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Who’s missing from the BBC’s Sound of 2010 poll? | Music | guardian.co.uk
The 2010 list is by far the most uninspiring ‘Sound Of…’ I’ve seen EVER.
Whilst I’ve heard Ellie Goulding’s name mentioned over the past few months, the moment I heard her I dismissed her as completely talentless and uninteresting. The less said about her, the better.
Everything Everything appear to be mildly interesting in a sort-of XTC/They Might Be Giants wacky-indie-pop kind of way which is likely to appeal to fans of semi-intelligent music. Whether they will make a dent in the charts, however, is another thing altogether.
Delphic are growing on me – and for me, the best of the list. They could almost be flatmates with The Big Pink, but for me their album’s the one to watch – I think they’ll be next year’s White Lies.
Just who the hell is Daisy Dares You? How come, in all the blogs I’ve read and contributed to, DDY’s name has never once cropped up. On the basis that she’s holding an acoustic guitar in the picture on the BBC website, I gave her video a screening and it seriously disappointed.
I’m also seriously struggling to believe that Stornoway have any chance at all of selling out the O2 Arena any time soon. In fact, if they end up as support on a future Levellers tour, I think that this could be considered the pinnacle of their career.
So… what’s missing???
Firstly, Exit Calm. Hailing from Barnsley, Yorkshire, their music manages to be exciting, dynamic and widescreen all at the same time. Their 2009 single ‘We’re On Our Own’ was my Song Of The Year. Their album’s released in the Spring – for me, they’re the big name of 2010. Watch this space…
Next up – London-based The Domino State. With three excellent singles and a Coldplay support to their name, it’s a wonder that the excellent Domino State aren’t on more people’s lips, but the release of their album early in 2010 should change all that. Excerpts of tracks on the forthcoming album are available now on their myspace site.
Finally, from America, the excellent Yeasayer. Their fab debut album All Hour Cymbals was a great listen but if new single Ambling Alp (available now in the US and early Jan in the UK) is anything to go by, they’ve developed a more-commercial sound which will appeal to fans of Vampire Weekend and The Strokes. A new album and a UK tour early next year are planned.
I suspect that once again “the sound of 20xx” won’t be known till closer to mid-year, when popular opinion coalesces and someone rather new gets a controversially high slot on a main stage at a summer festival or two.
Simon Reynolds’s Notes on the noughties: The musically fragmented decade | Music | guardian.co.uk
I was looking at Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the 2000s […] I was immediately struck by the fact that seven of the albums were from 2000 and 2001, with one other record from 2002 and another from 2004. The only album from after the mid-decade point was Panda Bear’s Person Pitch. Now what significance can be derived from this dense clustering (eight of the ten) of “greatest albums” in the first three years of the decade? You could interpret it two ways: firstly, music deteriorated as the noughties went on, or secondly, it grew harder and harder for people to reach consensus about which groups mattered, what records were important. The first scenario seems unlikely, so I’d have to go with the second. It resonates with how the decade actually felt: diasporic, scenes splintering into sub-scenes, taste bunkers forming, the question “Have you heard X?” increasingly likely to meet a shake of the head or a look of incomprehension.
Great stuff – this is a spot-on analysis of the indie music scene of the noughties and how it splintered under the sheer quantity of quality.
I doubt you will see a better run-down of the music scene of 2000-2010 until decades from now, when critics will be able to judge it in perspective of what came before and after it.
Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws – Home News, UK – The Independent
Police forces across the country have been warned to stop using anti-terror
laws to question and search innocent photographers after The Independent
forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being
widely misused.The strongly worded warning was circulated by the Association of Chief Police
Officers (Acpo) last night. In an email sent to the chief constables of
England and Wales’s 43 police forces, officers were advised that Section 44
powers should not be used unnecessarily against photographers. The message
says: “Officers and community support officers are reminded that we
should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily
restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is
unacceptable.”Chief Constable Andy Trotter, chairman of Acpo’s media advisory group, took
the decision to send the warning after growing criticism of the police’s
treatment of photographers.Writing in today’s Independent, he says: “Everyone… has a right to take
photographs and film in public places. Taking photographs… is not normally
cause for suspicion and there are no powers prohibiting the taking of
photographs, film or digital images in a public place.”He added: “We need to make sure that our officers and Police Community
Support Officers [PCSOs] are not unnecessarily targeting photographers just
because they are going about their business. The last thing in the world we
want to do is give photographers a hard time or alienate the public. We need
the public to help us.“Photographers should be left alone to get on with what they are doing.
If an officer is suspicious of them for some reason they can just go up to
them and have a chat with them – use old-fashioned policing skills to be
frank – rather than using these powers, which we don’t want to over-use at
all.”
This is utterly fantastic, and I really do hope this results in real education and instruction given to officers and especially PCSOs who seem to be behind a lot of the problems. It’s great to see such enlightened policy coming out of ACPO, finally. Of course, talk is cheap….
Preparing for South America
- Canon EOS 40D body
- Canon 17-40mm F4L
- Canon 28-135mm F3.5-5.6
- Canon 70-300mm (the cheap one)
- Canon S90 pro compact (just getting to grips with this, but excellent so far)
- Olympus water / shockproof compact (crap pictures, but could come in handy)
- Asus EEE PC netbook (for posting, surfing, photo editing and boredom relief on 16 hour bus journeys)
- Guidebook
Mortal Coil 