Preview: Dials Festival 2018 (Part 2 - Late Afternoon / Early Evening)

One of the best things about running your own small independent festival is that you get to help book the bands. Whilst I don’t book everything on the Dials Festival line up, somewhere between 30 – 40% of the line-up has been my own selections and as a small team we all have an input into the final bill.  

Being a fully independent festival gives us the advantage that the team take some risks in what we book, choosing some acts that we personally like, irrespective of if they’ll sell tickets or not. Yet clearly we also have to find artists within our small budget that will help make punters put their hands in their wallets, buy a ticket and come along to the event.

We also have to try and curate a line-up that makes sense to people. However, for me it’s also important to trust in some of my own judgements and put a few curveballs on the bill to give variety and people some choice. Of course, some of those curveballs may end up playing to virtually nobody, but I have to trust the audience of what is essentially a new music festival to be open minded enough to not just sticking with what they know - discovery is key. As a music listener I don’t listen to one genre or style of music and I’m sure many of you reading this don’t. I like indie, pop, ambient, electronica, soundtracks, folk, hip-hop, country, soul and many more genres, so I want, within reason, the festival programme to represent that variety, yet retaining a consistency that makes a complete bill.

With that in mind here are 3 further recommendations from the Dials bill for the middle part of the day, two of whom should be no surprise to regular long-term readers of the blog and one that I’ve yet to feature, but I’m very excited about.

17.00-17.30 Curxes - The Loft

Curxes played the very first Dials Festival in 2015 and return in an evolved form. Since that last performance the project has downsized from a band and is now just essentially the solo creative vehicle of Roberta Fidora who has moved away from the mainland, across the Solent, to take up residence in the Isle of Wight. In 2017 Roberta released her second album Gilded Cage – a weird experimental electronic ghostly pop record which made it on to the Breaking More Waves 2017 Album of the Year List. 

Live shows to promote the album have been relatively few and far between although Curxes appeared at this year’s Isle of Wight Festival and last year there were a number of gigs supporting Blancmange where a mysterious figure dressed as some sort of dancing bear accompanied Roberta on stage. Will we get the bear at Dials? You’ll have to be there to see. Expect to possibly hear some brand new tracks as well.



18.00-18.30 Salt Ashes - The Loft

You could consider Viega Sanchez aka Salt Ashes as one of the curveball choices at Dials Festival.  There are after all a lot of bands that play guitars and couldn't necessarily be considered pop. 

Salt Ashes is the antithesis of that. She does bangers. Electronic ones. Dark ones. Sultry ones. Very modern ones. There won’t be a guitar in site. Just her, some pitch perfect vocals and someone behind her creating the music. She’s probably the most pop act on the Dials 2018 bill and is all the better for it.

At this point in the evening you have a very simple choice – the psychobilly garage punk sounds of Sleepeaters in Bar Acapulco or some badass dance jams with Salt Ashes. Also, if you choose Salt Ashes you’ll then only have a one minute walk to catch my next recommendation in the venue opposite (Note: All venues are subject to capacity) who start as she finishes, so hopefully you’ll miss very little.

Why not get your disco shorts on (I'd suggest dark leather ones would be appropriate) and give Salt Ashes a go? Listen out for recent single Girls – which has clocked up close to 300,000 plays on Spotify this year.



18.30-19.00 Penelope Isles – The Vaults

For anyone that has ever been to a gig in the West country or pretty much any festival, the chances are you’ll have heard of Big Jeff John. He’s the big guy (obviously) with the big frizzy blonde hair and a heavyweight load of festival wristbands on his arm nodding his head, waving his finger and throwing himself around to the music at as many shows as you have had hot dinners. He’s been hailed as a hero by many, including lots of musicians, who now treat it as an honour to have Big Jeff at their gigs. Rumour has it one of Haim tried to propose to him.

So when Big Jeff recently tweeted “I’ve got something big that I need to say, it’s pretty big, so deep deep breath, build some serious tension. I fricking love all the members of Penelope Isles. They are a great band. Take the dreamy melodies of Beach House and the chunky lo-fi riffs of Grandaddy,” you’d better take notice. 

Thankfully I think everyone in the Dials team agrees with Jeff. Penelope Isles is a great band in the making. I saw them at End of the Road Festival earlier this year and their last two songs were so incredibly powerful they made me well up. Having already toured with The Magic Numbers, Dials is extremely grateful that Penelope Isles are coming to our festival. They’ve been signed to Bella Union records and will have an album out next year. Ones to Watch for sure.

If you want to come to Dials 2018, don't delay. Tickets will be more expensive on the day. Grab them by clicking on this link: www.dialsfestival.com. £16 in advance plus a small booking fee. Exchange them for a wristband on the day at The Wedgewood Rooms Box Office from 12 o'clock.

New Music: Curxes - The Stars, Like Dust (Video)

As someone who was born on a small island, lived part of their life surrounded by water (on a houseboat) and now lives in an island city, I can appreciate the advantages and disadvantages that separation and isolation of water can give. The biggest pro is undoubtedly that the physical disconnects that such life provides with a greater sense of mental freedom and independence; for musicians this can mean increased creativity and less pressure to follow trends or fashions, allowing them to create something unique. Yet this also contributes the biggest downside; freedom can go unchecked, meaning that artists can sometimes go too far down the rabbit hole.

In terms of music the Isle of Wight certainly seems to provide that freedom with a number of unique, sometimes challenging artists emanating from across the Solent. The likes of Plastic Mermaids, Champs and Lauran Hibberd have spearheaded the Garden Isle scene, getting varying degrees of recognition well beyond the relatively small towns from which they come. 

