Public Service Broadcasting - Elfstedentocht (Parts 1 & 2)

How do you experience music? Do you just listen to it? Or as you take the sounds in do they create visual images for you? Or is it something more instinctive than that – do you FEEL it?

Public Service Broadcasting is a band who operate for us on all three levels. They’re fantastic to listen to; with such varied instrumentation from electronic wizardry to guitar riffs a plenty - not forgetting those unusual vocal samples from old information films. Plus they’re very visual, using old video footage that blends seamlessly with the music both on the internet and in a live setting. But more importantly, as all the best music does, they make us feel something. On Everest they made us feel exhilarated and uplifted, on The War Room EP they made us feel melancholic, somewhat grief stricken and also strangely inspired and on Signal 30 they made us feel like jumping in the car and breaking speed limits (despite the safety briefings on the vocal samples). Let's hope they never use voices from a porn film on one of their songs.

Now J Willgoose, Esq. and Wigglesworth have released 2 new tracks that act in tandem with each other. Once again the combination of what they’re doing makes us feel wonderfully invigorated, only this time also proving that language is no barrier in music.

Elfstedentocht parts 1 and 2 are two very different pieces about a European speed skating event that takes place in the province of Friesland in Northern Holland. With Dutch vocal samples (complete with English translations on You Tube) both tracks have us reaching for our skates and wishing there really was snow and ice outside. Part 1 is Signal 30’s heavier short tempered cousin, all pumping muscles and titanic rock riffs, leaving you feeling gratefully exhausted. Part 2 is a gentler affair, with the visuals that focus on the snowy landscapes. The music is more flowing and almost hallucogenic, reminiscent in places of an indie rock version of Candi Staton’s You Got the Love (check out around 2.50)

Neither Elfstedentocht Parts 1 or 2 can be found on PSB’s debut album Inform Educate Entertain, but if you haven’t heard that yet we highly recommend you skate on over and give that a cool spin as well.

Elfstedentocht Part 1

Elfstedentocht Part 2

24 Hour Charity Blogathon - 31st Jan 2014

Today we’re asking for your money.

Breaking More Waves is an unfunded and independent new music blog. We write this because of our passion and love of music and so that in our own small way we can help support the artists that we love through the exposure they get via the blog and its readership.

But we want to put the blog to a further use and make some money. Not for ourselves of course, but for Cancer Research.

On 31st Jan 2014 we will be participating in a 24 hour blogathon. It will involve us doing nothing but writing and posting blog posts for 24 hours non-stop. Why? To raise money for Cancer Research UK a charity that is very close to our heart.

Cancer Research UK is the world's leading charity dedicated to beating cancer through research. They are fighting cancer on all fronts, finding new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat it to save more lives. They are entirely funded by the public. Throughout our lives many of us will be affected either directly or indirectly by Cancer. It’s why we want to do our bit and help a little.

So we’re asking that if you are a regular reader of the blog, if this is the first time you’ve ever visited or if you are an artist or music industry representative that has either been featured or have an interest in the blog, please support us in this 24 hour blogathon by making a donation – whatever you can afford will be gratefully appreciated.

You can make a donation at our Just Giving web page (click here) or by using the button below.

We’d also appreciate it massively if you are able to share this information and also repost this blog using your social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Thank you for your support. Follow us on twitter on 31st January for sleep deprived tweets and expect plenty of blog posts throughout that day and night.

Go on, do it now, give a little and make this whole thing worthwhile.

Joseph Salvat - Every Night

“You know they all say that you’re much more than this bust up face deserves, but then I guess you need the dishes I serve.” So starts the new tune from Josef Salvat – could it perhaps be the soundtrack to the biopic of Gordon Ramsey? We digress though, this is not a food or chef blog, even if we like to think of ourselves as a waiter serving good musical dishes.

So back to Salvat, a man who is deeply unashamed of the pastel suit and some confident stage posing, who previously had internet success with debut tunes Hustler and This Life; that is if you define success as lots of plays of your music rather than real life packed out crowds – when we caught him at Blissfields Festival this summer he played to a very scarce audience, but then the year before that we saw Charli XCX at the same festival play to virtually nobody and she’s done OK since hasn’t she?  

Salvat’s new song is called Every Night and somebody we played it to described it as ‘a plodder’, which doesn’t really sell it does it?  Although certainly there's a truth that Every Night is led by a dawdling bass throb as Salvat croons his way through the piece, before going for a gentle knicker-wetting falsetto in the chorus. So if it’s a plodder, it’s a pretty good one. Just make sure you have spare underwear with you when listening.

