HUNTING BILLIONAIRES FOR SPORT - RETURN POLICY MANAGER
It’s that time of year again. February came and went and the month’s labour brought us this auditory document: “Return Policy Manager” by the very real band Hunting Billionaires For Sport. “Why that name?” well I’ve named every RPM challenge album I’ve done to fit the RPM acronym because tradition and to differentiate it from my regular albums. “No not the album title the band name” oh yeah, sure , well y’know I just wanted to name the band something positive and optimistic, something to put a smile on your face and something in the future we can all look forward to.
Anyway, this year beyond the clickbait-y name I wanted this album to have a more specific aesthetic that was more organic and more directly anti-AI. So I added a couple more restrictions, on top of the regular RPM challenge restrictions of all sounds should be written and recorded in the month of February and be at least 10 songs or 30 minutes in length. So on this one on I vowed no virtual instruments, including all midi instruments and drum samples and no reverb plugins (which is less about being anti-AI and more just trying to wean me off over using convolution reverb plugins which are mess up my mixes outside of this project). You might think you hear reverb on these songs but you’re NOT you’re hearing delay effects that just kinda work like reverb.
I had aspirations of writing more anti-capitalist and anti-fascist anthems but after 18 years of doing this yearly Challenge I know that to get it done you just go where the moment to moment inspiration smacks you toward. So although there are a few songs which stick to the theme “Fear of a clear Blue Sky”, “Write down their names but don't keep them on you” and “Alex Karp just out there in the world” the album runs the gamut of styles and topics. I keep the song titles to the theme at least.
The large foam masks in the album cover are part of a short film project I plan on starting up soon, and a extra goal of this project was to create a soundtrack for this short film. And actually I think this short film will actually just be framed as an extended music video for Hunting Billionaires For Sport. But I won’t get too into it because I haven’t gotten started on it yet, so who knows when it will be done.