Swell
Swell make absolutely sublime music. I don’t know how and I can’t figure out quite why it’s so good but everything they have produced has been superb. This is no exception. Like all of their songs it hones in on one particular mood with breathtaking accuracy. It creates a reflective atmosphere and then subtly moves and changes taking you through the embellishments (bells and a stax horn riff) with a soothing ease. The album, ‘For All the Beautiful People’, is released at the end of August and it’ll probably be a stormer.
Headrillaz
The seventies funk riff is a good place to start and the vocal sample is pretty spot on. The rest of track has all the right beats in the right place and sounds like some mid-point between the Propellerheads and Fatboy Slim. Basically, if you’re an advertising exec and you need a bit of big beat music for your next advert this is probably the place to come.
Six By Seven
Six By Seven’s debut album ‘The Things We Make’ is an absolutely stunning album full of blistering guitar and slow building mesmerising guitar melodies. This single is a short blast of why it’s quite so good. Impassioned vocals, noisy guitars and that certain something which distinguishes them from most other guitar hopefuls. The second track is even better showing what Six By Seven do best with it’s knowing slow building tension.
Cornelius
This is another mixed bag from Cornelius but this time he’s put it all in the same song. Easily listening tunes, low-fi electronic beats and chiming guitar turn into a noisy blast of hyped up loops for the chorus before it goes all mellow again. It’s a very strange concoction and although it makes perfect sense on the album (well, sort of) out of context it’s particularly unsettling.
Dream City Film Club
So much noise with so little to say. Dream City Film Club used to be sultry and dark in a Tindersticks turned evil type way but now they have become a three piece and have become the poor man’s Placebo. Talking of Placebo, Brian Molko turns up on the second track ‘Some’ which is far better as it leans more to Six By Seven’s structured dynamic than the mess that was ‘Billy Chic’.
The Mystics
The Jesus and Mary Chain occasionally have a lot to answer for. Now that The Kings Of Infinite Space have been dropped it looks like The Mystics are going to try to be the next JAMC. Drop a little bit of Suede copyism in there too and you’ve got a atrocious single made all the worse by the fact that loads of people are doing exactly the same thing.
Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets
Experimental noodlings of the American variety. The first track is an almost conservative repetitive mantra about staying in bed and moping and the second a high pitched whine. I quite like it but it gets the thumbs down from the rest of the office.
Gramaphone
This is the debut from a Birmingham band who have just got a deal with EMI. I’m not sure if it’s available yet but if you go to their website you can find out. I only mention it because it really is quite special. Singer Penny McConnell has a brilliant voice and there is a nine piece orchestra behind it. The opening track builds steadily into an emotional peak that is not over bearing but still powerful. The rhythms behind this and the other tracks are also interesting and it is generally far more inspiring than a lot of the singles I’ve got sitting next to me.
Swervedriver
Swirling guitar sonic landscapes my arse. Bollox stodgy sub-metal indie rock more like.
Tin Star
Hooray it’s the all male Garbage. Cyber-rock seems to encapsulate everything bad about technology / rock crossovers. They’ve taken industrial music, stripped it of what made it exhilarating in the first place - the pile driving rhythms and nihilistic attitude - and created a chart friendly pigs ear of a genre. I blame it all on Butch Vig. Anyone with a name like that deserves some kind of derision.
The Supernaturals
Inane, cheeky chirpy indie pop. Superficial harmonies, vapid lyrics and a high chart place. The Supernaturals are the new Dodgy. Just what we need.
Mover
It’s on superior Quality Recordings. Oh, the irony.
Everything is Good
(Beggars Banquet)
The Right Way
(V2)
For You
(Mantra)
Star Fruits and Surf Rider
(Matador)
Billy Chic
(Beggars Banquet)
Lucy’s Factory
(Rotator)
Silver Balloons
(Beggars Banquet)
Motel Lullaby
(EMI)
Space Travel, Rock ‘n’ Roll
(Sonic Wave Discs)
Head
(V2)
I Wasn’t Built To Get Up
(EMI)
We Got It Going on (featuring Ruby Turner)
(Superior Quality Recordings)