M+A Win The Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition

Rather like the festival itself, the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition is on a scale that dwarfs any other ‘submit your music for a chance to play the festival’ contest, with 1000’s of acts entering in the one week gateway period in January. Yet once the masses have been whittled down to the final 8 (a process which for the last three years Breaking More Waves has been involved in – see here) the live final, whilst being slickly and professionally run with great live sound quality, isn’t a gigantic show. Instead it locates itself in the relatively small confines of Pilton Working Men’s Club just a few minutes from the festival site itself.

This year’s event followed a slightly different format from the previous years, with each act performing just a two song maximum ten minutes set, keeping the event to a somewhat more manageable length than the previous year’s marathons. The 2014 judging panel included amongst its number the likes of Huw Stephens from Radio 1, music journalist Chris Salmon from The Guardian, a representative from The Great Escape Festival and of course Michael and Emily Eavis from Glastonbury.

The 8 shortlisted acts that played were of consistently high quality but rather like the two previous years where Bridie Jackson & The Arbour and Treetop Flyers won, there was one performance that stood out. M+A transformed the room into a sea of smiles by delivering a fantastic multi-whistling, percussive banging, electronic sampling, vocal warping set of experimental pop that brought on waves of spontaneous dancing in the audience,  an impressive feat considering their relatively early third placement on the bill. It came as no surprise when they were announced as the winners, bagging them a guaranteed slot on one of the main stages of the festival and a £5,000 PRS for Music Foundation Talent Development prize, to help take their songwriting and performing to the next level.  Two runners up, golden voiced fresh soul / pop star in the making Izzy Bizu and energetic punk upstarts The Black Tambourines also took away a £2,500 Talent Development Prize. 

Above : M+A at the 2014 Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition

See  and hear M+A below, with the ultra-catchy tune Down The West Side and also watch a live video clip (not filmed at the Emerging Talent competition) of a song that they’ve not yet released, suitably named Festival, which was one of the two tracks they played last night to come out winners. 

M+A - Festival (Live)

M+A - Down The West Side

The Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2014 - The Shortlist

Two days ago the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition short list for the live final was announced. The long list of 120 acts chosen by music bloggers and writers, which included Breaking More Waves, was cut down to the final 8 by a second judging team that included Emily Eavis, organiser of the festival. “"We're so proud of this shortlist. It was really hard to get it down to just 8 acts - the standard this year was incredible - but I think we've whittled it down to a really strong final 8. I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone who entered, and to our team of judges for narrowing it down to 120 acts. Now bring on the live final!" We couldn’t agree more. The selected eight acts are all without exception very good.

Of the shortlisted acts, one of Breaking More Waves choices, Gibson Bull, has made the cut, so we can pat ourselves on the back for the fact that someone agrees with us. Also on the shortlist is Furs who we featured on the blog in 2012. 

The finalists and the writers / sites / blogs that chose them are as follows:

Gibson Bull (Breaking More Waves)

Hero- Fisher (Charming Man)

Only Girl (Judges Utd – Not one blog, but 3 combined which included this one)

M+A  (Michael Cragg from Popjustice. Freelance music writer for The Guardian, Notion, Beat and Dazed)

Furs (The Line Of Best Fit)

The Black Tambourines (Resonance FM)

Pandr Eyez (Drowned In Sound)

Izzy Bizu (Michael Cragg from Popjustice. Freelance music writer for The Guardian, Notion, Beat and Dazed)

Guessing a winner at this stage is impossible – from the sophisticated pop of Only Girl to the soulful R&B of Pandr Eyez to the surf rock of The Black Tambourines, there’s a wide variety of styles on offer. However, if previous years are anything to go by there are usually 2 or 3 acts that stand head and shoulders above the other acts in the live finals, where performance and raw talent shines through. Last year we fell in love and pretty much proposed musical marriage (OK, it was more of a first date but our love has not diminished a year later) to eventual winners Bridie Jackson & The Arbour after they performed, they were that good.

For now though we’d like to draw your attention to two acts on the shortlist besides our own selection of Gibson Bull, who we'll be cheering on. First up is Hero-Fisher, who it transpires is already playing the likes of this year’s Great Escape in Brighton and the Isle of Wight Festival.  Hero-Fisher’s song Fear Not Victorious starts as if it’s the female fronted baby of Manc faves James circa Sometimes (listen to the spoken word intro and the references to the weather and see if you agree) with the slightest dash of Lou Reed before grows into something rather cacophonous. It’s not an instant song, but repeated listens will find you delving deeper and deeper, not wanting to come up for air for some time. Watch the video carefully, its one of the slowest films you'll ever watch.