Josef Salvat - Every Night

Mogwai - Remurdered

Just in time for Halloween the new Mogwai tune sounds like it’s taken from a soundtrack to a lost Dario Argento film. It's the first piece of music to be lifted from forthcoming album Rave Tapes. Can you ever imagine raving to Mogwai? If you can they must be some seriously freaky drugs you’re on - they're certainly not a band that we'd expect to be twerking in da club on a Friday night to. (Note - you're probably unlikely to find us twerking in da club on any night, especially Friday).

Remurdered was produced by Paul Savage with whom the band worked on Mogwai Young Team (the album which contains Mogwai Fear Satan - our favourite Mogwai tune of all time) and Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. If anyone is still banding Mogwai as a ‘post-rock’ band this one will surely get them to rethink; dark, ominous and creepy sounding, Remurdered has just rekindled our interest and love of Mogwai by about three thousand percent.

Now can someone please make a super scary video with witches, blood and horrible screaming deaths to accompany this tune please?

Mogwai - Remurdered

F U R N S - New Waves

Danish band F U R N S sound lazily sexy. Now you may think that shouldn’t work, after all if you’re getting down and dirty with someone they should be putting some effort in - not treating the moment as if it’s time for a bit of a rest.

But trust us, with F U R N S the languid flowing music isn’t about hard and fast musical coitus but slow sensual seduction. Whilst singer and pianist Monika Falud doesn’t have the power of Hannah from London Grammar or the sophistication of Sade, there’s something about her tender tones that sweep you into a world of warmth and romanticism. She’s a talented lady as well, having played piano from the age of 8, and by the time she reached 16 had won several prizes at competitions in Denmark. Together with Mathias Dahl Andreasen, she formed F U R N S in 2011 and the duo has been releasing songs to the internet since 2012.

Prepare to have your ears kissed with their lucid musical foreplay as you listen to Sparks (a free download) and then go the whole way with the smooth silkiness of Haunt Me, which a few years ago might have been called chill wave - but we'll just call it lovely.

F U R N S - Sparks

F U R N S - Haunt Me (You Tube Stream)

Jagwar Ma - Let Her Go (Jagwar's Yew Mix)

It might only be October but already the part of the Breaking More Waves brain that likes to tie things up, file, compartmentalise and generally organise our musical life is thinking end of year lists. That means our own Ones to Watch for 2014 list (already written and fully formed and now being fleshed out into a series of blog posts starting some time mid-November) and our top 10 favourite albums of 2013 list, which is just beginning to shape.

One album that is certainly a contender for that list is Jagwar Ma’s Howlin’, an irresistibly groovy mix of surf rock, psychedelic tendencies, and electronic house grooves that recalls the spirit of The Happy Mondays and the age of late 80’s and early 90’s indie dance. From it comes this track Let Her Go, one of the more guitar driven summertime beach thumpers, which the band has given a little electronic sprucing for the dance floor with a big old chunky electronic bass sound. One for hands in the air, fist pumping, hip shoving indie disco grooving – the only criticism is that it needs an extended work out rather than its criminally short two minutes and forty five seconds.

Jagwar Ma - Let Her Go (Jagwar's Yew Mix)

Samuel - New Waves

Today we’re introducing a new artist who goes by the name of Samuel. No surname, just Samuel. His music is very much of the moment; Steam Train is all serene electronics, beats and tinged with slow-mo sensual R&B atmospherics, but what sets it apart from the masses is the tenderness, the softness, the sparse beauty of the thing. Amongst the smooth computerisations, the synth wobbles and the why-don’t-we-fuck-right-now bass there’s a gorgeously restrained soulful voice. There’s something about its inflection and tone that feels eerily familiar as well; as if it’s a ghost from the days of blogs past. We could be wrong but we suspect there’s something about dragons lurking in this singer’s history, but if there is or isn’t, it’s the now that we’re concerned with not with chasing yesterday. 

Oh go on then, we're not going to be mysterious, we're pretty sure that Samuel is Samuel Chase who used to be in Samuel and the Dragon (who recorded one of the most under-rated pieces of leftfield pop ever in Diamonds On A Boat) and then went on to record some material as Dreadnought. (Get out clause: nobody has confirmed this to us, it's just our own guess work so we can't be 100%, but we're 99% sure).

His Soundcloud tag describes Steam Train as a technicolour jam, but we’d suggest that if music has a colour, this song is black midnight darkness lit by the dull sodium glare of city streetlights and stars rather than bright rainbows. The Falling Star EP is out now. 

Samuel - Steam Train

Samuel - Falling Star (Video)

Honeyblood - Bud / Kissing On You

Glasgow-based two-piece Honeyblood impressed us at this year’s Great Escape in Brighton with their rough and tumble garage rock sound. Now Stina Marie Claire Tweeddale (vocals, guitar and greatest name ) plus Shona McVicar (drums) are releasing a single proper called Bud via Brighton’s FatCat Records on pink vinyl together with digital download. The track was produced by Rory Atwell who has worked with other notable indie guitar bands such as Palma Violets and Veronica Falls.