It was therefore not unsurprising to learn when Roberta Fidora aka Curxes returned with her second full-length album Gilded Cage last year that she had moved to the Isle of Wight. It was a record that was fearlessly experimental – a vivid collage of oddball ideas and warped sounds that sounded unshackled from the world at large. It was the sort of record that could really only ever be realised from living in a greater degree of solitude. It wasn’t going to be for everyone, but the more I listened the more interesting I found it and it ended up in my list of top 15 albums of the year (here).

Today Curxes release a new video from the record for the track The Stars, Like Dust. Whereas previous single In Your Neighbourhood displayed the poppier and more melodic side of Curxes, this track is its antithesis. Spooked-out synths, hazy vocals, beats that don’t seem to fit and then drop away altogether, this is definitely from the leftfield. But then with recent contributions to the likes of The Dark Outside, a site specific radio station in the middle of nowhere that nobody can hear (unless you happened to be on that particular hillside on the single day of broadcast with an FM radio), and live performances that have included a dancing bear, it’s clear that Roberta is not trying to satisfy anyone but herself.

Of the video Roberta says: “Introversion, distance and being burdened by nostalgia or surrounded by the past are the most prevalent themes throughout Gilded Cage and in the video for The Stars, Like Dust (directed by Rob Luckins), the only way to deal with them is by being lost in space memorabilia and good dogs.” 

It’s a neat piece of work with one scene that vaguely reminds me a little of a TV moment from Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy featuring some characters that you might recognise from the In Your Neighbourhood video and the Curxes album cover (which you can buy at Bandcamp by clicking here – I recommend the vinyl just for its orange colour and the bigger scarier cover).

The Stars, Like Dust is oddball spaced-out pop with a slightly disturbing feel. Not so much music to enjoy, but to experience; and sometimes that’s far more rewarding than something that Dua Lipa phoned in on her day off. 

Curxes - The Stars, Like Dust (Video)

Favourite Albums of 2017 #15 Curxes - Gilded Cage

Between 2011 and 2015 UK south coast electronic two-piece Curxes delivered a string of mainly self-released singles that hinted at an exciting debut album. Unfortunately, when Verxes arrived it was a relatively disappointing beast heading too far into confrontational shouty punk territory for many early fans.

However, with a couple of years away from the music, a relocation to the Isle of Wight and Curxes now being just a solo project of lead vocalist Roberta Fidora, 2017 saw a return to the fold with Gilded Cage, an album that went back to Curxes’ electronic roots, but with a much more singular experimental and less retro sound. In fact, on first listen it’s quite possible for Gilded Cage to leave the listener scratching their heads and wondering where the songs, hooks and melodies are such is the level of leftfield oddness. But they are there; they’re just subtler, weirder and less in your face. 

At Gilded Cage’s core is Roberta’s voice. In places it’s beautifully soft, sensual, creepy, pitch-shifted, ghostly, unsettling, dreamlike and gloomy. It's often difficult to understand what she's singing about, but that doesn't really matter - that just adds to the unsettling and somewhat menacing nature of the record. And the music itself? That could be described in a similar way. Don't expect bangers here - this is more unconventional. Fidora could, I'm sure, write a big pop tune if she wanted, but this new model suits her equally well.

So what can the listener find here? The instrumental Uniseum sounds like a modern-day version of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (the part that was used on The Exorcist) whilst Silent Running suggests that Roberta has spent a lot of the last few years gorging on dirty drugs and blood-thirsty horror flicks with its disturbing and heavy electronic pulses and weighty electronics. It’s not all so eerie and strange that it’s inaccessible though. In Your Neighbourhood is a delightfully gloomy but soothing spelling-bee electro pulse pop song with melancholy spectral vocals and Misery Mass would be worthy of featuring on an album by The Knife or Fever Ray.

Gilded Cage isn’t a record that is going to be ‘successful’ in the way that some people view success. The chances of it selling any significant numbers or having big streaming statistics are very low. It’s way too out there and way too experimental. Besides, it’s self-released with no major marketing budget behind it. However, in terms of being a coherent, interesting and inventive piece of outsider pop, it's very much a success.

You can buy / steram Gilded Cage via Bandcamp by clicking here

Curxes - In Your Neighbourhood

Curxes - Uniseum (Video)

New Music: Curxes - In Your Neighbourhood (Video)

If you’re a fan of underground electronic pop music you might remember the south coast two-piece that then became a three-piece known as Curxes. The band featured numerous times on Breaking More Waves, as they released a series of often loud, clanking and industrial sounding songs between 2011 and 2015 with one full length and one mini album, before announcing their parting of ways. At the time lead singer Roberta Fidora made it clear that this wasn’t the end of Curxes, but merely time for pause, reconfiguration and reflection – an artist’s equivalent of a university gap year or two. During that quiet interval the name Curxes did crop up once more on this blog when I wrote about how I’d become friends with Roberta and why we went all the way to Estonia together for a cocktail (here).

Now the pause button has been released, with Curxes relocated to the Isle of Wight (joining an ever-impressive list of acts from the garden isle that includes Champs, Lauran Hibberd, Nakamarra and Plastic Mermaids) and the musical journey recommences again; but this time Roberta is travelling more or less solo.

Having teased the release of a new album Gilded Cage a month or so ago with a rather creepy trailer video and an instrumental that sat somewhere between The Exorcist and Stranger Things soundtracks (click here to view), now the first song proper has been released. It’s called In Your Neighbourhood.

