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Archive for the ‘Emerging Artists’ Category
No Generation Gap
Billy Bragg once said: “Don’t let the pressures get you down, keep singing out, keep singing loud”. Of course these words could have been Billy’s own, but to be precise he said it about two years ago on Sam Duckworth’s second album “Searching For The Hows And Whys” as an interlude and was just quoting the lyrics. But anyway this sentence is characteristic for both, Billy Bragg and Sam Duckworth aka Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. The half British, half Burmese singer songwriter is well known for his political involvement such as for the “Love Music Hate Racism” campaign or his work for “Jail Guitar Doors”, a project for helping to achieve rehabilitation for prison inmates through music. On his third and self-titled album, his basically acoustic melodies are often influenced by electronic music, hip hop or drum’n’bass and therefore adventurous and somehow exempt from any genre. His songs always have a certain strength and density that is hard to describe. And although his lyrics are never explicit you can always sense the ideas or themes or just the fact that there is a message apart from happiness-sunshine-love topics. So I guess Billy Bragg knew very well why he was quoting Sam’s lyrics.
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Denis Jones – The One Man Choir
Before you listen to Denis Jones’ “Red + Yellow =”, limber up. His sound is like beat-boxing battle cry with an electronic tribal dance round a digital bonfire. I dare say this might be the kind of music John Martyn would do nowadays, if he was still alive. Denis Jones’ voice and his self taught guitar play is quite impressing, but it’s absolutely intriguing what he does with a loop station, samplers and effects. It’s like you can watch him constructing his wall of sound, brick by brick until the building is finished and ready for occupancy. “Clap Hands” is one of the best opening tracks, I’ve heard in a long time. “Rage” almost hypnotized me, when I first listened to it and it’s followed by “New Note” and eight minute post-rock influenced piece. The cool jazz trumpet in “Conception, Consumption and Radiation” finally proves that you can’t tie Denis Jones’ music to a particular genre. So, let’s put it this way: he’s a curious mind with a beautiful soulful voice and the right plug-in connections. (release date: 19/09/2010 on Humble Soul)
2No end in sight
Here’s a short guide for musical time traveling: buy the Mirrors single “Ways To An End” and a ticket for the upcoming European tour (Mirrors are supporting OMD) and you’ll go directly back to the early 80s. They look and sound like a mixture of Kraftwerk, Depeche Modeand Talking Heads. With other words: they snaffled from the best. The impulsive and dry beats accompanied by classical electronic pop harmonies are the perfect gifts for lead singer James’ extraordinary voice. How they elaborate their obvious musical impact is pretty fascinating, in particular onstage and live. You won’t find just a bunch of hipsters who are surfing the synth-pop remembrance wave, but a band that reflects their musical influences in their own way and thus create something new and exciting. The Brighton based quartet’s debut album is currently being mixed and will be released in early 2011. High expectations are vested, I reckon this debut will be something you won’t miss. Neither in your trusted record store, nor on the dance floor.
10/09/10 Monarch, London
11/11/10 E-Werk, Cologne
2It’ll stay in the family
The Bee Gees are probably the most famous ones, The White Stripes the most famous fake ones and First Aid Kit the most famous ‘you-tubed’ ones: siblings in music. Berlin based musician Vincenz Kokot and his sister Grenadine are definitely the weirdest ones in the sense of musical siblings, because Vincenz’s sister Grenadine is imaginary. So whatever she is and however she appears, she obviously inspires Vincenz Kokot to write brilliant both fragile and sustainable folk-pop songs. He recently released his second album as “My Sister Grenadine” named “Subtitles And Paper Planes”. The double album is divided in two musical parts: eight rather headstrong acoustic ukulele tracks which often demand absolute attention. The way he creates soundscapes where you have to listen to over and over again to discover the real song and melody, proves that he is a master of his trade. In the second part of the album you’ll find the more ‘catchy’ tunes, but not less extraordinary and beautiful. Altogether a double album full of swell lunacy.
9Darwin Deez
Darwin Deez’ self-titled debut album, could be easily summed up in one sentence: it’s really hard to dislike. It’s not that he’s an extraordinary musician and to be honest, neither is his band. The drummer and bass player actually never played before, but “Darwin loves them both as people and he wants to be around them”. I guess it’s exactly the sort of positive ingenuousness which makes Darwin Deez and his music so unique. What he does comes straight from his heart. And the more I listen to the album the merrier it gets. Even a song like “Bad Day” that starts with the lyrics “I hope that the last page of your 800 page novel is missing” makes you smile, because it’s just so lovely and true. “Radar Detector” is maybe the most danceable and funniest love song of this summer and if you can’t shake your hips to this tune, you’re either deaf or a Norwegian Black Metal musician who likes to burn down churches. So forget about your Jane Fonda aerobic DVD, buy the Darwin Deez album and you’ll have your everyday unit of wonderful and refreshing “indie rock with a side of calisthenics”.
