The Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition gives new and unsigned artists from the UK and Ireland the chance to compete for a slot on one of the main stages at the world’s most famous festival. Today the longlist of 120 acts selected by the first round judges (including Breaking More Waves) was published. This longlist will be cut down into a shortlist of just 8 by another group of judges. The lucky 8 will then be invited to play at a live final in Pilton in April to decide the winner. It’s the fourth time that Breaking More Waves has been involved in judging the opening round of the competition, which this year had in the region of 7,000 entries. For 2015, for our part, we listened to just over 150 acts from a variety of genres from folk, indie, rock, pop, soul, electronic and more and were asked to choose 3 for the longlist. Our three choices are: 1st Felix Hagan & The Family Brilliantly absurd and dandyish musical theatre that will have you dancing on the tables. Our number 1 choice.
2nd Wyldest Already featured a number of times on Breaking More Waves. Hazy, melancholy, ethereal pop that twinkles and shimmers with loveliness. For fans of Beach House and 80's indie.
3rd Fjokra A bit of a ‘wild card’ choice perhaps, but this confusing multi-genre embracing alt pop/rock full of hyperactivity stood out for its plethora of ideas.
We’re looking forward to listening to all the acts nominated, and of course seeing who the long list judges choose for the live final. In previous years some of the bands who have made the longlist (but don't necessarily make the shortlist) go on to do well anyway, even if they don't make the final. For example the likes of Circa Waves, Laura Doggett and Slaves have all cropped up on this list and have then gone on to get record deals. You can see the full longlist for 2015 here and listen to most of the nominated acts here, except for a small handful who didn't supply a public link to the song they entered, including one of our own choices Wyldest (although you can hear their new single above).
As soon as this new Låpsley video for Brownlow was released yesterday virtually every new music site in our land (and other lands) rushed to post it. A day after, the video still has just around 4,000 views so we figure there’s a hell of a lot of people out there who don’t click play as soon as something new is posted, so a more leisurely and less rushed post is still worth the time. Here’s the key facts you need to know about Brownlow: 1. The song is taken from her Understudy EP, which is a very good EP. In fact we have a spreadsheet called Favourite EPs of 2015 and it is listed on that spreadsheet. Having said that there are only 2 other EPs listed right now, which suggests we either have very high standards or actually haven’t listened to that many new EPs this year. See if you can guess which it is. 2. There’s a mellow bouncy bass sound in Brownlow which sounds very much like the bouncy bass sounds that bald headed techno brothers Orbital used to make. This is also a good thing. More bouncy bald brother bass please. 3. The video is basically Låpsley riding around in a car a bit and being ‘in da club’. Thankfully she has yet to write a song with lyrics that revolve around her being ‘in da club’ but if she does we may have to reconsider our position on her as that would not be a good thing. This song, as far as we can tell, is about living for the moment and seeing what happens, with lyrics about jumping into a pool and not knowing where the bottom is. Dangerous but exciting. Especially if you can't swim. 4. Låpsley was the winner of the Blog Sound of 2015 poll. This was also a good thing – she was one of our votes. 5. She’s playing some live shows and festivals soon. Dates (here). Another good thing. In summary Låpsley + music = a good thing.
Remember 27 Club by Chløë Black? It was one of the underground pop tunes of 2014 and garnered Chløë a place on this blog's 10 Ones to Watch 2015 list. Well, the good news is that it’s now getting an official release via an EP which includes the song, a remix by one of our other Ones to Watch (Elderbrook) and another track Cruel Intentions. This also means that there’s a new video for the song. It’s fair to say that this one is a bit slicker and ghoulishly film-noir stylish than the previous one – the message of the film seeming to be that if when eating your tea a flower pops out of your mouth, get ready to say your goodbyes. In more Ones to Watch news Chløë is also going to be out on the road supporting yet another of the names on our list – Rag ‘N’ Bone Man (it’s almost as if we planned this with some sort of inside knowledge – we didn’t!) with dates in Norwich and Southampton. She also supports Rhodes at Village Underground in London and Kiesza at Shepherds Bush Empire. So if you have tickets to any of these shows do whatever it takes to get there early. Shove a flower violently in your bosses mouth at tea break if he or she won't let you sneak off a bit early to get there in time if you have to. Just to make things clear – this is a 10/10 pop song and Chløë Black looks like she is a singer of near 10/10 proportions. If you go to see her alongside Rag 'N' Bone Man it's basically going to be like an episode of The Voice, without the swivel chairs and everything that is annoying about the show taken out and extra layers of darkness thrown in.
If you follow us on Twitter you might have seen us grumbling recently about ‘premieres.’ It seems to us that music industry protocol decrees that every new song released must have some sort of premiere or exclusive coverage. Whether you’re Arcade Fire premiering your new video on Pitchfork or a lo-fi indie band with your latest slice of dirty noise streaming exclusively on some small scale d-i-y music blog, helping you to sell 50 copies of your latest vinyl release, if you haven’t got one, it seems as if you’re worth nothing in certain sectors. But frankly we couldn’t give a flying fig about premieres / exclusives. Apologies now to bands and PR companies who offer them to us when they get an email back that says ‘yes this is good and we’re going to post it but we’re not bothered about going first with it, see if you can find someone else who this sort of thing is important to’ response. There’s a really great post about these things on Song By Toad called Why EXCLUSIVES!!! Make Me Hate Music. It’s kind of funny, kind of rude, but it hits the nail on the head from where we’re coming from. We're glad we're not the only ones who think this way. Basically these things are 99% of the time about desperation and attention. Have a read (and a giggle – we did) here. Why do we mention this? Because of this new song by a new act that goes by the name of The Japanese House, who according to twitter is actually a singer called Amber Bain. A quick google search of Amber reveals that she may have released some past material under other names, although we’re unable to 100% confirm this. The Japanese House is due to release a debut EP Pools To Bathe In through Dirty Hit (home of The 1975, Wolf Alice and Marika Hackman) on the 27th April. But here’s the thing; it had its radio premiere on Zane Lowe last night, then its blog premiere on Noisey. So, by the rules of premieres and exclusives it’s already asserted itself as being a moderately important record by industry types. This of course all sounds rather cynical on our part – but when it comes to the music, we’re not. Why? Because it wins. Still, the first track from The Japanese House fits perfectly in with the zeitgeist, with electronically filtered vocals and chilled studio electronics that are the equivalent of a lush pile carpet. But under all that trickery is the important stuff – a melody, and a rather alluring one at that. The Japanese House - Still
