Star Slinger - New Waves

Can musical bedroom laptop production be sexy? The answer is a resounding yes when Star Slinger is in town, because he makes music that could quite easily get you shimmying out of your clothes, naked and grinding very quickly.

Star Slinger is rapidly becoming one of the most blogged artists around and it’s easy to see why. His chopped and spliced samples of old soul, r&b and hip-hop may be the kind of thing that hundreds of wannabe bedroom producers aspire to – but Star Slinger does it incredibly well. From the horny jams of Do It Myself a track that ends with the sounds of a girl in the throes of sexual climax, to the fidgety fractures of Word – a piece not dissimilar to the work of Gold Panda -Star Slinger has the grooves. In fact he already has a bucketful of them on line and an album entitled Volume 1 available to download. Volume 1 samples everything from child-fronted reggae bands (Musical Youth) on Dutchie Courage to funk (Parliament) to 90’s soul (Mint Condition), to 80’s bagpipe guitar rock (Big Country) plus more and it’s this musical mish-mash that reminds us very much of The Avalanches (whatever happened to them?). It’s as good to listen to at home as it is to attempt to dance to, or at least nod your head to.

Star Slinger is one Darren Williams from Manchester, formerly from a small village in Nottinghamshire. He suggests that he likes the eighties, Sweden, dusty records, synthesisers, hip-hop, Henry Rollins, curvy exotic women and solitary animals, which sounds fine to us. Enjoy a sample of his glitchily seductive tunes below. Star Slinger is touring the U.S and Canada this February with Baths and Braids. We only hope that with him giving so much free music away he actually finds a way to make it pay.

Star Slinger - Do It Myself (NSFW) by Star Slinger

Star Slinger - Word by Star Slinger

STAR SLINGER - SLOW 'N' WET by Star Slinger

Star Slinger - Dutchie Courage by Star Slinger

Music That Made Me #2 - She's A Star - James

Music That Made Me is a weekly personal and autobiographical dip into the ocean of memories that over the course of this year will give context to Breaking More Waves.

There are some people that drift into my life and I can never remember where I first met them. Then occasionally there are people who boldly rush in, pushing everything out of the way with such an immediate impression that they are impossible to forget.

It was fireworks night – the air was full of sulphur and excitement and I was living on a houseboat on the River Thames. We were permanently moored in Windsor with a direct view of the castle. I often used to imagine her majesty woke up, looked out of her window with wakeful royal eyes and the boat was the first thing she saw.

This particular girl, who for some time I became almost strangely obsessed with was like no one I had met before. She had many of the typical traits that I found attractive in women – arty, pale skin, red curly hair, Celtic accent, suitably cool individual fashion sense (she sat next to Stella McCartney in needlecraft at Central St Martins College of Art and Design) - but what attracted me most was the conflict between her energy and the wall the she occasionally put between us. She had a contagious and explosive zest that made the world seem an exciting place full of endless possibilities, yet sometimes she seemed afraid of losing her own securities.

We became friends very quickly, nothing more – our relationship was one which for the most part sat on the side of nothing more than a vague tease - and we thrived in each other’s company. Everything we did seemed full of excitement – expensive Champagne at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden served by distinguished Italian waiters, weird backstreet temporary fetish fashion stores, vodka cocktails in hidden London basements, art-house films at the National Film Theatre, her exotic friends who made poverty seem exquisitely glamorous. “Let me give you a butterfly kiss,” she whispered one day to me, pressing her lips as close as possible to my face without ever touching. She was impulsive, eccentric, and maybe a little unstable at times; I thrived on it all.

She wasn’t a huge fan of music, although she loved experiencing the new – she was a big fan of travel and she often sent me letters from far corners of the world. When I took her to see The Verve at Brixton Academy she almost got into a fight with another girl – she had some temper on her. But it was another band and another song that I remember her by. The group was James.

