Blog of the Battle

We're sitting in the Premises cafe (in london) as, in the attached studios Sleeper Cell are locked in a studio perfecting their prize track.
Having won our battle of the bands competition, they're now sounding fantastic in the high profile eco-studio, frequented by the Klaxons and other amazing acts.
In fact earlier today sixteen year old Matt from Sleeper Cell was thrilled to bump into band Bloc Party!
They seem humbled, working with a producer who has worked with famous bands such as the Pet Shop Boys.
They are in Studio A which is powered by the solar panels on the roof of the building, in fact it only took five minutes to find our way through the maze that is premises studios, to the roof home to solar panels capable of producing 4200 watts.
The band sound really great and we can't wait to hear the finished product. We wish them loads of luck and have had a fantastic day.

George Brooke and Emma Kosmin

Well the voting over now (okay this post is a bit late) and the results are, well, results.
Congratulations to the bands that will be with us in London, hopefully some of the others will still turn up to enjoy the event.
Thankyou to everyone who voted properly.

There's only nine days to go till the event so make sure you buy your train tickets and come to support your favourite band. If you turn up early you can get bike powered smoothies from the Face Your Elephant tent or have a look around the party.

We're expecting you all to turn up.

C-Change, the hosts of this competition, are a group of young people like yourselves. We set up this event because we are genuinely trying to do something to change attitudes towards climate change and make people more aware of the impact their lifesyle has, and their responsibility to do something about it. We hoped that people would respect our aims and would enter into the spirit of this event in good faith.

Unfortunately we have become aware that not everyone is being entirely honest in the way they are participating. An analysis of the IP addresses which votes and comments are coming from shows that some people are faking it - setting up lots of hotmail accounts to place extra votes from. We have not, until now, restricted the number of votes from any IP address because we didn't want exclude people who are using a computer at their school, college or workplace which may share the same IP address with other people there. However our investigations have shown that, in all but a very few case, the multiple votes are coming from residential broadband IPs. Whilst you might get your mum and dad and brothers and sisters and so on to vote for you on the same IP address it is simply not credible that 96 people - all with hotmail accounts and different surnames - have voted from the same address.

Reluctantly we decided to restrict voting to one vote per IP address. This will apply to anyone voting in future and multiple votes already cast from the same IP address have now been removed. We are sorry if a few genuine votes get lost in this process but it seems far fairer than to let the competition be hijacked by a few people who have too much time on their hands and use it to set up fake emails.

C-Change wants to see a fairer and more responsible world. We all have to start with ourselves. There are lots of 'carbon cheats' out there - those with money and power who can just afford to gobble up far more than their share of the world's resources, and emit far more than their share of greenhouse gases. Honesty, transparency, and fairness are going to be really crucial to saving the planet. Let's start here guys!

Thanks,
The C-Change Team

That's right, our battle of the bands will be powered by bio-diesel which can be made out of chip fat.

Bio-diesel will run in (almost) any ordinary diesel engine and is environmentally friendly.

It is made out of plant oils (can be sunflower, vegetable ect.) that have been been modified (to find out more you can read an information sheet here.
These plant oils can be (as it says in the title) used chip fat as well as newly grown.

While this does cut emmisions it will not solve climate change because energy is used in growing new plants and in processing. Also land that could be used for growing food is used to produce fuel for cars. Using old chip fat means that it is more eco-friendly overall it still is not a cure-all.

At the CChange battle of the bands we will be running the main stage on a bio-diesel generator which will be running on either chip-fat or from bio-diesel grown in the UK (not transported over a long distance).

Now I'm just off to steal the local chippie's frying fat....

The Premises Recording Studio was opened last June and is Europe’s first solar studio entirely powered with photovoltaic (PV) panels on their rooftop.

The Premises Studios continues to pump up the volume and has seen the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Hot Chip, Bloc Party and Lily Allen passing through their state-of-the-art studios. The Klaxons recorded three of their tracks in the eco-chic solar studio for their debut album "Myths of the Near Future," that entered the UK album charts at No 2.

The Battle of the Bands competition is open to young people aged 11-21 with the closing date for submitting MP3 tracks on 18th June.

• Unsigned, new and emerging musicians will be able to upload their MP3 music tracks on the C-Change website for public voting.
• The competition is open to all music genres.
• The top 5 short listed artists will perform live in front of a panel of industry insiders at Party for the Planet on 7 July on Clapham Common with the ‘band stage’ powered by renewable energy.
• The winning artist will win a day’s recording laying down their music track at The Premises solar powered studio.
• Pulse Rated will be supporting and covering the competition on radio and website.

Julia Craik, Managing Director of The Premises Studios said:

“The Premises Studios are delighted to be backing C-Change and helping to communicate the important climate message to our younger generation and especially to those new, unsigned and emerging recording artists who are concerned about their carbon footprint. The Battle of the Band competition is a great way to show young people positive renewable energy solutions to tackling this global environmental problem”

Klaxons said:

“C-Change is a great project to get young people inspired, informed and switched on to the climate issue. The Premises Studios is a great example of how solar power is making a real difference in helping recording artists tackle our carbon footprint and at the same time make great sounding-music!. Young unsigned musicians wanting to do their bit for the environment – don’t waste time and get your MP3 tracks submitted to Battle of the Bands.”

Battle of the Bands is also being supported by Pulse Rated, a leading online radio station and download store dedicated to new, unsigned and emerging artists.

Peter Davis, Pulse Rated, Business Development Manager said:

‘This is a very unique campaign that aims to engage with the iPod generation to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face in our time. Pulse Rated is also delighted to back a competition that gives the opportunity for new talented musicians to play live with a headline act and to experience a top recording studio.’