JUKEBOX COLLECTIVE Welcome back to The Recommender. Those regular readers will notice that we've changed up a little from previous posts. This time we plan to do one single recommendation at a time, rather than the traditional three, so we can focus more on each band and post more frequently. It's all designed to improve the Recommender experience. One thing that will certainly improve it are the fantastic music selections such as Jukebox Collective. You will see in the below post, ( Recommender 78 ), that we had located our new favourite [...]
THE TINS This latest find is the direct result of a little blog scanning, so credit where credit is due for one of our self-nominated parallel blogs, Pretty Much Amazing , with whom we share many ideals. They in turn located the band from We All Want Someone , another excellent kindred journal. You see, there's this kind of primeval hunter/gatherer service that's going on for you with us bloggers. We love music, we go out and get music, we bring back music, you devour it. Well, I guess in this case, we let [...]
ZARRYLADE We first came across these guys last Autumn. Their sweet music charmed us enough to keep an eye on them, but sadly nothing has arrived since. We share them with you mainly because they're ace, but also because a little online chatter could perhaps spark a bit of interest and some possible development. Very little is known about them, except they made the rather stunning track that we list below. Lovers of Miike Snow , with his afro disco, or even The Police at their most enjoyable, will be moved by this. [...]
NOT SQUARES We kick off today's post with a band that could've easily been passed over by The Recommender, but thankfully this Belfast band have a well-oiled PR company. They sent us the below single by email and rather inexplicably we missed it first time around. Any successful blog gets way too many emails to cope with, short of employing an attractive secretary (note to self), but as the waves of requests pour in we do our best to check them through. Perhaps lately we've been rather rubbish, but pleasingly this PR company followed up with [...]
If you love The Phenomenal Handclap Band and Clock Opera as much as we do, then hold onto your chair... 24hours after posting our exclusive interview, (see the below post), with the delectable Clock Opera, his remix of another Recommender favourite, The Phenomenal Handclap Band, arrived in our inbox. How could we not post it!? It's fucking awesome! Check out Clock Opera . Check out The Phenomenal Handclap Band . Then check this out! THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND - BABY (CLOCK OPERA REMIX) [...]
Q & A - CLOCK OPERA Clock Opera are currently supporting Marina & The Diamonds on her nationwide tour, so when they recently rolled into Brighton The Recommender caught up with frontman, Guy Connelly, just before he went on stage at Audio. We caught him in an open mood, happy to discuss Clock Opera's evolution into a full band, the benefits of blog coverage, their recording plans and the dangers of playing Black & Deckers live on stage! [...]
The (r)evolution continues with our second party event of 2010. Last month was a massive success, with the predicted set of Brighton hipsters turning out. Highlights included some fantastic laughs with Eleni Mettyear's Photobooth, the results of which you can see here , but the stars were undoubtedly Plugs , as they blasted out an outstanding headline set. So we arrive at the next event, with Eleni Mettyear returning with her booth and the Ophelia Fancy girls will once again be handing out our gifts, which include our exclusive new mixtape (# [...]
PHANTOGRAM Some bands hunt in the dark and attempt to suffocate you with their bleak, scary music (see the likes of Portishead , The XX , Emika ). Some bands pour sugary pop all over you with a childish abandonment and produce friendly, neon cartoons of songs, (see Marina & The Diamonds , Tony Basil , early Madonna etc). On the odd occasion you get a band who produce something that straddles a bit of both camps, a wide gap to attempt to breach by anybody's standards, but they work out [...]
MONTAUK This new Scandinavian pair and their wonderful tune, H.O.L.I.D.A.Y, (listed below), arrived in our inbox in recent weeks and it's given us the perfect opportunity to discuss something totally awesome that's happening in the blog community. Namely that blog's are taking back a little bit of control. Right in the middle of the storm created by the Google-owned Blogger, who recently decided to shut down a handful of popular blogs for illegally hosting mp3s. Should we be scared? Not if the likes of the Big Stereo , Discobelle , Nightmagnets [...]
MY GOLD MASK It's actually the remixes of My Gold Mask's tunes that caught our attention initially, but obviously we are a bunch of inquisitive little fuckers, so we checked out their original music too and uncovered something very fresh indeed. It's the remix that we decided to list below, as it's so totally fine in all it's mashed up glory, brilliantly sampling Love Is The Drug by Roxy Music , and that alone is worth something, but there's a delightful bag of magic held in their original tunes too. They come over all Lo-Fi, [...]
