Artist Research: Moose Blood

The Background

Moose Blood are a self-proclaimed Emo-Punk band formed in Canterbury, Kent in 2012. In many of their songs they reference inspirations such as Brand New - a band that were 'big' in the Pop-Punk scene in the 90's and early 2000's. Also in their first album there were more references to other bands that influenced them in the 2000's such as Saves the Day and Say Anything.

When they formed in 2012 they released a demo for the song 'Bukowski' which became one of their most popular songs even currently.

After this, they worked on an EP named 'Moving Home', this contained: an instrumental that opened the EP called 'My Own Boat', 'Evening Coffee', the title track 'Moving Home', 'Carbis Bay', 'Drive' and finally the reworked version of 'Bukowski'. Their sound in this EP is very raw and is not altered much in post-production. Shortly after this, they also released two songs as singles 'Boston' and 'Orlando'.

                                       

November 2013, they collaborated with another small band 'Departures' to make a second EP, 'Departures/Moose Blood Split EP'. The only two songs from Moose Blood are 'Stay Here' and 'Girl'.

In 2014 they signed to No Sleep Records, a record company that many large punk bands such as Blink-182 have been signed to at some point in their careers. At the end of 2014 they went to the base of No Sleep in LA released their first album 'I'll Keep You In Mind From Time to Time'. It was well received in the US, it came in at number 9 on Rock Sound's 'Top 50 Albums of the Year' list and 45 in the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums.

More recently in 2016 they announced that they had signed to Hopeless Records for their new album. Their second album, titles 'Blush' is much less raw as they have a higher budget, this also means that the chances are that budget would also reflect in their music video productions but I do not have that budget as an A Level student.

Marketing

Moose Blood often use social media to market their products to their audience and also attempt to reach a wider audience, as they are still a new 'up and coming' band in the punk scene. They market from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Moose Blood Marketing on Facebook

Moose Blood Marketing on Twitter

Moose Blood Marketing on Instagram

Previous Music Videos

Gum

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ld88m2jLhwY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

• Narrative storyline that does not directly link to the lyrics.
• Artist is included in the video, live performance.
• A few of the shots relate to the lyrics but for the majority it is concept.
• Within the video there are links to the band's own merchandise but other than that, there don't seem to be other intertextual links.
• Throughout the video, there are no attempts to interact with the audience.
• The actors in the video aren't famous but are still the centre of the shots, the band feature for approximately 31 shots in the whole video.
• The video is of a medium pace, the average shot length is around 4 seconds in the first section. But after the first chorus, the shots shortened to an average of 2 seconds.

The elements I will most likely take from this is the idea of a narrative, however my narrative will almost entirely directly link to the lyrics. Also, the ratio of the narrative to the performance on screen.

Cheek

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JfrnlUg2p0k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

• The video is entirely concept and only contains live performance, this is similar to other videos of theirs, such as Swim Down, Bukowski and Boston.
• All of the video is revolved around the artist being the centre of each shot.
• Because the video is a concept live performance, the visuals don't at all connect to the lyrics.