‘Bleak and oblique choral post-pop songs’ is how Roberta has described the new material – which is an accurate description. In Your Neighbourhood is far gentler and less incensed sounding than much of Curxes’ past material, straddling the boundaries between experimentation and pop, with Roberta’s soft downbeat vocal being gorgeously soothing and haunting. I once described Curxes as being the sound of two robots f*cking. If that was the case then In Your Neighbourhood is very much the sound of something far more human and post-coital. There are gentle pulses, the aforementioned drifting choral backing, a neat chord change and some catchy little electronic riffs that make the return of Curxes a very welcome one. 

The song was co written with Andrew Wright, formerly of indie-art / post rock band The Strange Death Of Liberal England. 

Watch the video, which features a bunch of retro televisions and a puppet band below. 

Curxes will be supporting Blancmange on a number of their forthcoming UK shows. In Your Neighbourhood will be available on other formats besides You Tube from 6th October.

Curxes - In Your Neighbourhood (Video)

Why I Went All The Way To Estonia For A Cocktail

Last month I posted about how this blog had, at its best, become far more than just me bashing out a few words about music in the few spare minutes I have in the day. Breaking More Waves has become a vehicle for enabling some remarkable, emotional, beautiful and even comical journeys to take place in my life. Those journeys have been created through friendships that without this blog, almost certainly wouldn’t have formed. I’ve already written about sharing one such journey (on this post about singer Alice Jemima here) and today I’m writing about another one.

A few weeks ago on BBC 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq asked listeners to text or email in the weird and wonderful rock ‘n’ roll pilgrimages they had been on. Of course there are the obvious ones such as Salford Lads’ Club for fans of The Smiths, a trip to Abbey Road in London for Beatles ones, Graceland in Memphis for Elvis lovers and one I have visited myself – Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris. However, there’s another one that probably doesn’t crop up on the list of ‘must visits’ for quite so many music obsessives, and that’s to Tallinn in Estonia. But last weekend I made that pilgrimage. To visit DM Barr. Yes, it’s a bar that is solely dedicated to the music of British dark electronic pop band Depeche Mode.

Why? I hear you ask. Here’s the explanation…..

It started on the 10^th May 2011, when I wrote a piece about a new band called Curxes. I described their sound as “a mixture of the darkness of post Vince Clarke Depeche Mode, the industrial ice-cool of Propaganda, vocals reminiscent of a smoother Siouxsie Sioux all carpeted with fluidly uplifting pulses.” They were an exciting prospect because they really didn’t sound like any other new band around at the time and the lead singer had a thrilling powerhouse of a voice. Shortly after I wrote about the group that singer, Roberta, got in touch by email to thank me for the piece. Bands – that’s a tip for you, if you like what I write about you, a personal thank you can go a long way. In her email she suggested meeting up for a drink at some point, as we lived relatively locally to each other. A few days later we did just that and the slow beginnings of a friendship formed. It turned out that Roberta was indeed a big fan of Depeche Mode; my reference had been correct.

Like all good friendships, ours took some time to mature. By way of dead of night long drives to the middle of nowhere to chew the fat about our relationships with our partners through to many discussions about the internet, music and social politics, to gigs together (which of course included the mighty Depeche Mode as well as a mind-blowingly good show by the Pet Shop Boys) a bond began to form.

And during this time Curxes slowly released their musical output to the world, played some great gigs, some not so great ones and developed a small but appreciative fan base. It’s probably no surprise to find that I wrote about nearly everything Curxes released. Not because I was a friend, but because I was a genuine fan of their music – and wherever I could I helped them, giving them advice about how to get their work heard, constructive criticism of the songs, even driving them and their equipment to play in unlikely locations such as Leigh on Sea and Northampton as well as more obvious locations such as London and Brighton.

Push forward to the end of 2015 and Curxes announced their parting of ways. They had released a number of singles, a well-received album, an official remix for another bad spelling band of the rise (Chvrches) and had supported the likes of Wolf Alice, Friends, Karin Park and Polly Scattergood. It was not, as some thought, the end of Curxes entirely though, but a time for a pause, reconfiguration and reflection.

It was also around this time that I received a message from another music blogger Leigh from Just Music I Like. He was in Tallinn and was sitting in a bar dedicated to Depeche Mode.

“We have to go this,” I texted Roberta. “I’m taking you.” Why did I text that? Because life’s too short to say no to new experiences, new possibilities and have fun. Because sometimes it's good to do something just because you can - especially if it makes someone happy.

“You’re drunk,” she messaged back.

“I’m not and if you don’t believe me I’ll text you again in the morning.”

The next morning I texted again. Roberta believed me. Plans were made and as a result last weekend we flew to Estonia.

Tallinn is a beautiful place; I absolutely fell in love with its gorgeous churches and towering spires and medieval squares and clean cobbled streets and queer markets and stylish galleries and most importantly its people who were far more friendly and welcoming than my prejudices of Eastern European countries would have allowed for. But before sightseeing, we were on mission to visit one place and one place only.

The Depeche Mode Bar itself is located within the medieval walled part of the city up a narrow street just down from a nearby record store. Located in a dark cellar the place is full of Depeche Mode memorabilia, posters, Depeche Mode themed cocktails (yes, I admit I drank several – the excitement of actually being there got the better of me) and of course the band’s music, which is non-stop. First played from videos but then transferring to a DJ who on the night we were there found himself playing to a group of grown men dancing and singing in unadulterated joy to all the bangers from the leather clad synth goth boys from Basildon. It was fantastic. I’d been worried that after all the jokes about how we were flying all the way to Estonia just to visit a bar the whole thing would be an embarrassing let down. But it wasn’t – it was almost exactly as I had imagined it.