Despite hailing from Scotland, there’s a very American sound to Bud. We hear touches of The Breeders and Throwing Muses in their glorious shambles as well as the closer to home North-Eastern lipstick, glitter and leopard print rock of Kenickie (who featured all round media top person Lauren Laverne amongst their line up) on the good as the a-side b-side of Kissing On You.

We’re streaming both the video for Bud, which was filmed at Great Brampton House just outside Hereford as well the Soundcloud for Kissing On You.

Honeyblood play a number of UK shows this week. Dates are 24th Oct - Boiler Room, Guildford, 26th Oct - Sticky Mikes, Brighton, 27th Oct - Fallow, Manchester , 29th Oct – Glasgow Broadcast and 30th Oct – Edinburgh Electric Circus. If you're seeing them in Guildford tonight, we'll see you there.

Buy Bud here.

Honeyblood - Kissing On You

Honeyblood - Bud (Video)

Bad Romance - Why You Don't Have To Buy Vinyl To Love Music

It seems that not a week goes by and some journalist / blogger / music connoisseur puts up an article about how great vinyl is. For example in the last week we’ve read these two pieces: All My Friends Are Vinyl Heads and The Romantic Allure of Vinyl Puts its Digital Descendants to Shame.

Now, we’re not disagreeing that physical formats have something over MP3s and we’re not dissing vinyl as a form – far from it. Nobody has ever asked us if they can look at what’s on our iTunes, but many friends and relatives have asked to have a rummage through our extensive CD collection.

Yes you read that right. A CD collection.

Yet as we’ve read many of these articles, with their authors fetishizing about their romance with vinyl, the thing that strikes us, even offends us somewhat, is that somehow many of the pieces seem to convey the idea either explicitly or implicitly that it’s not possible to be a ‘proper fan’ of music unless you buy the black plastic stuff. That somehow only by purchasing vinyl can people parade themselves amongst their peers as being truly dedicated to a band or artist.

Bollocks.

Whilst we’d agree that there’s a difference between the casual music fan who listens to the radio, streams songs on Spotify and watches videos on You Tube, occasionally making the choice to buy the odd album over another luxury item such as new clothes, going out and the like, the idea that to buy vinyl as some sort of badge of affection for music is a load of guff. Even the arguments that it sounds better aren’t necessarily true. This good article (Does Vinyl Sound Better) by Mark Richardson on Pitchfork explains how ‘good’ sound is subjective. “Some people want "accuracy" and some people want a lot of bass; some people only care that it's loud enough. Plus, we're very good at fooling ourselves when it comes to making distinctions between sounds,” Mark explains.

All of the reasons people give about why vinyl is so brilliant seem to centre around the romance of it. But romance isn’t the same as love. Romance is to do with the physical – the smell, the feel the sensation of purchase and having something tangible to show the outside world, just like chocolates, flowers and Valentine’s cards. But love is intangible – you can’t see it. Just like music in its purest form. You can love music passionately but you don’t have to have a piece of vinyl to prove it. 

So if like us you haven’t got a tasteful vinyl collection and don’t feel the need to partake in the ceremony of its purchase and play, don’t worry. Romance is seductive, but it’s not true love. You can still be a hardcore music fan if you’re prioritising your spending on MP3’s, CD’s, gig tickets and very little on vinyl. You’re still showing love.

Mononoke - New Waves

What do we know about Liverpool based singer / songwriter Mononoke? For now, absolutely nothing; there’s just the music, just one song, but it’s a beautiful debut. Taking Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for a relationship that’s gone wrong, Alice is a gorgeously faded blue ballad; probably not best listened to if you’re feeling a little bit alone, fragile and tender right now. There’s something about the lyric “you wear your party dress but there’s no party to attend,” that gets us every time we listen.

So let’s go underground with Mononoke. “Down the rabbit hole he left you alone, you call that love?” Oh. So sad. So lovely.

Mononoke - Alice (Video)

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart (Video)

Last week NME Magazine’s cover featured a bunch of artists who were (a) young and (b) British and titled it Young Britannia 2013. This attempt at trying to band together a group of artists by geography and demographic smacked a little of the musical equivalent of casting a huge fishing net into the sea and writing about whatever was pulled up, but at least it got the NME focussing on new music rather than endlessly trying to relive glory days of the past.

One of the artists featured was Chlöe Howl, who seems to have been omnipresent in the world of new pop music this year without actually releasing a huge amount of songs.

