Blog: Some Of It Was True!

photo by Sasha Litvintseva * Time for a random update of SOIWT's entirely irregular videos post. Why? Because why not? Fear of Men - Doldrums Make yourself a cup of tea, sling on a stupid-big jumper and enjoy feeling down in the dumps with this fond number. Click here to view the embedded video. Big Deal - Talk Even more forlorn, this teary to-the-pointer features fabulously frank [...]

All skittish keys and flickery vocals, David's Lyre 's new offerings suit perfectly my current favourite activity: shivering. As I rub my hands and mutter terrible curses while waiting for trains, buses, bosses and dates, so Paul Dixon's chamber-pop-rock songs embark on hesitant ascents, wide-eyed pronouncements, maudlin string-downers and sudden, spirited riffs. They feel battered and bruised by the cruelties of life, but still bursting with pluck, wonder, and a fistful of magic dust. The tunes are those expected to form the bulk of a debut album, Picture Of Our Youth , which [...]

I understand these chaps and chapettes don't like the word " fusion ". So I'm going to avoid using the word fusion when describing the "stylistic amalgamation" in Telephone Banking . Fundamentally Clean Bandit is the "merging" of a string quartet, a drummer and a bloke who fills in with stuff like decks or sax. "Into the mix", they "combine" MC Ssegamic. So it's classical, electronica and hip-hop. "Coming together". "Mixed up". "Blending". You're thinking fusion, IT'S NOT FUSION. It's an unusual but impressive sound they produce, with the stomping bass, trilly violins (with classical ornamentation, called a 'turn'. You don't know what [...]

How to make the video of your second single go stonkingly viral? Easy - get a pantomime politician to dance (badly) and ape vocals (more badly) amid cheap-looking rooftop pot plants. That appears to have been to the ploy of London act The Good Suns , using Lembit Opik, and boy has it worked - to the tune of thousands of views and an Evening Standard story . As always with these things though, you wonder if the gimmick really helps. I'm 51% amused and 49% freaked by the video, but - hang on - what did I [...]

I sit on the train reading my book for nearly an hour, lost inside the engrossing plot and heightening drama. The carriage fills and empties, but I'm only dimly aware of it. But finally I look up, and there she is: the girl of my dreams, staring at me with an intrigued look, head slightly cocked, sunlight on her cheek, the startings of a smile on her face, a stray lock of hair fallen over her eyes. For once I can gaze back, not nervous, and it feels like time and sound have been suspended for a glorious instance, and it feels inexplicably significant and [...]

You know what it's like when you hear a cracking track, but for some reason, you just can't find it anywhere? ANYWHERE. Apart from, say, some weird, un-edited video which has been shot on a balcony with some weird American dude talking too much on YouTube . Which, you know, is fine, but you have to dedicate time to sit and listen rather than have it on the go on your listening device, with piss poor sound quality. You can't add it to your 'Music to bum-off' playlist'. No, sir, you cannot. This is my beef with the Laurel Collective . In this [...]

( Monday Music's the one weekly blog where SOIWT abandons its London-only focus, and goes global ) photo by Rianna Cox * Dark Dark Dark - Daydreaming ( mp3 ) From Minneapolis, this is my favourite song in a very long time. Full of gorgeous nostalgia, it revolves around rueful, hearty piano chimes and Nona Marie Invie's voice, so rich and sorrowful that I want to write to every ex-girlfriend immediately, and ask if we can't [...]

• Dark Dark Dark - Daydreaming

Ah, Bromley. A fabulous place, home to the gorgeous Glades shopping centre and, um, some other stuff. Yep. Good. It's wicked, basically, and you really ought to consider it for this year's staycation. And now, as if the above wasn't acclaim enough, the London satellite town cultural hotpot can count the Van Susans among its attractions. These lads ( two Ollys and three Dullaways ), tipped for great things by Londonist , make a soaring kind of guitar-driven indie, the sort of plaintive, sincere kind you've heard plenty of times before and will hear plenty of times [...]

