Having been inundated with applications from emerging artists for the eir Other Voices performance slot at the festival’s IMRO Other Room recordings, an independent panel of music industry experts has produced a four artist shortlist.
The eir Other Voices Open Call has its four finalists. Having received 1,000+ submissions from across the whole island of Ireland, the festival looked to a panel of industry professionals to whittle the record breaking number down to a single digit shortlist.
In no particular order, the four eir Other Voices Open Call finalists are:-
Not only will the poll-topping finalist bag a slot at the Other Voices festival, they will also win precious in-studio recording time, a music video, professional mentoring and guaranteed television airtime when their Other Voices performance airs as part of the 2018 RTE TV series of the same name. This rather juicy package which will make a dream gift for any of the four emerging artists is being sponsored by Irish telecoms company, eir.
And who wins is all down to you, the great MUSIC PUBLIC!
Can’t make up your mind? Tune into Tracy Clifford on 2FM to hear music from and interviews with all four finalists (you can also catch up on RTE radio player if you miss the ‘live in-show’). Polls close on Friday 3rd November and the winner will be announce on RTE 2FM three days later on 6th.
eir Other Voices Festival will run in Dingle from 1st to 3rd December. In its 16th year, the festival is an extremely popular arena for new music artists to showcase their talent.
Voting which is now open, closes at midnight on Friday 3rd November. The public’s chosen artist will be announced on Monday 6th November on the Tracy Clifford Show on 2FM, eir.ie and OtherVoices.ie.
Listen to the four eir Other Voices Open Call shortlisters on our mini-Spotify playlist below. You can follow us at DervSwerve on Twitter and Facebookto keep up to date with more music news, views and reviews.
For more information on eir Other Voices Festival 2017 and to register for the opportunity to access more than 70 free live events on the Music Trail at eir Other Voices Festival see www.othervoices.ie
eir Other Voices Festival is supported by eir, RTÉ, Kerry County Council, Fáilte Ireland, IMRO, the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Creative Ireland.
Radiohead have announced a 400-page career-spanning songbook. Featuring lyrics and chords to over 160 songs the collection is expected to ship c. 27th November.
Radiohead have announced a new 400 page songbook featuring the lyrics and chords to songs spanning their entire career to-date including rarities and B-sides. The artist-approved collection also contains 48 pages of artwork from long-term band collaborator artist Stanley Donwood who designed the exclusive cover art.
The new complete songbook follows the 2016 accompanying songbook to A Moon Shaped Pool and two collections of electric and acoustic guitar sheet music published earlier this year.
The Radiohead Complete Songbookwhich costs £40 Sterling can be pre-ordered here, with the first copies being expected to ship by late November, in plenty of time for Christmas.
Elsewhere in Radiohead-land, the vinyl edition of drummer Philip Selway’s soundtrack to the film Let Me Gohas just gone on release (you can shop it here at Bella Union). That comes ahead of his colleague and band mood-guitarist Ed O’Brien’s signature Fender EOB Sustainer Stratocaster making its way into music stores later in November.
Finally, before you go, if you haven’t already seen it, take a peek at the Jonny Greenwood approved Spongebob ‘describing’ each Radiohead album montage.
Dervscoveriesis a new regular post bringing you the best in ‘musica obscura’ – songs, sounds and artists who might not as yet swim in the mainstream, but whose music you should be familiarising yourselves with asap. As usual, this post will be accompanied by a Spotify playlist, which you can find at the bottom of the page.
Kick starting proceedings is a collective from Finland called RinneRadio with their jazz-ambient piece called Yasmin. Calling out above a meld of bubble and haze, an earnest clarinet captures the aural gaze before leading the listener into an imaginary world of visceral transcendence. The perfect blend of jazz and new age electronica, this is mindful instrumentation at its finest.
Rinne Radio are a constantly evolving techno-jazz outfit whose current line-up comprises Tapani Rinne on bass clarinet and saxophone, Juuso Hannukainen on percussion and Konsta Muffler Mikkonen on electronics with Mikka Kari in charge of sound design.
