New Music: Aluna George - Mean What I Mean

Writing a new music blog and spending pretty much every spare second of my waking day obsessing about the stuff (and not just new and unsigned music, but all music from mainstream chart pop to obscure soundtrack albums from the past) probably gives me a certain level of ‘expertise’ in the subject. However, even experts get things wrong (although probably less so than non-experts).

AlunaGeorge is a classic example. After a string of blog adored early singles and featuring on plenty of end of year tip lists back at the end of 2012, the band's bubbly dance pop looked set to rule in 2013 and beyond. But for me Body Music, the debut album, was disappointing, lacking variation and becoming a tedious listen as a full length effort and their live shows lacked any sorted of charisma or genuine excitement. When I tried to sell a very little played copy of the album at a car boot sale, nobody would take it off my hands for even 20 pence. At that point I wrote AlunaGeorge off as a flash in the pan who would be forgotten in a year.

Cut forward to now and everything looks very different.  I was very wrong. The hooky as a fishing line I’m In Control (featuring Popcaan) and I Remember were both killer tunes and the small part of their set that I caught at Glastonbury by chance whilst waiting to see Sigur Ros was like watching a different beast to the band I’d witnessed a few years ago – the show was very cool, delivered why mighty confidence and left a big smile on my face.

Now they're back with their third tune from their forthcoming second album also called I Remember. Mean What I Mean continues the trajectory of goodness. Finding the pair partnering with MCs Dreezy and Leikeli47 there's some hard hitting rap, Aluna singing a pretty melody and it's all underscored by the duo’s clever and once again catchy house pop production (I love those wonky sounding synth stabs). Quality vibrant pop.

Aluna George - Mean What I Mean

Flow Festival 2013 - Preview

So far in 2013 Breaking More Waves has been previewing and reviewing UK festivals. However, come August we’ll be putting the blog on hold for a few weeks whilst we take our summer holidays. Of course our holidays wouldn’t be complete without some music and so from the 7th-11th August you’ll find us in Helsinki, Finland for our second ever visit to Flow Festival.

The organisers of Flow describe it as both ‘a mental and physical state of being, where feeling flows collectively through music into a larger entity.’ Wow and there we were thinking it was just a bunch of bands playing some tunes.

Flow Festival is located at the historic Suvilhati ex-power plant area in Helsinki. This is very much an urban festival; the landscape here is one of concrete, metal and masonry. Tall chimneys rise up behind the stages and huge cylindrical gas towers form an industrial landscape that is almost apocalyptic in nature. Those looking for the hippy spirit of the healing fields at Glastonbury won’t find it at Flow, although 25% of the energy at the festival is produced with renewable energy and one stage (the Black Tent) will run 100% on wind power. There’s also a strong recycling policy on site and Flow is easily the cleanest festival we’ve ever attended – quite simply the Finns don’t drop their litter.

The tenth edition of the festival features a range of artists from both the Finnish and international scenes. Amongst the international acts scheduled to play are Kraftwerk with their absorbing 3D show, Grimes, My Bloody Valentine, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Alicia Keys, AlunaGeorge (their debut LP Body Music is released today and we’re streaming the track Best Be Believing from it below), Haim, Kate Boy, Disclosure, Mount Kimbie, The Knife, Cat Power, Kendrick Lamar, Austra, Of Monster And Men, Azealia Banks, Beach House, Factory Floor and Hudson Mohawke. Finnish acts playing that may be known to worldwide music fans include the rather excellent Rubik, K-X-P and Black Lizard.

Besides the music Flow also utilises its dramatic setting with interesting spaces and lighting plus quality food and drink. For example Flow is probably the only festival we’ll attend this year that has a large Champagne bar and amongst its food choices there is organic black bean soup with tomato and avocado salsa and half a grilled lobster and charmoula. A greasy burger with onions at Reading festival Flow is certainly not. It’s why you’ll find us there. Keep an eye out for our review shortly after Flow finishes, but in the meantime catch a couple of really short teaser videos of the festival below.

AlunaGeorge - Best Be Believing

Flow Festival Teaser Video 1


Flow Festival 2013 Teaser from FLOW FESTIVAL on Vimeo.

Flow Festival Teaser Video 2


Flow Festival 2013 Teaser #2 from FLOW FESTIVAL on Vimeo.

AlunaGeorge - Attracting Flies

If an alien were to land in our hometown seaside city of Portsmouth right now and we tried to explain to him / her / it exactly what pop music in the UK sounded like in 2013 we’d probably put forward AlunaGeorge as an example. With a nod to r ‘n’b, a tip to slightly warped pop, a Frank Ocean cover under their belts, working with Disclosure (the other duo du jour) to produce a bona fide credible big hitter with White Noise and featuring on both the BBC Sound of 2013 and the Blog Sound of 2013 polls, AlunaGeorge are undoubtedly of the moment. Of course that could just mean that they’re a passing fad and if they are then that’s fine with us, not all pop music can last forever. In fact anyone who loves pop music will know that the joy of it is forgetting about all the other crap in our lives and finding happiness in a beat, a lyric, a chorus, a tune and just enjoying the moment. If we start cataloguing if the songs are still going to be relevant in a decades time or how they compare to ‘the classics’ like The Beatles or Bowie (although so far the new Bowie stuff is good isn’t it?) we’re in danger of becoming a dull music expert and that’s not very sexy is it? And we want our pop music to be sexy. We want it to make us dance.

And Attracting Flies makes us dance. That slightly wonky we haven’t really got a clue what we’re doing but we’re feeling it type dancing that everyone with no natural rhythm does, especially after a couple of drinks. And remember everyone – the rules of pop chapter 7.2 state that the way a person dances is probably similar to how they have sex. Girls, just remember that when you see the man of your dreams shuffling around in an embarrassed uncoordinated way on the nightclub dance floor.

Taken from the album Body Music forthcoming on the 1 July, Attracting Flies is released on March 10. 

AlunaGeorge - Attracting Flies