Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for all your love and support this year! It means everything to us! 
🙂
It’s been a very big and busy one for us, we keep thinking it will calm down but with every project, signing, gig and venture comes more responsibility and business to get on with. We can’t complain, we love what we do and that’s why we do it. Thank you all for all again for your support.
Starting this year with signing the talented flamenco folk artist Stacey McMullen Music to our Wire & Wool label was a real treat for all of us. Stacey’s a good friend of ours anyway and although we don’t sign anyone just because we like them, the way we tend to do things due to the intense nature of a release campaign have meant we’ve yet to sign anyone we were not friends with at the time! It’s been great to see his musical career take off and how his confidence, craft and stage presence has grown and his work is now taking him out of the shire which is an important stage for any emerging musician. See how he got his-elf signed this time last Christmas here 
😉
https://www.facebook.com/StaceyMcMullenMusic/videos/878042759031294/
Our love affair with the incredible Hull/Leeds duo CHAMBERS continued to blossom with two follow up singles to last December’s Hostile release; Sister Doom and Down The Rabbit Hole. It’s been great working with a band who share the same drive and passion as we do and Hull’s become a second home for us. If you get the chance, do go up there for the massive inner city festival that is The Humber Street Sesh, we’ve been going for the last two years we’d strongly recommend you to go (or if you’re a band try and play)! We were invited up to speak and host a listening panel at 53 Degrees North, a really professionally ran industry conference held in Hull just before The Humber Sesh starts.
Our INFL catalogue is now clocking up hundreds of plays/syncs a year on TV networks and we had a couple of big syncs for Chambers (Kingdom U.S Kickboxing TV Show) and a No Nothings track ” A Country Song” was placed on the recent Gran Turismo game. It led to a lot of streams on Spotify so we thought we should make a video for people Shazamming it and here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4Sojv6hVc . Very well done Miles Clark for negotiating and securing this sync! It took almost two years to get in the bag and it’s a nice feeling for us all to watch that side of the business that we started almost 5 years ago start to blossom the fruits of our efforts.
Thank you Patrick Cannon for working so hard on the back end of our administration processes which have helped create in-depth readings of where and when our music has been used on TV, breaking down the royalty streams for our artists giving them a valuable insight into what exactly we do and how we help them earn them money through their music. More to come next year on that…
As a company we learn more about the business of music every day and we try and pass that on when we can whether it be through speaking at conferences, lecturing at colleges or just talking to bands about their up and coming releases. We helped Chambers and Josh Bruce apply successfully for their PRS for Music grants this year. The educational aspect of INFL’s an essential part of what we are now and I can see this being a big part of our future. We’ve had some amazing interns this year, thanks to Malikah Hart, Robbie Hamblin, Niall O’Connor, Imogen Reay, Lauren Nicole Insley, Naomi Grace Oakes, Natalie Greener, Kayla Bell, Oliver Cobbin and Joti De Riviola for spending some time with us, learning the ropes and helping us with our work. Thanks also to our team of soundmen, DJ’s, stage managers, promoters, drivers, writers and of course to the artists and bands we work with for being amazing human beings!!
Our regular resident nights are going well, big up to the venues for letting us do our thing, the The Southbank Bar – Nottingham City and Navigation Brewery Nottingham for our Thursday eve Nightfish gigs, Sobar for our Wire & Wool (poetry, spoken word music and comedy night) The Angel Microbrewery for our Fuzzbox and Open Mic Showcase gigs and Rescue Rooms for Bama Lama Sing Song, Next year we’ll have a few more too and well done to our intern Natalie Greener for helping launch and establish our non age restrictive night Hellcats INFL, we hope you can make our next one late January.
Hellcats – LUMER, Anoa & Superfurniture At Bodega
Our charity events went very well this year with our Dedicated I’m Not From London Marafun in May raising £367.71 for the Roy Stone Foundation and the Sutton INFL Marafun raising for the £630 Rachel Lucas Foundation in October (Thank you Martin Beresford for all your work with this) , This year’s The Nottingham Waterfront Festival raised £3,424.55 split 50/50 and go to the NUH Cystic Fibrosis Centre in the Nottingham City Hospital and The Roy Stone Foundation. It was a great day as always running two stages at The Hockley Hustle and it’s a magnificent thing to see the good causes benefiting from Nottingham music with the tradition continuing with the soon to be launch Beat The Streets happening next year on 2018! Get your tickets now!
It was wonderful to be nominated for the national LIVE UK Magazine Music awards and to get in the top 3 for UK Indie promoters with a local impact. I didn’t win but it was very nice to get industry recognition after so long working in it! Miles and I had a great time in London visiting partners and clients, speaking at the conference and partying with others working hard promoting gigs in venues across the country.
We’re gonna miss The Lofthouse, it was such a great place to put gigs on and hang out and ran by the incredible Ian Gardiner and Tricia Gardiner. Thanks for all the good times and hard work xx
The biggest project for us this year was our Arrows of Love , PRODUCT album launch. We’ve worked with Arrows of Love since they played as Hush The Many and for our label it was a big step (not to mention financial risk for us all). Artistically it’s one of our best releases and the campaign included a USA and European tour. It’s hard to put into words the amount of work that goes into an album campaign but for many reasons it involves a lot of love, blood, sweat and tears from the artists and the label. It was released whilst Miles and Louise had their second child, the beautiful Ada (Big congratulations again by the way!!) Thanks to anyone who has bought an Arrows Of Love CD, followed them on Spotify, written or shared an article on the band, worked on their campaign ( 9PR / Girlie Action / Cargo Records UK/ Phonofile / PledgeMusic / Triptik ) or come to a gig. We really appreciate, value and need your support and hope you like the album. The sexy vinyls have now landed and are now in the shops on Jan 12th.
Follow Arrows Of Love on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/53bwcB4WoLiedKkURq4Lpf
Download, buy a CD or vinyl here:
https://imnotfromlondon.greedbag.com/
Anyway, for anyone who’s got to this part of my round up, thank you for reading, thank you for your patience and tenacity and in the words of The Golden Girls, thank you for being a friend! If you’re still making plans for New year’s eve, maybe we’ll see you at Bamalamasingsong – New Year’s Eve 2017 Special at Southbank City! – Get your tickets now – £15 in advance from the Southbank City Bar or online through Gigantic Tickets here:
https://www.gigantic.com/nye-2017-at-southbank-city-bar-sou…
if not then see you at a gig next year, the music never stops people, it just get’s remixed!
That’s all folks, Merry Christmas ya filthy animals!
Lots of love, Will, Pat, Miles and all at I’m Not From London X
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