But now there is a new tune, it’s called Paper Heart, and it’s rather good. Here are some thoughts:

1. Paper Heart is a big electronic radio friendly tune, all about a relationship ending. So subject material originality = zero, but just deal with it, probably at least 75% of pop music is about love or its end and it’s better than singing about being in ‘da club’. We particularly like the sound at about 2.39 which sounds like a sexy electronic motorbike revving up.

2. The video is a riot of ideas which finds Chlöe going the whole hog to tell her ex-boyfriend it’s over. There’s balloons, donkey shit, big scissors, interpretive dancing, coloured umbrellas, rubbish men dressed as taps, karate dudes, a military band, carnival dancers and of course Chlöe herself. It might seem like quite a lot of money to spend on telling someone the bad news, but we think it’s worth it and Chlöe seems to enjoy it.

3. Recently on Twitter we asked our followers who they thought might make the BBC Sound of 2014 list. From that minor straw poll, based on the responses received, we’d put Chlöe Howl as a front runner in the early betting.

4. Pop music often doesn't last forever, but neither does a tasty fish. Both often are there to be devoured and enjoyed for what they are before the next meal comes along.  As Chlöe is one of those artists writhing in NME's big net, she deserves to be served up, let’s just hope the big bad pop machine doesn’t spit her out back into the sea too early.

Here's Paper Heart.

Chlöe Howl - Paper Heart (Video)

Gathering 2013 - Review

Our last multi venue music festival of 2013 brought us to Oxford, the City of Dreaming Spires. The occasion was Gathering 2013 which featured around 40 bands playing over 7 stages in 6 venues. Here’s our review, or rather……

10 Things We Learnt At Gathering 2013

1. Gathering is not a religious event.

Although you could easily be confused into thinking it was. With a queue that snaked its way down the pavement outside Cowley Road Methodist Church and large 3D letters spelling out GATHERING outside (see picture above), it wasn’t altogether surprising that we were twice asked what was going on by passing strangers. Was it a new religious cult one of them asked? No, it was just the eager queue for the wristband / ticket exchange of a music festival. The only religious experience to be had was the conversion of punters into fans.

2. Sometimes music venues are masters of disguise.

There was a little bit of confusion amongst non-locals (including ourselves) having arrived at the venue marked on the programme as The Bullingdon to find that it had become the Art Bar. Thankfully the confusion lasted only a few seconds before we ventured inside to catch the creamy pop magic of Lucy Taylor aka Pawws, who together with a drummer and keyboard player coated the room with a sweet glossy musical shine, a touch of flute and lyrics that explored different parts of relationships.  “I can make you feel better,” she cooed on one song. She was right.

3. The early bird catches the worm.

And that worm for us was JJ Rosa. With moments of Prince-like funk, groovy disco, a smattering of Hendrix and a cover version of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life by Indeep, Jessica Rose Hancock (formerly of The Jessie Rose Trip) was a new wave pre-raphaelite red spandex clad rock queen with a show stopping soulful / jazz vocal. A feverishly good start to the afternoon.

4. The early bird catches the worm (2)

Early bird tickets for this year’s Gathering Festival were just £15. Even if you just saw London Grammar and Local Natives (the two biggest bands on the bill) or like us venue jumped to catch plenty of rising talent this undoubtedly represents value.

5. The early bird catches the worm (3)

With Gathering seemingly letting each venue charge whatever prices they wanted for drinks, early arrivals at the Bullingdon / Art Bar found it was happy hour. We were charged just £2.50 for a pint of Thatchers cider. Another bargain.

6. If you want to make it absolutely clear where a venue is, just chalk it on the pavement.

7. All venues should have a kitchen.

When you’re rushing between gigs fitting in as many bands as you can (we managed 11 in 9 hours) there’s no time to stop for a sit down meal. So, well done the East Oxford Community Centre for providing us with a delicious Burrito which we were able to eat whilst watching epic rockers Pylo.

8. All venues should have sufficient air conditioning.

Wolf Alice’s tense searing guitars and close to breaking point vocals (streaming below) injected plenty of heat into the aforementioned community centre, both musically and physically. It was no wonder that lead singer Ellie announced that it was the hottest she’d been in her life; but even despite the lack of air, the band played a scorcher with one of the best and most deodorant challenging sets of the day.The venue won on the Burritos but its ventilation scored low.

9. London Grammar was the band to see; but only if you hadn’t seen them before.

Or at least that’s the way most of Gathering’s punters seemed to think, with a large queue forming for their inevitably over capacity show at the Academy. Having already seen the trio numerous times this year Breaking More Waves took a different route back to the Community Centre and was rewarded by D/C whose blend of supple soulful vocals and crowning keyboard grooves spelt him out as a new musical royalty in waiting. Keep an ear and eye out for this talented new kid on the block.

