Muchuu - Heart In Turn

At 1081 posts and over 3 years of new music blogging it’s inevitable that some of the artists that we featured in the formative and tentative early days of the blog will have now returned with new records, some as established stars, some still very much as unknowns to the public at large. Others will have fallen off the radar completely. Our 2008 list of ‘ones to watch’ returners include Florence & The Machine and Marina & The Diamonds, whilst the likes of La Roux and Little Boots remain absent on leave. Others such as Giantess (renamed Yes Giantess) have split and Skint & Demoralised, who parted ways from his major label before the album was released, hover around doing indie support slots, but at least he’s now got two albums under his belt - you can now listen to both, including the previously unreleased debut here.

Which brings us neatly to another previously featured group – brother / sister duo Muchuu -who rather like Skint & Demoralised have skipped very quickly to album number two, demonstrating one of the bonuses for fans of bands who don’t have huge commercial success and operate in a more independent way – that the whole process of writing, recording and releasing material can be sped up without lots of cooks stirring the broth. There’s an irony here because you would expect that major labels would want to capitalise on a band that experience commercial success, pop music being the fickle thing that it is, and follow up with a second album quickly. Also with a team working behind them you would expect a major label artist to have more time to spend on the creative process and less time on the business side of things, but it seems that in the majority of cases this simply isn’t true. Maybe independent artists are just more motivated? Or maybe major labels are just massively inefficient beasts.

Whatever the reasons let’s be thankful that Muchuu are back; they have a new album called On Beyond which is out now. You can buy it from iTunes here, listen and download a free track called Pirate here and to whet your appetite here’s a rather sparklingly gorgeous piece of pretty electro pop extracted from it. It’s called Heart In Turn. “I know in my heavy bones its worth all of this time alone, the chase and all the secrecy, obsession fade to you and me,” sings Millie with that distinctive cute vocal over fluttery woah-ohs and crystal showers of electronica.

Heart In Turn - Muchuu