12Fact And Fancy: Super U
I don’t know how I could ignore the Brighton based sextet Super U and their debut album “We Live In Bazakhstan” for more than six months. This record is like a universal weapon and I mean it in the most irenic sense. It makes you happy, when you’re sad. It makes you happier when you’re already happy. And if you listen to it every day for a few times, you may become the happiest person on this planet. I’m speaking from my own experience, you can call me cheshire cat from now on. Their catchy indie-britpop-rock fired my imagination, so I made up some rumours about them and their music and curiously waited what they had to say…
Download the song “What News From Cornwall” for free!
First rumour: The band is named after a French supermarket ‘Super U’ in Biarritz, where Matt Barr and Ewan Wallace first met during holidays. A fight for the last piece of goat cheese evolved into a profound friendship.
12Don’t look back, but always beyond…
…at least if you like to discover new music and emerging talents. But I guess that’s why you’re reading this article.
The Arctic Circle has teamed up with the label Humble Soul and recently released Outer Circle, a mini album for the correspondent concerts at Kings Place on the 11th and 12th September. The first of the Outer Circle series presents emerging artists from Bristol and Manchester:
Rozi Plain
The beautifully haunting voice of singer-songwriter Rozi Plain gives me goosebumps every time I listen to her music. It’s pure but somehow dodgy, her sound his full of hope and melancholy at the same time. Makes me want to go barefoot on a wet meadow. (photo: Tom Copps)
Francois And The Atlas Mountains
With his charming French accent and his snappy tunes, I guess Francois could even let sere flowers bloom again. So cute, it might cause diabetes. And if you’re a fan of Stereo Total you should absolutely check this out! (photo: Jeremy Benassy)
15Ratatat & Carl Burgess
Carl Burgess is a filmmaker whose work is full of surrealism and absurdism. His piece for music video for Ratatat’s single “Drugs” caught my attention, and I just had to share with you. Check out part of Carl’s interview with the Creators Project and the video.
Ratatat – Drugs from Blink on Vimeo.
Your latest piece, a frightening yet compelling music video for electronic music duo Ratatat’s single “Drugs” (above), is made using stock footage from Getty Images. It could be seen as a companion piece to Three People Trapped in Infinite Politeness. What is it that appeals to you about stock images being manipulated?
I had the idea to make a video from stock footage long before Evan [bass player and producer] got in touch about making a video for Ratatat. Getty Images is something I’ve worked with in the past, and I knew it had legs to become something more. In a similar way to Pictures From The Daily Mail I’d been scouring Getty for a long time — saving up a library of these clips. I was captivated by how surreal they were, the long stares into the camera, the fake smiles and the bad acting. I’d think “Who the hell buys these clips”? A good example of this is the woman at the end of the Ratatat video who’s stroking the dog, that one is so weird, I’d love to know what purpose they had in mind for that one.
13The Animal Beat – something extraordinary
In November 2008 Travis Tucker and Jeff Linka started to write songs in their hometown Richmond, Virginia. Shortly after Andrew Saunders, David Graham and Paul Howard joined the band and they became The Animal Beat. The band will release their first EP “Ambient Jungle Noise” in August and told me about whistling techniques, pepperoni stalagmites and of course a lot about their music.
The Animal Beat originally started as a duo with Travis and Jeff. How come you decided to enlarge your little “zoo”?
Travis: While Jeff and I were working on the first batch of songs in “the cave”, we started to feel like each song could be so much more than two acoustic guitars would allow them to be. We wanted to open the songs up a little bit and really see where they could go. Plus practice time was getting a little lonely with just the two of us.
Jeff: Finding other band members really was the goal all along. We were just lucky that everyone got together so quickly.
22Shedding some summer tears with Trev Gibb
Trev Gibb is somehow a fascinating kind of musician. His songs are rather melancholic, but filled with warmth. His lyrics are brooding, but seemingly without effort. His EP Summer Tears will be released on the 19th July and you should see for yourself how it works out. I will say this much: it does quite well.
While I was listening to your music some rather personal questions crossed my mind. But first things first: Who is Trev Gibb? Would you like to introduce yourself?
Well, I’m a singer-songwriter from Newcastle. Most of my songs have the same sort of introspective melancholic thing going on and for some reason almost all of them seem to be love songs of a sort or observational. I’m currently in the process of setting up a band and we should be on our way by August.
Your EP “Summer Tears” will be released in July, with the stunning single “Tyrants and Slaves” on it. The prevailing atmosphere of your sound and lyrics is melancholic, so the question arises: how do you usually come up with ideas for your songs?
Well it’s all random. Most of the time I come up with guitar pieces and just record every idea I have. I have no filter! I end up with loads of them floating around my PC, some stick and some don’t and others I might come back to much later. My lyrics are written individually from all of that. I have a few notepads filled with random lines or observations so sometimes I use them to thread things together, some lyrics end up in the drafts folder on my phone, sometimes I have whole lyrics written out that become one song, and sometimes, rarely I might be able to sit down and the lyrics and music just happen at once. Those are the best because they feel effortless, because there’s a unity of feeling to them and normally they’re the least complex and most simple songs.
Have you heard ‘Effortlessly’ by Field Music? If not, that song makes me think of that. The song is like an elastic band, it expands and contracts rhythmically and the lyrics just flow over it, the song feels like what it is called. I love it. That’s the type of song I’d like to be able to write. Although it may not have been effortless to write, it has that feeling.
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