Slinger’s twitter claims he’s a ‘Coconut Entrepreneur’ from the Virgin Islands, his Facebook states that his hometown is Caribou City a deserted ghost hamlet, his logo is a lightning bolt that looks like it should be on a superhero costume and his colourful website gives no information whatsoever. But we’ll forgive him for all of this because the clutch of remixes he’s put out up to today have all been class 1 bangers. Prince’s I Wanna Be Your Lover, Pharell’s Brand New and Jess Glynne have all been given his sexy dance floor treatments and now it’s time for Bastille to get the going over with a remix that kicks off as if its arrived from the Big Beat scene of the 90’s (Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Propellerheads etc) before heading into more cinematic territories managing to make this remix sound old-school but with a modern twist. We'll be keeping an eye and ear out to see what this dude comes up with next. Bastille - Oblivion (Slinger Remix)
Since the huge commercial success of Bastille’s debut album (Dan Smith seemingly still managing to remain completely unaffected and continue to be one of the nicest men in pop) it probably wouldn’t surprise anyone if the band took a bit of time out from the madness. But it seems that Bastille aren’t that sort of unit. Currently on a 40 date festival tour they’ve also been busy experimenting in the studio. Apparently new songs are forming with some sounding rockier in places whilst others sound more electronic. It seems that album two won’t just be more of the same. That willingness to push themselves further can be heard on this new offering which is called Bad_News. No jokes about a new Bastille song being bad news please and yes, the underscore is meant to be there, but it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. It’s a low key release recorded in just two days to form part of a limited edition (1,000 copies) 7" vinyl single together with the song Oblivion, just so that the band can get something out there again. Bad_News is still recognisably Bastille, but gone are the big jungle drums and ‘woh-woh’ chants (although there’s a bit of an oo-ooh hook in there), replaced instead with a slightly grittier feel and an edgy groove. “Don’t turn your back on me, don’t bury your head deep just because you don’t know what to say,” sings Dan, reminding us all that in those situations where someone has received bad news, inaction screams a statement of not caring, even if it isn’t actually the case. Better to say something or do something than ignore someone. Imagine how it would feel if it happened to you. OK, how to behave lecture over. Take a listen. Bastille - Bad_News
It doesn’t need an intellectual debate about it, quite simply a good pop song contains at least some of the following.
A good tune
A good tune
A good tune
And most importantly….
A good tune.
Pompeii by Bastille has a good tune several times over and therefore for any discerning contemporary music fan is quite obviously good pop.
There’s been quite a bit of debate around recently about how the UK singles chart is like the sewer of pop, full of stinking turds of songs.
Pompeii is like Dyno-Rod coming along and jet washing the whole thing.
If you like pop music, if you care about the state of the UK charts, it is your duty to pre-order this song (here’s the link) and ensure that come its official release date it secures a high chart position. £1.49 will get you the song, a b-side and 3 remixes. Let’s put that in perspective. That’s less than the price of 4 Andrex toilet rolls from Tesco and they just end up down the drain covered in shit.
If you bottle up one of our current favourite new-rising acoustic female singer songwriters, combine her with the melodramatic flavours of electronic pop band Bastille and whisk them up in a jug of Fleetwood Mac the results had very little chance of being anything but a suitably impressive musical cocktail.
As Gabrielle Aplin builds to the major label release of the touching Please Don’t Say You Love Mein November and Dan Smith and co. put out the internet loved Flaws at the end of this month, their cover version of Dreams has finally been released to Soundcloud after floating around on You Tube and the like for some time. If you haven’t heard it, take a listen now. Smith’s tones sound weary and disconsolate against the lightness of Aplin’s, the two marrying up perfectly to given the song a fresh twist whilst maintaining the spirit of the original. When Aplin sings the line “Thunder only happens when it's raining, players only love you when they're playing,” we swear we hear an angel in the skies. Drink this one up.
Throwing the migratory concept of the multi-venue multi-gig idea out of the window, due to a weird combination of the organisers timetable programming and our own summer festival schedule which gives opportunities to see certain artists at numerous events and therefore not necessarily this weekend in London, our whole second day of the Camden Crawl is spent in the bunting dressed Wheelbarrow pub. Camden Crawl ? More like Camden Stationary.
As the music and alcohol flows a constant stream of bladder-stressed punters are found pushing their way towards the front, for the location of the toilets is like a space planners entry into the Carbuncle Cup, being located behind the stage. It’s as if the audience are doing a constant conga through the crowd.
The first half of the day is presented by This Is Fake DIY and as you’d expect, what you get is the more alternative, d-i-y shouty end of the indie spectrum, conga toilet dancing probably wasn’t on their agenda.
3 piece Tall Ships start with big sonics. There’s looped rifferama, huge multi-layered soundscapes and floor banging that could start an earthquake. Neil Diamond once sang ‘What A Beautiful Noise’. Maybe he had Tall Ships in mind.
Next is one of This Is Fake DIY’s own family; the preposterously named The Victorian English Gentlemans Club. Their set list is scrawled roughly on a huge sheet behind the stage. There’s a horny aggression about them, with moments when individual members look like they’re about to lose it completely with an experimental self-induced orgasm. Thankfully they keep it under control albeit with telephones used as microphones, sawing violins, oppressive drums and guttural noise.
The audience thins out a little before Evans the Death start their female fronted indie jangles. The band don’t look as if they’re enjoying themselves, but then not every form of music has to invoke a cheese-laden smile. Lo-Fi torch song You’re Joking is fairly endearing, the band stripping away the fuzz for something a little more naked with Katherine's female Morrissey mournfulness taking center stage.