We left with huge smiles on our faces as we strolled back across Freedom Square to our hotel. Inside I was pretty pleased that I'd sent that slightly crazy text.

Thanks to music. Thanks to my blog. Thanks to Depeche Mode. But more crucially than that, thanks to friendship and the sometimes weirdly brilliant but very special moments it makes in our lives. 

If you haven’t heard Curxes or Depeche Mode, then your musical map is incomplete. Take a listen to both below. Run From The Funeral is a track from Curxes' album Verxes and hasn't featured on this (or as far as I am aware) any other blog before. You can find and hear the album at this link here. Never Let Me Down is a big arm waving anthem that pretty much every Depeche Mode fan loves. You can find it pretty much everywhere, but particularly in Tallinn, Estonia or just below the Curxes track.

When she isn't being the mouth piece for Curxes, or expert vintage item seller, Roberta designs some amazing (and very funny) pop star greeting cards. If you're a fan of Depeche Mode then take a look at her work on this link here. Her full product range can be found using this link. 

Curxes - Run From The Funeral

Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again

Preview - Dials Festival 2015

Dials Festival, Albert Road, Southsea, Portsmouth - 3rd October 2015

We’re pretty sure that we’re not the only music blog that has dreamed of curating its own festival or stage at a festival. So when the organisers of Dials, a brand new multi venue new music event based in our home city approached us asking if we’d be interested in hand picking some of the bands on their bill, we jumped at the chance.

Dials is a brand new collaborative festival taking place in 5 venues in Southsea, Portsmouth on the 3rd October 2015. It was originally set up when organisers heard that the well established new music festival Southsea Fest was not running this year and whilst hugely disappointed, decided the show must go on, in the form of their own show.

The name Dials comes from the concept that the festival is being run by a co-operative of venue owners, promoters and other music professionals and enthusiasts from the Portsmouth area, who are passionate about bringing exciting new music to the south coast, helping support local musicians, venues, businesses and the community in the process. 

Breaking More Waves is one of those enthusiasts. Others include iconic independent music venue the Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth cultural website and store Strong Island together with their offshoot record label Strong Island Recordings,  Hong Kong Gardeners Club, who have in the past propagated new music nights that included the likes of Everything Everything, Dan Smith (before he became Bastille), The Joy Formidable and Django Django  in tiny rooms before anyone had heard of them. Plus us, Breaking More Waves Blog. Hi. 

You can see the full list of artists playing in the poster below, which includes national touring acts as well as musicians local to the Portsmouth area. 

Of course what we’re really excited about is the handful of acts that Breaking More Waves has helped deliver to the festival. There's plenty of noisy rock n roll, indie and such like on the bill, but with our selections we've tried to inject something a little different. Here they are:

Alice Jemima

It was way back in April 2011 when we first featured Devon based singer Alice Jemima, a then unsigned songwriter, and ever since then we’ve been championing her music to anyone who will listen. We’re proud of the fact that directly because of that championing (and of course Alice’s fantastic songs) she landed a Radio 1 session at Maida Vale and since that time she has slayed the internet; her cover version of No Diggity has built up over 2 million plays on Soundcloud – more plays than all the other artists at the festival put together. The last year or so we haven’t heard that much from Alice, but with some recent support slots with Laura Doggett, a showcase for Sunday Best recordings at Brighton’s Great Escape, a new self penned song Diamonds & Bones getting an airing on Radio 1 courtesy of Huw Stephens and appearances at this year’s Camp Bestival, Somersault and Bestival festivals it seems that Alice is finally readying herself for something pretty special. We’re very pleased and excited to be able to finally bring Alice Jemima to Portsmouth. One not to miss.



Chloe Black

“We could have a star on our hands,” we wrote about Chloe Black in October 2014 and now that star shines on Portsmouth. Self-tagged ‘goth ‘n’ soul’ singer Chloe had a big online hit with her lyrically morbid tune 27 Club and all the reports we’ve received since have confirmed that she can deliver live as well with a potent vocal and bags of charm. Prepare yourselves to fall in love with Miss Black in the Wedgewood Rooms.



Black Honey

Furious frenetic feedback frenzies, pop melodies to die for and a captivating and dramatic front woman, Brighton’s Black Honey have it all. It’s probably why they were one of the most written about bands by UK Hype Machine listed music bloggers in 2014 and featured on the Blog Sound of 2015 long list – music bloggers version of the ubiquitous BBC Sound of list. As we all know though, being ‘big on the internet’ doesn’t necessarily translate to being a great live band, but Black Honey absolutely do. When we saw them earlier this year we were blown away by their rawness, their musicianship, their tunes and their power. Another must see, they’ll be headlining the Edge of the Wedge stage.



Lyza Jane

In contrast to Black Honey’s energy and forcefulness, London’s Lyza Jane creates languid sounding experimental electronic pop infused with modern trip-hop beats not dissimilar to the likes of Banks, FKA Twigs and Tricky. She’s already played Glastonbury festival twice, supported Alabama 3 and recently worked with reggae royalty Ranking Joe. There will be plenty of rock and roll aggression on display at Dials, so slip into something more comfortable for a while with Lyza Jane.



Glass

Glass are a totally new duo from London of which not much is known yet. You certainly won't find their songs streaming on Soundcloud, Spotify or You Tube. They describe their music as 'Pop Hip-Op Crance'. Those with good internet search skills might recognise them from previous musical projects. As Dials is very much a new music festival and that means discovery, don't play safe - make Glass part of that discovery. This will be their first show outside of London. Arrive early before they're gone.

