The music industry and the sound of unsigned music seems to be going through another evolution as of late.

I’ve reviewed various bands for my unsigned music blog recently, and they all had one thing in common. Their finished releases didn’t sound.. finished. That’s a bad thing, right? WRONG. The evolution that the unsigned music world is going through right now, is that many unsigned bands (dependent on genre) are releasing records to the world without having them perfect.

For example, the vocals aren’t smothered in auto-tune (everyone knows how much I hate auto-tune, if you don’t, READ THIS) and sometimes they aren’t even at the front of the mix, they’re buried deep behind the lead guitarist. I’m not going to lie to you, this did get on my nerves at first because I was so used to hearing that perfected, fixed up, radio perfect release for so long. Becoming a regular music blogger opened up my eyes to the dark, under-belly of unsigned material. It took me a while to appreciate it, but now? I love it!

It works so well, you can really feel and appreciate the amount of effort and heart that has been put into these sorts of releases, the imperfect product has a certain charm to it that you’ll never hear when listening to mainstream radio. The amount of chaos that I’ve heard within these records is astonishing, it sounds as if these sorts of bands have just hired a studio, plugged in their instruments, hit record and just started playing random notes! I’ll tell you now, to the commercial labels, that is their idea of a recurring nightmare.

BUT it’s an ever-growing trend to push out, raw, un-edited music! It really works in my opinion, but you need to have a certain character about you to sit down and enjoy it.

Is the unfinished record going to be the new way of doing things in the future? who knows? What I will say is this: listening to music that is raw has helped me discover a new side to the industry I fell in love with at the age of 9 (yes, 9), it has shown me that you don’t have to rely on expensive equipment to produce something of high quality, and it’s shown me that no matter what, don’t give a damn what people think, release what makes you happy and proud to be an artist, and eventually, people (like me) will catch on and appreciate right along with you!

Gary Cunningham is a 21 year old Musician, Musical Director and Composer from Billericay, Essex. He has been playing Piano for 16 years, singing for 6 and composing for 4. Throughout his career, Gary has been a part of various bands as well as his solo performances. He started his musical career seriously when he became part of a band named Ten Point Too whom he was with for many years until his departure in 2011. After his departure from Ten Point Too, Gary began his solo career by becoming a restaurant pianist at The Ivory Rooms. He also started to take part in various open mic nights (notably Boombox Essex Live Lounge). In 2014 he found his way back into the band circuit, deciding to form a function band named "The 45's" whom he is still with today, they have various private party gigs coming up over the coming months. Gary has now began work as a session musician after departing from Not Now Jhon (Now known as The Post Floyd Dream) in late 2016 and after completing his first UK Tour with The Signatures in 2017, he is now working with various singer songwriters and bands as a freelance session player.

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