THE AMPLIFETES It's rare that an artist gets on to The Recomemnder on the back of one tune, but we make exceptions when said track is this fucking loveable. To be fair this tune is a little off our beaten path, with it's retro, Roy Wood riffing and rather shameless Canned Heat influence, but the magic and uplift is so strong we simply stopped caring. This tune is made to be a soundtrack to a movie's bank robbery scene, or a BBC advert for the World Cup, or frankly any time you [...]
ENTREPRENEURS We are busy gearing up for The Recommender's launch party , which hits Brighton in a few days, but today we are getting back to our main aim, namely delivering new music to your neocortex. First up today is Entrepreneurs, who took far more unravelling research than usual to understand. This is the latest incarnation from the song machine that is Adam Crisp, (left of picture), a man who used to dwell in our local city of Brighton, in the band Elle Milano . In this former band they went from a three [...]
For those long term Recommender followers, you will have seen how this blog has improved and grown, step by step, into the beautiful monster it is today. Well, to all of you, here's our biggest leap of evolution yet! The Recommender will now be throwing monthly blog parties at a venue in the centre of the city in which this blog was born, Brighton, UK. As one of England's youngest and most forward thinking cities, it seems the perfect home. We will be showcasing the excellent music that we've been critiquing on the blog over recent years, so [...]
EMIKA Other practitioners of doom are often found simply gazing at their shoes, as they wallow in their XX -induced depression, some try to scare you with their masks and mystery, but not Emika. She is as brooding and as heavy as anyone you've heard, from Portishead 's industrial paranoia, to DJ Shadow 's damp basement, to Burial 's bleak urban sadness. However, her outstanding vocals, that flick and skim back and forth are like silk on a razor blade. On occasion she has a kind of ghostly, banshee eroticism in her [...]
TINASHE We first heard this fella through his Kissy Sell Out -produced tune, Come On Over (This Could Be Love) . We should admit at this point that Kissy seems a little bit of a one trick pony, with the trademark sound he adds to each of his remixes, making them recognisable as his, but ultimately a little same-y. However, as his twinkling synths danced all over Tinashe's track, we were intrigued. Then the vocals kicked in. Suddenly all the bouncing nonsense seemed to, well, make sense. It was a tidy marriage, but without [...]
ZAMBRI " If you love me, will it be from the start? If you needed me, will we never part? " So chimes out the lyrics on track From The Start , and it's perhaps fair to say these words wouldn't be out of place on a Stock, Aitken and Waterman piece of sickly pop. However, the warped, doomy vocals sung out on this track, from this pair of Brooklyn sisters, is of the darkest cool, made more from the Patti Smith , Alison Goldfrapp and Karen O [...]
GROVESNOR, HOT CHIP (DJ SET), :KINEMA: It feels like it's been a little while since we did one of these 'Gig Lists', but quite frankly it's expected, as December is often full with festive DJ nights, rather than quality bands. So here we are with a new year, a new decade indeed, and the event horizon looks very bright. There's a massive amount of quality line ups through January and February in Brighton. We begin with this special showcase, involving not only :Kinema: and Grovesnor, but also a DJ set from Alexis out of [...]
FEATHERS The first post of the year, and the decade, will begin with a themed blog of sorts. We used to do this all the time, but not so much recently, so it's a joy to do three recommendations that all create a similar feel. Today's themed sound? They're calling it 'chill wave', a kind of drifting electro surf pop, a sound that floats out of the speakers like perfume. All good bloggers were probably visitors to other blogs prior to creating their own and we are no different. Some blogs tower above the rest and [...]
THE RECOMMENDER 2010 PREVIEW We are finally done dealing with 2009 and can now enjoy a look ahead to what the next twelve months has in store. As one of your essential guides on new music we are perhaps fulfilling our duty to scan the musical horizon and pluck out the highlights. We have album news on some firmly set releases, some have definitely been discussed, some are simply rumours and some are wildly hopeful punts, but it's always worth getting ridiculously excited right? In our predictive preview of 2010 we will list the [...]
Although posts will be a little more sporadic over this festive period, we will still do our best to bring you a handful of musical gifts . As we edge towards the end of 2009, which has turned out to be a wonderful year for The Recommender, we thought we would provide you with a quick thank you. We list below two tracks that have popped up on the blog radars in recent weeks, together with two outstanding videos. These two tunes are of the kind that get many repeats and it's rare to have a [...]
THE RECOMMENDER
Kanye West Performs “Black Skinhead” & “New Slaves” On ‘SNL’ Season Finale: Watch
Noteworthy (Stream): Kanye West – Black Skinhead (SNL Performance)
Kanye Debuts New Song Projected On Walls
Watch Kanye West Perform on Saturday Night Live
Watch Kanye West on Saturday Night Live, performing “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves”
