It was Thomas Edison that once proclaimed, " genius is measured as 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration ". Well, here's a new band that have been working very hard since their birth, only six months ago, at nailing down their intellectual inspirations, so now we're looking to see if they've got the graft. They feel hand-crafted for the UK market, although Ms Mr are actually a boy/girl duo who call New York home, but their initial music is so exceptionally good that we think it's worth giving an extra effort behind them, as we enthusiastically punt [...]
Robin at the wonderful Breaking More Waves blog is something of a veteran of the blogging game, switching his opinions from local to global as he took his fanzine online. Music blogging often opens up opportunities for it's editor as the site grows in influence, yet Robin, who's undoubtedly experienced this growth, has always held on to his integrity and his original ethos. Breaking more Waves is respected, influential and highly regarded throughout the blogging world as well as the wider UK music industry, but above all it's his maintained humility - always downplaying his position within the [...]
This Toronto group have us completely hypnotized, following the addictive spell that arrived with the release of their début album, Feel It Break , which came out on Domino Records earlier this year. We haven't been shy in proclaiming it the album of the year so far. The first four opening tracks on the album are so arresting and immediate that it sets up one of the most consistent hours your ears will experience in 2011. If Austra were British they'd surely be hot contenders for the Mercury Prize, however foreigners don't qualify, but we're sure that they're [...]
It's an absolute pleasure to be part of your music discovery, as we do our best to bring you the bucket-loads of wonderful cutting-edge music that we uncover each year, proudly acting as your music filtration service for the busy global market of new artists. However, there's a few snags that we often have to overcome in order to complete the process. A commonly asked question when we are interviewed is " who recommends music to The Recommender? ". The honest answer is that we have a multitude of avenues to our market, from scouting online and in [...]
As we run up to the release of Alex Clare 's debut album, The Lateness Of The Hour , we get a showcase gig at Brighton's Green Door Store on Thursday 7th July. If you have read our previous coverage of the artist back here on The Recommender then you will know that this is an artist who's power hits you like a surging wave of sound when seen live. Signed by the huge Island label and backed in the studio by the Major Lazer team of Diplo [...]
Today we Q & A'd a front-running music blog, which has been on our blog roll, and many others, since our first forays into music blogging. In the increasingly crowded blog world you need to stand out by being unique. Too Many Sebastians is made up of a boy/girl team, bringing us cutting edge music, mostly of the electronic variety, often before anyone else. Their most unique asset is that one of them is from the UK and the other from Japan, writing every post in both English and Japanese, cleverly cornering two vibrant blog-reading markets. [...]
If you want an example of what the Internet can do for music, then you need look no further than this quartet from the arctic city of Oulu in Finland. We cannot imagine an indie band getting noticed so early in their careers from from a city as remote as that were we back in 1974! We know that you've never heard of Oulu, but with the Internet that doesn't matter anymore. In fact, does the Internet make geography entirely irrelevant these days? Not only are they from a distant cold corner of Finland, but they jam out a style [...]
We tip toe from genre to genre on this blog and after yesterday's dunk in the sweetest of pop we are now turning to something with an altogether more gritty aesthetic. Don't worry though, as tomorrow we'll serve up yet more saccharine goodies, as The Recommender continues to dish up it's chocolate box of treats. Duologue are a five-piece from London who started appearing in one-off shows last year, such as December 's showcase gig held by fellow blogger, Jamila Scott, from Fucking Dance/ Cruel Rhythm . Since then they've released a self-titled EP, which arrived last [...]
It's not that we are particularly anti-Simon Cowell, or specifically against the music that regularly churns out of the X-Factor pop factory, but there's something intrinsically wrong with the process and the delivery. The music is perfectly aimed for it's market, almost too much so, but the removal of any sense of DIY from the 'artist' makes it's manufactured productions ugly and contrite. Grenades For The Wall deliver similar music, but the difference is that it's hand-delivered by their own craft and that makes all the difference we needed. So we bring you this very green [...]
We're running a series where we interview these strange midnight creatures called music bloggers so we can find out a little more about them and hopefully uncover some interesting insights. This week we shine the light on Richard Thane, creator and editor for The Line Of Best Fit . His site is so large it blurs the lines between blog and website, but either way he is a genuinely important voice in our online solar system, so check out what he had to say below... [...]
