Gaea Girls + Bearded Youth Quest + Willis Lee - Portsmouth Edge Of The Wedge - Feb 7th 2012- Free Show

Today we’re taking a pause from new music blogging to bring to your attention news of a show that is happening tomorrow (Tuesday 7th) evening in Breaking More Waves home city of Southsea, Portsmouth, UK that we have a small amount of involvement in.

In conjunction with the recently resurrected all female gig promotion team of Hong Kong Gardeners Club we’re putting on a free show at The Edge of the Wedge (the compact 100 capacity sister venue to the mighty Wedgewood Rooms). The Facebook event page is here.

Headlining will be the mysterious Gaea Girls, a band who are retaining a very low key online presence. They make music which veers between electronica with kraut-rock influences and guitar drone, so be prepared to immerse your head in their spacey sound. Joining them will be Bearded Youth Quest and Willis Lee in support.

In addition we’ll be providing some musical interludes in between the bands. Some may call this a DJ set but we consider it more akin to playing some gentle background music to enable the conversation and beers to flow with absolutely zero mixing or beat matching.

If you’re in the South Coast area why not hit the Edge of the Wedge on Tuesday night? It won’t cost you a penny to get in – it’s got to be more enjoyable than watching Holby City, the Biggest Loser or Cowboy Builders on the TV hasn’t it? 

We hope to see some of you there and tomorrow normal blogging resumes with some new music.

The Saturday Surf #29

Ask any music blogger about post volumes and editorial content length and you’ll inevitably get different answers. Some will argue for multiple posts a day with little editorial (who reads this stuff anyway, surely it’s about listening to the tunes and watching the videos) whilst others will say that it’s better to post fewer times with greater volumes of text and thought. We suspect that the reality of a blogs style and content has as much to do with an individual’s personal life than it does any intellectual process. Let’s face it if you’re a student or unemployed you’ve probably got plenty of time to listen and post as much content as you want. At the other extreme if your life is full with a busy day job / family etc the chances are you’re doing well to post at all.

Our view is there is room for all types and styles of music blogs – we read / listen to both, although sometimes wonder if anyone actually makes it to the bottom of our longer posts without stifling a yawn or just skipping to the music.

Still with us? Haven’t yawned yet? Good, because the point we’re trying to make here is about our own situation. This week has been a good week in the fields of new music. It’s like being able to wander through an orchard and grab tasty musical apples by the basket load without even really thinking. Except the trouble is, in our case time is always working against us and just opening the gate and getting into the grove is complex. This is why we have The Saturday Surf. It’s a chance to quickly catch up with the musical fruits that nearly got away.

Alice Jemima – Far From Here

If Alice Jemima was an apple she’d be a Gala; crisp with plenty of rosy sweetness. Far From Here is a delicious little taster recorded on Garageband, whilst she beavers away growing something even more scrumptious in bigger studios for the future.

Foxes – Youth (Adventure Club Remix)

Remember Foxes ? We listed her as one of our Ones to Watch for 2012 (see what we said here) and all of a sudden she’s become music’s version of a Pink Lady apple because of this remix. Why a pink lady ? Because Orange Pippin website (a comprehensive resource for apples and orchards) named it as no.1 in their top ten varieties of apples as voted for by their visitors and users of Hype Machine (a comprehensive resource for new music and banging remixes) have been voting for this remix of Youth in their masses.

The Neighbourhood – Female Robbery

If the two previous musical fruits were lacking in crunch for you here’s something more guitar based. The Neighbourhood have an EP coming in late March / early April and this taster track is a good start. The Neighbourhood are like a Granny Smith in so far as they’re slightly tart and have grown out of California.

That was the apples of the week  Saturday Surf. Full of musical fructose and vitamins.

Lucy Rose - Red Face (Video)

Lucy Rose has really become our fille de l'année over the last 12 months and with her new single Red Face taking a slightly beefier route than her more gentle persuasions of the past, has demonstrated that even acoustic types can rock out a little too.

With the video Lucy seems to want to flex those musical muscles a bit further. By drumming. In a field.

You can imagine the conversation with her manager, can’t you?

“I’m bored of making tea and being all sweet, girlish and elfin. I want to show how tough I am and get physical by bashing drums, in a field. WITHOUT WEARING A COAT.”

“Er Ok Lucy.”

“Nobody has ever done that before.”

