When artists have multiple alter-egos and side-projects that sound virtually indistinguishable from their main hustle

Contractual fulfilment aside, I've never understood this.

Future, much as I love his music, sounds like Future no matter how much he proclaims to be The Wizard, Future Hendrix or Caesar Lee.

And what about solo projects by artists who are already pretty much the leaders of the bands they front?

What became of Sasha Fierce?

Eminem/Slim Shady

Good one

Canadian post-punkers Ought essentially had a line-up change with some musicians dropped and/or switched around but ultimately making a roughly-similar noise. This dramatic change heralded a name change to Cola.

Ones who actually released albums under the alter ego name:

Bobby Digital
Makaveli
Viktor Vaughn

a bunch of Kool Keith projects

I'm assuming the whole Slim Shady/Eminem dichotomy is that Slim is the cartoonish rap persona while Eminem gives him a chance to rap more about Marshall Mathers the person - but the lines seem too blurred for most to make a serious distinction, I'd say

Similar dynamic with T.I./ T.I.P.

Or Nas and Escobar

Beatles/Klaatu

Mariah Carey/ Mimi

Tori Amos and the American Doll Posse.

Robert Pollard/approximately one million bands

Bonnie "Prince" Billy/ Will Oldham

Pharell/ Skateboard P

Stephin Merritt solo
The Magnetic Fields
The Gothic Archies
Future Bible Heroes
The 6ths

I love 'em all but I have to say that I really can't see much to distinguish them. The 6ths is almost all guest vocalists so there's at least a clear idea there, but the songs all sound like Stephin Merrit songs.

And what about solo projects by artists who are already pretty much the leaders of the bands they front?

In the sense that the solo projects are busman's holidays? If so what about Faces/solo (pre-America) Rod?

Stephen Malkmus / Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

xpost Rod didn't even play solo shows back then.

I feel like Green Day could have conceivably released the Foxboro Hot Tubs album under their own name had they recorded it in the 2010s/20s.

(xp) Neither was he "leader" of the Faces.

on the other hand every time a Lucky Wilbury song comes on I blow people's minds by telling them it's actually Bob Dylan singing

Autechre / Gescom

re:Rod, fair fair - it's just the Rod-led Faces stuff and the relevant solo stuff of the period all feels like one ongoing thing to me.

aphex twin

yeah alias-happy electronic producers probably own this thread

RDJ is a funny one. He's had loads of aliases, but I think it's partly due to his contract with Warp not letting him use the Aphex Twin name elsewhere.
The difference I suppose is that Aphex Twin's discography is so wide-ranging in style that it would be a bit redundant to put things under an alter-ego.
Why are SAWII and SYRO both under Aphex Twin while Polygon Window isn't?

re:Rod, fair fair - it's just the Rod-led Faces stuff and the relevant solo stuff of the period all feels like one ongoing thing to me.

A lot of that is down to Ronnie Wood though.

With Bowie-- Ziggy Stardust is a character that seemed to allow him to be weirder/more Sci-fi, whereas Aladdin Sane is just a continuation of that, and the Thin White is his retreat from costumes

I feel like Green Day could have conceivably released the Foxboro Hot Tubs album under their own name had they recorded it in the 2010s/20s.

IIRC, wasn't one of the Uno, Dos Tre albums actually started out as the second Foxboro album before the band and/or label changed their mind?

I'd not heard of that Foxboro Hot Tubs album before. A cursory listen would have made me believe it was a Strokes side-project that sounded indistinguishable from the Strokes

I think Bowie's personae were largely justified, although I struggle to really see the differecne between Ziggy and AS - the latter could just as well have been a Ziggy follow-up really

The obvious thing with dance producers using pseudonyms is to sign the names to different labels and then when you've made far too many records in one year, they can come out under different names and it eases the danger of any real overexposure - in one year there could theoretically be four singles under one alias, four under another, four under another, and all are from theoretically different artists. So if anything I find it more interesting when a producer has stated some clear if slight differentiations between pseudonyms beyond just the labels they're using, rather than never speaking about it and leaving you to just assume they're used almost at random.

e.g. in the late 80s/early 90s Dave Lee would license different 12"s to hip American labels like Quark and Nu-Groove and used different names as a stunt to fool import buyers in the UK into thinking they were purchasing new US garage and house. From which Raven Maize and Joey Negro emerged. But this solidified into using different names for cuts with slightly different influences - RM were meant to be more Latin-ish (although certainly not by the time of The Real Life), Akabu more deep house, Jakatta more classical/film score-inspired house. These distinctions might not be immediately obvious but they're there.

Similar is Todd Terry in the late 80s with the Project, Crazy House, Orange Lemon and Black Riot. Pretty much all interviews with him of the time stress the subtle variations between them. I have less idea what those variations are when it gets to the early 90s and he starts being Gypsymen and that.

ahem ROYAL House. Freudian slip.

