ftprints11 (footprintseleven) is the primary vehicle for multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer Richard Rummery – who has a unique and diverse approach to modern popular music. He began in musicals and talent quests as a child, winning the Thunderbolt Talent quest in 1972. Playing bass and keyboards in various school bands, he began writing, influened by Genesis, P. Gabriel, Bowie, Frank Zappa and Jethro Tull. After completing a course in audio engineering at ASRE in
After several years spent in prison, recording the music of inmates for a double album with a multicultural ethos called Bravo (a world–first) he formed a production company called November Media with Wayne Capper, whom he met there, and set up a recording studio. It was in this period that ftprints11 was born, releasing the cd album Colourblind to wide critical acclaim. Frustrated at the lack of competent musicians to work with in such a small town like Armidale, he decided to become a solo artist and has not looked back since.
Ftprints11 emerged in 2003 with Colourblind, followed by the double album set Unsound and Thump (2006) - two contrasting cd albums that have gained international exposure for ftprints11’s unique musical approaches. The single ‘I can’t escape love’ lifted from Unsound was released in the US on 3000 Records gathering valuable airplay and featured on U.S. reality TV show Laguna Beach. The catchy and subversive pop of ‘I’ll take you somewhere’ (from Thump) has been selected for a Rock 4 Life compilation album out soon. Ftprints11 have new cds available including Violet Millions, Cinderella’s Guts, The Number of the Soul, and the new Flex and Reflexion double album set. These albums show the diversity and depth of ftprints11’s music – called flexrock - and while categorization is difficult, since his influences and styles are diverse and uniquely incorporated into his original musical statements, it is widely accessible music with power, depth and subtlety. Also a radio show producer Rummery has a couple of awards for Excellence in Broadcasting and recently did a series of shows for CAHMA called ‘News from the War on Drugs’ heard on 2XXFM ACT. Whilst working on his PhD in philosophy over the last few years, Rummery has had a break from relentless music writing and production. But now new grooves and soundscapes which have come from his studio experiments over recent years are ready for airing. Having mastered and transcended most other styles of music so far the newer material is designed to get the dancefloors really pumping. In this how, ftprints11 take on the DJ’s turf; playing guitar/kb’s/bass/percussion along with original electronica, techpop, electrorock, psytrance - and many more of those other ridiculous genre-names and false categorizations which he detests. “It is the music that communicates itself, no matter the genre, but if only one is listening.”
The modern listener has very wide tastes, often too wide to pinpont or predict. Yet marketers of music need them to be identifiable as a demographic group so they can find ways of coercing them into becoming a customer and keeping them. But people who follow trends change their mind as the latest ‘fashion’ dictates and fail to develop a soundtrack to their own life through independence of choice which is unique to them and comes to form their intimate identity. These days many young people do not even pay for the music they listen to, preferring to copy it from friends collections – who themselves have copied it. Therefore the artists who are trying to survive do not get enough opportunities to be heard, and this has lowered the standard of pop music as corporate record companies aggressively market to specific demographic groups, and now hope to expand on their profit by organizing ‘collaborations’ between artists of different genres. The listener may not realize that their acceptance or toleration of mass media techniques opened up the door to even more middle-men and parasites inserting themselves in the artist-listener relationship. One wonders why the quality of musical artists has dropped dramatically in the last two decades even as we are in a global listening world. But now ftprints11 aims to recover some of that quality via the fusing of musical genres and styles, enhancing the quality of the musical experience for the listener.
Bookings: ftprints11@myspace.com
Phone: 0435526984