“Er, but Lucy they have. Look here’s some men drumming in a field, and here’s some more (and he's great) and here’s even more. Ok, technically that last one isn't actually in a field, but it's close. ”

“But they’re all men and I want to show them that girls can drum in a field to.”

(Sighing) “Ok Lucy, it’s your video. But let’s put some sweet and cute clips of your childhood in the video as well, just to remind people of your soft side – because that’s what your audience likes.”

“OK, but for my next video I want to be in a shed, mending things with tools, in the middle of winter wearing only a string vest. OK?”

“Oh god.”

You can catch Lucy out on tour supporting Noah and the Whale in the UK at Southend Cliffs Pavilion, Plymouth Pavilions, Wolverhampton Civic and Manchester Apollo in March. She also heads out to the US and Canada to support Bombay Bicycle Club from mid-February. Red Face is available on iTunes now.

Lucy Rose - Red Face

Maker - New Waves

By now you’re probably sick of the name Lana, with the fabulous Miss Del Rey’s omnipresence on every music related website being almost blinding. So today may not be a particularly good time to introduce you to another one, namely Lana McDonagh and her band Maker, but bear with us whilst we do just that.

The most common assumption with Breaking More Waves is that this blog is Brighton based. It’s not, but we fully understand why so many people think so. After all we’ve probably covered more bands from that seagull crowded seaside city than any other outside of London. With Maker, we’re adding another.

Maker are the aforementioned Lana and a trio of more masculine types;  Danny Mcgurn, Toby Horton and Macc Kano. They revealed themselves to the world just a few days ago with a tweet in mid-January linking to a website that contains nothing more than a couple of pictures and (importantly) some music. Besides that there’s been very little. Fellow Brighton based band Cave Painting mentioned them on their Facebook page and for now that’s pretty much your lot, except for a mysterious You Tube piece (below) which has a slightly woozy atmospheric piece of indie on it. A bit of digging on the web might find you some more information – Lana for example was previously a member of another band The Laylanas and went under the name Lana Lay. Yes Lana Lay, Lana Del Rey, those names are almost too close for comfort.

Del Rey aside, don’t assume when looking at the picture above that Maker are another band pushing out sub-rate Horrors influenced indie-goth-rock. They’re most certainly not. Instead they make bounding melodic music with a rock-pop feel, the kind of stuff that would sit very neatly on the airwaves of BBC Radio 2 or 6 Music. Searching for reference points we’d probably suggest that if you took the likes of Lissie or Stevie Nicks, stripped away America and added in some good old fashioned late 80's guitar-toting jangles, rhythms and stomps you might be a little bit closer to the Maker sound, but to be honest this still falls a long way short of being accurate. The best thing, as always, is to press play and make your own decisions. It’s time to introduce you to Maker, Brighton’s newest band. Gigs will follow shortly - keep an eye on their website via the link above.

Maker - Missing



Maker - Secret Heart

Wonder Villains - New Waves

In the mid 90’s a scene born out of fanzine culture, glitter, glamour and d-i-y attitude called Teen-C punked its way across the UK for a few brief but exciting years. The likes of Bis, Dweeb, Disco Pistols, The Period Pains and most notably Kenickie, featuring a young Lauren Laverne, created a wave of short lived enthusiasm for a whole bunch of teenagers with no musical ability but plenty of style / attitude to create their own bands. It even helped give birth to this blog, albeit in a shabbily produced paper fanzine form called Breaking Waves. That’s where the ‘more’ comes from you see.

Whilst this scene, like many other scenes, left no discernible legacy (except for Lauren) you can still hear its influence in the likes of early Los Campesinos!, Fight Like Apes and more recently the band Pris who we’ve featured a number of times on Breaking More Waves.

Here’s a band that are probably far too young to have ever even heard of Teen-C, having only just finished their A-Levels, yet their sound - a blend of gloriously fizzy indie pop -  bears much resemblance to it.

Wonder Villains are Eimear Coyle, Cheylene Murphy, Ryan McGroarty and Kieran Coyle from Derry in Northern Ireland.  Having already released the likes of Zola - a toybox song of sugary catchiness that references the Italian football legend - the band is readying its new single Ferrari for release on Feb 19th. It’s a brilliant mess of girl gang shouting, forthright vocals and hooky synth and guitar lines that irrespective of your age will probably have you smiling and dancing. Some times girls (and boys) just want to have fun. Now where’s that glitter?

Wonder Villains - Ferrari

Wonder Villains - 33



Wonder Villains - Zola