I'd not heard of that Foxboro Hot Tubs album before. A cursory listen would have made me believe it was a Strokes side-project that sounded indistinguishable from the Strokes

I think between the last Green Day album and at least half of what comprised their 2012 trilogy the garage-indie thing is territory Green Day enjoy working in.

XTC/The Dukes of Stratosphear - The Stone Roses just know they wanted John Leckie to produce their record and didn't necessarily know that the bands were one and the same.

wait a minute the Dukes sound a lot different than XTC, even though you can tell they're the same band

What about alter egos that sound almost nothing like the artist-- David Johansen/ Buster Poindexter

I think it's fair to say the Dukes didn't sound like XTC up to that point, but XTC and the Dukes would cohere a lot more later on

the two albums Moby released as Voodoo Child might as well just be Moby

I usually think of dance music producers using aliases to produce in different genres, although sometimes the differences are slight (but the overexposure/label contracts thing is an excellent point too). Sometimes the differences start collapsing though, like Caribou vs Daphni at this point.

I guess sometimes it's nice to have an alias just to remove the pressure of making something under your main name, even if it ends up sounding similar.

one guy this does make a lot of sense for is Uwe Schmidt aka Atom Heart, the guy has like 60 aliases but of the stuff I've heard they do all sound pretty different

this dude on the other hand:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/58247-Kouhei-Matsunaga

Aliases: Koyxeи, Koyzeu Mamcyhaza, NHK bs, NHK yx Koyxen, NHK'Koyxeи, NHKyx, Speedy K (2), yx Koyxen & fm™
Variations: K, Kohei Matsunaga, Kouhei, Kouhei Matsnaga, Koyxen, KOYXEИ, Koyxeи Matsnaga (NHK), Koyxeи Mattsunagnen, Matsunaga, Коухеи, Коухеи Matsunaga

was a big fan of some of his stuff and was disappointed to find out he only had a few albums, only to find out he actually had way way more stuff out there, but it's impossible to remember the exact aliases to search for, plus some of them use Russian characters like that backwards 'n'. and it all kinda sounds the same anyway. he's great though

Will Sheff released his first "solo" album last year which didn't sound all that different from the last few Okkervil River albums, on which he pretty much did everything anyway. AFAIK he's put the OR name to bed and will be going out under his own name going forward.

Stephen Malkmus / Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

― ...eh you get the gist of it (dog latin), Tuesday, October 3, 2023 7:33 AM (three hours ago)

This is neither an alter-ego nor side-hustle, just proper crediting for his band on those particular records.

Why are SAWII and SYRO both under Aphex Twin while Polygon Window isn't?

RDJ said this (in 1997):

PSF: With your work, how do you see the difference between Aphex Twin and your side projects?

I don't know. There's really no big theory. It's just things that I feel right in doing at the time and I really don't know why. I select songs for certain things and I just do it. I don't know what it means.

I wish more non-musicians would try this out. Like Joe Biden could show up to work one day as the Grey Pardoner, and issued a bunch of pardons.

This is neither an alter-ego nor side-hustle, just proper crediting for his band on those particular records.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, October 3, 2023 7:17 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, but to be fair I don't really know which of those post-Pavement albums are solo and which are Jicks really, which is the point of this thread - it all sounds like Malkmusian indie rock music, perhaps with the exception of that sort of spacey country record he did which was quite different in approach

I think the only two he has technically released under his own name (besides his debut*) are "Groove Denied" and "Traditional Techniques" – which are fairly different from the band stuff...

*of the debut, Wiki sez: "Malkmus intended to release the album as The Jicks, but Matador insisted that the album be released under his own name.[citation needed]"

always got that impression from the disc and sleeve, it's just the cover that marks it as a solo album

I think i would rather just have my name listed in the credits than be known as a “jick”

face the truth was solo iirc

yeah, I tend to think that many more dance-oriented producers have slight variations depending on the style they’re producing in.

one example that i have never truly been able to
embrace, i think because the sonic textures often appear so similar, is the music of Dominic Fernow. Sure, slight variations in approach, but I can’t tell a lick of difference between a lot of tracks from his various aliases.

Why would someone with as well-documented an aversion to art from Bad People as yourself be listening to Fernow in the first place? (N.B. I plead guilty to profiling him for The Wire, but at the time — 2011 — I thought he was just a typical proto-incel noizeboy creep/loser.)

I don't really know which of those post-Pavement albums are solo and which are Jicks really, which is the point of this thread

the only two malkmus albums that aren't at all jicks albums are the most recent two which are both stylistic diversions. the s/t isn't credited to the jicks but that was at the insistence of the label, and face the truth is credited to them on the back cover and they still all play on it.

.

Why would someone with as well-documented an aversion to art from Bad People as yourself be listening to Fernow in the first place? (N.B. I plead guilty to profiling him for _The Wire_, but at the time — 2011 — I thought he was just a typical proto-incel noizeboy creep/loser.)

TIL that ufo has me muted (lol)!