THE LEGACY OF 'E'

A dive into the process that produced PolSky's new single

Welcome to this slightly belated publication of my Triweekly. With all the best intentions to publish this to schedule, I have found my attention fully occupied by the latest single release from my band PolSky, ‘PRODUCT E’. It therefore felt appropriate to make it the focus of this newsletter. With the song out on November 1st, I’ve been on a steep learning curve on how to use various socials platforms, how to release NFT’s, navigating weird terms and conditions of A.I. companies and learning to edit video (very basically), and in the process having meltdowns and revelations in roughly equal measures.. of which, Dear reader, I shall reveal further details of later in this edition.

Product E goes waaay back ..it started life back around 2008, along with another track from the first album called Rounds , these two were my first adventures into songwriting. I’d just left a band i’d been in called Bib (that had been like a military grade training program in stagecraft and band shenanigans!-more on this later) the songs had originally been developed for that project…with Bib disbanded, I toyed with the idea of starting my own band as a vehicle for these tracks and other ideas that were beginning to emerge. All this was set to the backdrop of the financial crash and the bailing out of wall street.. which largely served as the inspiration for what was to become POLSKY and it’s most recent iteration PolSky.

The song has really been round the houses, despite the song being one of the first written for PolSky, for reasons that will become clear as we proceed through this edition, Product E did not make it onto the debut L.P. Executive Functions, in fact the Album needed to be completed first to pave the way for the concept of the track to emerge.

Boardroom Blitz

I adopted a faux corporate identity for PolSky essentially in opposition to the rampant corruption and nonsense espoused by our government regarding Austerity, big society and all that bollocks , and set out to release Products not Songs , the band were The Board. and I of course was the C.E.O! The singles from Executive Functions would become Products A-D

Product A - 100 Million Ways to Die - Breathettes (tm)

Product A+ Culture - Breathettes (Self-Rolling Edition)

Product B Halcyon Daze - Anti-Anti Depressants

Product C Song for the Silver Surfer - Retro-Immersive VR headsets

Product D Rounds - Utilitarian Hydration Units

Explained in depth by my C.E.O. avatar on our Linkdin page ! Welcome to PolSky (Corp))

These were also made into real world versions:

I am the experiment

Why the products? Well……I have, over my life been an enthusiastic consumer of the original versions (Marlboro/Rizla/Heineken/Anti-Depressants), those days are over now, but being an ex-smoker/drinker and prone to bouts of anxiety depression they all have a particular historical resonance for me. On another level they are design classics. I decided to hijack these brands as a commentary on the onslaught of advertising we are exposed to from practically the moment we are born, whilst simultaneously pointing to the fact that in this day and age, it’s more like being in a Brand less a BAND! Thirdly, the designs bear a direct link to the subject matter of the songs, and more broadly everything that appears on Executive Functions, where my intention was to deal with the topics of addiction, mental health, social media anxiety and ultimately a system we are born into, that appears to give rise to these phenomena

Ray Davies of The Kinks once said of songwriting something like ‘ The middle 8 of a song is the explainer bit’ in this context PRODUCT_E is the Middle 8 of Executive. Functions …even though it wasn’t actually on it. Conceptually while the other singles were both product and song title, PRODUCT_E is PRODUCT_E both song title and product!! Eureka I cried! This was the META zenith I had been searching for….

What is PRODUCT_E?

Well…are you sitting comfortably ? During the Cameron Tory government, Austerity was imposed on the populous in the UK, and to those with an enquiring mind like myself, it seemed obvious that the public was paying for the fall out from 2008 financial crash. Cue much research about fiat monetary systems, fractional reserve banking and quantitive easing, not very rock n roll I know, but if anyone could pull it off writing a song about this I pondered…it’s gonna be me! the research lead me to a video of Richard Nixon making a public announcement declaring the end of the Bretton Woods system ,

in this he states the intention "To protect the position of the American dollar from speculators” when in reality, by de-coupling the dollar from it’s exchangeability with gold it actually made it literally a GOLDMINE for speculators, to this day it seems to have created a kind of mass gambling economy, people betting on the demise or rise of various hedge funds etc…arguably a key contributor to the the big crash of 2008. So with a slight re-edit of his words to reflect this, it then became the sample you can hear at the top of the track and set’s the scene nicely for the subject matter of the song.

I wanted to frame the lyric very much like in an olde English poem. Despite searching unfortunately I could not find the original poem that was the direct inspiration for the first verse of the track:

‘The people are in the shoppe

And the shoppe is full of people’

The Original poem went something like:

‘The Sheep are in the meadow

The meadow is full of sheep’

I was struck by the evocations of early commerce, and a seeming celebration of abundance. So I wanted to reflect that but with an up to date framing for the times.

