Adrian Belew’s Kickstarter campaign to partially fund an innovative new app called FLUX ends at 5:30 p.m. Eastern today (November 9, 2014), even as tour dates continue around North America with his Power Trio.
Belew plays tonight in Seattle, with concerts into December. FLUX will be formally released after a launch party later this month in between these Power Trio shows. As of late on November 8, FLUX had 338 backers who had raised some $31,375 dollars toward funding the app.
We caught up with Belew to discuss how FLUX will impact his recording career, and a very special reward being offered to fans through the Kickstarter campaign, in this exclusive Something Else! Sitdown …
NICK DERISO: With the release of this new app, can we infer that you’ve finally gotten bored, some 20 solo albums in, with the process of recording in the same old way?
ADRIAN BELEW: I’m never bored with the process of recording. I am bored with the box that you’re in as a recording artist — the format for songwriting, in particular. It’s something that’s been the same for 60 years now. It was, at first, dictated by things like radio programming, where they said, “OK, we need a three, three-and-a-half minute song.” If you look at a song like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” it doesn’t have a three verses and two choruses. It starts, it goes through what it has to say, and it has an ending. It’s a great song, but there are many of them that are like from that era. Then, somehow along the way, we became enamored with this format. I just think it doesn’t fit with the way that people absorb music, and the way that people share things and learn things today. It’s interesting, there’s a radio station now that only plays half the songs. They play the first half, and then they go to the next one. That’s an indicator to me that I’m not the only one with a short attention span. [Laughs.]
NICK DERISO: Even in the album era, you were limited by the shape and size of the vinyl. You could only put so much sound on it, and you could only put so much content on it.
ADRIAN BELEW: There’s a lot of limitations that I think can now be lifted from the creative process of making music, and presenting your new music. It’s not only limitations such time length, and how much information and all of those things, but also what the content can and can not be. There are advantages that we didn’t have before. As a music app, for instance, you can include far more information than you could in any other package. FLUX is going to have all kind of stories, and we’re going to continue putting in videos of me in the studio creating the music. Naturally, it will have lyrics — which is something you do get with records, or did — but also details on how we recorded it, the gear that we used. It will be highly informational, plus highly visual. Those are advantages that you have in the app world. The only limitation is how much information do you want to put in before it becomes too big of a download.
NICK DERISO: One of the more intriguing pledge rewards is a 20-song compilation disc of songs that you are personally curating.
ADRIAN BELEW: It’s a cool package, because I went back and said: “Someone who had never heard any of my music, what songs would I want them to hear? What are my favorite songs? What songs still resonate with me, and what would I be proud of?” Well, I’ve got a lot of songs, you know — 200, and when you start mixing in all of the songs for FLUX, it’s going to grow exponentially. So, I narrowed it down, and I felt these 20 songs — kind of from the middle of my songwriting career, thus far — would represent some of my favorite songs. It’s a very uplifting kind of record, actually, because it’s got songs like ‘Big Blue Sun,’ and things like that never made it to radio. They were never right for that, but I think they are still songs that people, once they get them in their head, they like to sing them and remember them. You know, there’s such a volume of work that I have now, if someone new comes to it, they might be pretty overwhelmed. So, rather than have them have to find 20 solo records, I did the work for them. We also have a smaller version of this same CD available on our tour, with a lot fewer songs than the one you can get a limited-edition through the Kickstarter campaign.
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