The Saturday Surf #9

With constant offers of sex from gorgeous online PR media types to hanging around back stage drinking champagne with some of the planet’s biggest buzz bands, the life of a high profile music blogger really is all about living the dream isn’t it?

And a dream is all it will ever be for Breaking More Waves as we continue our existence as a small scale, independent and old-school music blog. From our basic back-in-the-day domain address and Blogspot layout template with no fancy design aesthetic, to our lack of no more than twenty words artily cool thesaurus heavy posts with accompanying blurry video. Breaking More Waves remains what it is, doing what it does, with no bigger ambitions, no plans to become a record label, no goal to become ‘a big blog’, no vision of building some sort of career or revenue from what we do here and with absolutely no desire to be in with the in crowd. We’ve said it hundreds of times before, but ‘cool’ is transient and not something we’re interested in.

Our mission is simple – to love music and write about the music we love in a style that reflects the authors personality rather than some attempt at pseudo-journalism. Hopefully you’ll share some of that love.

So let’s get metaphorically naked and go skinny dipping through a few of the musical waves that have got us a little shivery this week, in our weekly feature The Saturday Surf. There’s plenty to catch up on, but as always we’re limiting the number of tracks to a manageable handful.

Zola Jesus – Vessel

The track that a lot of the internet has gone crazy for this week is the first release from the forthcoming Zola Jesus album Conatus, due September 26. Her previous album Stridulum II was in our top ten albums of 2010 and it also featured in the UK Bloggers Top 50 albums of the year poll. Vessel is no radical departure from songs on this previous work, although it places more emphasis on mechanical rhythms – like a factory in a bad mood. UK fans can catch her this year at The Big Chill, Field Day, Bestival and End of the Road Festival.

Zola Jesus - Vessel

Babe Rainbow – Set Loose

It’s over a year since we last mentioned Babe Rainbow and his horrow-show spooked-out electronica. This new work taken from his recently released Endless Path EP on Warp is surprisingly warm, and blissful, treading along a lusher ambient path, dare we mention the word chill-wave ? Or is that now considered so geekily-limp-wristed-male-student-smoking-joints-in-his-bedroom that it would be time to shut this blog down forever?

Babe Rainbow - "Set Loose" taken from Endless Path EP - OUT NOW

Gold Panda - MPB

Further electronic wizardry comes in the form of this new tune from Breaking More Waves favourite Gold Panda, which rather like Zola Jesus has pushed the internet and Hype Machine into meltdown. As you'd expect from Gold Panda MPB displays all sorts of oddball disjointedness yet never loses flow. Roll on album number 2. Have some of it. Now.

MPB by Gold Panda

Boxes – Throw Your Stones

Delicate beats, a reference to With or Without You by U2, hints of The Postal Service and a subtle melody that decides to go a bit doo-wollop in the middle section. Throw Your Stones by London’s Boxes is more of a graceful flight on a glider with a tiny bit of turbulence thrown in than a sonic jet ride, its gently affecting turns taking on the role of an indie electro-acoustic security blanket. Repeated listens will make you feel even more comfortable and you might just want to wrap yourself up in its light musical warmth.

Boxes - Throw Your Stones

Creature - So High

This week, we’ve left our favourite till last. So High by living it up Canadian group Creature is 47% Blondie 34% Goldfrapp and 19% Donna Summer. It is also 100% amazing. They also have another song Prom Prom the chorus of which goes “It’s prom prom, you’re a lesbian,” which is probably the best or worst lyric you've ever heard depending on your perspective, until they follow it up later on the track with “She’s a lezzie, now let her be a lezzie.” You can hear that teen coming out pop-drama by clicking here.

So High - Creature

That completes this Saturday Surf. Musical skinny dipping that sets you free. Shall we do it again next week? See you down on the beach then and we’ll break some waves together.