FEATURE: OMB's guide to Oxford #3

*Originally published for Artrocker (21/1/13)

Scientists claim that today is the most depressing of the year. Crap weather, empty wallets and a lack of upcoming holidays are but a few of the reasons behind “Blue Monday”. To top it all off, there’s a chance that none of us are allowed to use our HMV gift vouchers (did you actually get any for Christmas? Yeah, didn’t think so).

In cheerier and more relevant news for the Oxford Music Blog's guide to Oxford, the city’s only independent record shop, Truck Store, will be celebrating its second birthday on 10th February. Blessing Force’s “sad disco” lot Trophy Wife will headline with support from Rhosyn, Salvation Bill, New Carnival and Jordan O’Shea. It’s a stellar line-up to say the least, and one that will nicely celebrate the city’s illustrious music scene. You should probably thumb through some records while you’re there, too.

If, like others of the 21st century convenience mindset, you prefer to get your music from the comfort of your sofa, then be sure to download the exciting freemixes of Kill Murray’s latest single, ‘For The Kids’. Ambient-pop newcomers, The Sea The Sea, have done a smart remix of the track. The man behind it, Dave Freeman, said: “I spent my teenage years before I learned to play guitar producing electronic music, so it was fun to go back to.” He also cites the support Kill Murray have given the band: “They headlined our first gig and helped us organise it. Aaron mastered our first single. It's nice to know other bands in the area because you can help each other out.”
 

Kill Murray were in session for BBC Introducing in Oxford last week and you can download the podcast for free from the Introducing website.

Saturday night also saw one of the biggest turnouts for Introducing in Oxford’s monthly Upstairs at the O2 Academy nights, with an explosive, sold-out headline set from Falmouth’s Tall Ships. One of the highlights of the evening was, undoubtedly, the performance by Introducing in Oxford’s adopted sons, Stratford-upon-Avon’s My Grey Horse. The show’s producer, Liz Green, has tipped the harmonic-pop lot for 2013. Local favourites Wild Swim and the elusive but rather wonderful Salvation Bill are also on the list.

   

Liz added: “We’ve also got a great electronic scene emerging in Oxford. Artists like Theo Bass and After The Thought are certainly doing things differently.”

Other local releases to get excited about in the coming weeks is the new single from The Scholars, ‘Love The Thunder’, Pixel Fix’s video for new song, ‘Rosa’ and the debut EP from cellist and “multidimensional artist”, Rhosyn.
Seb Reynolds of The Epstein and Flights Of Helios is also launching a monthly charity remix project. Proceeds from the downloads will go to Helen & Douglas house and the first instalment, a remix of ‘Dearly Distracted’ by Edinburgh’s Meursault, is available from his bandcamp.

Lastly, with Truck Store defying the digital age, the new online magazine for local music and culture, Spires, has announced plans to go into print from April. Editor Matt Ayres said: “I still see the value of print media in the digital age. To me, there's something timeless about leafing through a nicely written, well designed article on your favourite local or national band/artist when it's on paper. It feels more permanent.”

February’s issue sees an exclusive interview with local heroes Stornoway, who are playing two headline gigs at the magnificent Oxford Town Hall on 14th and 15th of February.

Who said January was depressing?

PREVIEW: Tall Ships, Listing Ships, The Sea The Sea and more at BBC Introducing gig

*Originally published for BBC News Oxford (17/1/13)

Tall Ships will be supported by four up-and-coming bands at January's Upstairs at the O2 Academy Oxford in association with BBC Introducing.

The line-up on 19 January includes Oxford acts Listing Ships, Robots With Souls, and The Sea The Sea, plus Stratford-upon-Avon's My Grey Horse.

Ric Phethean, from Falmouth trio Tall Ships, said: "We're really excited to be playing for BBC Introducing again.

"It's the first show for us this year and the line up is looking great. It's going to be awesome."

He added that the band were "stoked" to be asked back to play after their BBC Introducing slots at Reading and Leeds Festival in 2012.

The post-rockers' debut album Everything Touching was released in October to much acclaim, and saw them perform album tracks for Huw Stephens at Maida Vale.

'Oxford is home' 

It will be the second time that Stratford-upon-Avon's rising stars My Grey Horse have played the BBC Introducing stage.

Co-vocalist and guitarist Oobah Butler said: "To be supporting Tall Ships and playing in Oxford for BBC Introducing again is exciting.

"Oxford just kind of fits us; it has a real sense of home. Stratford-upon-Avon has no music scene so we've been really lucky to have such amazing support."

BBC 6 Music's Shaun Keaveny named Need Wood his Record Of The Week in December, which is the lead single for the band's new EP Stop Before The Dry River.