Yasmin is out on the Ambient Zone label.
Things move onto a darker, more unnerving landscape with next track, the absolutely superb Witness by Paul Woolford under the Special Request moniker. Taken from his second 23-track album entitled Belief System, Witness is a deeply textured and richly atmospheric instrumental interpretation of mystery and foreboding. Starting with a veil of mist, the track quickly descends down a rabbit hole of disquietude.
A breathtaking if troubling composition that will hold you captive.
Belief System is available via the Houndstooth imprint.
There are few sounds as mesmerising as marimba; for centuries any bell-like sounds whose timbre soared up into the heavens like chiming stars have fascinated, uplifted and captivated. Rite is an utterly beautiful echo-chamber of xylophones, marimbas and glockenspiels brought to us by Snow Palms, the brainchild of musician and composer David Sheppard. Taken from his sophomore album Origin and Echo, which incidentally was two years in the making, Rite is an utterly beautiful and transporting piece of musical argentum.
Rite is taken from the forthcoming album Origin & Echo due for release via Village Green on 17th November.
Taking things in a completely yet not unrelated stylistic direction is young American Julien Baker. There is something equally soaring about Baker’s pole-vaulting vocal and cirrus-level atmospherics. Turn Out The Lights is the title track from 21-year old’s second album and if a benchmark of the record’s quality, then the bar has been set sky-high. Moving from soft finger-picked strings and earnest low-key vocals through a haze of reverb the track builds to an outro packed with fuzzy intensity and a powerful vocal ascent. Impressive is an understatement.
Lovers of Bon Iver style indie folk will be in thrall to the Tennessee native.
Julie Baker plays Whelan’s on 9th November (two days ahead of the equally splendid Lucy Rose).
Turn Out The Lights is taken from Julien Baker’s new album of the same name out October 27th on Matador Records.
Staying in guitar strumming, string plucking, southern state indie-folk territory we take our next cue from the guys over at BBC Introducing Devon. Recalling Tom Petty or that virtuoso of acoustic guitar Bob Dylan, StevieRay Lathamhas a voice that would be more at home on the broad expanse of the Great Plains than the grey pavements of London Town.
There are subtle echoes of the inviting melodies of Arctic Monkey’s genius Cornerstone on the Londoner’s latest single and former Devon ‘Upload of the Week’ Kristina, a semi-acoustic ballad with an underlying intensity that belies its superficial simplicity. It’s sometimes hard to believe that one artist could create something so compelling and beguiling as this track, with its entreating vocal and curious lyrics. Low-key electric guitar and intermittent synth samples add a 2017 twist, giving the track an ‘urban cowboy’ for the 21st century vibe.
Kristina is taken from Latham’s second album entitled Winter in London out now.
Next up another BBC Intro Devon find, Daniel Lloyd. Purveyor of ‘twangy gloom’ (love it), Daniel hails from Torquay in Devon. With a voice and lyrical edge that belie his tender age, this young English artist is on a par with the likes of Alex Turner and Richard Hawley. In fact, Lloyd sounds eerily like a young Hawley, his voice more cavernous than the midnight pits of Ebbw Vale.
You can hear Daniel’s stunning new track Love Discourse below. Imposing and unorthodox it is, just like his subterranean vocal and mature beyond his years arrangements. In the words of the late, great Tom Petty, we’ll watch and wait as Daniel Lloyd steps “Into the great wide open”.
**As Love Discourse wasn’t uploaded to Spotify we cannot include it in our accompanying playlist, sorry.
Ramping things up a tad are London-based Honey Lung with their latest number, Stuttering Mind. Lovers of MBV and our personal faves, Leicester based Dayflowerwill fall head over heels with this track, this band, this sound!
As a mark of just how damn good this quartet are, they headlined the BBC Intro stage at the Reading & Leeds festival earlier this year.