10. Chlöe Howl often gets described as sassy. That’s because she is.

We’d give Chlöe 8/10 on the sassy scale for her performance at Gathering.

Check out some great photos from Gathering 2013 by friend and reader of Breaking More Waves Abi Dainton here and enjoy Blush by Wolf Alice below.

Wolf Alice - Blush

London Grammar - Nightcall (LG re-edit)

This is our final post for the week as we take a short blog break – we’ll be back Monday 21st October.

Until then we’ll leave you with a cover version by a group that we’re seeing for the fifth time this year this evening. London Grammar’s take on Kavinsky’s Night Call is one of the many understated lullabies you’ll find on their debut album If You Wait. This soothing re-edit of the song takes the trio’s trademark moody piano, atmospheric guitars and Hannah Reid’s powerfully haunting vocal and gradually escalates them all towards the heavens. Depending on your perspective the LP's gentle glow is either a masterstroke in subtlety or a bit of a yawn inducer in its entirety, but away from the full length every tune when heard individually sounds majestic. Night Call is no exception.

Night Call will be released as part of an EP on December 8th to cap off a very successful year for the band.

London Grammar - Night Call (LG re-edit)

astronomyy - New Waves

Earlier this year the blogs went into buzz overload with a new artist called astronomyy (yes, no capital letter at the start - deal with it grammar police) but here at Breaking More Waves we weren’t convinced. To our ears his music sounded like Eric Clapton trying to be ‘relevant’; r ‘n’ b dad rock was a phrase that came to mind. Despite the spacious casting of the sound the guitar solo on Don’t Need You sounded horrendously self-indulgent and Things I’d Do For You sounded drippy, making us want to shout “man up” at whoever astronomyy is. Categorising his music as surf / R&B and stating that his soul was written in H†ML should have hit our seaside referencing internet based preferences perfectly, but it didn’t.

So when we reluctantly pressed play on his new track Drivin Me Crazy yesterday we weren’t expecting much and for the first 20 odd seconds nothing altered our perceptions. Then that changed. For although astronomyy’s voice is still featherweight, Drivin Me Crazy uses guitars that sound sexy and thrilling, the beats are slick and the production is spot on. It’s very zeitgeisty of course, but it does something for us. This is slinky. 

Somewhere someone is probably making love to this song right now (chances are they write a music blog).

Go on then, maybe we were wrong at first. Just maybe. This is blog sex.

astronomyy - Drivin Me Crazy

Young War - Rose Gold

A few months ago we streamed the demo of a song called Say That It’s Love by a Manchester's Young War as part of our preview of the Bushstock festival. That song has now evolved into a fully fledged recording together with four other beauties which form his debut EP Rose Gold, exclusively revealed yesterday via Daisy Digital*, one of our new favourite blogs.

If we were going to tag Young War with a genre it would be R&B, but this isn’t the sort of modern electronic R&B that you’ll find all over the blogs right now. This is a warmer, older era form of R&B that has a more acoustic / organic sound that feels instantly familiar. It’s pleasingly soft-pedal and will probably annoy the hell out of all of those people who want their sounds to be edgy and challenging, but if you’re like us and occasionally want the musical equivalent of a warm bath to placate the ears, Young War is it.

Our favourite song on the EP besides Say That It’s Love is the title track Rose Gold; a sad slow groovy relationship crooner that finds Thom Stone (for he is Young War) singing that it’s ‘so hard to watch it die’ but ‘the memories start to fade with time.’ Ah bless, it’ll probably make you want to give him a hug.

Our English teacher told us to never use the word nice, that there were much better words to use. But what’s the point in inventing a word if you’re not going to use it? The sound Young War makes is nice. Who cares what teacher says?

You can download the whole EP from Young War’s Facebook page for a single like. Now that’s what we call a bargain.

Young War - Rose Gold

Gathering 2013 - Preview

Us Brits love talking about the weather, mainly because it’s so variable. We even have a multitude of words for rain, that all mean different things: It’s spitting, showers, drizzle, wet air, tipping it down, raining cats and dogs, sheeting it, the list goes on and on. So it’s inevitable that when we mention UK summer festivals, the weather gets high priority in conversation. Yet this year, despite Breaking More Waves spending most summer weekends somewhere in a field in the UK soaking up live music, we haven’t got a soaking. The wellies haven’t had one single outing. Mud? What’s that?

Now the tent has been packed away for another year it doesn’t mean the end to music festivals quite yet. For it seems that nearly every city throughout the UK has its own multi-venue event and many of them take place in autumn. But because they're in urban locations, our wellies can stay safely packed away - there are many positives to tarmac and an indoor venue. We’ve already covered Southsea Fest, the weekend just gone saw Norwich’s Sound & Vision and next weekend both Cardiff (Swn) and Oxford (Gathering) will find wristband sporting music fans  trooping the streets until the early hours - we’ll be amongst them in Oxford.

