Do you Remember Georgia Barnes? She first came to the forefront in 2014 with the release of her EP Come In following a few years of drumming for the likes of Kate Tempest, Juce and Kwes. The daughter of Neil Barnes from Leftfield (if you’ve never heard Leftfield’s brilliant album Leftism or seen the Guiness advert that featured their track Phat Planet (here), that’s your homework for today), she styled her name as GEoRGiA and released her imaginative debut self-titled album in 2015. Roll on to 2019 and Georgia appears to have fixed her Caps Lock keys and is now producing her most accessible and poptastic music to date. We’ve already had Started Out which picked up plenty of plays on BBC Radio 1 and now there’s the Robyn-esque About Work The Dancefloor, which frankly is bloody brilliant. Big 80s robotic synth stabs? Check. Pulsing Moroder like synths? Check. A hook that’s spoken not sung so those of us who really can’t sing can join in easily? Check. Oh and a video that features a house that’s converting to a night club so hard that it’s on fire. Check. Add it to your playlist now. Like I have. Because it’s the end of the month and that means it’s time for an updated playlist with every song featured on Breaking More Waves from March. You can find the playlist by clicking this link here. Georgia - About Work The Dancefloor
Last month I introduced Southampton’s finest new band to the pages of Breaking More Waves. (Here) They were and still are called BASH! Now they’re back again with a new song. Hurrah. As soon as a group mentions the F-word (that’s fun by the way) music snobs sometimes turn away. Imagine if for example Radiohead had described themselves as ‘some kids having fun.’ A certain type of Pitchfork reader would have instantly dismissed them. How can they write good songs when they’re enjoying themselves? Well, that's how BASH! describe themselves on their Facebook page and to use a cliché, the music snob's loss is our gain, because it means more room on the dance floor for us. Two fingers up to you Mr Making Music Has To Be Serious For It To Be Good. And BASH! are good. And fun! And they love an exclamation mark as well. Imagine Radiohead’s Creep looking like this: CREEP! Isn’t that more exciting? Anyway, Indecisive rocks. It’s a little heavier than previous song Wild – although don’t expect anything that sounds like Metallica. The lyrics go a little deeper as well. Just press play on the song below - you don't need an essay from me describing every bloody guitar riff and drum beat. BASH! will be supporting Girli in their home city on the 11th April. Keep an eye out for more live dates soon. BASH! - Indecisive
Rosalía’sEl Mar Querer didn't make it into my Top 10 Albums of 2018 list, but if I wrote that list again now it would have done. It's been a bit of a slow burner for me, Already a huge star in some parts of the world, here in the UK, after two records, she very much still a rising artist. I could imagine her pushing her trolley around your local supermarket and nobody recognising her. In fact, even though I listen to a lot of music, it wasn’t until a holiday in Rosalía’s home country of Spain last summer that I came across her songs. El Mar Querer is a mind-blowing long-player mixing traditional flamenco with R&B pop and exciting synthetic beats. If that sounds like an awful idea, it isn’t. Rosalía pulls it off 100% with her incredibly expressive and beautiful voice and some exciting ultra-modern production. It shows that pop can still do something unusual and exciting even if as a genre it has reached middle age. Since the album she has also cropped up on James Blake’s rather good fourth record Assume Form on the song Barefoot In The Park (one of the highlights of Assume Form) and has been teasing the fact that she has collaborated with Billy Eilish. This summer Rosalía heads to the UK and besides a show in London at Somerset House will be hitting Glastonbury Festival. For anyone moaning that The Killers are an uninspiring choice of headliner, may I suggest you take inspiration in Rosalía instead. Glastonbury is about way more than 10pm Saturday Night on the Pyramid stage. Today Rosalía released a new track and it’s a bit of a surprise. In the same way her debut album was a big stylistic jump to her second, now she’s releasing a reggaeton tune called Con Altura with another collaborator J Balvin. Apparently Rosalía listened to quite a lot of reggaeton when she was younger and so for her this is a natural progression. Even if like me you only know a little Spanish (living fast is mentioned in the lyrics so I’m guessing the song is something about that) it doesn’t really matter – the hook will grab you anyway. And being Rosalía the video, like all of her work, is a lot of fun, taking some more traditional dancing and bringing it fully up to date. Check out the video below and if you haven’t done so, treat yourself to a listen of El Mar Querer - one of the best pop records of 2018. Rosalía - Con Altura
With hints of The National, Gang of Youths and a more introverted and quieter Springsteen, Mosa Wild flawed me with Smoke, their debut release, in 2016. That was quickly followed by some support slots with Maggie Rogers and so 2017 seemed to promise an exciting year of releases and shows from the band. It didn’t happen. In fact it seemed for some time that Smoke was the only output we’d ever get from Mosa Wild and they’d become one of those ‘whatever happened to….’ bands, building up 8 million streams on Spotify in the process. Then out of the blue the wheels have been set back in motion. With a show at the Waiting Room in London confirmed as well as slots at Great Escape and Bushstock Festivals, Mosa Wild can be taken of the notice board labelled 'Missing Presumed Dead'. It was just a rather long intermission, which makes sense given that when the founding members of band got together they called themselves The Intermission Project before changing to Mosa Wild. To fully confirm their return there is also a new song. It’s called Night and was produced by Jim Abbiss of Bombay Bicycle Club and Arctic Monkeys fame; but this time there’s the promise of more as there is an EP on its way called Talking In Circles which will be released through Glassnote. Night is a call for support set against widescreen stage straddling indie rock guitars: “This night is long, my fire is burning out, help me be strong,” sings vocalist Jim Rubaduka and it only takes a couple of listens to confirm that it’s a potential anthem in the making. Amongst the abundance of gangs of indie boys with guitars, Mosa Wild is a cut above the rest. Mosa Wild - Night