Here is a good example of similar a style of poetry The Fair Field Full of Folk,

In the chorus:

‘Can’t you see how we. will always be product e’

I wanted to evoke the idea that ‘E’ in this context represents energy and therefore we are the source of all the product(ivity)

ART-COIN

This is perfectly crystallised in the artwork, I wanted the concept to speak to the current global transition we appear to me making into digital/crypto currency I’ve been interested in the idea that money is taking on an abstract, almost psychedelic quality as it becomes further removed from the source (or labour). Directly hijacking the Bitcoin design, I made a few alterations: around the edge of the coin it now says ‘FAN TO FAN’ instead of the original “PEER TO PEER” and also from ‘BITCOIN’ to ‘ARTCOIN’ this being a comment on the declining royalty returns for musicians from the likes of Spotify etc, which is only set to get WORSE

(Thanks to Jevelyn Labor and Phillipa James @ Almond Marketing for the design work)

Block N Roll..

In a form of derangement, I then thought could I release it as an actual cryptocurrency? My plans were scuppered however, as our bassist Chris Norman works for the Financial Conduct Authority and is prohibited in being part of any crypto enterprises ! seriously you couldn’t make this shit up…

It seemed I had to draw the line, do I stick to my guns about releasing a band cryptocurrency and lose a bassist? Not on my watch!…My compromise was an NFT, of which I have decried an ARTCOIN for our purposes. I did a fair amount of research and settled on Rarible as it had the most appealing interface and although I’m at novice levels, the platform can be utilised as a social media network (exciting for future digi releases for PolSky), turned out to be a relatively straightforward process and hey presto! There are now a limited run of 10 ARTCOINS available to buy on the Ethereum blockchain…happy days…..and we still have a bassist.

Watch the shameless infomercial here:

The only thing left to do was to get some testimonials, I made this video of ‘USERS” reacting to the “PRODUCT”…

When I was generating the “Trial Users” I used an A.I. company called Synthesia. Just as I was getting the hang of using the software, I got the email below from a gentleman named Zack at customer support… I’ve no idea what he thought I was making reference to ;)

Despite my explanation they suspended my account, though thankfully I’d already downloaded the clips seen in the video before it got taken down :), a win for now, but I have nightmares of an A.I. generated bureaucrat/ mafia operative knocking on my door one day demanding recompense.

Can I have more Dystopia with that ?

Musically I wanted the track to be a juxtaposition of modern Electronic/Synthesised sounds and a Gregorian vibe. As chance would have it, I met a chap called Chris Tickner in my local pub in Catford… turns out he was a Gregorian singer in the band GREGORIAN! Serendipity on steroids i’d say.

Not only did he agree to sing on the record, he sold me his Peugeot 406 for 500 quid that ended up being TOUR-estatecar for the band. Thanks Chris. Without doubt, I will be asking them back for the PolSky stadium tour pyrotechnics and all !

At this point, I’d like to acknowledge Christopher Bangs the producer on the record as well as sometime label boss for Disruptive Element, long time best mate and musical collaborator in a forthcoming project Love Amongst the Ruins. He did an amazing job recording the Gregorian singers in a church in Greenwich, then later tracking the awesome band Alex Robertson (Drums), Chris Norman (Bass) and Ben Warn (Keys) at Masterlink studios with James Welch, and sculpting the immense sound of the track with strings, anvil samples and a GONG to give the track an appropriately O.T.T. send off…

And then release….

The initial intention was to create a sound that felt like it was collapsing under it’s own weight. and i’m proud to say… by jove i think we did it! thanks to all who contributed to the song, it’s been an epic journey but totally worth it. For me it underlines the Executive Functions period for PolSky. and judging by the wealth of tracks lined up, the process has left myself and the band in a good place for 2025. We are in the process of recoding album 2, as well as preparing albums 3 and 4, you can hear these being assembled in real-time over on our Patreon, where we will be posting early mixes of songs as well as behind the scenes studio footage and more. Lastly you can catch PolSky live at The Fiery Bird in Woking, Friday 13th December, links here to the Event and Tickets

Stay tuned for more PolSky Propergander in the coming months, next edition will either be an introduction to my alter ego and top PolSky remix maestro Bob Gravalax, or a follow up acoustic track to ‘The Resident’ that features lyrics about my Nissan Micra, and the megalithic structures of Orkney! perhaps I will take votes on it…?

Signing off for now, I will leave you with the Live version of PRODUCT_E, broadcast from The Boardroom ……..see you in three weeks time for the next edition, Goode Bye, K