A limited edition of 1,000 copies of the silent protest album, Is This What We Want? on black vinyl will be released on Dec 8th. It is available to pre-order from The State51 Conspiracy store here, at Rough Trade UK here, and other record stores. All profits from sales of the album will be donated to the charity Help Musicians. Here’s a report about the vinyl album in today’s Guardian newspaper which highlights McCartney’s involvement.
As we previously reported when it was released digitally in February, this is a silent album from more than 1,000 musicians protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law. The vinyl edition includes a bonus track from Paul McCartney. Kate contributed one of the tracks (see our best guess below at which one it is). The vinyl release is out on 8th December. Publicity one-sheet sheet here.
In February, Kate wrote on her official site:
Over one thousand musicians are jointly releasing this album today to protest the UK government’s planned changes to copyright law.
If these changes go ahead, the life’s work of all the country’s musicians will be handed over to AI companies for free. None of us have a say in it.
The UK is full of pioneering, highly creative and imaginative artists. The government’s willingness to agree to these copyright changes shows how much our work is undervalued and that there is no protection for one of this country’s most important assets: music.
Each track on this album features a deserted recording studio. Doesn’t that silence say it all?
I’m very happy to have contributed a track to this project and to join the protest.
Please help protect the music makers and our heartfelt work. We make it for you, not for it to be taken and used against us.
In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?
Kate
The album was released in February on streaming platforms including here on Spotify. It includes contributions from Kate, Damon Albarn, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Pet Shop Boys, Billy Ocean, the Clash, Hans Zimmer, Imogen Heap, Cat Stevens, Max Richter, and many other names.
The 12 track titles spell out the following sentence: The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies. And we note that the final silent track 12, “Companies” does faintly feature the birdsong of a dawn chorus, a lot of cat purring sounds and what sounds like the sipping of hot tea (at the 3 minute 10 second mark)! So, do we think this is Kate’s contribution to the project? Listen and see what you think…
Various Artists – Is This What We Want? Limited vinyl is available to pre-order from The State51 Conspiracy store here, at Rough Trade UK here, and other record stores.
Leave a Reply