I loved and still love a lot of their material – from their early 80’s indie-folk roots to their arena topping rock-pop of the early 90’s. She’s A Star isn’t by any means my favourite James song – that would be a close call between Ring The Bells, Sometimes, Out To Get You, Johnny Yen and of course their anthem Sit Down, but it reminds me of her. There’s some snippets of lyrics that seem just right “much brighter than all this static,” and “so frightened that he won’t love her, she builds up a wall,” seemed to almost be written with her in mind. I never told her that when I heard the song it made me think of her – at the time I wasn't an outward fan of clichéd sentimentality and linking it to music, but now some fourteen years on when I hear She’s A Star it makes me smile and remember.

Clare Maguire - Last Dance + BBC Sound of 2011

Over the last couple of years we’ve published a number of commentaries on the annual BBC Sound of List. In 2009 we asked “Is winning the BBC Sound of List a poisoned chalice?” Conclusion - only if you don’t have commercial success fairly quickly after, otherwise watch out the media may decide to knock you down if you don’t meet their hyped up expectation. In 2010 we took part in the voting for the list ourselves and gave our thoughts on voting. Conclusion – as one of the panel it’s important to vote for acts that you love the music of, but there’s no point voting for an act that has not already got some degree of exposure, otherwise it’s a wasted vote. We also questioned why there was so little rock music in the Sound of 2010. Conclusion – music and fashion go hand in hand having to undergo stylistic change to market themselves as a luxury commodity, and rock music is so engrained in tradition it has for the moment fallen out of fashion. This article proved to be more prophetic than imagined as by the end of 2010 the number of rock songs to feature in the UK singles chart had fallen to its lowest tally in 50 years (article here)

This year we’re not blogging any further on the Sound of List. The reason being that two articles produced by our UK blogging peers – the excellent Faded Glamour and The Recommender have already said everything we want to say here and here - and you can read some interesting debate in their comments section, including thoughts from Breaking More Waves. The only thing we will add is that if this year’s top 4 are anything to go by and be believed, it could be a good year for the initial J. Jessie J, James Blake, The Vaccines (with a lead singer called Justin) and Jamie Woon have all got the votes. In a way it’s a shame that of the long list of 15 Jai Paul didn’t make the top 5 so that this blog could have been an absurd piece about alliteration in pop music.

However, as much as Jai Paul is a warped and inventive artist we’re pleased to see that Clare Maguire upset the J’s and sneaked it to the top 5, if only because she’s an artist that we’ve been blogging since January 2009. Clare’s single, the follow up to Ain’t Nobody is called Last Dance and was written the day after Michael Jackson’s death. “You're the first man to move me yeah, you helped me feel alive,” sings Clare in tribute, her huge voice underpinned with a tribal-thump sensibility. This is big. Font size 72 big. The video is streaming below and for those who are still getting to know Clare there’s a bonus remix of her song as well as her cover version of Antony and the Johnsons Hope There’s Someone. Who would you save your last dance for?

Clare Maguire - The Strangest Thing (Bloodshy & Avant Version) by Breaking More Waves

Clare Maguire - Hope There's Someone (Antony & The Johnsons Cover) by Radar Maker

Kyla La Grange - Walk Through Walls

Big ballsy guitars, female vocals out of the Maria McKee school of country tinged rock girls and drums that the word crash was really invented for give a powerful introduction to the new single by songstress Kyla La Grange - who you may remember from Breaking More Waves back in March and April last year.

Following up her support slots this winter with I Blame Coco, Kyla’s new material is a free download entitled Walk Through Walls – you can put it on your PC or laptop from the Soundcloud player below. If we were directing a video for this song we could easily imagine scenes shot on windswept mountains and in vast derelict churches, Kyla dressed in flowing robes trailing romantically and seductively out behind her as shards of glass rain down like surreal raindrops. If visualisation of music isn’t your thing and maybe you’re a bit more kinetic, then just feel the full blast of the guitar wattage here, this is a powerhouse of a song, the kind of stuff that when played live it’s ok to pull a gurning* face to whilst placing one foot on a speaker stack in a rock god pose.

Kyla will shortly be announcing some UK dates, so maybe we’ll see you down the front for one of those and see if he gives it the gurn. She is also due to play SXSW in Austin, Texas in March.

*Note for non-UK readers who may not be familiar with the art of the gurn or gurning, all is explained here.

Kyla La Grange - Walk Through Walls by Stayloose