Meanwhile, Bandcamp has become the rarest of Silicon Valley stories: a slow-burn success. ‘Artists have to come first’ … Ethan Diamond, founder of Bandcamp. Spotify has rarely turned a net profit, but it has 130 million paid subscribers and managed to scrape together $100m for a recent deal to host podcaster Joe Rogan exclusively.
Who would want dusty vinyl or external hard drives if they could have all the music they wanted on their phone or laptop for a low subscription price? The result of this shift, as musicians from Taylor Swift to Thom Yorke to Joanna Newsom have complained, has been paltry payouts for artists and a consolidation of power among tech companies.
Streaming services – including YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal – signalled that the era of ownership was over. In the decade afterwards, the music industry remade itself in Spotify’s image. Spotify would be “better than piracy”, thought its 23-year-old creator, Daniel Ek. Five thousand miles away from Oakland, California, another startup millionaire was launching his own music service in Stockholm, one that would give listeners access to everything ever recorded. Bandcamp would take care of the fiddly stuff – transcoding music into different formats, payments, analytics – and take a 15% cut of every sale. After four years of work, the band released their self-recorded debut album, A Long Lost Silence in July 2018.W hen Ethan Diamond founded Bandcamp in 2008, he imagined it an alternative to MySpace: an easy-to-use website where bands could interact with fans and sell music. In 2013 Jan Lüftner (drums) and Markus Dold (guitar) completed the line-up. THERE’S A LIGHT was founded in 2011 as a studio project by David Christmann (guitars) and Jonas Obermüller (keys), with Andreas Richau (vocals/bass) joining for their first EP, Khartoum, in 2012. Album closer “Even In The Darkest Place.” weaves heavy tunes with a vibrant melody into a harmonious work, leaving an outstanding atmosphere and synergy of hypnotizing post rock experience in the style of God Is An Astronaut, Russian Circles or Sigur Ros. Otherworldly “Dark Clouds Behind, Bright Skies Ahead” and “Appearance Of Earth” create another new facet of THERE’S A LIGHT’s universe, both accented by impassioned cello performances by guest musician Akito Goto. Far-reaching “Like The Earth Orbits Sun” is the record’s first song that features the captivating vocals of Andreas Richau, in addition to vigorous “Elpis” and lucid “Be Brave, Fragile Heart”.
The album opener, shimmering “.The Storm Will Set The Sails”, immediately casts a spell with its daydreamy, dazzling melody and great arrangements, while following “Within The Tides” captures a more dramatic, progressive touch with impressive technical and rhythmical trademarks. But on the other hand, it can be destructive when holding on to something, which can never, or hardly ever, come true. Everything physical seems to fade away as their hauntingly beautiful sounds fill the void with all-consuming atmosphere, while conceptually taking a deeper look into what hope really means and its different facets: On the one hand, hope can be something good – a thriving force that continually pushes to reach a higher energy and better mindset. Rooted in the post rock scene, their music combines powerful and resolute guitar lines and audacious melodies with elements from the ambient genre, occasionally adding emotional vocals to some of the album’s eleven flawless songs. With their symbiosis of post rock and ambient music, THERE’S A LIGHT creates a layer of sonic soundscapes on their sophomore offering, leading to an inimitable state of mind that comes close to an out-of-body experience. After recently signing a worldwide record deal with Napalm Records, German post rock/experimental youngbloods THERE’S A LIGHT now unveil their second album, f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶I ̶h̶o̶pe̶? for what must we hope? on December 10, 2021.
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