Indie artists get together on promotional album

Buy Indie Music .com Compilation Vol. 1

Black Dog Promotions

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Buy Indie Music .com Compilation Vol. 1

Black Dog Promotions

Buy Indie Music’s Web site is a great promotional tool for independent artists. It’s specifically built so that independent artists pay a small fee while the Web site sells their CDs and the promotion team submits their Web site to thousands of search engines, manages and creates mailing lists, and does other online promotions so that independent artists can start building up exposure to their music.

They also encourage their artists to submit their music to be on the Buy Indie Music Compilation series. They make this CD as a promotional tool and send it to record labels and independent media all over the country.

This CD has a little bit of everything to suit your musical tastes, from hip-hop/R’B to pop/emo. All in all, there are admirable efforts on this first volume, but nothing on it seems capable enough to get on any record label, whether it’s a major or an indie.

With its touch of hip-hop and R’B, Buy Indie Music.com Compilation Vol. 1 starts out with Timothy Dark, a religious rap artist. He uses beats similar to those used by Run DMC to relay his positive messages. It would have been a mediocre effort, but the soulful background vocals seem to clash with his angry and powerful vocals.

The album then goes on to “Wrap Me Up in Your Love,” another rip-off of ’80s style, by Emmet North Jr. It’s a cheesy ’80s attempt at hip-hop music in the style of Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines,” but with a lot less talent. “Players Anthem” by Heat may be the only rap/R’B song on the album that would be looked at by record execs because it is about the one subject that seems to be the inspiration of hip-hop today — “Getting Booty.”

This album covers all subgenres of rock — Southern rock, progressive and emo. The Southern rock band The Shade is a conscious effort; they sound like a combination of the music of The Eagles and the vocals of Tom Petty. They sound like the band that always does live covers of country music at your local block party. Weak attempts at hard rock by bands like Informer, Shadow Point and Purge d.i. make you feel sorry for the bands because they try so hard to bring back badass ’80s rock, but you know they will be opening up for Whitesnake at a small club in Boston.

There isn’t a lot of substantial talent in the 14 different bands and artists on this CD. Instead of creating new, fresh music, they are all trying hard to be something that was either popular 20 years ago or copying styles off of major artists today. But it’s an admirable effort by Buy Indie Music to get otherwise unheard artists a chance to be heard. Next time, let’s hope they get more selective in the process.