"It's great to have support from people like Shaun at BBC 6, and BBC Introducing, who are so enthusiastic about us," Oobah added.

My Grey Horse have received comparisons to The Shins and Grandaddy, but they find it difficult to describe their sound.

Oobah said: "I really love pop music, but with My Grey Horse we're probably fighting it as much as going with it.

"The main thing is that we always try to put a narrative and a sentiment there."

The band are about to write their debut album.

"I'm not sure exactly where we're going yet, but it'll involve sleeping on floors and possibly hiding ourselves away in a commune in Wales."

'Top secret' 

One-man music machine Steve Wilson, AKA Robots With Souls, has played previous Upstairs gigs as a member of local acts Phantom Theory and Toliesel.

Steve said: "I'm really looking forward to this gig. Upstairs gigs are always good nights and, as it is just me this time, it's very exciting."

He explained how he came to be a solo act: "When everything with Phantom Theory began to slow down, I started looping riffs at home on a beat up old bass guitar, just to play drums to.

"The bass just ended up becoming a part of the drum kit to make the whole process easier and then, as riffs turned into songs, it became less about the drums and more about keeping everything in its rightful place."

Self-described as an "art rock/noise rock band," Steve is influenced by Death From Above 1979, Femme Fatale, and Sonic Youth.

The debut Robots With Souls EP release is pencilled in for the summer and is to be recorded in a "very top secret never-been-done-before super-exciting way".

He added: "Think cassettes and MiniDiscs, melted down to a plastic liquid, then sent to you in an insulated jiffy bag... but maybe in a less abstract way."

'Artistic fervour' 

Newcomers The Sea The Sea are delighted to be playing their second ever gig.

Vocalist and guitarist Matthew Clarkson said: "Opening the bill that sees Tall Ships headline will be a very memorable experience."

The five-piece cite dream pop, ambient, post punk and post rock as their influences, but "ultimately, we write guitar-driven pop songs, experimenting as we go".

Matthew describes Oxford as a "very strong" music scene.

He added: "It's small but bustles with artistic fervour. It's an inspiring and romantic place."

The band released four free singles in the run up to Christmas and will spend 2013 expanding their profile.

Every month a selection of local talent plays the regular band nights at the O2 Academy, with highlights featured on BBC Introducing in Oxford.

FEATURE: MAUSI

*Originally published for The Tipping Point (in association with The Generator) (14/1/13)

In the words of the American writer Henry David Thoreau: “one must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.” Newcastle’s Mausi are no strangers to this philosophy, with the sun-bleached electro-pop  of ‘sol.’ wearing record needles thin over the course of 2012. Now the quartet are welcoming in the new year with ‘Move’ and still have every intention of overdosing on the Sunny-D.

‘Move’ already feels like an established Saturday night floor filler with its beefy 90s piano hooks and fluttering high hat taps. Darting synths bring Calvin Harris’ ‘Sweet Nothing’ to mind, but the organic harmonies of Italian-born siblings Daisy and Thomas Finetto results in its more carefree disposition. 

Your mother may fail to describe what the kids get down to nowadays, but the words “groovy” and “funky” do have their place here. ‘Move’ is to-the-point, feel-good dance music – a breath of fresh air in the stale furrows of January.

Mausi play The Tipping Point's Roundhouse Rising Showcase at The Sage Gateshead on Sunday 17th February.

*Tip courtesy of Bob Allan at The Generator.

REVIEW: Album Of The Year: Grimes - Visions

*Originally published for the Oxford Music Blog (20/12/12) 

Certainly one to file in ‘other’, Grimes third and best album to date is a tricky old thing to define.

Critics have lazily described Claire Boucher’s music as having a ‘post-internet’ sound, but really she just has an incredible knack for marrying genres of the past with the present.

The result is a kind of ancient machine: established and contemporary. Boucher’s weightless, Cocteau Twins-like singing invariably meets with versatile synth patterns, an ambient sound that, unlike other modern electronic acts, doesn’t become repetitive.

Whether it’s the menacing pop of ‘Oblivion’, the video game glitches of ‘Genesis’, the classical-meets-digital brainwash of ‘Symphonia IX’ or the cataclysms of ‘Circumambient’, Visions is the kind of record that you will return to time and time again.

REVIEW: Rainbow Shark - Rainbow Shark EP

*Originally published for Spires Magazine (14/12/12)

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FEATURE: Dan Croll

*Originally published for The Generator's Tipping Point blog (13/12/12)

I’m honoured to at last reference a musician with (phonetically) the same strange surname as me, but only because the artist in question is breathtakingly good.

