If awards were given out to countries for their 'Outstanding Contribution To Music', then 20122s winner would surely be Denmark. Of course lots of great music appears from all corners of the globe every year, and it's only June so others still have time to compete, but without any doubt in our minds the Danish are currently so far out in front, scoring winner after winner, that we honestly don't think Lionel Messi fitted with laser-guided boots could score any more frequently. This has been reflected in The Recommender's posts, particularly throughout the early Spring, as we delivered [...]
What's in a name? With a moniker like Mountain Folk you'd be forgiven for imagining this new project to be full of battered acoustic guitars and check-shirted men with over-sized beards, singing heartfelt songs suited for camp fires and log cabins. When this act was sent over to us for consideration, you can imagine that the assumptions made from their choice of title might have us parking it as yet another potential Bella Union suitor, and although Fleet Foxes fans may find lots to admire here, this is actually far more cerebral and weird than you might [...]
An artist's home can often come flooding through their music. Could The Smiths have come from anywhere other than Manchester, or The Red Hot Chili Peppers from anywhere but Los Angeles? We think not. Sometimes a location can mirror the music and we think this is particularly true of Latino bands. When we say Latino, we ask you to consider anyone from Spain's El Guincho to Brazil's Holger , with their wonderful fusion of tropicalia, afrobeat and pop. There's a wildly sunny disposition to it all, with an uninhibited energy and carnival atmosphere. We imagine them to [...]
During interviews and Q&As people often ask us what type of music The Recommender writes about. Our answer is always that we cover anything, so long as it's awesome. OK, so we don't cover much heavy rock, jazz, or speciality dance genres, so it is perhaps easier to list the type of music that we don't cover, but as for everything else it gets on if its good, very good. One genre that we're perhaps guilty of ignoring, although not entirely, is hip hop. If The Recommender is about trying to reward your curiosity with a selection of [...]
Music blogs moved on from being self-obsessed, online vanity projects some years ago. Sure there's still a sense of them being personal, independent and amateur, but upon these sites are voices and opinions that are commonly regarded as 'tastemakers' within the music industry. The blogging sphere is a zone in which influence can now be dispensed, giving useful, ever-growing spotlights to the music we cover. Blogs have created a place where you can genuinely discover something new, a home which is now anchored at the new cutting edges of emerging music. They've not so much replaced the traditional music media, more [...]
We could suggest that today's recommendation is an example of how varied our coverage is. We could do, but we won't, as the only reason that we feature such a disconnected assortment on this blog is because we have only one piece of qualifying criteria - that the artists have to be awesome. Today we focus on one such artist. He won't be for everyone - awesomeness is of course subjective - but we believe in him, so we figured a little in-depth coverage was warranted. Looking at the artists we have featured so far in 2012, you can find [...]
We recently met up with Derek, founder of the Neon Gold music blog and label, at the recent Great Escape festival. Having just watched a band that he's fully supported, St Lucia , we put it to him that there is a new genre and we are calling it " Neon Gold pop ". This is because there's a recognizable style of synth-based music that he is often first to. It's always scaled up, with lots of pop hooks, middle eights, a stack of energy and a light convivial touch, often fronted by a charismatic [...]
To paraphrase the elaborated story from the PR biography, the leading duo behind this band met over a camp fire party beside the sub-tropical forests of Australia's Eastern coastline. If that fantastical imagery doesn't immediately paint you a picture of how this group might sound then we may as well send you straight down to the music players below. What is particularly interesting is how this band wear their influences on their sleeves, how they take their settings and their connections and use them to drive their creativity. Somehow this band couldn't come from any other circumstances than from those [...]
Next week this band launch their careers. Although, rather strangely, this is a band that some of you will already know. It is perhaps a sign of the times, in an Internet age, where people can see a band perform live, discuss their music on their blogs, radio can pick up on them and begin playing them, hell this band even self-produced and self-released a full EP and handed it out online for free last August. So when we say 'launch', what we really mean is this time they're doing it officially. If the traction they picked up with their [...]
The slightly older generation of readers that visit this blog will surely have an opinion on this band. Anyone that was around the first time Joy Division or Siouxie & The Banshees screamed into view will find lots of familiar ground with today's recommendation. Their first listen will either stir up a love for this band because of their affinity to the guitar bands synonymous with the late 70s and early 80s, or they'll hate them because of how depressing it is to see how little music has moved on. Everyone else can stand their opinions [...]
