British band Belle & Sebastian are turning to their fans to crowdsource their thoughts and feelings about self-isolation and life under lockdown. ‘Protecting The Hive’ is a two-part project where fans will be asked to submit lyrics and song themes and the band will then turn them into music.
The first fruits of this is a five-minute visual piece (full of images of a deserted Glasgow, the band’s home town) narrated by lead singer Stuart Murdoch and friend of the band Alessandra Lupo. Part two will see the band release demos of songs this Friday (24 April) based on the same written contributions from fans, with those same fans being invited to play around with and record their own versions.
“Ok, I’ve got an idea,” posted Murdoch. “I come up with lots of tunes but the band aren’t around just now, and I rely on them to turn them into pop. How about we make a tune together using remote technology? Send me a few sentences or a paragraph, I’ll try to funnel those words into a song, then I’ll record an acoustic version of it and bounce it back to you. Then it’s up to you to do what you want to do with it! You have GarageBand, Zoom, whatever. A collaboration. Someone might be good with tech. Someone might want to sing it. Can you put a rhythm to it? Someone add some organ, some flute! At this point it’s out of my hands.” This is a band that has always understood the power of their fans and the importance of the world they all inhabit. This is a fitting way to get them all involved in a project at a time when feeling a part of something has never been more important.
Image by Amy Hope Dermont (CC BY 2.0)
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