The Sound Of Arrows - Magic

That’s it. We made it. This is the 1000th post on Breaking More Waves.

This may not seem that incredible, but we’re very proud of getting this far. Breaking More Waves is now just over 3 years old and in the last two and a half years we’ve averaged 1 post a day, every day, with (usually) just Sunday off. This has been achieved against a background of a demanding full time professional career outside of music, being a parent, a partner and having a busy and active social life. Call us smug, but we’re pretty happy with our achievement. We often hear talk and read about the most ‘successful blogs’ and success seems to nearly always be determined and characterised by the most number of hits and how well known the blog is. Our success is much simpler – publishing this thing on a daily basis.

At a rough guess in the last 3 years we’ve published something in the region of 280,000 – 300,000 words. That’s the equivalent of about 3 novels. Some posts have been pretty good, others (usually the ones written at 6am on a Saturday morning after 4 hours sleep, before the children get up and scheduled for the next week) have been pretty shocking. The gradual growth in hits, getting name checked here and there and being commended by our peer group is nice, but not the reason we write. Our main reason is quite simply to champion the music we love.

We’ve seen blogs come and go and we’ve seen blogs vary the pace of their posts depending on their own author’s position in life. It probably comes as no surprise to find that many of the most active sole author blogs are written by students and those who are unemployed. Although we’re very lucky to not be spare time rich, it does make Breaking More Waves a real labour of love.

So today we’re celebrating. There’s a little bit of magic in getting to 1000 posts. So here’s a band that we wrote about a few times way back in 2009 – The Sound of Arrows. Bizarrely we talked about their song Magic in September of that year and yet recently the group have re-released it. The sweet mini-film that accompanies their joyously child coated tune is a fantastical 4 minute dream adventure where all the parents in the world have disappeared leaving only the kids and strange monsters that seem to have come straight out of a Pixar movie.

Possibly one of the slowest re-releases ever, but maybe sometimes the best things in life – even sugary high-camp pop music – take time.

The Sound of Arrows - Magic (Tom Staar remix)

The Sound Of Arrows - Into The Clouds Remix

Earlier this month we introduced the remarkable Swedish sugary high camp that is The Sound Of Arrows in a blog here. Now courtesy of those good people at Neon Gold Records the cola cube electronic duo have put out a video remix. Yes, that’s right, Into The Clouds has been remixed so the band thought it deserved a different video. This time The Sound Of Arrows have spliced and cut up footage from the 1985 film Explorers and the 1986 film The Boy Who Could Fly and the remixers have given it an electronic high camp beat that sounds more Pet Shop Boys than the Pet Shop Boys themselves. Then just as things are getting a little too obvious the mix dissolves into a dubious anolgue synth workout that harks back to the era of eighties soft rock, with just a sprinkle of Physical by Olivia Newton John added to both the melody and rhythm. This is surely about as ostentatious as things can get. The people to blame or salute, depending on your perspective are Fear Of Tigers who have also created remixes for Visitors and Infadels.

The remix makes us cringe and smile in equal measure, and in a couple of years time we will wonder 'what were they thinking' but right now if it makes you grin and tap your feat you can order the remix on 12” vinyl from Pure Groove Pure Groove.

The Sound of Arrows, "Into The Clouds" (Fear of Tigers Remix) from Neon Gold Records on Vimeo.

The Sound Of Arrows - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

Don’t you just hate records with children singing on them ? Well so did we, but recently there has been a school bus full of great songs with kids choirs on them. Passion Pit started things rolling with the fantastic Little Secrets and now here come The Sound Of Arrows with M.A.G.I.C, a song that’s so sugary it’ll probably end up being used in a Disney commercial. But sugary doesn’t mean bad. The Sound Of Arrows make playschool pop like the Pet Shop Boys having fun. It's camp on a grandiose scale, very electric, very eighties, yet very modern. The group have even covered 80’s power ballad The Power Of Love by Jennifer Rush live, but thankfully don’t have the same big hair. Into The Clouds is musically and visually (check the video below) Vangelis meets the Never Ending Story and is due as a single on 21st September. The band have been working with the pop prince producer Richard X and given some time we suspect The Sound Of Arrows could find themselves chart bound.

Hailing from Sweden (what do they put in the water there to make the pop so good ?) The Sound Of Arrows are Oskar and Stefan. The group have described their sound as synths drenched in reverb, stardust and nostalgia and we couldn’t have put it better ourselves. It will make music snobs cringe, but ignore these big bad ogres, because for those who love big widescreen pop sneezed out of fantasies, it doesn’t get any better than The Sound Of Arrows.

The Sound of Arrows - Into the Clouds (Music video) from The Sound of Arrows on Vimeo.