Curxes / Jerry Williams / Wyldest

Whilst we’ve selected acts from London, Devon and Brighton to play, Breaking More Waves is also pleased to give a nod to some of the local and emerging talent from the Portsmouth area, or acts that have Portsmouth connections. Curxes, Wyldest and Jerry Williams are three artists that we’ve featured on the blog a number of times and all of them will be cropping up somewhere on the Dials bill. So if audacious dark electronic music (Curxes) chiming ethereal guitar pop (Wyldest) or catchy acoustic pop (Jerry Williams) are your thing, then go watch all of these.They’ll be giving some of the national touring bands a run for their money.

Tickets for Dials are on sale from today and available locally from The Wedgewood Rooms, Pie & Vinyl, Strong Island’s store. You can also buy them online from this link. 

We recommend buying early as the current £15 price tag is for early birds only.

Keep an eye out for a shiny website for the festival coming real soon and in the meantime, check the Dials Facebook (here) and  enjoy the playlist below of most of the artists so far announced. More acts are still to be added to the bill.

You can follow Dials Festival on Twitter here

Buy tickets using this link

Put 3rd October in your diary now. 

Dials Playlist

The Alt-Escape 2015 - Preview

This coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday many a new music fan in the UK will be decamping to Brighton, Sussex for the 10th birthday of the Great Escape Festival. 

You can see our explanation of why we love the event so much on this link here.

Plus you can see 20 acts that we recommend from the official programme in our 5 blog post preview here, although line up clashes preclude anyone seeing all of those acts.

Today we’re turning our attention to the Great Escape’s kid brother event, the Alt-Escape, which just like its bigger sibling has grown beyond all recognition from its early days. The Alt-Escape is, in the words of the festival organisers, an “official series of showcases that take place alongside the core festival programme at The Great Escape.”

The Alt-Escape offers over 200 additional artists performing in over 15 venues, and unlike the Great Escape itself most of these shows are open to any member of the public who is over the age of 18 irrespective of if they have a Great Escape wristband or not. Some of these gigs are free admission for anyone, whilst others are free for Great Escape attendees and accessed for a small charge for those without a wristband. 

A number of bands who are playing the Great Escape also take the opportunity whilst they are in Brighton to play one of more Alt-Escape shows. So even if you’re not going to the Great Escape (tickets are now sold out) it’s still possible to enjoy 3 (or even 4 if you count the couple of gigs that are held for early arrivals on Wednesday night) glorious days in Brighton watching plenty of live music at little to no cost.

Here are 5 bands / artists playing at Alt-Escape that we recommend (programme clashes permitting). 

Arctic Lake – The Joker 1.45pm. Thursday 14th May

They might be playing a pub called The Joker, but there’s no joke about the band’s music. Beautiful minimal instrumentation coupled with Emma Foster’s haunting vocal, it’s no wonder that their song Limits found itself on daytime Radio 1 via the BBC Introducing playlist slot.



Curxes – Bleach 17.40pm. Thursday 14th May

Having just released their debut album proper via Strong Island Recordings and fresh from an album launch party the night before, electronic duo turned trio Curxes will be bashing all hell out Bleach (previously known as The Hydrant) in the north of Brighton just before you have your tea. Expect dramatic poses and an even more dramatic sound from the self-confessed blitz poppers.




Kassassin Street – Sticky Mike's Frog Bar 12.00pm. Friday 15th May

Arguably the finest band to come out of Breaking More Waves home city of Portsmouth for some time, Kassassin Street’s groovy blend of rock and electronics has found them being compared to everyone from Primal Scream to MGMT to Kasabian. The group have begun to find favour with the online press, particularly blogs, with their most recent track To Be Young entering the Hype Machine chart and being featured on the likes of Indie Shuffle, Ear Milk, Acid Stag and of course Breaking More Waves. Get out of bed early to catch them.



Syron – Horatios 17.00pm. Friday 15th May

Three days in Brighton wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the pier, maybe some fish and chips and then to a bar called Horatios which is set next to the funfair. It captures the essence of faded seaside glamour rather well and there you can get a dose of dance pop bangers from south London’s Syron as part of a showcase presented by Spindle and Firetrap.



Alice Jemima – 2.30pm The Monty. Saturday 16th May

Having featured heavily on Breaking More Waves as far back as 2011, Alice Jemima self-released her All The Boyfriends EP in 2012, appeared on a Radio 1 late night session and picked up over 2 million plays on Soundcloud for her cover version of No Diggity. However, in terms of new material there has been very little in the last couple of years. That's all changing now though as 2015 sees the slow return of Alice Jemima with a few gigs, and now a release of sorts, with Alice cropping up on Laura Doggett’s Into The Glass EP singing on Night Girl, a tune she co-wrote with Laura. At Great Escape Alice will be playing a show for Rob Da Bank’s Sunday Best record label, which no doubt will include plenty of new songs. Keep an eye out for further news about Alice, her music and releases as the year goes on.



We'll be publishing daily reviews of this years Great Escape on the blog and tweeting about some of the action live from Brighton as it happens.

Curxes - What You Want

Here’s a big alt-pop banger. Not a banger in the sense of something like Calvin Harris or David Guetta of course, although wouldn’t it be fun to slip this one onto Mr Guetta’s USB stick / laptop or whatever it is he uses to DJ and see what happens? No, this tune, What You Want, from Breaking More Waves long term favourites Curxes, is a darker, more tense, more muscular piece of clanking electronic music. It even has the closest thing these robo-popsters will ever get to a dance floor build. Add to that an ear-pummelling chorus that kicks the word subtle out of touch and you’ll probably find Calvin and David cowering under a table together somewhere asking for their mummies.