Gathering is a one dayer in the Cowley Road area of the city and runs from 4pm until 3am. Still a relative newbie in this ever growing market Gathering has some big names in Local Natives and London Grammar topping the bill, but this is very much a festival about new bands.

The line-up is like a smorgasbord of Breaking More Waves featured artists. The likes of Chasing Grace, Candy Says, Cheatahs, Chlöe Howl, Findlay, Gold & Youth, JJ Rosa, Laura Welsh, Pawws, Pylo, Ruen Brothers and Mt. Wolf are amongst the 42 acts playing across the 7 venues. If you’re going we recommend any of those, plus in addition here’s three more recommendations from the bill that we haven’t featured before.

D/C

London’s D/C is like a bucket. A bucket that’s full of talent, with that talent sloshing over the side trying to escape. He’s been putting out some incredible mash ups based around intense cello playing and beats including this one that includes Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar and Rudimental parts within. You’ll find more of that over at his Soundcloud as well as this live recording of an original song called Devil On My Shoulder which is the musical equivalent of the smoothest mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream piled high.

Jake Hart

Understated, minimal, late night, Jake Hart owes something to James Blake with his down tempo blissful songs. Lovely stuff found in the form of Awake below.

Lauren Aquilina

‘18 year old singer songwriter and biscuit enthusiast,’ is how Lauren Aquilina describes herself. With her Fools EP and Sinners EP both finding plenty of fans online her 2014 tour is already beginning to sell out, Lauren could well be 2014’s Gabrielle Aplin, even without a John Lewis Advert.

Gathering takes place on the 19 October at various venues in Oxford and organisers are predicting a sell-out very soon, so don’t leave it till to the last minute to buy your tickets (here). We’ll be bringing a review from the streets of Oxford and Gathering 2013 shortly after it finishes.

Critcisms Of New Music Blogs - Some Misconceptions

There’s a level of misapprehension about this new music blogging business in certain quarters. Here are just four of the inaccurate statements and criticisms directed towards us from readers, artists and Twitter followers we've received over the last year. We’ve bundled them together and put them in this post because (a) it’s a wet Sunday afternoon and we were looking for something to keep us busy, but more importantly (b) having invested considerable amounts of time over the last 5 years into the blog it can be dispiriting to read or hear statement we believe to be largely incorrect relating to something that we're passionate about. 

1. Criticism that ‘Hype Machiners’ only feature tracks that the bands have paid the site / blog to feature. (This comment came from a band that had not had much success getting their band featured on blogs.)

In the five years of Breaking More Waves existence we’ve received two offers of payment for featuring a track and in both cases wrote back to the band suggesting they seriously reconsidered their approach. However we acknowledge that there are sites out there who take payment to review music although none of them are listed on Hype Machine. Here’s a great article on Echoes and Dust about if bands should pay for record reviews. (In a nutshell our view is they shouldn't - after all how can an objective opinion be given if your being paid by the artist who you are reviewing and therefore how can the review be of any value to its reader?) 

2. Criticism that ‘tastemaking’ blogs are statistically more likely to write about an artist that that the blog writer / editor has heard on TV / radio.

Blogs are usually ahead of TV and radio in their coverage of new music, that’s why they’re called tastemakers. We can press play on a track we discover online, love it and post about it instantly - often at demo stage or way before the music industry has got involved. If an artist has made it on to TV the chances are they will have been written about on new music blogs many months (or even years before). You want examples? OK, here at Breaking More Waves we first featured Ellie Goulding in February 2009, she debuted on TV with her first single in October that year. Chvrches first popped up here in May 2012, and appeared on Later With Jools nearly a year and a half later. We're proud as a new music blog that our discoveries of music come from many sources and often way before they are featured on mainstream media - it's one of the reasons (besides our wit, intelligence and dashing good looks of course ;) ) that people read us.

3. Criticism that blogs have become too mainstream and don't feature enough underground artists.

There is no rule on the internet that says that blogs must be underground – this rule is just in someone’s head. The criticism fails to understand that many blogs are written by sole authors who simply write about the music they like. If that happens to be mainstream / commercial music, then so be it. If you don’t like it don’t read that blog, look elsewhere. There are plenty of blogs writing about underground or unsigned music. From our own perspective if something is commercial or not has never been a reason to write about the music - we just write about music that we enjoy. 

