Below is an email interview with Frank Joshua. All interviews are published unedited.

• Whenever I listen to your tracks I am always blown away by the quality of the production. Where do you record your songs and tell me more about the production team?

The approval of your peers, even more than commercial success, is kind of what every artists wants deep down I reckon. So the way Stereofame does it, with votes from members then a panel of experts, is really appealing. But I also think a key part of it is the cash prize. When the future for making money from music is so unclear, this is a way of spreading the income generated by good sites down to artists. And it has the potential to be part of a package of things that can be built into an income for artists. What’s interesting now, as opposed to when I was making music 15 years ago, is there are no obvious guidelines. If you can cope with the ambiguity and just keep pushing your stuff out there, not knowing who’s really listening or why, things just seem to turn up. A kind of “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. For instance I’m part of a wider cross-promotion group that grew up on Reverbnation and we’re now supporting each across a number of sites. Back in the day the audience for unsigned artists was basically the people you knew and their mates, now it can be truly global. However a side line to help bring in income is probably essential for the majority of artists. Which means music can end up playing second fiddle when your creative energy is all used up in a day job. That said, there is a kind of levelling out process at work here. Fewer artists making mega bucks but also fewer artists making nothing at all!

Sure. The machine is still in action and I hope to have some more stuff to put up soon. I’ve got a version of the song Kiss that Ginny has done a second vocal on that I think is really special.

I do occasionally play live but nothing like I used to. In the late ‘80s we seemed to spend all out time trying to be the best live band we possibly could, playing any and every shitty venue London, particularly Camden, had to offer. We thought that it was key to build a live audience and experience that showed our “star quality” and leave the making of the album to the record label. All our recordings were our best attempts to recreate the live experience. Now, I’m doing the opposite. I spend all my time (and spare cash!) on making recordings that I’m really proud of and that ‘work’ as recordings. (Something I wish I’d done years ago!) The funny thing of course is that now playing live is where it’s at and I’m stuck in the studio! That said I’ve just been asked to do a gig with MikeWhitePresents in London in Nov. This came about through the Reverbnation cross-promotion group, so it all links up somewhere.

Firstly I need to make it clear that embarrassing your children is the only clear job a parent has! Music’s long way from being over and done. I feel like I hear something that grabs my attention most days of the week. Which doesn’t mean I can’t get all middle aged on occasion (and complain about the lack of melodies in this “American rap music”) but mostly I keep finding myself surprised when I hear something that seems so obvious but which I’d never have thought of doing. And it’s even possible that not only do I over hear things that my kids are playing and like it, but that I might even introduce them to things! This certainly happens to me in my day job when the young things I work with put on a track and I can pick out the old samples in it. I’d like to think they’re impressed by that by I have a feeling they may not be!

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