The Saturday Surf #23

Elton John once sang that Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, but we can assure you it’s not –wherever you are. It’s for loving – musical loving. Right now as this blog posts to the internet at 8.30 on Saturday morning we’re driving north to Sheffield. Why ? Follow us on twitter and we’ll reveal all later today. But whatever it is please don’t Hold It Against Me.

Oops! I Did It Again dropping another clue as to what a Lucky weekend this plans to be. Anyway, this blog is all about musical love, after all we were Born To Make You Happy.

So this is The Saturday Surf, the bit at the end of the week where we pick up the tracks that we would have dedicated a full post to if it wasn’t for the fact that we were too lazy / busy / unable to and bung it all in some sort of musical set menu. This week it’s a 3 course set meal featuring some synth pop for starters, some downbeat piano /electronic post-dubstep for mains and delicate acoustic folkish beauty to finish. It'll keep you dancing Till The World Ends

Black Light Dinner Party – Gold Chain

For hors d’oeuvres there’s Black Light Dinner Party. They’re a slow cooked delicacy, having only released three tracks to the internet since March, and each one has made it onto Breaking More Waves. Gold Chain is coated with a big slice of cheddar flavoured keyboard sounds and a spoon full of sugary lyrics. Consider our tastebuds and earbuds brought to life.

Gold Chain by Black Light Dinner Party

Paper Crows – Gone

Like Black Light Dinner Party, Paper Crows are no strangers to Breaking More Waves. Gone is the B-Side to the bands single When Friends Survive; a doped-up come-down of minimalistic piano and blissful ambient shimmers, it will leaves you feeling just a little bit tender around the edges. Delicious.

Gone by Paper Crows

Greta Isaac – My Book

For desert here’s something simple, sweet and mellow. Welcome to the quiet revolution. Greta Isaac is an unsigned singer songwriter who writes soothing, richly sensual songs built out of unhurried grace and calm. There’s a definite similarity to acoustic chanteuse Kate Walsh both vocally and in terms of composition. Really quite lovely.

Greta Isaac - My Book

Black Light Dinner Party - Small Boxes

Remember Black Light Dinner Party? They burnt brightly with the computerised pop dream of debut song Older Together earlier this year and a bunch of bloggers (including ourselves) went a bit ga-ga mental over it. Since then the band have been pretty elusive – we almost thought they’d gone into hibernation - but now new material is emerging.

Small Boxes is not as instantly hooky as Older Together, but there’s no denying that after a few listens its mid-tempo electro-shimmer takes hold of you, touching you with a too-cool-for-school nonchalant groove. It’s fair to say that the production and sounds used will probably still draw the inevitable Passion Pit comparisons, but this is no bad thing.

One thing we’re a little disappointed with in terms of coverage of Black Light Dinner Party is the amount of articles that we’ve read calling the band anonymous. Even the NME called the group a ‘mystery project.’ Come on journalists doesn't your job description require you to be a little investigative ? Although not to the extent of the disgusting News of the World phone hacking crimes, please. Do your research, as even a humble two-bit one-man part-time blog like Breaking More Waves managed to unearth a few facts with nothing more than Google in about five minutes (here). For now however, let’s not worry too much about identities because ultimately that's just filler back story (although we do love a good back story now and then as it helps us to relate and gain a sense of ownership of the artist and we all know that secretly pop isn't just about the music - it's about the haircuts, the fashion, the attitude, the character and the history). For now just enjoy the music.

Small Boxes by Black Light Dinner Party

Black Light Dinner Party - Older Together (Video)

With just one song and a small handful of blog loving, Black Light Dinner Party are finding welcoming ears with their song Older Together, a hooky computerised groove that could have easily been the hidden track on Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change EP. It’s the kind of song that just screams out for a boutique electro-pop label like Neon Gold or Kitsune to pick up on it with its steely backwash of electronica, plinky plonk keyboard notes and growing euphoric build.

For those who want to know more about the band, there’s still very little out there, apart from the few facts we gleaned and reported on when we first posted about the group last month (here). Now there's this new video for the song. It was shot by Dreambear with a little bit of help from Lomography. Enjoy.

Black Light Dinner Party "Older Together" from dreambear on Vimeo.

Black Light Dinner Party - New Waves

Just one song. One song full of Passion Pit / Miike Snow throbbing electronica, plinky keyboards and falsetto male vocals is all we have from Boston’s Black Light Dinner Party – but sometimes one song is enough. In this case it’s called Older Together and it’s already been all over a number of blogs including a few high profile ones. Yet (wait for it) nobody seems to know very much about the band at all. It seems as if they’ve taken their name literally in their method of approach – keeping people in the dark and hungry for more.

Such a mystery approach leads some people to ask questions about the bands existence (here) and the answer if we believe everything we read on the internet is “The band members are: Jack Cote, Matt Decker, Joel Friedman, TJ Jordan and Zack Lipkins. They have a Myspace, Twitter and Facebook page.” And that’s it – with their official web presence giving nothing away, no press release or obvious information out there it’s easy to make the ‘we know nothing about this group’ statement.

But with just the small bit of information we have we’ve done a little bit of digging. Here’s just a couple of snippets that we’ve found. First the band is not that new – there is evidence of Black Light Dinner Party being around at least a year ago, even if those internet entries have now been deleted. Second one of their number has been producing some quirky folky electro-acoustic music for a while now, away from Black Light Dinner Party. It seems like Decimal. One may also have connections to the band. But really does this matter, it’s just back story. What counts are the tunes. And Older Together, which you can download below is a turned-on synth sizzler indeed.

Older Together by Black Light Dinner Party