Today's recommendation is inadvertently poignant. The band have no idea that it's poignant, but it is. Just yesterday a debate raged online, particularly on Twitter, among music bloggers following an interesting article in which the founder of Drowned In Sound , Sean Adams , was interviewed on a piece entitled, " The Slow Death Of Music Blogging ". Don't panic people, The Recommender isn't going to die any time soon, what Sean was discussing was the end of the blogging spectrum that indulge in what we dismissively call ' Churnalism '. It's when an [...]
Usually a biography that contains stories of an artist's Romany Gypsy influences and a love of ghost stories would have me running to the horizon. However, there's something this artist has done with the traditional English song that's gritty and dark. Once you hear the rest of her biography you realise she's destined for success, she always has been. Her upbringing clearly set her off on this direction, influencing her to her core, infusing with her soul and 2012 should see her finally reach the first big junction in that destiny as she sets about releasing her debut album. Thankfully [...]
The Recommender has been seen DJ'ing late night sets at a variety of bars and venues around their local city of Brighton over recent months. Our aims have always been simple; to try and deliver the music we write about in yet another medium, bringing more and more ears in front of the emerging artists we love. We've spun tunes until 3am at side street pubs, we've been filling the dance floors at Vice Magazine 's monthly launch parties and now we've been invited to secure a couple of fixed residencies, so we wanted to share the good news [...]
We get a lot of requests from artists, PR, managers and labels asking us to post music from bands that have already released several albums. We tend to turn them down, as this blog and the service it's trying to provide is all about delivering new, emerging music to people. What good is it to recommend an artist you've already heard of, right? On the flip side, we're not interested in desperately being first either, more that we're only trying to be early to new music, so the readers genuinely discover something. Anything else makes the purpose of this blog [...]
Last month, the BBC 6 Music radio station had their inaugural Blog Awards , in which they asked a selection of UK blogs and music sites to select the award's categories. The Recommender was one of the nine sites asked to contribute . They requested we choose an alternative category to all the other 'normal' awards, so we selected ' Best Tease Of The Last 12 Months ' and put up a range of music videos for the public to vote on. And vote they did, in their hundreds. It was a massive success, leading to [...]
With the agreeable and temperate weather, that both the north and south of the UK has been enjoying this week, we have something of a perfect selection for you, with today's band proving your ideal afternoon soundtrack. There's a theme to the top and tail of the UK with today's post as our blog is based in the South, but it's the Northern music blog, Crack In The Roa d, to thank for today's tip, so credit to the Newcastle blogger Josh and the gang for this delightful highlight. If you've never visited Crack In The Road, then you [...]
Some record labels just nail it every single time. It's obviously rare, because scouting for the very best new music is one thing, but then actually signing them can require further fortune, as you compete with so many others, but every now and again a record label appears and it delivers band after band of awesomeness. Double Denim is one such label. They can proudly mention current hype magnets, such as Outfit and Zulu Winter , when discussing their roster, having already released the likes of Blackbird Blackbird , Body Language and [...]
On our travels we often find ourselves deep in conversations with new bands that are asking us how they should go about launching themselves into the limelight. Some of them have been floating around their local scenes for too long, perplexed as to why they're not getting anywhere, especially as they consider themselves " unbelievably awesome ". The key word, that we've mentioned many times before on these blog pages, is ' traction '. If you're in a new band and want to generate some useful hype, particularly if you want to snare the attention of a record label, then [...]
Tony Marks hosts his New Music Show on Juice Radio , the largest independent station in our home city of Brighton, where he delivers contemporary releases on four shows each week. We first appeared on his show at the start of 2011. He invited us in to show off music that The Recommender had discovered each month from within the blog world. We appeared every month through last year and here we are once again kicking off 2012. Every show's been an absolute blast, allowing us to deliver The Recommender in a completely different way to a new [...]
When creating music, it's well known that a good collaboration can often do wonders for an artist's output, development and recognition. We recently discussed collaborations on our post about the excellent Polica , who are a re-collaboration from the bones of the previous super-group, Gayngs . Sometimes we are lucky enough to witness a total that's been forged by skilled hands to add up to more than the sum of it's parts. This can be two unknown artists, or a producer and musician in the studio, or simply happy accidents, but when we see artists raising their game [...]
