Similar Artist Research - Bombay Bicycle Club

Bombay Bicycle Club are an indie rock band from Crouch End, London. It is useful knowing this exact area because we can now do research into their background and how successful they actually have been in coming from such an area. It is composed of 4 members, Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren De Saram and Ed Nash.

In an interview with ContactMusic, a site which interviews and reviews different musicians, the band said they were influenced by many 1990's american bands including Pavement and Sonic Youth. This is useful information as we can further research into these artists and see what type of style they have allowing us to gain more information.

I have read over the whole interview which ContactMusic carried out with Bombay Bicycle Club and some of the information is useful, as we can use it to inform decisions we will make on our project. The link for the interview is here: http://www.contactmusic.com/interview/bombay-bicycle-clubx03x08x09

In terms of how the band fashion themselves, they also draw a lot of their style influences from the 90's. A piece on the band as a whole and their style and then each member's individual style was carried out by Fashion Beans, a website which focuses on the fashion on celebrities etc. This article can be viewed here and is well worth the read as it gives details on individual pieces of fashion for each artist and allows us to tailor certain aspects minutely to our final artist.

http://www.fashionbeans.com/2010/bombay-bicycle-club-style-steal/


Their Albums:

I had the blues but I shook them loose:

I absolutely love this cover because of the vintage image in the background. These vintage or atleast vintage looking images are becoming ever popular now especially with stores like Urban Outfitters, who use many of these images in their products and to influence the styling of their shop. The simplicity of the text and the stark contrast between the black and white image and the blue of the text is also very well done as it catches the eye of audience. It's not over professional but looks like an album that one would want to buy. This cover doesn't give much away about the band, therefore intriguing a possible audience. I think it would be useful for us to draw influence on this album, because of its simplistic yet attention grabbing nature and adeptness to todays market.

Flaws:

This album cover I'm not as fussed on. While again I fee it has that edge which is becoming popular in the market today, for me, I think its quite boring and not eye catching enough. The simplicity and dark colours I feel aren't appealing for a young audience and thus this isn't something I think I would like to apply to our piece. I do however like the text that is applied for the titles. I think this simple, vintage style font is really good looking when applied to an album and would be one which would be worthwhile considering. I think however, the font used needs to be informed by the music and therefore, if for example we used quite a loud song this wouldn't be suitable. Therefore, this has highlighted to me the need to consider all aspects including music and artist when designing small parts of the album, including font.

A different kind of fix:

Again, I really like this album cover and the colours, the natural colours used. I love the fact that the same titling for Bombay Bicycle Club from the first album has been applied again here. I love the colours and the font and their simplistic style and how they don't give away much about the contents of the album. The abstract nature of the 2 faces and colours and pattersn within are a useful tool by enticing possible audience to check out the album. All of these methods we could apply to our artist and would be worthwhile for us to consider.







Website:

Again, as before with the previous 2 artists, Bombay Bicycle Club implement the same style within their website. It is very simple, with neutral colours implemented and not complicated or distracting for a viewer of the website. As this is pretty much the same as the other websites, I don't think its necessary to go into much evaluation, however it confirms that in terms of our website design, we might be better to go with a simpler design.

Demographic:
I used music analytics website, beluga.grooveshark, to gain an insight into how their fans are distributed and it is as below:

This is useful because it shows us what group of people we need to target mostly, but also how the current methods Bombay Bicycle Club adapt, are not targeting other demographics. Thus showing that if we want to target a higher demographic, that we might need to think of new methods for marketing and styling. However, I always thought we were  going to target a younger female/male demographic and therefore this is simply helpful in showing us that this genre is popular amongst this demographic and the styling, sound and marketing of Bombay Bicycle Club is successful for this age range confirming that it would be worthwhile for us to considering implementing some of their techniques.