Haze - Reset

A few days ago Berkshire based singer songwriter Haze popped a new song up on her Soundcloud with no explanation or fanfare. And whilst her understated and beautiful tunes probably don’t lend themselves to the showbiz drama of whatever the internet version of the red carpet, trumpets and flags being waved whilst Haze herself stands on the rooftops dressed in gold sequinned hotpants shouting ‘LISTEN YOU BASTARDS I’VE GOT ANOTHER SONG OUT AND IT’S BLOODY GORGEOUS AND YOU SHOULD ALL CHECK IT OUT AND EVERY BLOODY BLOG AND WEBSITE UNDER THE SUN SHOULD FEATURE IT’ is, it still deserves your attention. Maybe it’s our job to suggest that to you and then just let the music speak for itself?

So here’s Reset. A song with a captivating quiet power that touches both with its music (piano, strings, soft simple beats), Haze’s very special vocal and words: “Why do we hurt the ones we love?” she asks. It's as if she's whispering her darkest secrets, fears and loves right into your ears with her songs. That's what makes them exceptional.

You can catch Haze supporting Gideon Conn at the Green Note in Camden, London on the 8th April and Norway’s Sea Change in Reading at the Oakford Social Club on the 6th May (a free gig).

Haze - Reset

Haze - Smoke (Video)

Last weekend The Guardian published an article that detailed the inner workings of Radio 1’s playlist committee and how it decides on what tracks will get the stations maximum exposure through repeated plays (A-list records get 25 plays a week, B-list 15, and C-list eight to 10). You can read it via this link. The article made depressing reading, detailing the stations over reliance on data from social media and You Tube to determine what would and wouldn’t get played (that is of course if the record was even given consideration, which appears to rely heavily on having the support of a radio plugger to get under the noses of the committee.) As the Guardian suggested it made the whole process utterly soulless and risk free – where was the passion? Where was the ability of an individual human with a strong gut feeling to say 'I think this record is f*cking brilliant and irrespective of the fact that hardly anyone has watched the video on You Tube, I believe it’s our job to give this song a chance?'

The article emphasised to us the thought that, in their own small way, how important music blogs are, particularly to acts without a radio plugger or big financial backing. In all the time we’ve been writing Breaking More Waves we’ve never given any consideration to how many hits or plays a song has had, we’ve never given consideration to if an act is on a major label, a tiny indie or is completely d-i-y, we’ve simply featured music that we believe in, that says something to us. It’s just our opinion and taste. The idea of relying on data rather than gut instinct to determine if something is great or not is something we would never ever do. Ironically of course by streaming a track here we’re increasing the songs data load, and if enough blogs grab hold of a tune and push the views and plays through the roof Radio 1’s playlist committee will have to take notice.

Today we’re streaming a video from an artist that at the time of writing has had just less than 50 views. It’s probably fair to say that Radio 1 won’t be coming running any time soon, but we’re absolutely enamoured by the song.

Reading based singer songwriter Haze’s Smoke is inspired by the TV series of the decade - Breaking Bad - the lyrics being pretty self-explanatory if you’ve seen the show, although alas Haze doesn’t mark the tune with any Jesse Pinkman style yo’s (like this). It’s a quietly alluring song, that grows in stature as it develops, with the key line "win or lose, would you choose the life you had?" being the inspiration for the video.

Forget the data, give the song a chance.

Haze - Smoke (Video)


Haze - Smoke (official video) from The Deolali Plan on Vimeo.

Are You Listening Festival 2014 - Preview

Festivals. Breaking More Waves loves them. Big ones, small ones, in-between ones, we adore them all. 

However there’s one thing we don’t like about them, particularly in the UK and that’s rain. There will be those who say that 5 days at Glastonbury, wading around in your wellies up to your ankles in mud  is ‘character building’, an ‘experience’ and ‘brings people together.’ We just think it’s downright horrible, exhausting and a deeply unpleasant way to spend a weekend.

It’s why although you’re bound to find Breaking More Waves trooping round a few (hopefully dry) fields this summer, we’ll be hitting the single wristband, multi-venue, city festivals harder than ever this year. Even if the heavens open, we can be assured a club, pub or concert hall to dry off in for these events and there’s even the joy of a comfy bed, clean toilet and a shower afterwards.

It all starts for 2014 at the home of one of the most famous UK festivals; Reading. But the event isn’t the Reading Festival, this is Are You Listening? Festival, which returns for its second year in Reading city centre after an enormously successful debut in 2013. 

Are You Listening? is very much a local grassroots festival, having a stated policy of ensuring that at least 70% of the artists booked to play are from the Reading and Berkshire area. It’s also great value with advance tickets costing just £10 with a local charity benefiting from the ticket sales, as all proceeds after costs go to Reading Mencap. Last year the event raised a fantastic £8,250 for this good cause, way above the organiser’s target.