4. Criticism that new music blogs are too obsessed with buzz and hype, rather than longevity.

There’s no rule on the internet that says that what blogs should and shouldn’t write about. Not even in The Rules of Pop Chapter 27 - The Internet And Music. There are many blogs out there who will only feature an artist in the early stages of their music careers because that’s their niche – brand new artists, that’s why people read those blogs. There are blogs who simply act as agents of ‘churnover’. However there are many others who occupy a different role and will continue to write about artists that continue to excite them over the longer term. Please don’t tar all blogs with the same brush – if you’re levelling this criticism as a generalisation about all blogs you’re not looking at the right blogs for you. There are more words about ‘churnover’ and our thoughts about getting excited about the brand new / buzz here.

FFFRRANNNO - New Waves

If you’ve already come across the ridiculously named but easy to Google FFFRRANNNO it’s most probably in the same way we did; through the twenty something producer's remix of Lorde’s Bravado. The connections with Lorde don’t stop there; both artists come from New Zealand and have the same people working for them. However, in terms of musical similarities there’s very little except that both are very enjoyable.

FFFRRANNNO’s tracks remind us a little of Gold Panda or Mount Kimbie in so far as it’s modern electronic music that aims for more than just the dance floor – your private home listening attention is demanded as well. This level of privacy seems to extend to some of the track names; one piece is titled How To Fuck Well (having listened to it we still haven't improved our abilities in that area - maybe we weren't listening hard enough) and a freshly plucked remix of The 1975’s Pressure, which is subtitled the Birthday Sex Remix (our detective work suggests FFFRRANNNO’S birthday is 14th March, so you know what to do then OK?).

These crisp, shiny productions fizzle with brightness and are packed with enough ideas to warrant repeated plays. Our biggest difficulty was selecting just a couple of tracks from the wealth of ultra-modern zooming computer richness that FFFRRANNNO has uploaded online to date to recommend to you. So get started with what’s below. First there’s that lolloping Birthday Sex Remix and that’s followed by Noah. It's a track that pings, woops, bops and grooves in all the right places before it takes off to the moon. If you like what you hear, head this way for more.

And as for the name? Simple. It's just his first name, Frano, elongated for internet accessibility. 

The 1975 - Pressure (FFFRRANNNO's Birthday Sex Remix)

FFFRRANNNO - Noah (Audio Stream Only)

Indiana - Mess Around (Raider Remix)

Earlier today we SHOUTED about SHOUTING on the internet to get your message across.

OUR MESSAGE WAS / IS VERY SIMPLE – MESS AROUND BY INDIANA IS A BLOODY GREAT SONG.

That is all.

Who said it was impossible for Breaking More Waves not to write a really short snappy blog post that just said here is a tune, it’s good, listen.

HERE IS A TUNE, IT’S GOOD, LISTEN*

There, that was easy wasn’t it? That concludes our shouting about Indiana. Can we have an album released now please?

Less snappy, more waffle filled posts will continue as normal tomorrow.

*Actually this a remix. If you want to hear the original and haven’t done so already (AND YOU REALLY SHOULD) please read the previous post from exactly 12 hours ago.

Indiana - Mess Around (Raider Remix)

Indiana - Mess Around (Full Version)

Yesterday we wrote some words about how as a fan sometimes you have to SHOUT QUITE LOUDLY A NUMBER OF TIMES TO GET A MESSAGE ACROSS. ESPECIALLY WHEN EVERYONE ELSE IS SHOUTING ABOUT OTHER STUFF.

Well we’ve shouted about Indiana quite a bit over the last year so today we’re going to do some more shouting.

We’re shouting this at exactly 8.30am.

We will then shout again at 8.30pm.

Our first shout is that WHILST WE’VE ALREADY FEATURED THE VIDEO OF INDIANA’S MESS AROUND, THERE IS ALSO A FULL LENGTH VERSION OF THE SONG WHICH GIVES YOU AN EXTRA 2 MINUTES OF A.M.A.Z.I.N.G DARKNESS.

Don’t listen to us though. Listen to Indiana. OK?

See you later for another yell?

Indiana - Mess Around (Full Version)

Findlay - New Waves

Breaking More Waves is very much a fan blog. Put simply, we post what we post because we’re fans of the music and for no other reason. As fans this means that sometimes we have to keep SHOUTING about something great. Our hope is that every now and then someone reading this blog will discover something they like and fan conversion will take place, but sometimes it doesn't happen instantly. You have to SHOUT loudly, more than once, to get people to take notice. It's not the most subtle of techniques, but sometimes it works.

It’s a philosophy we share with our big bad blog brother The Von Pip Musical Express who has been SHOUTING quite loudly in everyone’s face for some time about Findlay from Manchester. So after all his ear pummelling we’ve been battered into submission and have to agree that the gutter fingering rock n roll bruising she delivers is pretty damn fine.

Take new single Greasy Love. It’s a bit of a ‘holy shit’ moment. It’s the musical equivalent of a fist f*ck and finding it dirtily wonderful. It has big drums, grubby guitars and underneath it all a chanted chorus that hooks your ear off without mercy. Really what more do you want?