It's no secret that The Recommender is a massive supporter of the Manchester-based quartet, Everything Everything . They earned the accolade of Track of the Year 2010 , with Suffragette Suffragette in December, as well as grabbing a top five position in our Albums of 2010 , with their début Man Alive. The album was subsequently toured around the UK, to much acclaim, before they repeated the circuit on board the NME tour bus. They now stand at the foot of Festival Mountain, as another (rainy) British summer brings us an endless [...]
We've been running a rare series here on The Recommender named ' Remix Specials ', where we shine a light on those DJs and producers who are doing stellar work with other people's tracks. To give you an idea of how good you've got to be to earn yourself a post, we haven't done one of these specials for six months - not because of a lack of remixes, but because we're proudly picky. The last one was the mighty Yuksek , on the back of a trail of specials over the years, which included the likes of The Knocks [...]
Southern Shores are finding themselves washed up on the beaches of many a music blog of recent, as we build up to their debut 6-track EP, Atlantic , which begins with the release of it's first single, Night Is Young , that's officially out today. It would be easy to join in with the often-generic editorial coverage and state that they're the perfect soundtrack to your summer, but in all honesty, they would make you feel summery if you were camping in the depths of northern Russia in January, so warm and comforting is their marvellous music. [...]
In recent years the UK has had a deluge of successful female solo artists who have rained down radio-friendly music across the pop spectrum. These young women have been so dominant and successful it's left us wondering if the balance of the sexes can ever be restored. The blogger's search lights have been looking out for pop's knight in shining synths to come hurdling over the horizon and today that light has found Bastille , so let's see if he's ready to land a hit for the boys. Bastille is actually solo artist Dan Smith, from South [...]
Next up in this meet-the-blogger series, where we focus our attention on the editors behind the world's finest music blogs, is the charming Matthew Young, who is the editor for Song By Toad . Having been placed in the top five in last year's peers-only poll on the best music blogs in the world , (Song By Toad ended up joint fourth with Gorilla vs Bear ), he was a natural for a Q&A selection. His tidy blog is well-established, even branching out as an excellent independent label , and is particularly great at [...]
We all assume that the truly memorable moments in your life are the rushes of adrenaline, as some scary drama sideswipes you unexpectedly, or when everything changes following the birth of your first child, or a marriage with the one you love - you know the really big things. Well, as John Lennon once insightfully stated " life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans ", so today we want you to imagine the moments in between the large, obvious life-changers. Imagine the seconds you take to pause in life and ponder. It might [...]
Radio stations big and small, local and international, have been kind enough to invite The Recommender onto their airwaves a number of times in recent years, but it's the Tony Marks show at Juice FM - the largest local station in our home city of Brighton - that allows us regular access. We visit Tony once per month to discuss the online world of blogging and to bring along a few tracks from the cutting edge of music. Live radio is always a special treat and a totally unique way for us to continue [...]
It's time to bring you our 'new favourite band'. This is a transient position that changes regularly - which is perhaps to be expected with us spending so much time filtering excellent music - and although it's a temporary but welcome title for a new group to have, one thing is clear, there's lots to adore about this new five-piece from London. Theme Park began life as a different band, calling themselves Ark People and gigging the circuits, playing a style of post-punk pop with the odd bit of Theramin and a loose [...]
Here at The Recommender we find the relationships with our network of music bloggers one of the most rewarding aspects of our online world. Connections are made on a daily basis with a web of music bloggers as passionate as we are. To celebrate we bring you the first in a line of Q&A's which we will be doing with these world-class music bloggers, giving you a little insight into the inner workings of music blogging itself. These people spend a lot of time shining a light on music, so we thought you might enjoy us reversing that focus back onto [...]
Everything Everything are a band that's known to be something of an acquired taste, but our palate devoured them as if they'd been prepared by a Michelin -starred chef. Some dismissed their sound as over-complicated or too random, but we bloody loved it, finding them incredibly inventive and original, whilst still providing hooks and singles in abundance. Well, Mammal Club are being touted as a more palatable Everything Everything, so we're poised and salivating all over our keyboard. We'd heard Mammal Club's debut EP, AU , upon it's release on the Everybodys Stalking [...]
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