD and Master mixes hanging around an EP release.  Usually, I’ll do an extended mix that uses much the same stems as the original single (I did forget to mention that remixes are almost always of the A-side) and a completely new remix using, say, just the vocals.  It’s really good fun because it’s a slightly different way of making music: no writing involved.  Just music.
I’ve wittered on for long enough, so I’ll just say thank you for reading my insomniac blog post and that Persistent fantasy will be out on 9 April 2016!  Hurrah!
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