There's a style of minimalist pop music that's singed at it's edges with hip hop or rnb, of a kind that can be found successfully being paraded by the British artists, Jai Paul or James Blake . There's a steamy undertone infused into their music, and sexuality is a regular bold overtone that's found in the themes inside hip hop and rnb. The thing is Americans can place sex into their music better than us Brits. That's obviously a generalisation and it would be weak of us to push out the examples of Rod Stewart or Tom [...]
This is why we love The Great Escape Festival . This is also why bands are wise to play at the three day event. Ultimately the weekend is a showcase for emerging bands and finds such as the one we provide for you today are precisely what the event is really all about. Make all the plans and schedules you like for the city festival, but with over 300 bands, at thirty venues, last minute changes and unavoidable queues, it is perhaps advisable for visitors to prepare for the unexpected and assume you're gonna have to alter your intentions [...]
Some genres suffer from a lot of cliches. OK, so all genres do to some extent, but some suffer that bit more, like they have a black hole of cliches sucking infinitely upon them. It doesn't stop credible music or new ideas being written within that genre, but it makes it an absolute minefield in which to tread. One of the obvious genres to suffer this affliction is rock, which is possibly down to the over-ambitious bands of the 70s and 80s that eventually led to the likes of Spinal Tap and Bad News finding a [...]
And so concludes The Great Escape Festival , which always turns into the biggest weekend of our calendar year. It's been four days since the event finished, yet our hangovers have barely receded. On one of the nights we finally reached our bed at 8am! A marathon indeed. Below is our review of a handful of experiences and exploits, but in truth it's pretty impossible to extol the real experience in words. Sure we had an amazing time, with lots of live music and venue hopping, but as a Brighton resident every other week of the year, we noticed [...]
As you can see on our About section, we pride ourselves on throwing at least one mean party every year at The Great Escape Festival . As we build up to what will be our third consecutive year in a row we're now well known for this annual shindig. As 300 bands and the entire UK music industry descend on Brighton's seaside for a weekend of new music, we do our best to provide a genuine highlight among the many highlights. This year should prove to be one of the most exciting shows we've ever [...]
The Great Escape festival is an absolutely massive weekend, the biggest of the year for our music blog by a some stretch. Not only do we have The Recommender's own official showcase at The Green Door Store on Thursday afternoon, kicking off the weekend's music in as much style as we can muster, but we've set about organising plenty more exciting stuff on top of the other very, very exciting stuff. It's all so damn exciting isn't it!? The festival is a major event on the music industry calendar, known not only for the 300 bands that [...]
If ever there was a music festival designed for a music blog like ours it would be this one...OK, so perhaps SXSW too, but this one is literally outside our house. Absolutely zero connecting flights to Austin required then, as we only need to step outside of our door and we're surrounded by 300 artists and what seems like the entire British music industry, as we all set out to enjoy the annual Great Escape Festival . As you would expect, this means we are going to be very busy little bloggers over the weekend of the [...]
How do you stand out in an over-saturated market? The Recommender is a music blog seemingly among billions of others out there. What makes our music blog so different? What makes you return to our pages and selections, and what is it that stops you from repeatedly visiting other music blogs? It's an interesting thought, and in all honesty, it's a point that you could perhaps answer better than we ever could. We imagine it might be the fact that we research our subjects as thoroughly as possible. Perhaps it's the quality of the selections, what with us being such [...]
Aesthetics are important, right? It's a topic that we want to discuss a little bit today, as it's a theme that runs not only through our selection, but through the source in which we found this artist. Credit is due to No Fear Of Pop , one of Europe's leading music blogs, where they specialise in covering left-field underground music from its Berlin base, but with contributors as far reaching as New York and Sydney. This is not only a site known for turning up exceptionally fresh selections, but they deliver it all upon one of the tightest-looking blogs [...]
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. Once a month Tony generously allows us to deliver The Recommender in a completely different way to a new audience via his busy airwaves. You can find all of the past shows that we've appeared on at this link . Below we have the last two shows from March and April. As always, among our meandering rambles, we tried to deliver a broad, fearless [...]
THE RECOMMENDER
Boards of Canada – Reach For The Dead
HAERTS: “All The Days”
Sexy Track // “Devil Or Angel” // Lou Doillon
DANCE BITCH DANCE: disclosure - when a fire starts to burn
Daft Punk - Lose Yourself to Dance (Simøne Remix)
