As some regular readers might know, besides writing this blog I’m also involved in booking Portsmouth’s Dials festival, a small multi-venue festival that runs in 5 venues on one street in Southsea, Portsmouth in October. The festival is a little different than most multi-venue events insofar as all the core team volunteer for the event, it’s 100% independent and all profits are given to local mental health charity Solent Mind. Obviously with the current pandemic situation and lockdown (albeit a rather relaxed lockdown compared to some other countries) a lot of festivals have already been cancelled and there is doubt over any live music happening at all in 2020. However, at this stage Dials is still planning to run - if you want to support the charity you can buy an early ticket by clicking here. We were due to have announced the first wave of bands including our main headliners in April, but because of the situation we have delayed that just for now. The 2019 event was the first time in the four years since the festival had been running where I personally booked the all bands for the main stage at The Wedgewood Rooms, which was exciting but also rather nerve wracking. This gave me an opportunity to hand pick a number of acts that I’ve featured on the blog, including two acts that I’d named in earlier years as ‘Ones To Watch’ in my annual round up of tips for the next year. And so it was that hitting The Wedge were The Blinders, Another Sky, Walt Disco and Saltwater Sun. The Blinders headlined and put on an electrifying show; raw, passionate and full of an angry energy. Today saw the band release a new single that conveys that anger further. Lunatic (With A Loaded Gun) is a song that was written directly about the USA's separation policy and the resulting brutal images of children being placed in cages separate from their families. If you’re the sort of person that thinks that’s acceptable at any time or in any form then please take a good long hard look at yourself. The music is as fiercely incensed as you’d expect and although I wish the subject matter didn’t have to exist, I’m grateful for such a stimulating piece of music. Lunatic (With A Loaded Gun) comes from The Blinders forthcoming album Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath due July 17th. The Blinders - Lunatic (With A Loaded Gun)
Away from my day job (which has absolutely nothing to do with music) one of the other projects I’m involved in is running a small music festival in Portsmouth. It’s called Dials. It’s a multi-venue event run by a team of volunteers in support of Solent Mind, a local mental health charity. Dials ran in 2015 and 2016 as a smaller replacement for the now defunct Southsea Fest, before taking a break in 2017. My original role was not much more than having a small hand in booking some of the artists that played in those first two years, helping out with a bit of public relations and trying to understand how a putting on a music festival worked; it's a jigsaw and you have to put all the pieces in the right place at the right time. In 2018 we decided to continue, with a slightly different (albeit very small) team as well as a modified concept and I acted as festival director as well as co-booker. For 2019, I’ve taken a step back after some recent health issues and another team member Abbie Eales has taken on the role, but I’m still quite heavily involved; I co-book the event and generally do whatever I can to help with the limited spare time I have. 2018 was the first year that the festival took the decision to support a charity and it is something that is very important to me. I’ve always been more of an actions speak louder than words sort of person (ironic given that I write a blog) and so you won’t find me doing lots of posts on Twitter about how important mental health is – I’d rather get on with organising an event like Dials and supporting an organisation like Solent Mind and (hopefully) giving people a great day out watching some of the best new music out there. Tweets are useful, but taking real action is even more so. 2018 represented a new start for our festival with its charity support and revised team structure. The feedback we got from punters was hugely positive and spurred us on to do it again in 2019. This year we’ve grown the team working on the festival as we had lots of interest from people about getting involved and volunteering after the 2018 event, although the festival itself is the same size. I like to think that when something is positive and successful people want to be part of it. It certainly helps having a bigger number of people to spread the workload, especially when the team is full of such talented and brilliant people. I mentioned the praise we received in 2018; we especially liked that ticket holders thought that Dials had a friendly community atmosphere, was well run, had some nice elements of attention to detail (even though we had very little budget), how close all the venues were to each other, and how much great new music they discovered. And it’s new music discovery that is at the heart of Dials Festival. Which is why I’m incredibly excited today to reveal the first 13 acts that will be appearing at Dials 2019. Headlining will be The Blinders - a band I named as Ones to Watch in 2018 (here). Since that time they’ve released their debut album Columbia and cooked up a storm wherever they’ve played live. This year they’ve already played the Scala in London and will be supporting Noel Gallagher at some of his summer shows before they head to Dials. Alongside The Blinders I’m ecstatic to bring Another Sky back to Portsmouth for the second time. If you’ve read Breaking More Waves this year or followed me on Twitter you’ll probably know that this band is one of my favourite new acts of the last 12 months. They were the first band I approached about playing for 2019 and was absolutely delighted when they said yes. If you haven’t heard them yet, it’s time to do some catching up and listen to tracks like Chillers, The Cracks, Forget Yourself,Apple Tree and Avalanche and feel the band’s power. Having seen them play a number of times I know they can deliver the goods on stage as well – they are all fantastic musicians. Besides these 2 bands today we’ve announced 11 more acts. From fresh new cosmic dreamy synth pop from Bristol (Pocket Sun) to snarling South London new wave punk recently signed to Felix White of The Maccabees new Yala! Records label (Talk Show) to analogue ambient audio-visual electronic art from Brighton (Johanna Bramli) to a band that are playing Glastonbury, Boomtown and Download this summer, have collaborated with Bobby from Primal Scream on a recent single and are making people’s jaws drop with their full-on live performances (Black Futures). We’re really proud of the line up we’ve curated and hope that as many people as possible will come along for the day. We’ve already sold out of early bird tickets and hope that even if you know none of the acts playing, you’ll come for a grand day out anyway. A quick plea: It really helps us survive as a festival if you buy tickets early so if you have any thought about coming to Dials 2019 – grab a ticket now (just click here). Dials takes place on October 5th on one road (Albert Road) in Southsea, Portsmouth and runs from lunchtime to around 11pm at night. The artists announced for Dials 2019 so far are: The Blinders, Another Sky, Arxx, Black Futures, Fake Empire, Haze, Hussy, Johanna Bramli, LibraLibra, Pocket Sun, Saltwater Sun, Talk Show and Wych Elm, but this is just the start, we have lots more to come. Find out more about the artists, check out the Spotify playlist and most importantly buy your tickets at the Dials Festival website by clicking www.dialsfestival.com
