If you don't want to read a near 800 word discussion on how blogs 'discover' new music and just want to hear a song then please skip to the bottom of this post where it says in capitals Now Here's The Even More Important Bit Of This Blog Post, press play and read that small part whilst listening. For the rest of you, here's a tale with a slight twist to it.
Before Breaking More Waves was born we possessed the naïve notion that music bloggers discovered all the fantastic new bands and artists they covered completely on their own. We thought they were so hungry for music that moved them, so tuned in to the musical landscape, that their brightly burning spotlights were always out there hunting and highlighting the artists that were going to produce albums that we’d all be salivating over two years later, with no help whatsoever from anyone except their own abilities to track down brilliance.
It was therefore a crashing disappointment having established ourselves within the new music blogosphere to find that some of the so called tastemakers and gurus of the new were actually being fed many of the acts they featured on their blogs from music industry PR companies, labels, or other record industry contacts. It seemed to all be about who you knew / networking rather than 'ability'. The independent new music scavenger side of our brain screamed out in defence of the guys who were writing blogs that actively went out looking for the best in music. These were the bloggers who turned up to see all of the support bands at a gig in a pub on a rainy Monday night in Grimsby or Swindon rather than just the main act that everyone else is there to see, in the hope that one of them might just be incredible. Or the lone man sitting in his bedroom at his laptop scouring one particular genre tag on Soundcloud or Bandcamp to find that gem that nobody has unearthed before. Wasn’t this what great new music discovery was about we asked ourselves?
So let’s introduce a new band. They are called The Night. We ‘discovered’ them via an email from a major label publicist. They are apparently ‘a big priority for Parlophone with an album coming up for the new year.’ It took us all of four minutes and fifteen seconds to discover this band as we listened to their song Strangers. Hardly hard work by us as a music blog was it? It completely undermines the spirit of independent new music discovery.
Now the independent music blog argument goes something along the lines of this: What’s the point of blogging about a band that has been signed by a major label, who will get a fat wad of cash thrown at them to help get them exposure when there are thousands of bands out there with no financial support who could do with a blogs help in getting some plays of their music and name out there far more? You’re just acting as a pawn for a major label.
Here’s our reply. This blog is independent. That means independent in terms of editorial, finance and thought. Therefore we don’t need to tow whatever the latest party line is or what the rules of blogging chapter 27 paragraph 3.3 say. All we do, all we will ever do, is write about music that moves us, that makes us feel something, that we love, be it an unsigned artist, an artist on a small indie label or an artist on a major label. It won’t make us cool or in with the in crowd, but that’s how we like it.
So this is The Night. A band that we discovered by a major label PR email. When you press play to hear them for the first time and hear them sing “we’re just strangers in the night,” you might just have a little giggle at that line.
Yet actually The Night aren’t complete strangers.
HERE’S THE IMPORTANT AND SLIGHT TWIST TO THIS RAMBLING BLOG.
Because the lead singer of The Night is called Sophie Rose. We wrote about her back in October 2010 as a solo artist having discovered her ourselves after one immense internet scouring session – a complete organic non PR led discovery. If you look carefully at the video on that blog post (the MP3 streams have long been taken down) you may even recognise some faces from the photo above. It seems that just as we writing about Sophie Rose, The Night were being born.
NOW HERE'S THE EVEN MORE IMPORTANT BIT OF THIS BLOG POST
And so finally to the music; the thing that counts miles more than any of our long rambles or how we actually discover it in the first place.
The Night is a six piece from London. They play beautiful, nerve-touching, timeless pop that hints at the likes of Fleetwood Mac. They have a classic sound that’s a world away from the thrusting and often generic r n b influenced songs that litter up the UK airwaves at the moment. They’ve even managed to take Rihanna’s We Found Love and turn it into a dreamy, sun kissed piece of ear candy that sounds utterly their own.
Yes, they’ve signed a deal with a major label, but once they were just struggling independent types. Yet all the time the music has been perfect.
We’ve fallen in love. Now it’s your turn. Welcome to The Night
The Night - Strangers
