It’s great looking back. When all these bands arrived in our ears they were so fresh. They jostled and niggled to be noticed.
Give them a bit of time and they positively fly home with their nuance and sway. So, here we are at the business end of the year lauding the young talents that ’shroomed this year, mainly from the UK but a triptych of US acts to keep the Atlantic friction in full swing. These are our favourite newbies.
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10. King Cannibal
Fierce and uncompromising, this low frequency carnivore makes The Bug sound like Bob Marley as King Cannibal launches explosions of post jungle, proto dubstep and bastardised dancehall rhythms.
Though amusingly he sees his music in a gentler light: “One of my older tracks featured a woman crying over the whole thing, pretty much from start to finish. Personally I don’t think of what I make as all being that dark but maybe it depends on what you’ve spent your formative years listening to.”
Tracks like ‘Arigami Style’ are meaty beyond belief, whilst ‘So… Embrace The Minimum’ arrived at the same washed out spacey steppin’ journey that Bristol half-step producers like Peverelist and Appleblim are concurrently pioneering.
And his links with older genres is just as strong: “I have always been a big fan of techy drum ‘n’ bass and love the foul, dirty, filtered basslines people like Nico and Optical would use,” confesses the south Londoner. “That is really how I came up with most of the King Cannibal album – I put those sounds in to the shape of what else I was playing a lot of at the time. As for being labelled dancehall, if The Bug is one step removed from dancehall then I’m two or three steps further. The framework of the genre just lends itself to placing the sounds I like in to it.”
Words by Matthew Bennett
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9. The Invisible
Some things just have legs. During our daily zoological observations at Clash we established that this band certainly were ‘of feet’. The Invisible went bi-pedal by accident on Accidental Records when members of existing bands Jade Fox, Zongamin and Polar Bear collaborated for what was meant to be Dave Okumu’s solo album. This group then grew heads as well as legs and ended up a fully fledged screaming, running and seducing band in its own right. Hello Invisible.
Dave Okumu reflects on their origin: “I think our friendship was certainly a strong foundation for our musical union, as well as the fact that we had done much of our formative musical exploration together. There was never any agenda with the sound other than to be ourselves. Shaping the sound, with Matthew (Herbert)’s invaluable assistance, has been a bit like creating our own language: one which reflects whatever we love, whatever inspires us, and whatever we care about.”
The result was of course Mercury nominated and will slow burn its way through your hard drive with a neat course that swings through dance then detailed indie explosions seemingly tipping its hat in many directions without ever blowing off. Drenched in emotions, it’s getting better at every listen and we are convinced it’ll stand the test of time better than nearly all of its peers. Magical.
Words by Matthew Bennett
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Read more of our Top 10 Newcomers HERE.