As the artist of our chosen song to make a pop promo for is not well known and hasn't had any previous marketing campaigns or pop promos made, I have been researching artists that make similar music and have had previous marketing campaigns and pop promos. Nicola has been researching Zero 7, and Jessica has been researching Star of the Lid and Four Tet. I have been researching Boards Of Canada, a Scottish electronic music duo.
Genres: Electronic, Downtempo, Ambient, Experimental, Psychedelic, IDM (intelligent dance music)
Years active: 1986 - present
www.boardsofcanada.com
Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. They are signed to Warp Records and have released several works on that label with little advertising and few interviews, while also having an obscure and elusive back-catalogue of releases on their self-run label Music70.
Their music is reminiscent of the artificial, warm and scratchy sounds of 1970s media and prominent themes include nostalgia, childhood and the natural world. They are said to take the documentary films made by the National Film Board of Canada (Canada's public film producer and distributor), from which their group name is derived, as a source of inspiration.
Major releases:
- 1998: Music Has the Right to Children – (Warp/Skam) #193 UK
- 2000: In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country – (Warp/Music70)
- 2002: Geogaddi – (Warp/Music70) #21 UK
- 2005: The Campfire Headphase – (Warp) #41 UK
- 2006: Trans Canada Highway (Warp)
I think that the target audience for Boards of Canada's music will be fairly young people aged 18-30 (although there's nothing to say older people wouldn't like it), either male or female, and the key feature that defines their audience is people's music tastes - whether they have an open mind when it comes to what music they listen to and would enjoy non-mainstream music, and that will enjoy experimental and electronic music.
Music Video
This is the music video for Boards of Canada's song "Dayvan Cowboy", taken from the album "The Campfire Headphase". It was directed by Melissa Olson and has been watched over 820,000 times on YouTube. The video consists of footage from Joe Kittinger's famous parachute jump from 19.5 miles (31.4 km) altitude. Later on in the video, slow-motion footage of big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton is used. It is quite simple, no complicated narrative, just watching an amazing spectacle of someone jumping from plane and the view they had and imagining the adrenaline rush that he must of felt, and I think it works really well with the uplifting feel of this song. It "matches" the album cover and their overall marketing campaign, with a strong nature and artistic theme, and I think the music video has a very broad appeal in terms of who will watch it.
This is the only official music video Boards of Canada has (the rest on Youtube are fanmade). Some artists in this genre of music choose to simply not have pop promos and just have their songs. We hope to show that having a music video can be a great addition to your song, and can really help to create a promotional package that can help to promote the band/artist.
Album Covers
This one is for the album Geogaddi released in 2002. It is of what appears to be silhouettes of people standing with their arms and legs outstretched , amongst some trees, around a star or planet. It is almost as if it is simply a tie-die pattern, and then on closer inspection you realise its actually humans and objects.The red and orange tones give a warm and friendly feel to the cover. It has a symmetrical look to it, and a psychedelic feel. This goes very well with the fact that the music is of the electronic/ambient/psychedelic genre. Personally I think the font size that has been used for the title of the album and the band name is too small, and when we make our own album cover we need to carefully consider the size of the font we use so that it is easy for everyone to read.
This one is for the album The Campfire Headphase released in 2005. It is a photograph of a man, but we cannot see his identity as the image has a green and blue smokey/liquid like overlay. It is almost as if water has been poured onto the photograph, making it damaged but giving a nice affect. I really like this cover and it has given me some good ideas on what I could make my album cover like. As our artist is fairly anonymous, we could have a photo of him (or someone similar as it wouldn't really matter) then overlay it with something such as an effect or colour, to give the impression that our artist is rather mysterious and unknown as you cannot see his identity.
Interesting typography has been used for the words "Boards Of Canada" with all the letter A's being changed, and we could experiment with fonts when making our album cover to give a unique and interesting feel to it and make it stand out from the crowd.
Print Adverts (Posters)
Here is a print advert for the album The Campfire Headphase. It is heavily based on album's cover - the same photo, typeface, look and feel. This increases continuity, strengthens the albums brand identity, and helps the audience to recognise that this advertises the album, so when they go into a record shop looking for it they will know what it looks like. I am going to do similar with my music album promotional package, and make the album cover and magazine advert very similar in style, as it works really well in strengthening the artist's and the albums identity. As the photo of the poster is quite bad quality, I can't see what is written in the smallprint underneath the title, but I presume it is the albums release date, and perhaps a link to their website, which is really crucial to put on a print advert so people know where to find more information on the album or artist.
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