The Recommender

The Internet’s changed everything. All of us already know this. It’s a fact that is shown off in many different ways, but none more so than on music blogs. In recent months we’ve received comments and emails from music bloggers from as far away as Los Angeles, Canada and Australia, asking how a UK-based blog like ours got on top of a band from their local town before they did. The Internet dude, the Internet. It doesn’t just fuck with boundaries it blows them away as if destroyed by Vogons.

We honestly couldn’t be any busier as we run around our local city of Brighton, yet we still weren’t first to the likes of Gross Magic, Curxes, Rizzle Kicks, Cave Painting, or Fear Of Men, all of which are local to Brighton in 2011. In fairness, we weren’t particularly interested in most of them as there was either nothing to add to the coverage, or we simply didn’t like them enough, but it’s worth noting that all have earned blog buzz in recent months. Being first isn’t important either, as it’s not a race, it’s just that you would have thought we could have been, considering our position as busy networkers in our local scene. Well, today we’re onto a new exciting Brighton-based artist, and judging by just a dozen tweets, alongside just a couple of Tumblr posts, it looks like we’re pretty damn early on this one…although we’re STILL not first.

Originally from London, BLANc, is a solo artist, (real name Will White), who comes with the kind of pedigree that is sure to get him noticed. He’s the brother of Hugo and Felix from The Maccabees, with whom he’s toured and gigged. He was also the lead singer for Talk Taxis and a band called Childhood, but this is a definitive solo project. He’s apparently planning some live shows under the new moniker, so we hope to keep you posted and watch him ourselves soon enough, assuming the shows are likely to be in Brighton.

The first track that appeared is Staying Young, an indie pop tune that layers dark, fuzzed guitars over the top of a more basic set of lighter chords. It’s an untidy juxtaposition, but it serves the track well, as it swells and throbs behind Will’s charismatic vocals. The pace keeps the energetic rumble going throughout, although the drums are neither driving it or simply keeping time, falling somewhere in between, which is a trick missed, but the piece still holds together well and never dips below it’s own speed limit.

The latest track on offer arrived in the shape of LWTL in recent weeks. The Camden-esque slacker indie continues, with another racing stride. Once again the vocals carry it, with Will sounding like someone who is infinitely more assured than you are. It’s a song that separates out the parts better, only becoming a wall of noise on occasion, but with the same contemporaries-reflecting-the-past sound that we used to get when Supergrass did The Kinks, or Kasabian did T-Rex.

Brighton has never been far from a youth scene, with a particularly good live music circuit, but this year we seem to be producing buzz bands at a particularly fast rate. All are very different, much like the range of bands we had emerging from Manchester a couple of years ago, who were all excellent, but because they didn’t sound the same it couldn’t be defined as a ‘scene’. This seems to be another social occurrence the Internet has melted away. We will keep our ears out for more, although in all honesty you could just as easily hear it first from a blogger in New Zealand! (MB)

BLANC – LWTL

BLANC – STAYING YOUNG