The Recommender

ENTREPRENEURS

We are busy gearing up for The Recommender’s launch party, which hits Brighton in a few days, but today we are getting back to our main aim, namely delivering new music to your neocortex.  First up today is Entrepreneurs, who took far more unravelling research than usual to understand.  This is the latest incarnation from the song machine that is Adam Crisp – a man who used to dwell in our local city of Brighton, in the band Elle Milano.  In this former band they went from a three piece, to a four piece, then back to a three piece, often using a variety of fake names and personas, so you can perhaps understand the amount of deciphering it’s taken to learn how Adam got here.  He’s also dabbled in other projects, such as Kobe & The Konsoles, so it’s one confusing mangle, eventually nudging our noses up to his door with this new solo project.  Thankfully his music is so exciting, adventurous and adorable that the journey was well rewarded.  Eclectic pop, distorted melodies and an exceptional ear for a daring composition fly around your head, over beats that rampage between Dom Howard and something Russel Hobbs would tap out.  On top of all this it’s Adam’s distinctive vocals that really make us want to wallow.  His voice is tinged with parts of Alex Kapranos at his most fried, (see the track In Breach (Wet Fish Handshake)), or Matt Bellamy at his most slurred, (see track Wasted Floozies), but it’s a joy to follow through each tune.  He is planning to release a debut EP, Uv Been Robbed, (Joking But Not), towards the end of the summer.  Getting him noticed in the mean time are a handful of select remixes of Marina & The Diamonds and Clock Opera, which in both cases are more adventurous, warped and slower than the many others that we’ve heard recently.  This is one artist we are going to keep an eye on, if for no other reason than to avoid yet more convoluted untangling!   (MB)

Find him here:         Myspace

Hear him here:        ENTREPRENEURS – INFINITY

Hear him here:        CLOCK OPERA – WHITE NOISE (ENTREPRENEURS BACK SEAT SLASHER REMIX)

THE HIGH WIRE

You would be forgiven two misjudgments with this special London trio.  Firstly that they are indeed only a three piece, so full and plump is their collective sound.  Secondly, that they are indeed from the UK, so American and more specifically Californian, is their shoegazing pop music.  You know the sort, with it’s familiar thrumming, basic country guitar chords, uplifting vocal harmonies that purr over a percussive beat.  Inside their musical box of tricks they also pull out sackfuls of sunshine, bags of bliss and drifts of dreamy charm.  It’s reminiscent of Mercury Rev, or perhaps The Flaming Lips at their most romantic.  It turns out that this breezy trinity initially arrived a little prematurely at the end of 2008, having been selected by none other than Chris Martin to open up for Coldplay, before they were truly ready to make full use of such a shiny spotlight.  An independent release of their debut, Ahead Of The Rain, was put together and shipped out in early 2009, but sadly never fought at it’s correct weight.  After leaving their starting line with a stalling engine it perhaps felt that the talent behind the wheel was never going to join the pack, but we have recently received some good news.  Thankfully it’s now looking like 2010 may finally prove to be the year in which things start the march to victory, as their full debut album proper, The Sleep Tape, gets released on the Grandpa Stan label.  Inside are songs with themes of broken hearts and sleepless nights, but the best evidence of any evolution from their earlier work is the scale of each composition, mainly witnessed in the intertwined vocals from Tom Crompton and Alexia Hagen.  With this they will hopefully not only catch the rest of the pack, but fly right by.   (MB)

Find them here:        Myspace

Hear them here:       THE HIGH WIRE – THE MIDNIGHT BELL

HI TIGER

This New York collective proudly point out on their Myspace that, according to the Chinese Calendar, it’s the year of the Tiger.  Time will indeed tell if that prophecy is true or a load of hopeful, star-gazing bullshit.  What we do know is that this lab-born, electronic pop band are ticking a lot of the right boxes, which is a rare thing from such an experimental project.  Born from the people behind My Other Computer Is A Sunset and Neon Coyote, they very much feel like they’re making music for 2010.  They produce a tumbler of sounds, which turn out to be a wonderful concoction of mixed up shapes and fuzz, cleverly working all the right parts of your brain.  Like much of their artwork, it’s a weird collage of influences and derivatives.  On tracks like Dance Around, (see below), it sounds like a wasted Lou Reed being backed by The Orb, with their burnt, spoken words and beats that sound like they’re thumping through the walls from next door.  On other successes, like the track Prima Donna, there’s MGMT synths and vocals that sing of friendships as if they haven’t quite come down from last nights party yet.  The meandering pauses in their tunes are beautiful and drifting, but always return to the songs original seductive plan of charming rhythms and positive story telling, “you just gotta believe that we’ll find a place, I really hope so“.  They made their Hide The Drugs EP available to download for free in parts here, but as for the future we should warn you, this experimental music will likely never fill a whole album with consistency, but when it hits the sweet spot, boy does it taste good. (MB)

Find them here:         Myspace

Hear them here:        HI TIGER – DANCE AROUND