CLASH OF INTERESTS

Side projects are always at least interesting, some can even be better than the band they grew out of! Some can also be at least good enough that they, given the chance, could be just as big as the band they come from

The latter path applies to Gabriel Stelling, of Metronomy fame, and his band Your Twenties. Your Twenties make jerky, indie-pop; head nodding, foot tapping and shape pulling is unavoidable upon hearing them. They could be the 'next big thing' yet I fear Gabriel's prior commitments will mean that the band will never reach their true potential

For the time being though, welcome them into your hearts...

Listen to: Your Twenties - Caught Wheel (myspace)

& download some of their newest demos over at Pinglewood

PICK UP YOUR JAW

We at DDJY! have had the pleasure of hosting two Spider Webb DJ sets in the past 6 months, both packed with the best in post-punk, krautrock, C86 and electronica. Those sounds were clearly heavily influencing his band (The Horrors) as a whole, now they've turned around and let their new single 'Sea Within a Sea' loose into the world. This could be the single of the year, their new album 'Primary Colours' could be one of the albums of all time...

Download: The Horrors - Sea Within a Sea

IT'S NOT SO GRIM UP NORTH

Well I've finally got a particularly tricky essay out of the way so it's back into the realm of blogging for me...

As I have previously written about: Ross and myself, Matty, are in a band called Vaporators. We haven't even started taking ourselves seriously yet but within a couple of months of setting up the Myspace page we have already received an overwhelming amount of feedback from all over the UK, a fair bit from London but particularly from Manchester.

I feel many nights in Manchester are shunned when great promoters are talked about, usually because the best are in London - yet it should be taken into account that it's not an easy job trying to coax the best bands in the world away from the Capital. This fact makes nights such as Now Wave, FictionNonFiction, Stop Making Sense and numerous others so very special.

As well as great nights there are also a healthy amount of quality new bands coming through, here's two that have caught my ear in particular recently...


DELPHIC

On first listen you can probably tell that there's a New Order record or two in their collection, yet this sound has possibly more of a dance edge to it, particularly 'Counterpoint' which could easily be seen as being made for the club rather than the mosh pit. Their name has been on tipster's tongues for nearly a year now and a breakthrough is imminent following a tour of Europe with Bloc Party

Listen to: Delphic - Counterpoint (myspace)

YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS

This quartet from the land of 'cotton and guns' make a lovely lo-fi alt-rock racket. Mixing the sounds of Pavement, Yo La Tengo and Grandaddy to make a blissful noise that could either soundtrack a day at the beach or a night in front of a log fire. They have the honour of opening for Health in Manchester on April 22nd and on first impressions that slot is thoroughly deserved!

Listen to: Young British Artists - Year of the Rat (myspace)

IT'S HARD TO RESIST

It's great when a band comes along with that 'X Factor', a proper one, not just a marketable face and a competent voice. Probably the best band in the UK right now, The Big Pink, have just announced their next single 'Velvet' and it has scooped up my 'Single of the Year' award and ran with it. It's a sound akin to the dynamism of bands such as Death in Vegas but with a bigger impact; it's clear that Milo and Robbie have used all the knowledge they used to make bands like Klaxons and Crystal Castles successful and put it into their own efforts.

The result really is brilliant, I watched this video repeatedly after I first heard it and I think you will too. It's more than a little influenced by the videos of Chris Cunningham, but that's a very good thing...

The Big Pink - Velvet

YOU WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

I'll start this week by immersing myself in one of my latest little pleasures, a band whose songs have made my skin feel like the sun's blazing down upon it; they're going to be huge and their tunes are going to be all over this summer like heatstroke, they're Two Door Cinema Club

Based in Northern Ireland and sounding like a less irritating Vampire Weekend it seems that Two Door Cinema Club are one of the first new bands in 2009 to be making serious strides. Their debut single 'Something Good Can Work' is going to be out soon and you can download the demo below

Hopefully we can get them to DDJY! before they run riot at the festivals...

Download: Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work (demo)

A GOOD PLACE TO GET SOME THINKING DONE

'Buzz' is a strange thing, it seems like a very hasty element of the music industry, however, it's actually very gradual. The cool kids and underground tipsters pick up on a band, they fall into the hands of the PR people, it falls into the hands of the media, it falls into the hands of the listener and then into the hands of the slightly 'slow on the uptake' tipsters; all in what can be a space of about a year. A band can be 'hyped' for a good 18 months nowadays without any damage to their reputation if they take their time with releases etc. so a band that's seemingly been around for ages can be seen as fresh by the next guy.

One band that seem's to have been in the spotlight for ages is Titus Andronicus who are one of those Los Campesinos!-No Age-Animal Collective type of bands hailing from New Jersey. Their name seems to have been absolutely everywhere at the start of 2009 and they've been regular names on Radio 1 and 6Music tracklistings in the past few weeks. Maybe a re-issue of their debut could end up becoming something pretty essential this year!

Listen to: Titus Andronicus - Landscape with Icarus (myspace)

FALLEN ON INQUISITIVE EARS

As I scan the musical highway that is MySpace, for fresh blood, I find my journey is littered with mediocre artists seemingly only in a band for the sake of it. There's also the case that a lot of the bands are quite simply just damned awful, so when a band comes my way that's listenable I find myself throwing myself head on into their sound. One such band who have impressed me on my search are Sharks who hail from my old hometown of Royal Leamington Spa. You'd be right in saying that they sound a heck of a lot like The Clash but with an unmistakeable vibe of the sort that seemed to surround the C86 movement of the 1980's. On first listen you're unlikely to pick that up, yet when you really listen there's an element of The Boo Radleys (when they weren't soundtracking GMTV) and it's only the singers gruff voice and the distortion on the guitars that makes you think twice before comparing them to the likes of This Poison or early Orange Juice. Not a cert for success but definitely worth your attention...

Listen to: Sharks - Fallen on Deaf Ears (myspace)