Then there’s Off & On (see and hear here) which is definitely more on than off – it’s on fire, on heat, on the money.

You can almost hear the sweat dripping in her songs. Play them. Then if you love them SHOUT ABOUT THEM.

Findlay - Greasy Love (Video)

Rosie Lowe - New Waves

Devon’s Rosie Lowe has been bubbling under this year, originally with 3 songs (River, 10 Thousand Ballooons and Sinking Sand) on her Soundcloud, (they have now all now been removed) as well as providing guest vocals on Lil Silva’s deep house tune No Doubt this summer. However, a new track appeared today and so we feel it’s time to introduce Rosie to readers of Breaking More Waves.

Me & Your Ghost is very of the moment stuff. With looped spooked out noises, solemn piano and beats that sound like someone is pressing buttons at random, Me & Your Ghost is by no means a straightforward pop song, but in some ways it still is pop as it sounds very of the moment. It probably sits in the more out there territory of an avant-garde pop artist like Bjork , particularly in terms of its unusual use of beats. The comparisons with Laura Mvula, The XX, Jessie Ware or Sade that have been lobbed her way may be difficult to hear at this moment, but give it some time and more will become clear. 

Me & Your Ghost is taken from Rosie’s forthcoming EP Right Thing due on December 2 which she worked on with Kwes and Dave Okumu of The Invisible. 

Rosie Lowe - Me & Your Ghost

Daughter - Home (Jon Hopkins Remix)

Take two artists that have produced equally great albums in 2013, put them together and the risk is huge disappointment – after all if you were drawing a musical Venn diagram Daughter and Jon Hopkins probably wouldn’t be the first two names you’d think of showing any relationship between.

Thankfully Hopkins knows his place. This new version of Home, originally from Daughter’s Wild Youth EP (which unsurprisingly given the title also contained the original version of Youth hidden away on track 3) is 80% Daughter. This is the right way to do things in this case.

OK, it’s hardly a remix at all is it?  But as the EP was great this is a chance for those who missed it first time round to play catch up and older Daughter fans won't be able to claim that ‘that weird electronic producer bloke Hopkins has ruined it’. Home (Jon Hopkins Remix) is featured on the soundtrack to the film How I Live Now which is also by Hopkins. He worked on it at the same time as he was finishing off his Mercury nominated and sure to be on plenty of end of year album lists record Immunity. You can listen to excerpts from the soundtrack here which contains all the beautiful ambience you could need in less than 5 minutes.

Daughter - Home (Jon Hopkins Remix)

Clare Maguire - Black Coffee

With each new track that Clare Maguire puts out, there’s a sense that after her debut pop album and some personal troubles she’s really finding herself as a performer and a person – less polished, less trying to be perfect, but all the better for it. This latest tune, a cover of Ella Fitzgerald’s Black Coffee is by far our favourite yet. No, cut that, favourite doesn’t do it justice; if we could marry a voice (which is a weird concept we agree but stick with us on this one) this would be it; it gets right to the very core. It's unlikely to find any place on the Radio 1 playlist, but has already found a place in our heart.

Clare will shortly be returning to the live stage first this weekend in Norwich at Sound & Vision Festival and the weekend afterwards at Swn Festival in Cardiff. Hopefully she will be playing some of her own headlining dates soon, fingers crossed for some low-key intimate gigs in low ceiling candle lit bars draped in velvet, which would suit this seductive ode to drinking and smoking away loneliness. 

Now does anyone know a registrar that will allow two non physical things - an internet blog and a voice - to get hitched?

Clare Maguire - Black Coffee

Linus Young - New Waves

With a modern production applied to an atmospheric indie rock template, Linus Young has divided our thoughts; first that this new band could be onto something, or second that they could be the next version of The Neighbourhood. Remember their song Female Robbery? It was a promising start, appearing to drag indie rock out of its often backward looking mould, but everything after that veered dangerously close (OK, it actually hit) to Maroon 5 blandness. Could Linus Young end up doing the same? Let’s hope not (even if both acts are touring with The 1975 in the US and UK respectively).

For now let’s just enjoy City of Sin – which is rather excellent. It’s a song that manages to combine the languid artistry of groups like The XX and London Grammar with guitars that glide and chime, some near obligatory modern electronic pulses towards the end, male female vocals, plus a Breaking Bad style landscape in the video. 

According to Google searches the track first showed up on line at This Kid Is A Problem and Disco Naïveté and has Manny Marroquin (who has worked with Kanye West, Alicia Keys and The Weeknd amongst others ) on mixing duties, which all suggests that there’s a team behind this one, so more is sure to follow. 

Linus Young - City Of Sin (Video)