NZMM Interview: Burn My Shadow & ‘Burn My Records’ label
Have a read of our interview with Pōneke band, Burn My Shadow, who also run the ‘Burn My Records' label.
Burn My Shadow
About the Band:
Who are you? Tell us a bit about your music:
Jayde and Broghan met in 2013 because Broghan auditioned for a band that Jayde was putting together, and this kicked off a long friendship and business relationship that has survived a lot of different projects and ventures over the years. Tod, our guitarist, met Broghan when she auditioned to be a part of Tod’s cover’s band in 2017, and he later came on board to play in Burn My Shadow and write music with us. We’re a group with some pretty eclectic influences - Broghan is a jazz vocalist and composer who went to music school, Tod is a well respected working musician and has been active in the Wellington scene for many years, also playing in his own original bands. Jayde Marter is director of the audio department at PikPok, and a producer and former successful DJ. We blend our diverse backgrounds into a contemporary but also nostalgic synth and rock fusion with high quality production that takes from a lot of different musical influences and genres. Sometimes it's more pop rock, sometimes it's dark synthwave, sometimes it borders on nu metal. We just write what we really like listening to at the time, and what feels good to make.
What have you been working on lately? Any new tracks or albums on the way?
At the moment, Burn My Shadow has been working on releasing a series of singles over the course of the new year, which we are super excited to get out into the wild. There’s about 4 more in the pipes for this year, all very synthy! So if you’re interested in electronic music and synth rock that’s a bit dancey, we have plenty to come for you this year.
Where is the best place people can follow you & find your music?
We’ve released music on a heap of different platforms, so it’s dealers choice, really! We have a Burn My Shadow YouTube channel, as well as Spotify, Facebook and Instagram accounts which are great places to go and engage with our music if you’re keen to find out more.
What were the 3 most influential albums to you growing up?
Tod is a huge Queen fan, so I would say any Queen album would almost certainly be his thing. Jayde is a big electronic music fan and former DJ who loves The Prodigy. Broghan is a massive weirdo who loves, specifically, the soundtrack of the film A Clockwork Orange and played this CD in her car for about 10 years.
Deep-Fried & Disenfranchised Single
Which other Wellington musician (s) would you most like to work with?
Wellington has so much musical talent that this question is nearly impossible to answer, but we have absolutely loved working with the musicians affiliated with Lovelands (which has recently closed down). So many great bands have come out of Lovelands and we look forward to keeping in touch with that community of original musicians moving forward.
What’s your favourite Wellington venue to play in?
This is a tough question, to choose just one. There are a heap of great venues to see alternative music in - but we have several favourites. Obviously, Valhalla rates highly as a Wellington institution. More recently we have also enjoyed playing at Lovelands (which is sadly no more but would otherwise be a tie for favourite) and we enjoy playing in the fabulous Underworld Tavern on Pirie Street.
In your songwriting or composing (or the band’s songwriting) how do the compositions and songs take shape?
Generally Broghan and Jayde will put together the base of the track - Jayde programming in drums and creating some basslines, and Broghan coming in to fill out progressions, harmony, transitions and vocal textures. After we have recorded the bones of a demo and produced it a little bit, Tod comes in and writes guitar parts over the structure with us. Once Tod is done, Broghan and Jayde go back over and fill in any missing flavour textures, fills, and bits and pieces until the track feels polished - then we prepare for release.
Where/when is your next gig?
We just played Amplify: Pōneke - a celebration of female-fronted altertainment! It was a festival of 4 bands, accompanied by The Garden Pole, belly dancing, and tattoos, at Underworld Tavern on May 24th. Headlining the show were SKRAM, an absolute institution in the rock scene here, as well as the fierce Cherry Punch, and incredibly talented newcomers LadyReign. And of course, Burn My Shadow. Check our socials for upcoming gigs!
Girls Like You Single
About the Label:
Who are you? Where are you located?
We’re Burn My Records! A Wellington based alternative music label that serves the recording, production and release needs of the Wellington alternative music community! We love our original alt music community in this city and think it is truly something special.
Tell us a bit about your label. How did you start it? What do you release?
We started a music label because over the last 10 years we have been creating, producing, recording and releasing music we have met a lot of obstacles. We want to be able to streamline the parts of the process that we found frustrating for other artists and help them to reach an audience. So many musicians spend their lives learning and mastering instruments and then it comes to release day and they have to spend all their focus and energy on maximizing the impact of their art. We are here to try and take some of that work out of the process, so they can focus on what they love best - which is the creative stuff. Our label is founded on 3 critically important principles to us as people: ‘Creating to relate’, ‘cooperation over competition’, and ‘mana over money’.
Was there any music or artist that inspired you to set up a label of your own?
We decided to set up a label for ourselves when we realized how hard it was to make music submissions without representation because of the oversaturation in the market from independent artists just like us. Rather than wait to be discovered, we decided to make an artist label for ourselves, and found it was immensely helpful to release our music effectively. Now, we use that knowledge to assist other independent artists with their release plans.
Is there a particular ethos around your label? How do you choose your releases?
Yes! We choose to release original music from Wellington alternative bands because we are incredibly passionate about the community that exists in this city. We are also really passionate about representing and assisting other female fronted bands to succeed.
Reptilian Nation Single
What are some of the projects you have released?
As we are an artist label, we have released loads of Burn My Shadow related content, but we have also released collaborations between Burn My Shadow and guitarist Lorenzo Vichi, and collaborated with the game company PikPok on a recent game theme tune release. Burn My Records is a brand new artist label that began business in the last year, and we are so excited to announce that we are on the verge of signing our first band (that isn’t Burn My Shadow or Lorenzo) and releasing our first project with them! We’re looking forward to giving you some more details once that is all squared away.
What are some of the projects you have in the works?
We have a huge amount of content that we are currently working on. We have a new band coming on board with a particularly exciting release which is due to arrive at the end of the year. We have around 4 Burn My Shadow projects to release in 2025, as well as a few Lorenzo Vichi ones. In addition to this, we have also recently composed and completed a release for PikPok for their original game Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days. Between them, Jayde and Broghan compose a lot of video game OST’s and themes for the games industry - with Jayde being audio director at PikPok and Broghan being a freelance composer and sound designer for video games, who now works in the commercial music industry.
Can you talk a bit about the 'Into the Dead' game music project? How did that come about?
Jayde and Broghan used to work together at PikPok as one half of their audio department. Prior to that, Broghan was working as a freelance composer and songwriter who was commissioned to help Jayde on Into the Dead 2’s theme tune Nails, in 2017. This most recent release is a continuation of the musical identity of the 'Into the Dead' franchise. Broghan now contracts as a freelance game music composer and recently gave a talk at New Zealand Games Festival’s Play by Play conference - about how to release your Game OST like a music label.
Where do you see the position of Record Labels now in the Music industry, given the DIY ethos around music creation? What can you offer an artist?
This is a great question. Whilst it's absolutely true that artists can produce and release their own music from start to finish and own every single part of that creative process, it's incredibly time consuming and requires a regular release cadence to really maximise results. We’ve created efficient release processes and assembled a team of experts to take a lot of that work out of the equation for artists, so they can just focus on creating the music that they love.