Honey Lung trade in clean guitar lines immersed in fifty shades of reverb with soft-tone vocals a la Ecstasy of Saint Teresa or their precursors Colorfactory. There are touches of melancholia around the edges of some truly gorgeous melodies and a warmly textured arrangement as the band cleverly (and very successfully) experiment with flipping focus from foreground to background. Even if indie isn’t your thing, Honey Lung are a band you should keep a beady one on, as there’s more here than meets the inexpert eye.
Stuttering Mind is out now – Honey Lung are currently on tour.
Django Django – the name just conjurs up all kinds of bounce, mayhem and fun doesn’t it. Brimming with colour, texture and zipping rhythm, their new track Tic Tac Toe brings a welcome splurge of brightness to our chilly, grey days. This rambunctious psych/art-pop energiser is yet another mouth-watering morsel from the London- based quartet’s upcoming third album.
The carry-on cowboy-esque feel-gooder is a blitz of thigh slapping beats, glorious harmonies, frantic guitars and bonkers arrangements. Need a pick-me-up? This is all the tonic you’ll need!
Django Django have been announced for Dublin’s Tivoli, 2nd March, 2018, tickets Euro 22.50 plus booking fee will go on sale via Eventbrite on 27th October, link here.
Marble Skies, the follow up to the band’s 2015 record Born Under Saturn has a release slot of 26th January 2018. Pre-order details here.
Cardiff-based four-piece Estronshave been faved by fans and moderators of Fresh on the Net several times – proof-positive that we know a good thing when we hear it, and, that they know how to spring cracking good tunes!
Alas, I was never blessed with good timing. Having missed out on every opportunity to review them for FOTN, I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since. Their new release Cold Washprovides the perfect opportunity to do just that.
The flip side to previous single Glasgow Kisses, Cold Wash is a menacing clangour of metal and percussion that plays to the vocal strengths and endless range of front-woman Taliesyn Kallstrom. Hurling push-pull lyrics across a looping kerrang of driving guitars with gale fore indignation, Cold Wash once again finds Kallstrom in fine vocal form. Deliciously intense, there are moments of lulling reprieve before the track ratchets back up to a squally close.
Estronshave a rep for blistering live performances. They’ve just completed a full UK tour but if you’re hanging in Cardiff or its hinterland on 9th December, you’ll be able to catch their set at Chroma/Palomino Party, @ClwbIforBach details here.
Cold Wash/Glasgow Kisses is out now via Gofod Records.
Norwegian Anna Lena Bruland, better known to music aficionados as EERA is now just days away from releasing her debut album Reflection of Youth. Hailing from a fishing town south of Oslo, EERA decamped to London several years ago and it continues to be her base. There she honed the now highly regarded, exceptional songwriting skills displayed on her latest singles; three tracks in fact lifted from the Norwegian’s debut record. Songs I Wanna Dance & Christinewere the ‘amuse bouche’ to current album appetiser Living, a strident something from virtually nothing that takes its thematic cue from a close, personal friendship.
While her voice captivates, EERA takes no lyrical prisoners, her sparse perspicacity a feat of concision. Similarly, her music can sound as barren as a wasteland or as brimful of skew-ways, gyrating wet metallica as an underground indie club on a Saturday night.
At times wistful, at others penitent, Livingis as uncompromising an emotional expose as one would normally attribute to the likes of PJ Harvey.
EERA is currently supporting the Ghostpoet tour. Part recorded in producer Nick Rayner’s home-studio in Cork, Reflection Of Youth will release on 3rd November 2017 via Big Dada.
Also hailing from Nordic territories are Norwegian duo Smerz whose popularity has grown exponentially over the past few years thanks to Nordic music aficionados like Ja Ja Ja Nordic rowing in to give them some serious support.
The pair have just dropped their 7-track debut OkeyEP with a release party scheduled for 26th October at Corsica Studios in SE London, details here. Taster singles from the EP have included the songs Blessed and most recently Half Life, but our feature track is the sultry No Harm.
