Recalling the early days of Madonna or a disco-down Kylie, Nottingham’s very own singer, songwriter, producer and remixer Ronika is readying her new double A sided single Only Only / In The City for release on September 26 through the Record Shop label.
In The City streams below.
This is all about the dancefloor but with pop sensibilities running through the gaps between the tiles. It’s as if somehow Ronika has been locked away in a late 80’s New York basement club and only just found a way to escape.
Rather like Willy Moon who we featured yesterday, Ronika’s material may be stuffed and signposted with obvious reference points, but there’s really nobody out there doing this at the moment. “I’m just trying to increase the body count of people who have been knocked dead by my music,” she says. Knocked dead sounds a little violent for our liking, but In The City will certainly get you into the groove.
At first glance Summer Sundae festival in Leicester doesn’t look particularly appealing. Located in a city centre with a line-up that includes McFly, Newton Faulkner, The Maccabees and Showaddywaddy (yes honestly) sounds like someone has put the name of every band that ever existed into a hat and pulled some out randomly and called it a line-up.
But closer inspection reveals a festival that is bulging with musical goodness and has a couple of unique selling points that means that it’s a cracker of a festival – whatever the weather.
Summer Sundae may not pull huge names; it’s having to be run on a very careful budget after overspending in previous years, but as you look down the bill there’s a whole host of great new artists, many of whom have appeared on this blog. Take for example the band Other Lives, who play their first ever UK show on Friday afternoon on the Rising Stage – their album Tamer Animals is a subtly distinguished gem, one of our favourites of the year. On the same day there’s the jaw-droppingly good folk rockers Admiral Fallow, the irresistible put-a-smile-on-your-face indie of Givers and a certain Mr Graham Coxon of Blur. Add to that list over the next two days Breaking More Waves featured favourites Beth Jeans Houghton, Yaaks, Kyla La Grange, Delta Maid, The Antlers, Warpaint, and Exampleas well as names such as Blood Red Shoes, Dry The River, Bellowhead, I Am Kloot, The Agitator and Mercury nominated acts King Creosote & Jon Hopkins and Everything Everything and you have a veritable feast for your ears.
But there’s something else pretty clever about Summer Sundae. Unlike many other festivals, the chances of the dreaded line-up clash are minimised by the main stage running whilst the other three stages change over and vice versa. So in theory if you don’t stop for toilet or food breaks you can watch a band on one of the three smaller stages and as soon as they finish walk a few yards across the compact site to watch the next performance on the main stage. Not only that but if the weather is atrocious, you have the benefit of being able to dry off and even sit in comfort on a balcony as the second stage is Leicester’s De Montford Hall which is located on the side of the park where the event is held. Of course being a permanent building on site brings other luxuries – permanent toilets, sinks with hot water and soap and a carpeted bar area. If the idea of 3 days in a muddy field seems like your worst nightmare then Summer Sundae provides a decent halfway house between that and a normal gig.
We’ve mentioned some of the artists playing Summer Sundae. Here are three of our recommendations for your listening pleasure. We’ll be bringing a full review of Summer Sundae with our usual round up of the key points that make a festival work or not after the event.
*Footnote - Due to the recent riots and looting in the UK some events have been cancelled. We understand that there have been some incidents in Leicester, but that Summer Sundae organisers are liaising with police and the festival is still due to continue. Please however check the event website (link at the top of this preview) before travelling.
We live in an age where every musical idea has references to the past. Previously the underground was the place for innovation, but now even that is a bed for a fever of nostalgia. There seems to be no cure to this malaise, just a constant grabbing of our past musical heritage, mixing it up a little and putting it out to sell again. There's no such thing as a new idea - just regurgitating others creative ideas.
So against this background let’s introduce Willy Moon. He’s an odd one. Odd in the sense of being different from everything that’s around at the moment, but not being in any way avant-garde. He’s very much something new from the past. He’s certainly not underground, but he’s not mainstream either. At this stage we greet him as a passing curiosity with some interesting stolen ideas.
Willy Moon’s reference points are from the library of retro-rock - Bo Didley, Eddie Cochran and Link Wray spring to mind. With his stripped-back beat-laden song I Wanna Be Your Man the closest contemporary cousin is probably The Agitator. He also has the same slick teddy boy hair and penchant for looking smart as the Brighton rock n stomp man – although this visual quality could also have been appropriated from Rick Astley or Hurts, He only follows two people on Twitter – Kanye West and Big Boi. Right now only 30 people follow him.
I Wanna Be Your Man, which surfaced online recently, has according to our investigations actually been present on his now deleted Myspace for almost two years. His Bandcamp is still around though. It clocks in at less than two minutes. The black and white video for the song has some slightly mad spotlight puppet styled dancing. It’s as retro as you can possibly imagine, the twist being that there's some more modern beats. It's just a little crazy. Form your own opinion below.
If music is your hot hot sex, then here’s something to make you even sweatier. By the end you’ll probably be at least down to your underwear, and possibly even naked. My Tiger My Timing graced Breaking More Waves a short while back with their single Endless Summer and now they’ve pushed out this throbbing and pulsing remix of the song that gives a vaguely Moroder-ish flow to the track, keeps the hooky nursery rhyme vocal melody and heads out to the dance floors, looking to pull.
This is the stuff of pulsing strobes, girls and boys grinding sexily and the club losing itself in a delirious thrusting mass. Arousing stuff, get your coat Just Say Joe, you've pulled.
