The Recommender

These days it’s almost ‘normal’ for a new band to arrive under one of those invisibility cloaks that Harry Potter uses.  It’s rather unhelpful to music journalism and frankly just as twee as a J K Rowling yarn.  In fact, very much like this post, it seems the articles that report on these bands prefer to speak about the issue of mystery, rather than the band or the music itself, as is evidenced by this article on the Times Online.  To be fair there’s simply no choice when all you get is a video to work with!  It seems to have stepped up a gear with IAmAmIWhoAmI though, with Wikipedia notations, fake Twitter and Myspace accounts, alongside the equally challenging moniker.  They’re clearly enjoying poking a little fun at us.  We thought we’d got past all this mystery nonsense, following the revelations of Monarchy, The Golden Filter and Summer Camp in months gone by.  The obvious considerations for all this will be that the artists maintain control by holding something back, or that they’re fighting against the over-exposure in today’s media, or that it’s a cynical marketing plot, or they’re wanting “the music to stand on its own” etc.  One thing for sure is that if your music isn’t pretty damn awesome, nobody will care enough to lift your cover.  With IAmAmIWhoAmI the music, with numbers and references instead of song titles, is not only thoroughly decent, but exceptionally polished too, as are the mysterious videos.  This is some seriously top budget stuff, with the kind of imagery, effects and styling of Tony Kaye, Guillermo Del Toro or David Lynch.  The music is that icy brand of Scandinavian pop, (which generated the most likely suggestion of them all,  Jonna Lee), with it’s creepy, ethereal potions.  The beautiful female vocals warp and twist over the slow, patient crescendos.  Music and particularly imagery this strong have suggested Lady Gaga, but that seems too unneccessary for her at this stage in her career.  The scary vocals have an accent, linking up Fever Ray’s/The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson, but surely two bands are already enough?  Among all the others, you can now see the new video below, for the new track O, which is surely the finest of the collection to date.  It also backs up the most popular and sensible conclusion that this must be Jonna Lee, but the conspiracies and conjecture will no doubt continue.   (MB)

Find them here:         Youtube Channel

Hear them here:        IAMAMIWHOAMI – O