Remember when indie bands actually sold records? Johnny Foreigner do. “You must be what’s left of the record industry, pleased to meet you,” Alexei, their indie to the core (he’s even wearing a Wedding Present T-shirt) vocalist starts. It’s followed by “This song is off our new album, didn’t anyone actually buy our new album?” “This song is from when we used to be famous,” is another one. Starting your set with off-microphone singing in a room full of people halfway through a day of all-day drinking probably isn’t the best way to get heard; the chatter wins this one. However Johnny Foreigner punch back with a raucous and glorious racket once amplified. Soon the whole audience looks like one amorphous nodding dog as sweat drips from Alexei’s brow. They might not be selling many records, but their ferociously good live show still trades excitement.
After a short break the second half of the day commences with Kyla La Grange. Kyla may be a slight figure on stage but her raspy unforced vocal has some balls behind it and she needs that to deal with the now ever increasing drunks. A dirty look from La Grange at some p*ssed lads who are standing right at the front with their backs to her talking says a lot about what La Grange is thinking, but she’s much politer than much of her ‘audience’ to say anything more. It’s a shame because her widescreen country / folk /rock sound typified by the frowning Vampire Smile is at times spine-tingling with its crescendos and hushed intimacies.
Any criticisms about music festivals being badly organised and running late are put to bed by Beans On Toast who comes on five minutes early, hashes up the first song and finally gets going bang on time. There are old songs (MDM Amazing), new songs (Dry War), a new band that sound like the Pogues gone wrong in a good way and a truncated cover version of the Beastie Boys (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party) all delivered with Beans gravel voiced wit and humour. For Dry War he explains that he started writing a song about the drought but it started raining every day since “so I put some stuff about war in it to make it relevant.”
There’s an influx of (mainly female) younger audience members in the front rows for Bastille. Vocalist Dan Smith sports a haircut last seen on Tom Bailey of the Thomson Twins, the euphoria dial gets turned up several notches and suddenly the drunks seem to disappear as the room takes on a new level of vibrancy. It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes. It’s easy to see why after a few years of plugging away solo with little return Smith and his band are now collecting the dividends. Songs such as Flaws, Laura Palmer and Overjoyed are compelling and have developed a life of their own – a rapturous and dramatic three quarters of an hour of pop music.
Burger King hats, leopard print, hotpants, stupid shades, bouncing (lots of), calls for ‘make some noise’, mates of Kanye (Mr Hudson), a bird watchers daughter (Rosie Oddie) and a collection of songs that sound like every best guilty pleasures compilation you’ve never bought finish the evening off, all courtesy of BIGkids, whose second set of the day they declare to be much better than the first. What they do is dumb-fun, fans of classic rock and indie will not be amused, but frankly this was a much better party than beard / cock stroking over a Beach House B-Side.
Hear a collection of songs from some of the bands in this review below.
Over the last 15 days Breaking More Waves has been publishing its very own selection of artists, musicians and bands that it believes are Ones to Watch for 2012.
New act tip lists seem to get more numerous every year and none is more ubiquitous than the BBC Sound of list, which we will be posting our thoughts on separately in a few weeks, after our traditional run down of our favourite ten albums of 2011.
Back at the end of 2010 a small bunch of independent music bloggers, including Breaking More Waves discussed the idea of collating the combined thoughts, knowledge and passions of the UK blogging community to create the Blog Sound of 2012. The idea was in no way intended as a platform to criticise the BBC’s Sound of List, which Breaking More Waves has previously been involved in and continues to support. The BBC’s list acts as an invaluable tool to help new artists gain strong media publicity for their music in a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult for such acts to establish themselves. The Blog Sound of 2012 is more an experiment to decide if a pool of UK music bloggers can come up with some interesting alternatives.
From these blogs suggestions a most voted for long list of 15 artists has been collated, of which a top 5 will be published in a few weeks, with an eventual winner being announced. Because of the selection of blogs that voted, the final list has a fairly strong bias towards indie / rock and folk / acoustic music but there's still much variety within.
And here, in no particular order are the 15 artists that have been chosen as the Blog Sound of 2012.
Houdini Dax – Brit-Pop influenced rough n ready psychedelic indie rock (Link to Facebook)
Lianne La Havas – Soft acoustic songwriter with soul and jazz tinges (Link to website)
Theme Park – Indie band recalling Talking Heads with danceable tropical pop (Link to Facebook)
Washington - Dramatic confident pop from adopted Oz girl born in Papa New Guinea (Link to Myspace)
Friends – Rhythmic girl fronted band with a hint of Tom-Tom Club and R ‘n’ B references. (Link to Myspace)
Meursault –Tagged as folktronica in some quarters, with 2 LP’s already behind them. (Link to Facebook)
Daughter – Sparse experimental female fronted folk (Link to Facebook)
Beth Jeans Houghton – Leftfield alt folk with all sorts thrown in (Link to Facebook)
Outfit – Layered sounding indie group that have been compared to Wild Beasts. (Link to Facebook)
Of the 15 acts chosen 3 of them also appear on the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch list ( Lucy Rose, Lianne La Havas and Outfit) with one of them (Beth Jeans Houghton) appearing on our own Ones To Watch list back in 2009. 8 of the 15 have appeared in some form or other on the blog this year, suggesting that the tastes of Breaking More Waves are not always that far removed from our blogging peer group.
As always with anything that we feature on the blog, we recommend that you listen to all of the artists above – maybe you’ll discover something that you haven’t heard before and love, which is ultimately the point of music blogs.
Keep a look out for the top 5 and winner of the Blog Sound of 2012, coming soon – in the meantime here are a couple of tracks of two of the nominated acts that we've never featured on Breaking More Waves before - The Jezabels and Friends.
