Stereo Current: Duran Duran’s Antony Price Tribute and What “Indie” Means in 2025

Welcome back to Neural Newscast, Stereo Current. I'm Julian Vance, broadcasting from that imaginary backroom where the 12 inches are alphabetized, the lights are low, and the truth is cut at 45 RPM. And I'm Sloan Rivera. Tonight we're talking about the people who dress the music, and the music that dresses itself. Two stories, one shared moral. I mean, artistry is never just one medium. First up, Duran Duran remembering the late Antony Price. A British fashion designer Nick Rhodes called an important collaborator from the very beginning. Christ passed away December 17th at 80, and Rhodes's tribute reads like a liner note you want to keep. He gets described as a visionary, and not in that vague press release way. More like, you know, someone who understood a silhouette can be a chord progression, that the right suit can change the way a synth line feels in your bloodstream. Grode says nobody did glam better than Anthony. And if you've ever watched the real video, yeah, you already know what he means. Those pastel-colored silk suits are basically part of the song. You can hear the sheen. Pastels that didn't soften them, they sharpen them, like seaglass edges. It's fashion as rhythm section, clean lines, bright hits, a little danger under the polish. And Price wasn't just Duran Duran. His work shows up across the whole glam to art rock arc. David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mick Jagger. The piece notes you styled all eight Roxy music album covers, and even designed the t-shirt on the back cover of Lou Reed's Transformer. That's the kind of legacy you don't always clock until someone threads it together for you. And then you realize the visual language of an era had a tailor, a quiet architect with a measuring tape and a wicked sense of taste. Price came up proper, too. Bradford School of Art, then the Royal College of Arts Fashion School, graduating in 1968. And in 1969, Mick Jagger wears his body-hugging trousers on the Stones' Demi Shelter U.S. Tour. That's a pretty loud first rockstar moment. A designer's version of an opening slot that turns into a headlining career. And I love the range here. The piece mentions women's wear, too, with people like Kylie Minogue and Jerry Hall. Price wasn't trapped by one kind of body or one kind of mythology. Brian Ferry called him a master craftsman, and one of the most remarkably gifted people he ever met. And Rhodes writes that even though fashion media didn't always give Price the recognition he deserved, the artists and other designers knew he was a genius. That line hits. Mm-hmm. Because it's the same story you see in creative work all the time, the people closest to the process know who's really holding the structure up. The spotlight is loud, the foundation is quieter. Rhodes also calls him loyal, kind, intelligent, and razor-witted. And he says Price's swan song fashion show a few weeks ago was as spectacular and relevant as the first one he ever saw. That's not nostalgia. That's a career that stayed present tense. It also reminds you style is not surface, it's authorship. For certain bands, the look is part of the instrument panel. If you pull it out, the song still plays, but it doesn't glow the same. Which takes us to our second thread tonight. What Indy even means now. Because if Antony Price is about the unseen hand-shaping an era, Indy is about the unseen labor shaping a career. Indy used to be a door with a lock on it. Either you had the major label key or you didn't. In 2025, it's more like a way of walking through the room, DIY posture, direct connection, and a refusal to let the algorithm be your manager. Historically, the clean origin story is Buzzcocks. 1977, Spiral Scratch self-released on their own label. That's the classic indie definition, independent for major label machinery. But then the 2000 hundred scrambled it. Indie became a sound, a vibe, a haircut, a side eye, a glossy pop. And now the sound versus status argument is basically a never-ending comment section. Right, because you can have major label distribution and still feel Indy in ethos. The example that gets tossed around is Vampire Weekend, signed to Columbia but operating with that scene-coded intelligence a self-aware curation. So Indy becomes less about who cut the check and more about who holds the steering wheel. Who owns the master? Who decides the rollout? Who talks to the fans like their people and not data points? And the numbers are wild. One report pegs indie artists at 41% of the top 1,000 artists by Tartmetric Score in 2024. It also claims over half of music consumed on major platforms comes from unsigned artists. That's not a Mitch. That's the ocean. And yet the ocean is cold, because scale doesn't automatically mean stability. You can be streamed a million times and still be eating instant noodles beside your merch bins. Exactly. The same sources point to pressures, rising manufacturing costs, tariffs, visas, and streaming demonetization, and some bands are opting out as protest. Dearhoof and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard get mentioned as artists pulling back from streaming platforms over low returns and corporate entanglements. So... Opting out is a kind of punk now. Not spikes and safety pins, but a spreadsheet rebellion. A refusal to let your art become a lost leader for somebody else's quarterly call. On the brighter side, indie superpower is community. The data suggests over 90% of mid-level artists who grew by at least 20% in 2024 were indie artists, while major label acts were under 10%. That's a loud signal. A connection beats campaign. Because community is the new radio. It's bandcamp notes, discord rooms, comment threads that behave like little venues. It's intimacy at scale, which is a weird phrase, but it's the air we're in. And the tool set makes it possible. Affordable production software, home recording, direct distribution, everybody's got a studio now, even if it's just a laptop and a half-broken MIDI controller held together by Hope. Then there's TikTok in the short form universe, where a hook can become a ritual before the song even has proper cover art. Promo is less poster, more pulse. Less billboard, more breadcrumb trail. So if you're asking what indie means in 2025, it's this. Ownership, agility, and direct relationships. Plus the willingness to do the work labels used to do. Sometimes that's liberating. Sometimes it's exhausting. And it loops back to Antony Price, honestly. The greatest collaborators are often the ones who don't get the loudest credit. The designer behind the video. The friend behind the tour look. The person doing the invisible work that makes the art feel inevitable. Yeah. Whether it's a silk suit in Rio or a DIY release strategy in 2025, the details are the difference between something you like and something you remember. That's our set for tonight. Keep your ears open, keep your eyes open, and if you love an era, learn the names of the people who built it. They're the real liner notes. This is Neural Newscast, Stereocorrent. I'm Julian Vance. If you're listening on your favorite app, go ahead and follow the show and share this episode with a friend who still reads liner notes. Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed. View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com. And I'm Sloan Rivera. See you in the stacks. Neural Newscast is AI-assisted human-reviewed. You are AI Transparency Policy at neuralnewscast.com.