Having now morphed into a three piece with a new member Camille, who we understand hits things very hard, Curxes will be bringing the noise at a variety of shows in the next few months, including a couple of gigs at the Alt.Escape (the sister of the Great Escape festival) in Brighton, plus Blissfields Festival and Victorious Festival this summer.

What You Want is taken from Curxes debut album Verxes, which you can order by clicking here.

What You Want - Curxes

Curxes - Valkyrie

Valkyrie is the new single by Curxes. Ok, before you all get too excited let us explain that it’s not a bootleg remix featuring relaxed crooner Val Doonican and mid 80’s band Mr Mister and their number 1 US hit Kyrie (look them up if you have no idea what we’re talking about). 

However, once you’re over that disappointment the good news is that if you’re feeling a bit punchy or aggressive today this will work for you, as Valkyrie is a warmongering slap in the face piece of angry sounding industrial pop.

“I’ve never been patient, subtle or vacant,” bellows lead singer Roberta and certainly there’s very little subtlety on this song, but before you switch off thinking that Curxes have gone for the obvious and have been taking lessons from the kings of the lowest common denominator such as Calvin Harris or David Guetta, fear not, because there are many different types of unsubtle. Bangers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and musical appearances.

On one side you have Harris and his music by numbers rave-‘choons’ complete with the video for Summer that features bikini and underwear clad ladies and lots of fast cars. It’s currently wracked up 140 million+ You Tube views. On the other hand you have Curxes sounding more incensed than ever, with screaming, out of control screechy trumpets and clanking metallic beats that sound a bit like Chvrches and Depeche Mode cavorting with each other on a bed of nails. 

Harris or Curxes – choose your sides carefully. Harris may have the bigger army, but according to Norse mythology when it comes to the battle it’s the Valkyrie who chooses who will live and who will die. 

Valkyrie is released on 18th August but is available to pre-order now from here.

Curxes - Valkyrie

Curxes - A Primary Question

Pre-internet, when the distribution and  way we listen to music was less complicated, things seemed a little more constant and ever present. Today however songs are like a prostitutes knickers, going up on line and then disappearing down again, particularly if an unsigned band sign a record deal or change musical direction and don’t want to be represented by their past material anymore. 

Imagine The Beatles in this world. Would they decide that after releasing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that they no longer wanted Please Please Me to be available as they didn’t represent who they were at that point and remove it from You Tube / Soundcloud etc? The internet and digital formatting has given artists that easy choice. History can be wiped away with the click of a button.

Which is why it’s nice to see Breaking More Waves favourites Curxes release a new mini LP prior to their debut proper, compiling some of their older singles and demos from the 2010-11 period, in a physical format (CD). It’s called Precurxor (see what they did there?) and in keeping with the bands past traditions was released on the tenth of the month (yesterday).

Having picked up on the band in the very early days, a large number of the tracks on the album have already been streamed on Breaking More Waves (before they were taken down from Soundcloud). However, there are also two brand new/unreleased/old demos - A Primary Question and Lightness. It’s A Primary Question that has immediately grabbed our ears; with its 80’s moody sounding synths, twangy guitars and drum machines it reminds us a little of The Cure. A Primary Question is less dense and pummelled with industrial noise than some of their later work, sounding as if it was recorded in a near empty room with nothing but shadows for companionship. This enables lead singer Roberta’s vocal, something we’ve always thought of the band's major tool, to be shown off to full effect, veering from a sexual cooing softness (even if she is singing lines like “death is collectable” – a reference to later taxidermy related videos perhaps?) to a more commanding sternness. Good stuff. Now the only primary question is why it remained for so long as an unreleased demo?

Buy the Precurxor CD, which contains 7 songs for just £5, including postage, from Bandcamp by clicking here, or download  for £4. Bargain.

Curxes - A Primary Question

Curxes - Avant-Guarded (Video)

Calling Curxes ‘synth pop’ these days is akin to calling X-Factor ‘progressive and essential TV viewing’. In fact recent live shows have found the south-coast duo ditching the keyboards completely, allowing Macaulay to frug with the guitar whilst Roberta prowls the stage dramatically ready to chew the face off anyone who wasn’t paying attention. Further evidence of this rejection of Depeche Mode comparisons comes with new song Avant-Guarded released earlier this month. Whilst it maintains a basis in programmed electronics, it has more associations with post-punk and electropunk than anything else.

Now let’s be clear about this. The song itself is by no means our favourite Curxes tune. There’s a brilliant earworm of a hook in the part that barks “sound and vision is a privilege, trade your faces, alter the images,” but elsewhere the machine gun beats and angry shouts veer too far away from our core love of melody. It seems that with Avant-Guarded Curxes are letting fly as musical outsiders.

However given a visual treatment things click into place more. The only music video to feature a budgie named Eugene, it mixes real life footage with animation and gives some clues as to the bands existence as d-i-y outlanders and underdogs balancing the drudgery (or should that be budgerie?) of real life (work, household chores) against the need to enjoy escapism / their art. “Eugene Budgerigard – He never lived,” states the epitaph on a gravestone at one point in the video. Poor old Eugene. If only had had flown out of his cage; but maybe flying is something that can only be done by those privileged enough to be able to afford it?

You can download Avant-Guarded from here.