Hero-Fisher - Fear Not Victorious (Video)

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Secondly there’s Izzy Bizu a singer who has already had the support of Zane Lowe’s next hype on Radio 1, BBC1 Extra and a lot of pop blogs after being discovered through open mic competitions. She’s 19 years old, is from South West London and has a sweet jazzy /soul voice and is already being tipped as a next big thing, so is sure to be in the running at the live final as she can certainly sing.

Izzy Bizu - White Tiger (Video)

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The invite only final will be held at Pilton Working Men's Club on Saturday 5th April, 2014. Breaking More Waves will be in attendance – keep an eye on our twitter during the night for updates. Hear all 8 finalists on the playlist below.

Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition Shortlist (Playlist)

Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2014 Longlist Announced - Our Selections

For the third time in a row Breaking More Waves has been involved in the judging of the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition, which gives new emerging and unsigned artists from the UK and Ireland the chance to compete for a slot on one of the main stages at the festival. Because the competition receives thousands of entrants the organisers ask a selection of UK music writers and bloggers to help with the judging process, sending each a playlist from the many entries to select their three favourites to form a longlist. That longlist is then whittled down to a shortlist of eight artists by another group of judges including Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis. These eight acts play at a live final in Pilton in April to decide the winning act.

This year Breaking More Waves was involved quite heavily in the judging process, picking five acts on the longlist. This is because besides our three choices from our main playlist we also helped judge some further acts where due to unforeseen circumstances two of the original judges were unable to fulfil their commitment. These two additional selections are listed as 'Judges Utd' as 2 other bloggers also chose 1 additional act to make up a selection of 3.

Today the longlist was announced and you can see all the selected artists here. Besides our own choices we're very pleased to see the likes of Fickle Friends (one of this blogs new favourite bands), Codes (who we chose for the longlist ourselves a couple of years back) and a number of other acts that we've featured in the past such as Brolin, Hot Feet and Ronika. We look forward to listening to all the acts nominated ourselves, and of course seeing who the long list judges choose for the live final. In previous years some of the bands who make the longlist (but don't necessarily make the shortlist) go on to do well anyway, even if they don't make the final. For example last year Circa Waves were one of the bands selected and now this year they are being championed by many an indie fan and magazines such as the NME.

The five acts we chose vary considerably in musical style and genre and also in profile. Cosmo Sheldrake is probably well known to new music fans, having found large amounts of support on the blogs, whilst the likes of Wednesday’s Wolves will be pretty much new to everyone, having only formed last year, and at the time of writing have just 180 plays of their song Sticks and Stones on their Soundcloud. Our basis for selection was not how well known the act was or not - simply what we thought was the best music we heard.

Here are the nominations from Breaking More Waves, together with a few words on each act. We look forward to seeing the final 8 selected artists and hope to be able to report back directly from the live final in April which we will be attending.

Cosmo Sheldrake

Quite simply the most absurdly innovative and eccentric artist, Cosmo Sheldrake remoulds traditional genres for a new generation with quirky found-sounds, loops and nonsense experimentation all over the shop. It's utterly compelling and without getting too carried away, his music needs to be filed in the top drawer marked maverick genius.



The Ragamuffins

Purveyors of brassy chest-thumping and organ swirling mayhem, The Ragamuffins combine classic Brit-pop references with catchy hooks that make us think of bands such as The Jam, The Milk, The Boo Radleys and Dexy’s Midnight Runners. There’s a hint of northern soul and sixties pop in their uplifting songs. They know how to jam joy into the ears.



Wednesday’s Wolves

Wednesday's Wolves are Chrissy and Ysabelle and together they create graceful female harmonies that float into the ears like a tender kiss. The simplicity of the music allows the songs to breathe and their demo of Sticks and Stones charms with its melancholy from start to finish. Fans of The Staves will find much to immerse themselves in here. Beautifully emotive.



The Merrylees

The music of The Merrylees is the colourful sound of cowboys riding over the hill into the sunset dressed in t-shirts with psychedelic prints rather than stetson hats and shotgun style chaps. A cosmic and nostalgic sound full of enjoyable guitar chops, trumpet swoons and melody.



Gibson Bull

Gibson Bull is an acoustic based singer songwriter with sweet and gentle melodies, but on the song Skin & Bones he adds a modern twist by adding soft beats and groovy double bass that wouldn't be out of place on a trip-hop record. Richly mellow, it's a piece of classic and very human songwriting.