This year Are You Listening features over 60 artists and takes place across eight venues in Reading Centre, namely Pavlov’s Dog, RISC, Oakford Social Club, South Street Arts Centre, The Bowery District, The Face Bar, Purple Turtle and one that has to be worth a visit, the bar known as Milk, which serves cocktails served in milk bottles and jam jars as well as a multitude of rums. 

Fancy attending? here's the details: Are You Listening? takes place on Saturday 26th April 2014. Tickets are available in advance for £10 by clicking here (they will be more on the day) and the music gets underway from around 2pm, although some of the venues don’t open until later in the afternoon or evening.

Here are 5 acts that Breaking More Waves recommends seeing at the event, which subject to venue capacities and stages sticking to their timetables (which will be published soon) should all be possible to see without any clashes.

Vienna Ditto (Oakford Social Club)

Whilst the majority of the action doesn’t get underway until late afternoon / early evening, an early stop off at Oakford Social Club might pay dividends. Vienna Ditto mix twangy rock and blues guitars that sound like they’ve been stolen from a lost Tarantino soundtrack, add bursts of electronic edging and top it all off with femme fatale vocals. 



The Jettes (The Purple Turtle)

Pan’s People loving rock n roll meets sixties bubblegum pop with plenty of fuzz and full on riffs. A bit like The Primitives only brasher. What’s not to like about that?



Haze (Milk)

A regular on Breaking More Waves since we first discovered her at last years festival, local girl Haze has a voice that will melt hearts and songs that deliver power through their delicate beauty. 



The Night VI (21 South Street)

Another Breaking More Waves regular, The Night VI have picked up plenty of blog buzz with songs like Thinking About You and Sienna. Described here as making “heartache sound unbelievably lovely,” The Night VI have class embedded in their core.



Ezra Furman (21 South Street)

Previously with The Harpoons and now solo, Ezra’s new album Day of the Dog has received rapturous reviews (Michael Hann of The Guardian called it ‘the best record of 2013’.) Come and experience his brand of rock ‘n’ roll and see what all the fuss is about at his first show of an extensive UK tour.



Expect a review of Are You Listening? shortly after the event at Breaking More Waves.

Haze - Together Or Apart (Video)

We’ve been hankering for a single proper from Berkshire based singer songwriter Haze since we first featured her on the blog last April with her song In The Midst Of The Storm and finally our wishes have been granted. It’s been well worth the wait.

Together Or Apart is a breathtaking piano ballad which finds Haze pondering on the subject that more songs have been written about than any other – love.  Or more specifically can love last forever or will we all end up with broken hearts? Despite this philosophical question being somewhat introspective the alluring beauty of Haze’s unique vocal and the gentle growing power of the melody means that you’re more likely to be carried away on a heavenly wave of joy than wanting to go and check in at a depression clinic. This one induces hairs to stand up on the back of the neck. Oh, that voice!

Haze will be playing live at Reading’s Are You Listening Festival in April (the first acts of which have just been announced and includes the likes of Breaking More Waves favourites The Night VI – bands announced so far and ticket info can be found here) plus a number of other dates throughout the summer. Together Or Apart will be released as a digital download on March 25th – full details of which will appear here.

Haze - Together Or Apart (Video)

24 Hour Blogathon : Haze - True Love Will Find You In The End

Oh. It might only be two minutes and thirty seconds long but this is stunning. Haze (not to be confused with Angel Haze who is very different indeed) puts another cover version on line, we take one listen and swoon. Listen to that voice – a mixture of sweetness with something grittier underlying it; just perfect. Add a soft simple backing and you have the definition of beauty in your ears. 

“Cos true love is searching too, how can it recognize you, unless you step out into the light the light”

If you’re in the Reading area right now, you can catch Haze playing tonight at Club Velocity at the Rising Sun Arts Centre. Get thee there now music lover!

This blog post is one of a series published as part of Breaking More Waves non-stop 24 hour Blogathon to raise money for Cancer Research UK. If you have read this post and enjoyed it or the music we’d really appreciate it if you would donate £2 to Cancer Research using the button below. 

Haze - True Love Will Find You In The End

Haze - River

Yesterday was Joni Mitchell’s 70th birthday. So by rights we should have featured this song then, but unfortunately it only came across our radar last night when the blog had been put to bed. But really it doesn’t matter, because despite the way that music blogging appears to sometimes work, with one artist / song / album quickly being discarded for the latest shiniest new thing, the best music isn’t just about one day, it’s about a lifetime, and Joni’s song River, is not only one of her most famous, but also a piece of work that has stood the test of time. So the fact we're a day overdue here means absolutely nothing.