Dan Croll was first tipped by us in August when Toby Rogers praised his Flaws-era Bombay Bicycle Club balladry. A couple of months later, the Liverpool musician has come forward with a debut single sounding broader than all of his tracks put together (this is far from a discredit – check out the wonderful ‘Home’ and ‘Always Like This’) – so much so that the likes of Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac have aired/interviewed him on their shows.

‘From Nowhere’ literally has arrived from another part of Croll’s mind, opening with a fairground organ that wouldn’t feel out of place on The English Riviera. It bursts forth with a statement bass-line, reggae rhythms and vacant jazz chords that, in all honesty, make you wiggle like a child in your desk chair. There’s a boyish, earnest tone to Croll’s singing, which nonchalantly glides over the track’s shimmering multicultural sound.

In essence, ‘From Nowhere’ does nothing less than hark to the kind of cool pop music that Santigold writes across the pond, but Dan Croll makes it in Britain. His debut album is out next year.

PREVIEW: Lewis Watson headlines BBC Introducing's Upstairs at the O2 Academy

*Originally published for BBC News Oxford (6/12/12)

Oxfordshire internet sensation Lewis Watson will be supported by four local singer-songwriters at December's Upstairs at the O2 Academy in association with BBC Introducing.

The gig on Saturday 8 December will see performances from Adam Barnes, Jasmine Hill, Gavroche and Alex Lanyon.

Lewis Watson, 20, was first played by BBC Introducing in 2010 and has received almost five million video views on YouTube.

He performed the lead single from new EP Another Four Sad Songs on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show after it charted on iTunes in November.

He said: "I've been to plenty of gigs at the O2 Academy, but now I'm headlining. It's great.

"Oxford is a great place to start out [as a musician]. I started doing open mics and it's fantastic for that."

Although not one to shrug off comparisons to artists like Ed Sheeran, Lewis likens himself to musicians a little further from the spotlight.

"It's a massive compliment to be compared to Ed Sheeran. I like to think that I draw more influence from Ed's workrate than his music though.

"I'd compare my music to City And Colour, or maybe Benjamin Francis Leftwich." 

The Oxford singer-songwriter is signed to Warner Bros and expanded much of his early fanbase through social media.

His success in the virtual world is now very much in the real, with the recent announcement that he is to support Birdy on her Australian tour in April 2013.

He added: "I'll be playing the Sydney Opera House before I'm 21. Mental."

Thriving scene

Adam Barnes will be playing a BBC Introducing gig for the second time Adam Barnes played an Upstairs gig in support of Glasgow's Admiral Fallow in May, but this month the event is completely bursting with local music.

Speaking of the "thriving" Oxford music scene, Adam said: "The best part is that there are always great bands to listen to who are currently doing well, not just in Oxford but across the UK."

He is also acutely aware of the important role that solo musicians play in the music industry.

"More have moved into the spotlight recently, but there are just as many as there ever were.

"You have to think that within every band there are one or two songwriters. The time period does change and different musical genres do steal the limelight, but songwriters have always been up there, from the Bob Dylans to the Springsteens to the Damien Rices."

Adam's music has taken more of a contemporary folk route of late, something that he is proud to exhibit at the Introducing gig.

"It's going to be a good show. It's always great to be involved with BBC Introducing in Oxford so I'm really looking forward to it.

"I'm also heading into the studio over Christmas and starting the recording of my debut album which is really exciting for me."

'Endlessly buzzing'

Jasmine Hill, 17, from Hook Norton, is another young act performing on the night.

She describes her music as "hook-based with pretty quirky productions... a mash up of Paloma Faith, Newton Faulkner, Adele, and Ed Sheeran".

While her covers of similar pop artists have garnered her attention on the internet, Jasmine is determined to share more of her original songs.

"I currently have a stash of originals in the bag and I'm now really focusing on adding to these as well as working and writing with top musicians and producers."

She has also found a way to get her music into a different medium.

"A song I wrote awhile back called 'Free' is being used in a film out early 2013 which is extremely exciting," she said.

Jasmine believes the support she has received from people in the local creative industries is down to their generally "open-minded" natures.

"The music scene [in Oxford] is endlessly buzzing with new talent and fresh music. The majority of people in Oxford are supportive of new artists and genres, so it's awesome for me to showcase my music."

The next couple of weeks are booked up with studio dates in London to record her material.

Also on the line up is Lucie Norton a.k.a. Gavroche who describes her music as "alternative angst folk with electronic tendencies". Singer-songwriter Alex Lanyon will open the night.

Every month a selection of local talent play the regular band nights at the O2 Academy, with highlights featured on BBC Introducing in Oxford.