Ones to Watch 2013

For the next 15 days Breaking More Waves will be revealing its annual Ones to Watch list. The 2013 list, for the most part, represents a summary of some of the artists that we’ve written about over the last 12-18 months who we are predicting will step up their game further in 2013, alongside a few that we’ve yet to feature. All of the artists are what we would largely define as new artists in so far as they have yet to bother the UK top 40 singles and have yet to release an album.

Over the next couple of months magazines, websites and blogs will be deluging you with these lists as if new music only appears in a slot between November and January every year. Yet we all know that this is not the case. It’s why our list brings together much of what we’ve been writing about in the past and pushes it towards the future. It’s also why we’re going early with our list – we want to give you our vision and ensure we’re not influenced by others that will come (including the BBC Sound of 2013 and a poll that we help run - the UK music bloggers alternate take – the Blog Sound of 2013).

As in previous years of producing this Ones to Watch list the artists chosen reflect the output of the blog and its musical preferences, although in keeping with 2011 the expansion of the list from 10 to 15 gives us the opportunity to cast our musical net a little wider.

Forming any sort of ‘tips’ list is ultimately just a guessing game. Anybody in pop music who thinks they can accurately tell who is going to succeed either artistically, creatively, critically or commercially is a fool ; but we’re keen to show our foolishness.

We’ll be introducing the first of our 15 Ones to Watch 2013 tomorrow at 8.30am GMT on the blog and then one each day at the same time for the following fourteen days. Until then, let’s take a look back at our previous predictions. Some hits. Some misses. As you’d expect really.

Ones To Watch 2009

La Roux, Little Boots, Passion Pit, Yes Giantess, White Lies, Skint & Demoralised, Alessi’s Ark, Florence & The Machine, Mumford & Sons, Marina & The Diamonds

Ones To Watch 2010

Ellie Goulding, Hurts, Beth Jeans Houghton, Unicorn Kid, Delphic, Clare Maguire, Stornoway, Mirrors, Holly Miranda, Clock Opera

Ones To Watch 2011

Clare Maguire (2nd nomination after failing to release anything in 2010), James Blake, Misty Miller, The Vaccines, Starsmith, Let’s Buy Happiness, The Milk, D/R/U/G/S, Visions Of Trees, Spark

Ones To Watch 2012 (Expanded from 10 to 15 artists)

Lucy Rose, Spector, Alabama Shakes, Foxes, Dot Rotten, Lianne La Havas, Lana Del Rey, Willy Moon, Michael Kiwanuka, Queen Of Hearts, The Staves, Ren Harvieu, Outfit, Charli XCX, Rachel Sermanni

Here’s one of those artists from last year’s list. Miss Del Rey had a pretty good year didn’t she? There’s more of her to come on Breaking More Waves in December.

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (Monsieur Adi Remix)

Shields - Pharoahs

Here is a new song from Geordie band Shields. Actually, it’s not in fact a Shields song at all but a cover of the SBTRKT track from his eponymous debut album. In tribute to the easy to google beat-man the band sport similar masks to him in a video which you can watch here. So it’s like having 5 SBTRKT’s on your viewing device rather than one. Which must be quite exciting if rather normal looking men in masks is your thing.

Pharoahs is the bonus track on the iTunes extended download and physical CD of the bands Kaleidoscope E.P due on the 19th of this month. We’re not quite sure what a bonus track is these days. Is it what would have been known in the days of vinyl only as a B-Side? Or is it a free give away? Which it can’t really be if it’s on a CD because you’re paying for the CD anyway. In our desperation to fully understand exactly what a bonus track is we googled the term, which of course led us to Wikipedia, which told us more than we could possibly ever want to know about bonus tracks. Essentially it’s a promotional term or device and the Japanese have to take the blame for it. Read more here if you must.

So Pharoahs is one of those stuttering choppy indie-dance-pop things that manages to sound smooth and spikey at the same time, like for example a piece of soap with some cocktail sticks stuck in it. Or rather in a musical sense like Miike Snow with more guitars or Friendly Fires with slightly less crazy hip shaking. Whatever, we're going to stop writing bollocks and let the music do the talking.

Shields - Pharoahs

Celestial Trax - 1994

Here’s something we don’t normally ask you to do. It’s to ignore the first twenty five seconds of this new tune by Celestial Trax. Why? Because quite simply it’s rubbish; it’s got one of those slow-mo vocal sounds that probably sounds fornicatingly fantastic when you’re out of your mind on drugs in some trendy East-London underground club, but anywhere else just sounds a bit silly.

But get past the intro (with the exception of a second off your tits vocal interlude around the two minutes thirty mark) and what you’re left with is one of those seductive jams that doesn’t really go anywhere and doesn’t really do anything, but still sounds lazily sexy. It would be easy to criticise 1994 as being doped-up electro-muzak, but that misses the point. Not every tune should be about melody, sometimes it’s good to have something to put on repeat, let it play over and over and lose yourself in its wash. This is our favourite drug, it’s called music.

1994 is the sound of crawling into bed with your lover at dawn and knowing that what happens next is going to be languidly sweet. For more Celestial Trax find our previous blog post here, or an albums worth of material here.

Celestial Trax - 1994

Halls - White Chalk (Live Video)

Music isn’t just about hearing something, it’s about feeling something. We’re pretty sure Sam Howard aka Halls knows this. Because with White Chalk, taken from his album Ark, Howard creates something that makes hidden emotions surge through the body. There’s grace, calm, heavenly beauty, isolation and a sense of otherworldliness in this beautiful piece.

Taken from a live session recorded in London in the summer of 2012, complete with a small choir, this live take of White Chalk is compelling stuff.

You can hear the whole of Halls debut album on Soundcloud (here). Take some time out and give it your attention.

Halls - White Chalk (Live)