If you’d like a free ticket to Dials, then why not come and help out and volunteer? We’ll be looking for people to help with things such as merchandise sales on the day, artist accreditation and acting as runners. It’s a really rewarding experience (something I never really considered until I started helping out) and we’ll make sure you get some time off to go and see some of the artists play. If you’re interested in volunteering just send an email to dialsfestival@gmail.com To finish off, here’s some music from a few of the artists playing Dials 2019. We look forward to welcoming you in October. For more information on Solent Mind and what they do click here. The Blinders - Brave New World
Guitar music is dead. Rock is RIP. Blah blah blah. That seems to be the view held by certain sectors of the music industry. In the UK, if you turn on Radio 1 right now you’ll find very few guitar bands on the playlist. The noteable exceptions at this week are Blossoms and Florence and the Machine on the A list (both arguably not pure guitar bands) and holding a brightly flaming torch for exciting new young rock bands, Dream Wife on the C list. That’s it. Here on Breaking More Waves I’ve never been a champion of just indie rock music, just as I’ve never been a champion of just electronic music or just folk music or just experimental music. I’m excited by all types of music and don’t really understand people who only like one genre. There’s a whole world of sound waiting to be discovered. Only listening to one genre is like only eating fish and chips or only having sex in the same position and place. Boring. Right now I don’t buy the guitar music is dead argument. Sure, it may not be morphing into anything particularly new or challenging as a genre but right now I feel there’s a whole group of guitar bands out there who are committing huge amounts of energy and zeal into what they do; the result being the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when you witness them play live. There's still a lust for rock 'n' roll. The Blinders are one such band. Raw, passionate, with a lead singer who is like a modern day version of Jim Morrison, there’s a dark burning fire in this band that not only works live but translates its heavy fuel into the recorded form well. New single L'etat C'est Moi is a perfect example of that. “A self-proclaimed war-dance told by the Idiot King himself. The first-person perspective of a madman, and his obsessive fantasies for power over all, and insolence from none,” is how the band describe the song. It’s a brutal but euphoric cacophony of noise that is a long way from displaying signs of indie rock being dead.This will make you feel alive. The Blinders - L'etat C'est Moi (Video)
With the 2018 Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch posts now complete, I’m wrapping things up with the full list of 10 artists selected and an accompanying spotify playlist which you can find by clicking here or stream below. It has one song from each of the acts selected. Whilst posting about these artists I’ve had a couple of comments made from readers about balance and how the selections were all mainly female and I’d just like to address this. First, so what? It’s the music that I'm concerned about not the artists sex. Secondly that statement is actually incorrect. Yes, 9 of the 10 artists I have selected have a female vocalist (when I introduced the posts here I noted that because of my tastes, the list wouldn’t be balanced in that way) but there were 31 musicians of which 16 were male and 15 were female. So in terms of that demographic the list was pretty much balanced - although this was more from luck than any judgement. Thank you to everyone who engaged with these posts this year. Whilst Breaking More Waves is written mainly for my own entertainment, the Ones to Watch posts are very much for others. Amongst my (real life) friend group some of my friends, who know I'm obsessed with music will often ask me ‘what are the latest new acts we should be listening out for then?’ My Ones to Watch list is essentially my online response to that real-life question. Here’s a summary of the 10 artists chosen and a playlist featuring 1 song by each act. 1.Sigrid 2.Jade Bird 3.Superorganism 4.The Blinders 5.Pale Waves 6.Grace Carter 7.Off Bloom 8.Confidence Man 9.Pink Kink 10.Maisie Peters I'll be updating the Breaking More Waves monthly playlist at the end of this month as per usual, but it won't include the Ones to Watch posts only the other new music that I have uploaded in November. If you want to follow the monthly Breaking More Waves playlist you can find that by clicking on this link.
“The future’s bleak, but at least we get to decide it’s soundtrack,” state The Blinders. And what a soundtrack. Take one listen to Brave New World, a gritty and raucous mix of punk, psychedelia, shouty indie and a hint of Carter USM’s Bloodsports For All and you’ll see. It’s the stuff of sweat, blood and tears. It’s the sound of a band who, if they have ever been told that guitar music is dead, have clearly decided that it’s fake news. Having released their debut EP Hidden Horror Dance back in 2016 The Blinders have been slowly growing an audience ever since. 2017 saw them doing the business through hard gigging, support slots with Cabbage, one of last year’s Ones to Watch, and festivals such as Great Escape, Reading and Festival No.6. Next year will see the band hitting the road for their own headline tour which is likely to be an explosive and highly energetic affair. Manchester-based, but Doncaster born, The Blinders have had comparisons thrown at them ranging from Arctic Monkeys to Jimi Hendrix Experience and they're a band that are not afraid to address the current state of the nation. They’ll be bringing a mosh pit to a town near you soon. Ones to Watch in 2018 for sure. They bring the noise. The Blinders - Brave New World (Video)
