Independent artist, multi-instrumentalist and self-confessed music obsessive Cam Bloomfield recently took to the stage at Headliner’s live venue, The Pioneer Club to perform with LD Systems’ MAUI G3 all-in-one column speaker system and Palmer’s PAN 04 2-Channel passive DI Box. We caught up with him after the performance to find out what he’s been up to of late…
Hey Cam - what have you been up to since the last time we caught up?
I’ve been up to a lot since 2020! A lot of it was just about staying alive and getting happy again. I moved from North London back to Essex in the countryside, and since then I've been writing soundtracks, writing an album myself, and I've been going to different places around the world and travelling some more – just downloading a bit more life. And now it's time to finish up all the music that I've written off the back of that. So it’s been like a sponging mission since then.
The vibe up here was brilliant, and just felt really immersive.
The last time we spoke you said the one thing you miss was playing live. How has it been getting back to performing on stage?
It’s been incredible. One gig in particular was supporting Zak Abel at the Jazz Cafe. That was mid to late 2021 I think, and that was one of the first proper shows back. That was a big moment for me being up there singing some new songs, with a whole crowd there for the first time in forever – that really brought it all back. We've done quite a few shows since then, with a couple of festivals here and there, so it’s great to see it back to where it should be. Now I've got all of this new music written, I'm just buzzing to get that out on the road.
How do you find it being an independent artist in today's industry? What are the advantages and what are the biggest challenges you face?
One of the biggest things for me is creative control. It’s about having the ideas, having all the people around me that I've built these relationships with for years, and knowing that everyone in that process has a lot of love and trust for the skills and the emotional investment in what's going on. It’s also about being able to take that from the initial idea, to then making a record, to then putting it on stage, and knowing that all of those things are within people that you really love and trust.
There’s a lot of advantages to being independent. When you do start making a decent amount of money, you're not paying stupid percentages to someone here, there and everywhere. You get a lot more control over your creative, but also your business as well. I think that's one thing that a lot of artists are waking up to. Even if you didn't define yourself in that kind of way, you can be a leader of your business and take that from the creative as well, rather than having it as two separate things. You can still use the business to make you even better as an artist rather than think, ‘Oh, now I've got to go and wear a suit and be that guy.’ Nah – you can just really back your ideas to the fullest and soak up the wisdom from good people around you.
The biggest challenge is probably finance. There's a lot of different ways that you can do it, and a lot of ways that you can be a lot more creative in the way that you're collaborating with people or brands or companies. There are a lot of ways to make money; traditionally that would come from a label as they obviously back you to the fullest, but there are a lot more creative ways as an independent.
As we were setting up, I was sat at the back of the room and the system was booming.
How did you find using the new LD Systems kit today?
The new kit’s been wicked – really, really nice. At the beginning of the session before I started they were playing some music as we were setting up; I was sat at the back of the room and it was booming. This is not a small room either, and it sounded so good! I was just quite annoyed that I couldn't be in two places at once, so I could hear how it sounded when I was up here.
This was my first time using kit from LD Systems and Palmer, and it was clean. The vibe up here was brilliant, and just felt really immersive, especially because I was coming up with some new arrangements of the songs which are very different from the records, and you have to be really in on some of them. It was so easy to get into that space with this kind of system around so yeah, I would love to be using it again and I would highly recommend it. If anyone from LD is around, you've got my number now!
What have you got in the pipeline?
I'm doing a few shows over the course of autumn and winter but they're yet to be announced. The main thing for me though is finishing the album, which I'm going to be doing within the next month or two. So as soon as that's done it all gets exciting.