When Berkshire lass Haze (you may remember her from our write up of Are You Listening Festival in April) fired this one across to us there was a sense of uneasy trepidation; covering a classic tune can be fraught with peril. Thankfully we needn’t have worried. Haze’s version is full of everything that makes music perfect. Just listen and be consumed. 

If we were a record label, we’d sign this up asap, rush release it for December and bag ourselves a Christmas number 1. But we don’t have to worry about that because it’s only bloody free to download, isn’t it?

Haze - River

Are You Listening? Festival 2013 - Review

On Saturday 27th April the UK festival season kicked off properly with the inaugural Are You Listening? Festival in Reading, Berkshire. The polar opposite of the ‘other’ festival held at the end of August in the same town, AYL is an intimate multi-venue event featuring mainly local bands or artists having a connection to the area. At a price of just £10 for the whole day with all profits being donated to charity (Reading Mencap) it provided excellent value for those who can’t afford the exorbitant prices of the behemoth summer festivals.

Carrying on in a similar manner from last year’s festival coverage on Breaking More Waves here are 10 things we learnt about this new event:

1.Small is beautiful

Festivals often become victims of their own success. Bigger multi venue events can find punters spending nearly as much time in queues and having to plan rigorously ahead to avoid them. As a new kid on the block AYL suffered none of these problems, retaining the concept of how these events should work, with punters free to roam between the 7 venues with no at capacity issues. Yet getting a good balance of ticket sales versus capacity everywhere still felt busy enough to generate an atmosphere.

2.The stars were out in full for AYL.

We spotted Bono, Whitney Houston (back from the dead?) and Peter Andre during Bloom’s noodly indie set in The Purple Turtle. OK, they were on a TV screen showing videos to the side of the stage, but they were there in spirit, doing their bit for charity. Extra points to the birthday boy guitarist in Bloom who sported a rather fetching headband. Maybe he received it from his aunty for his birthday and had to reluctantly wear it to show his ‘appreciation’.

3.Reading appears to be in a drinks price time-warp

Was this 1998 again? £1.95 for a pint of cider in one venue. £2 for a pint of lager. We can’t imagine drinks being that price at the other Reading Festival.

4.Milk isn’t always necessarily healthy

If you fancied something more expensive to drink then the venue known as Milk was serving cocktails in glass milk bottles with a straw. We’re not sure if the other Reading Festival could compete with this either.

5.Bands often state the blindingly obvious

“Find us on Facebook and the internet.” It appears that the law is that every band in the country must say this during a performance. Come on bands, let’s have some more interesting banter or otherwise say nothing at all please. You think a lot about what and how you play - give some attention to the space between as well.

6.When it’s for charity nothing matters too much

Despite a few cancellations, including two of the bigger names on the bill (The Good Natured and Mt Wolf) nobody seemed to really mind. After all, it was all for charity, spirits were high and the organisers did a pretty decent job of communicating the cancellations (better than some larger well established festivals) and finding replacements to fill the slots.

7.Boys in the band indie rock dominated at AYL  

As Elephants Are widescreen guitars were the metaphoric equivalent of a sonic air-raid, trying to find a bigger place, whilst Coastal Cities (pictured) off key yelps found a hooky charm when combined with synth subtlety and jittery hip-shaking guitars. In fact everywhere we looked there were men with guitars.

8.Tweeting about the weather at a festival is a risky business in the UK

“What a lovely sunny day at a festival.” Don’t ever tweet things like this. Two minutes later it will rain. (Thankfully it was only for a few minutes).

9.When there’s no danger of a queue at this type of event it’s fine to turn up just as an artist is about to start

Ex-My Luminaries man James Ewers’ new project is known as Lonesound and for a while it looked like the name couldn’t be more apt. Five minutes before he was due on stage the total size of the audience numbered two. Thankfully there was a last minute rush and Ewers demonstrated depth in lyrical delivery and his ability to pen a tune as he performed to a hushed appreciative crowd in the Reading International Solidarity Centre.

10.Despite all the male dominated indie rock at AYL, there were subtler softer delights to be discovered.

The gentle tones of Haze’s lounge pop provided a moment of respite against all the bluster. Imagine Nina from The Cardigans cooing at a keyboard and vocally you’d be getting close to the mark.

If AYL is to become a regular event or simply a one-off, we don’t know, but we can’t fault 2013's for starters. Value for money, raising cash for charity, highly enjoyable, with a relaxed unpretentious friendly atmosphere and some great music; Are You Listening? is a welcome new addition to the festival calendar.

Here's one of our discoveries from AYL. The lovely Haze.

Haze - In The Midst Of The Storm