I'm going to try my hardest not to sound like one of those awful middle-class journalists, in their 30s, who think they're 'down with the kids' (although I am SO down with the kids. And CRB checked, before any fingers are pointed). This 'mini-army' (really mini, if you ask me...) has been dubbed by T4 as one of their 'Rising Stars' of 2012, as well as been bigged up by MTV , so unless you live in a box, in a field, on an island (sounds delightful), you're going to be hearing a lot from Clement Marfo and the [...]

photo by Sannah Kvist * Today I will mostly be doing the following: monitoring my bruises after last night's epic four-hour slug home; burning effigies of the same evening's final bus driver, who abruptly stopped his vehicle at 3am because he had "finished my shift"; looking outside and admiring the white wonderland; looking outside and hating the white wonderland; ordering take-out; listening to this sexy, slowed-down, sedative Carly Simon cover ( mp3 ) by London acts Alpines (previously featured here ) and Maya Jane Coles ; sleeping. Why-ee-yay-ee-ay..

• Alpines and Maya Jane Coles - Why (Carly Simon Cover)

Dubstep. Who doesn't love dubstep? A lot of people. But akin to his namesake, this act has the cunning to make those all too boring and annoying genre boundaries a bit blurry, by fusing R&B, minimal house, disco and shoegazing into his dubby sound. The great thing about Fantastic Mr Fox is that when you randomly click on a track, you have no idea what you're going to get. And diversity is the spice of life. Alongside cumin. Click here to view the embedded video.

Miss MGMT? Pining for Passion Pit? Here's your fix: The Ghosts ' debut single ticks all the vital synth-pop boxes, from falsetto vocals to an impossibly perky disposition. Just ignore that growing sense of déja vu and bounce along in giddy glee. [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Before I start, I would just like to say...I wrote this here blog entry yesterday, but the CMS we use decided to just...lose it. Which is great, considering the hours (1 whole hour) I had put into it (maybe half hour, but still, it's frustrating). What you are reading is a tribute. Oh look, another pretty, beardy man with a guitar. BORING. Or...is he? This is no ordinary pretty, beardy man with a guitar. Signed to the Ninja Tune label (who count the likes of Bonobo , Dels and Slugabed [...]

Familiar with the sinawi genre? Me either. But I sure intend to be after highfalutin' along to these delicious, limited-edition jams by new London discovery Halo Halo . Both packed with irony stringwork, and both making me imagine some sort of heathen, Filipino version of a dance-round-the-campfire scenario, the perky songs also feature vocals so serene and soothing that they must be the sworn enemy of headaches worldwide. That's a convoluted and frankly crap metaphor, and yet I so totally don't care - see how heady and heedless this trio gets me? Hot damn! Now: where did I put that cobra blood...? (via [...]

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photo by Pedro Ramos * This song by London musician Higher Learning - aka Richard Forbes-Hamilton , a "multi disciplinary artist" also known as The Tall One Behind - is exploratory pop music that computes as much on a neurological level as a sonic one. It seems to contain a secret, not-quite-fathomable message - a language you recognise but can't speak; a really familiar person who you've never seen before.

We've blogged about Real Fur before ( here ) so let's skip the bio. But what we didn't do was talk about The Fool, an excellently angular, alt-rock number full of lovely jangles. So now we are. Because it's great. [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

I look at her and think of all the things I want to say. I'll tell her about this great book I just read, and an exhibition we'll both like. I'll comment on her bag and say oh, I've shopped there too. I'll let her know how gaspingly pretty she looks, how it almost makes me cry. I'll reveal my innermost fears, my deepest failings, my fatal flaws, because I know she'll forgive them. I'll pledge everlasting loyalty. I'll tell her my email password and give her my pin number. I'll propose. Except I won't, I don't, I shan't say [...]

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photo by Harry Mitchell Available for free via their Facebook page, Breton 's new five-track EP Blanket Rule feels like a return to their squat-party-playing days . The quintet - who live together at bretonLABS, where they also make video and doubtless other wacky stuff - throw dirty industrial bass, fizzing beats, scratchy vocals and regular changes of pace into an experimental cauldron, and emerge with a record that feels very underground, very visceral. It's fast and thrilling, then slow and muttered; an antidote to fresh air, a soundtrack for painkiller [...]

• Breton - How Can They Tell