We write from our hearts, which happens to be something that we strongly demand from any bands that are covered on these blog pages. There are few rules to earn your place on The Recommender, except that you have to be bloody good and write your music with integrity. If we like you then we write you, and today's recommendation has our hearts properly hooked. We're certainly not the first online commentators to point this duo out to people, because they've enjoyed a building swarm of online coverage as we lead up to their debut album. They've earned [...]
In recent posts we've discussed music as an art form and how some people allow that idea to lead to unrestricted creativity. That artistry is a common shared element found with the people that feature on The Recommender's pages, but when you look at the likes of manufactured pop or the 'musicians' that appear from the X-Factor production lines, and such like, it is hard to pin the same description of 'artist' on the performers. Yet it's those people that appear on the major label's portfolios. At it's core, music is a medium of creativity and today's recommendation is yet [...]
Did somebody state that guitar bands were dead? The indie vs pop debate raged around over the last three or four years as guitar-based music became massively out-sold by the more electronic trend of modern pop. A mostly female-fronted youth market saw the girls defiantly climb on top with a sequence of talents that arrived around 2008/9, including the likes of Florence & The Machine , La Roux , Little Boots , Marina & The Diamonds , Ellie Goulding , and you can take the continued run of success right up to the more recent [...]
As the British intellectual, Stephen Fry, once said, " it is the useless things that ultimately make life worth living, and that make life dangerous, too. Wine, love, art, beauty, music ", the list goes on. It is with this thought in mind that we turn to today's recommendation. At the heart of every musician you should locate a creative of the useless. They should simply be a spout pouring music all over our experiences. An outlet for their imagination, a resourceful talent for their inspired artistry. Why most artists stick to one genre, or one band for that matter, [...]
Is it possible to balance the fact that we adore the Brighton band Mirrors whilst utterly despising the Manchester band Hurts ? Yes. Yes it is. That's the exact position The Recommender finds itself in. Is it a geographical thing, seeing as we too are based in Brighton, as we are more inclined to value and support local talent? No. No it isn't. The two bands are by no means identical, but they do share a percentage of familiar elements, all of which could find favour with the same fans - big synth chords, dramatic songs with [...]
BBC 6MUSIC BLOG AWARDS 2012 This month BBC 6 Music has asked a handful of established music websites from the UK to select and host a category for their inaugural BBC 6 Music Blog Awards . The Recommender has been asked, (alongside The Quietus , Drowned in Sound , One For the People , Never Enough Notes , For Folk's Sake , Some Kind Of Awesome , The 405 and Data Transmission ), to select a category and ask it's followers to [...]
THE BBC 6MUSIC BLOG AWARDS 2012 You don't just have to be a reader of The Recommender these days, you can also listen to us discussing music on the radio. Over the last couple of years our editor, Mike, has been welcomed into a range of studios to commentate on new music, including the likes of Juice FM , Hype Machine Radio , BBC South , a number of podcasts and on America's National Public Radio, but one station that's had us regularly on air is BBC 6Music . As [...]
The world of new music is a very impatient place to hang out. It's like the London Underground at rush hour, or the taxi rank at the end of a Saturday evening's bar crawl. Everyone is keen to be first, or at the very minimum not to be last, please anything but last. There's a clamour to cover artists when a hot new track appears on the horizon, especially when it's as hot as today's. Just look here at The Guardian's refusal to wait for a second track, or our UK blog bros, My Bands Better Than Your [...]
Some music suits a certain mood. It just does. When you correctly match your mood to the music it can envelope you like a cloud of silk. However, some music is so atmospheric and so effective, painting a perfect tone, that it drags your mood into it's picture whether you want it to or not. It's design is so attractive that it's impossible to resist. Today we are recommending a new artist who manages that trick like a master. Although her movements are subtle and patient, she will have you hypnotized under her spell before you know it. This is [...]
Just like lots of other folks in the blog world, we get sent lots of material that is still at the demo stage. It's to be expected seeing as we tend to operate among the bottom layers of the underground music scene, so we expect a broad range of finishes to the work received. However, some is surprisingly polished and it just goes to show how much effort goes into new bands from the outset - something that's required to get noticed, particularly by record labels, if you want any chance of being signed in a very competitive environment, where [...]
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