Matt Rowe of MusicTap recently interviewed Anji Bee for a feature on the newly revamped music site. The piece goes into some depth about Anji’s thoughts on the current state of music while looking into the origins of her Chillcuts Digital label, the creation of her new The Chillcast with Anji Bee: 5 Years of Chillin’ compilation, and how she selects music for her weekly podcast, The Chillcast with Anji Bee.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Quality Time With Anji Bee of Lovespirals and Chillcast
Anji, what prompted you to put together Chillcuts over five years ago?
After a decade of being signed to Projekt Records, Ryan and I wanted to try releasing music independently for a change. The whole reason our debut album, Windblown Kiss, was released on Projekt was simply that Ryan still owed an album on his contract. I figured I had enough experience with online music distribution and promotion to handle a small record label, having done so much of that type of work for ‘Temporal‘ and ‘Windblown Kiss‘. I basically launched Chillcuts to release our second album, ‘Free & Easy.’ Ryan’s experience in building the back-end of websites helped me to create expensive websites on the cheap, while my experience in the visual arts and background in social media and promotions helped to drive sales. Oddly enough, it seems this first release is our most popular, which may speak to how much effort we put into making Chillcuts succeed right out of the gate.
Music has gone through so many changes over the decades. Do you feel that this generation of music provides enough in styles to help those caught in a decade of preference?
First of all, what people need to realize is that there is a whole world of music that is not being played on the radio or TV. I get all the music I can handle and then some strictly from the Internet. And the variety of music available on the Internet is more vast that you can even imagine. It’s truly staggering how much great music is out there when you start searching for it.
What do you look for in a band that sends music across your desk? What do you listen for?
The music needs to strike certain chords for me; I want to feel it in my gut. It could be a tear jerking lyric/vocal, or it could be a booty-shaking bassline/groove. It could be a gorgeous melody played on keyboard or guitar, or an amazing vocal harmony. It could simply be a really sweet string pad or a sitar hook — who knows? But I think there’s generally an element of authenticity in expression that I’m seeking. That’s what is wholly missing in the pop music industry. I want to feel what the artist was feeling when they were creating the song. I need to be drawn into that little world and feel immersed in it. Hearing a really sincere song is a bit like falling in love for me. Obviously not every song on the show can have that strong of an impact on me, but the more of them I can find and string together for a set, the better the show is.
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