Curxes - Avant-Guarded (Video)

Curxes - Further Still (Avec Sans Remix)

If you love silky smooth electronic remixes, here’s something to make you feel a little moist. Remember London duo Avec Sans? We mentioned them less than 48 hours ago on the blog as we wrote about how following a succession of perfectly defined internet approved electro pop tunes such as Heartbreak Hi and The Answer, we’d heard very little from them since naming them as Ones to Watch for 2013. Now as we sit at the musical bus stop, patiently waiting for something to come along, here they are hand in hand with Curxes, another one of our Ones to Watch for 2013 and they’re ready to take you on a ride to heaven. No ticket required.

This beautiful astral computer trip is like all of our dreams coming true in one glittering, shimmering pot of liquid haunted gold.

You can download this remix for free from here and while you are at it, if you haven’t done so already, grab the emotional dazzler that is the original of Further Still for free at  Curxes' Bandcamp as well.

Earlier in the year Curxes got together with yet another one of our Ones to Watch 2013 Chvrches to produce a hard hitting what the f*ck remix of the song Recover which you can find on Chvrches EP. Now we’re looking at that Ones to Watch list from last year and wondering who is going to remix who next? All we need is Chvrches to do Avec Sans, the triangle would be completed and we could die happy. Here's the blissful beats and pulse of Curxes vs Avec Sans.

Curxes - Further Still (Avec Sans Remix)

Curxes - Further Still (Video)

So who wants some glock-rock then?

With their first ever performance video Breaking More Waves favourite boy-girl UK south coast blog-crush band Curxes step out of the shadows like an alternative glockenspiel tapping version of the Pet Shop Boys with a sprinkling of Lynchian serenity. Anyone expecting Roberta in a bikini top and denim cut-offs, pouting and panting like a sex starved Britney Spears whilst a shirtless Macaulay thrusts his way across the strobe lit dance floor swigging champagne before taking on the ladies will be sorely disappointed, but then frankly they’ve got the wrong band haven’t they? We can’t really ever imagine Curxes being “in da club,” and frankly they are all the better for it. Probably.

Instead we get a taxidermy studio with both band members fulfilling the experimental dreams of a slightly crazed practitioner. There’s probably some deep and artistic meaning behind the film to do with the death of something (love?) and wanting to keep it alive, but we’ll leave that to the psychologists amongst you to figure out. Watch out for the slightly creepy / funny ending as well.

The dead good news is that Further Still is available as a free download from here. They will also be playing live in the dead centre of London alongside fellow Blog Sound of 2013 long listers Seasfire at Madame Jo Jo’s on May 7th. People will just be dying to get in there. Sorry about these grave jokes. We undertake to do no more.

Curxes - Further Still (Video)

Curxes - Further Still

This week is huge for fans of electronic pop music. Depeche Mode released their new album Delta Machine, which whilst not achieving the greatness of the likes of Black Celebration or Violator is a vast improvement over previous effort Sound of the Universe. La Roux returns to the fray with a small number of low-key trial-run shows for album number 2 (we’ll be at her Brighton gig – keep an eye out on twitter for our thoughts about that) and one of our Ones to Watch 2013 Chvrches release their brain tingling loin moistening Recover EP. Finally cult-blitz-popsters Curxes (another of our Ones To Watch 2013, who in their early days were compared to Depeche Mode with a female vocalist) release a new free to download single. Is this all some carefully constructed plan by the synth gang to wrestle the crown away from the ‘guitar music is back’ brigade or merely coincidence? Frankly we don’t care. That old cliché that we like any music as long as it’s good holds true and this new material by Curxes is indeed rather tremendous.

Curxes have been described as dramatic, intense and as the sound of two robots fucking (oh hold on, we said that one) after bombarding our senses with the 2012 sister singles Haunted Gold and Spectre. So it’s pretty easy to assume we’ve all got Curxes sussed; that they’re that loud post-industrial-electro-pop group with a whacked up bad-ass bass who treat everything like a hammer to a nail and then some.

Yet those assumptions and conclusions are just the windows that we see from and Curxes aren’t looking at the same view. In fact they’re not even in the same building. There have been subtle hints of this; from the duo’s version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas that premiered on Breaking More Waves at the start of December (racking up 15,000 plays on Soundcloud in just over 4 weeks) to some new songs that they’ve been gradually sneaking into their live set, one of which is Further Still.

It’s a track that has more in similarity with Bat For Lashes and the quieter moments of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s than it does their usual reference points. Written at a time when, for a while, lead singer Roberta Fidora lost part of herself after the break-up of a relationship, it shows that even the coldest of robots have a heart. It’s soft, tender and beautifully sung; the first time that in recorded form Fidora has really shown what a well formed pair of lungs she has. Apparently this is a woman who recently scored 99% in a high level signing exam and was narked that she didn’t get 100. On that basis one day we fully expect a Curxes opera. But for now we’ll stick with their breed of anti-pop; because Further Still isn’t some quick throwaway thrill, it’s not a quick tongue down the throat, knickers off, thank you very much, see you later. It’s subtler and deeper than that. It succeeds because of its restraint; even when the song sounds like it might attempt to explode it holds back.

Don’t expect everything that Curxes do in the future to be the sound of soft footsteps tripping lightly across dusted undertakers floors though, there’s still a fiery heart there as well. It’s part of their yin and yang make-up that made us love them in the first place; that mix of anger and emotional beauty.  Want an example of the other side? Check out their official ‘1996 remix’ of Chvrches Recover which can be found on the Scottish band’s EP. It’s a pure piece of pummelling laser rave synth aggression of the highest order. It will f*ck with your ears. For the future we hear gossip about the sound of a saxophone squealing like a pig being bum-fucked and a band going batshit mental in a Nordic battlefield, which is probably something you don’t get to hear every day. Curxes are most certainly not one of those bands who are compromising what they do for commercial success.