A meld of low-key R&B and undulating yet edgy electronic beats, No Harm is a contradiction in terms of a delivery that wavers between apathy and melancholia. Vocals are frosted, breathy affairs – glacial one minute, whispering out-breaths the next. Spacious yet busy, morose yet provocative No Harm’s innovative, genre-crossingdeconstructed soundhas been lighting up playlists across BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music, a sign that things are definitely on a vertical trajectory for the CPH based pairing.
Smerz have been touring across Europe with a series of Half Life after parties and festival slots. If you haven’t already had the chance to see their brilliant live set, they have more dates lined up in Germany, Greece and Italy, details here.
No Harmis out now via XL Recordings. Okey is on digital release via XL Recordings / vinyl via Hard Up Records (UK) and in Denmark from Escho.
New ‘one to watch‘ Connie Constance wraps things up today. Hailing from Watford, this young singer might have just a bijou collection of songs to her name but what an impact those songs have already made!
Connie’s second EP, Let Go, is set for release on 24th November and if the title track is anything to go by, it’s going to be impressive ++.
Displaying what is already a very special talent, Connie Constance recalls the smokey timbre of Sade or Nina Simone with the youthful grace of Lianne la Havas. While her vocal has all the confident control of her predecessors, its near-London origins remain evident on the young singer’s unadulterated enunciation, making it all the more appealing.
Let Go is an open display of vulnerability – “don’t go, I need you“. Its spacious and languid layering of warm jazz tones and textures make the perfect vehicle for Constance’s multi-faceted delivery. Veering between entreaty and defiance, her voice sweeps across registers with the confidence of youth and rawness of ingenue.
Just how someone so young can perform with so much panache is simply mind-boggling.
Let Go is out now via all digital services; the EP of the same name will release 24th November on the AMF imprint.
As always, we round off today’s post with a complementary Spotify playlist – caring is sharing, and one way new or emerging artists can ensure their music is heard is by word of mouth, or reposts on social. So go ahead and spread the word. A bientot, DervSwerve
Tori Amos‘s 1992 debut was the stark ‘Me & A Gun’. A gut-wrenching, raw dolorifuge sung a cappella, it was the sonic autobiography of her rape aged 21.
Now some 25 years later Amos returns with her 15th studio album, Native Invader. What’s clear from the off is that the American is still battling emotional, physical and personal pain, but in a world now rife with political turmoil. The album’s triumvirate of thematic touchstones are environmental destruction, US political upheaval and most significantly, the calamitous stroke that left the artist’s mother unable to speak.
While comparisons with Kate Bush are now just yesterday’s news, they cannot be completely side-stepped, and are at their strongest on piano ballads such as opener Reindeer King. The album’s other singles Cloud Riders and Up The Creek couldn’t be more polarised. The former is a dreamy, country-bluesy slow-tempo track on which Amos’ vocal floats over a metaphorical storm and some seriously slick gospel organ. The latter is a finger picking funk-out that tackles Trumpton and all its vainglorious but reckless gibberish.
Native Invader dips in and out of the pockets of several genres and styles – Dooby-esque American rock (Broken Arrows), emotional electro-pop (Wings), inter-galactic sample-fused balladry replete with lush guitar rondos (Chocolate Song) and compelling, heartfelt piano mini-dramas (Bang). It’s possibly in the this last style of earnest balladry that Amos’ star still shines brightest.
Stand out is album closer Mary’s Eyes, an exquisitely choreographed waltz of piano and strings on which Amos questions the unquantifiable extent of her mother’s debilitation – “What’s behind Mary’s Eyes?” – in the most touching and serenest of vocals.
Like forerunner Bush, Tori Amos falls into the marmite category. She is an artist music fans will either adore or deplore. What cannot be disputed is her exceptional talent and enviable gift for innovation and re-imagining. The American’s legion of super-fans will wax lyrical about Native Invader, and so they should. Hopefully, others will opens their eyes, ears and hearts long enough to experience the wonder of Ms. Amos’ idiosyncratic virtuosity. 7/10
Native Invader is on release now via Decca Records. There is also a 15-track Deluxe edition available including two extra tracks Upside Down 2 and Russia.
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