Sliver Man On the debut album & ‘Analog X’
Incorporating 30-year-old, never-before-seen cine film footage recovered from his childhood, Outpost Media founder David Silverman has created a nostalgic visual accompaniment that perfectly complements his intricate track ‘Analog X’.
3 BAR FIRE are proud to present the evocative video to ‘Analog X’, the first single to be taken from the long awaited debut album from Silver Man. Just about time then, for one of WithGuitars more prolific writers, Tom Claydon, who takes it from here.
Hi Silver Man, thanks for taking the time out for this interview! Please could you give our readers a brief introduction?
Yep, I am a Super Hero time traveller from another planet. My special powers are animal mimicry and clairvoyance.
You took time out from production to set up the Outpost Media PR company, why was now the right time to release the album?
“Yes I did – about a 9 year break. I have thought about this and I really don’t know. Maybe it was a lack of confidence at the time I was writing it, and now I wanted to finish something that I never completed. Like people who go to University and drop out, only to wish they had completed their course. I know a lot of musicians who never complete their tunes and never put anything out. They do it for the enjoyment of doing it, the process – finishing is actually the hardest bit to do. I had released a couple of singles over the years, and of course had something out on Tru Thoughts in 2003, but it was last year, 2013, that I felt I had to revisit it. A friend heard the tunes and encouraged me to do it. Not that no one had heard or encouraged me before, but I suppose the causes and conditions came together to push me to do it. Outpost was well established and ticking over, I didn’t have any other pressing business interests, so I kind of wanted to get into creating something again, and looking back at my tunes I realised I had 20 complete tracks, and I whittled this down to 10 for the album. 2 or 3 of these tracks were damaged and I needed to have them repaired by a mastering engineer, Alex Balzama, because I had sold all my equipment a few years ago – I only had the finished masters so I couldn’t do individual track edits. Once Alex had done this, i realised I had 10 tracks that I was happy with and the album was complete. In hindsight, I was so close to finishing it 9 years ago but the PR company took off and I just sacked the whole producing thing off literally overnight. The temptation to quit is at its greatest right before you are about to succeed, and that’s what happened with the album. So I am very glad to have finally completed it.”
Watch and enjoy the ‘Analog X’ video
Have you embarked on any other musical ventures in the past? DJing, bands perhaps?
“Yes I have played the guitar since I was 8, and I have been in bands from the age of 20. I DJ’d for a number of years – that helped me earn some extra cash when I was starting out in Music PR, and meant I could start promoting my own nights properly, which I did in various venues throughout London from 2001 – 2005.”
Having worked with such an interesting range of artists, would you say any of them had influenced your sound?
“It was artists like Kruder and Dorfmeister, who i have worked with who were big influences, the K+D sessions album is a classic for me. Bands like Massive Attack and Portishead most definitely. And then more recent artists like Bonobo, though I never worked with him directly. And of course all the Tru Thoughts artists like Quantic, TM Juke and icons like DJ Shadow.”
Who are you listening to at the moment? Who’s on your iPod?
“I am listening to loads of bands all the time for our publishing and distribution arms so the list is long and a lot of it is unsigned. There’s a difference between what i listen to for pleasure and what I am listening to for work purposes. I have to like it to work with it, but I also have to see how it can work in a commercial context. It has to be something that really touches me for me to love it and i am loving this band called Jungle at the moment – 2 tracks i heard called Platoon and The Heat which are just amazing.
I am finding new ways to discover what happens in the world. Mel Ruben now runs our PR company and i have stopped reading the news for the time being. Being a PR for 15 years i devoured the news voraciously and I wanted a break. Now i find out about news from other people or from Facebook. I don’t watch the news on TV and I don’t read any newspapers.”
Do you have any plans for any more releases or future musical projects?
“In a word, no. I might do another single, i enjoy the creativity of doing a video and having that so i might do another one of those.”
Any final words?
“I now run Outpost Group, www.outpostgroup.co.uk, which incorporates our PR, publishing and distribution companies. I am using my experiences as an artist and from working within the music industry for nearly 15 years to develop artists from all genres and levels worldwide.”