Further Still is free to download now and when they reach the limit on Soundcloud, you can grab it from the bands website. The Chvrches Recover EP is available from the usual digital stores to purchase now. Not only is it a good week for electronic music, but a good day for bad spelling.

Curxes - Further Still

Chvrches - Recover (Curxes 1996 Remix)

A Quite Exciting Thing From Curxes

Now here’s something exciting.

That is if you find the thought of spooky taxidermy collections a bit of a turn on.

Which we’ll be honest, we don’t. That would make us a bit weird. But then ‘Igor’ has no such qualms. Read his story here.

We’re not sure about the wallpaper in the video either, but thankfully it seems that there’s no Igor equivalent on the internet when it comes to appreciating those distinctive brown patterns.

No, the reason we’re excited is because it seems that after laying low for a while Curxes (who according to BBC6 Music and Hype Machine were one of the 15 most blogged bands by UK bloggers last year) are about to release new material. The song is called Further Still. We’ve been lucky enough to hear it already. It’s bloody marvellous. We think it’s going to surprise a few people. Think Yeah Yeah Yeahs meets Bat For Lashes. Those expecting another clanking piece of industrial aggression will have to rethink their take on the band. Keep an eye and ear out on the internet around March 25th, with full visual accompaniment that includes scalpels and squirrels following shortly after.

Curxes - Further Still (Preview)

A Message From Noddy Holder (Guest Post)

IT’S CHRISTMAS !!!!! (Well nearly)

Hey kids, are you hanging up a stocking on your wall ? Because it's the time that every Santa has a ball. So here it is merry Christmas, and it’s a very merry one for me because the royalties for THAT song have started rolling in again. Thanks iTunes, I don’t even have to get out of bed these days to earn some extra cash in December. Look to the future now, it’s only just begun, every yuletide from now till as far as I can see is just a load of old Christmas songs being repurchased again and again and my pockets sounding like jingle bells with all the coins in them. Remember when I sang about granny always telling ya that the old songs are the best? I was right you see. So was granny. Now we're laughing all the way to the bank. So here for your listening pleasure are some old songs for Christmas revamped by new artists. They’ll slay ya.

First we’ve got Foe. She’s not really got into the tinsel and mulled wine spirit like I do with Xmas Break Up. But still, not everyone can be as Christmassy and perky as me. Come on everyone, shout it out - IT’S CHRISTMAS !!!!

Next up is a track that Breaking More Waves posted earlier this month, but it’s so beautiful I wanted to give it the Noddy Holder nod of approval. It’s Curxes and their festive take on Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas complete with Corononation Street samples. Apparently they were the 11th most blogged band this year by UK hype machine listed bloggers - you can see the full list of most blogged bands here. Time for another mince pie I think. You can get this song for free just by going here.

Finally, to wrap up Noddy’s Christmas gift selection, whilst you’re waiting for the family to arrive, here’s THE BEST CHRISTMAS SONG EVER, or rather a cover version of it. This one’s actually from last year, but still, it’s tradition, it’s Christmas, so sing along everyone. “So here it is merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun…” Thanks Carosel (even though you split up in November)

*Footnote - Noddy's** guest post is our final post on Breaking More Waves until after Christmas. To all our regular readers and subscribers have a cool yule, we'll be back real soon with the winners of the Blog Sound of 2013, commentary on the BBC Sound of 2013,  Sweeping The Nation's UK blogger favourite album survey and then finally get round to posting about some new music - we have a huge backlog of stuff that we've been listening to waiting for you to hear in the new year.

**This may not have actually been Noddy posting. It may have all been a disgraceful sham.

Foe - Xmas Break Up



Curxes - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas



Carosel - Merry Christmas Everyone

Curxes - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Is it too early for a musical mince pie? We think not. The bah humbug cynics amongst you may say there’s no such thing as a great Christmas song, but over the next three days here at Breaking More Waves we hope to prove the grumpy Santa bashers wrong, albeit what we're offering is full of melancholy.

Let us be one of the earliest to wish you a very Happy Christmas and offer you a gift of goodness from dark electronic kids Curxes. It’s the first song from a new set of Christmas covers recorded by different artists that we're premiering on Breaking More Waves over the next three days. We’re calling them Christmas Waves Volume 1. And until the download limit is reached you can grab each one for absolutely free.

Having been named as one of the artists on the Blog Sound of 2013 poll yesterday alongside the likes of Daughter, Haim, Savages and Chvrches, Curxes celebrate by presenting this exquisitely beautiful version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. It shows a very different side of the band from what you may have heard previously. Gone are the industrial clatters and sonic synth aggressions; instead there’s a sense of intimacy and from the heart emotion, accentuated by the staggering sensual warmth of Roberta Fidora’s vocal which is strong without falling into the Florence / Jessie J school of warbling and intimate without falling into the breathy Ellie Goulding/ Gabrielle Aplin camp.

If we could marry a voice it would probably be this one. Happy Christmas. You can download the track for free from the Soundcloud player below. If you choose to do so we simply ask that to show your thanks to the band you go the Curxes facebook page (here) and click like or click the love heart by the track on Hype Machine.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another never heard before Christmas cover for you to enjoy.

Curxes - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas