Music
Originally published on Friday, 13th March 2009
Cross-Pollination
As the daffodils blossom and friends start hitting their partially-informed hayfever remedies (really, adding honey from Canada to your tea won’t help if you live in Hackney), we’re getting a whole hive of blinding artists cross-pollinating via countries, genres and sounds.
Yes, it can go wrong – as the mighty Mighty Boosh once put it: ‘a mixture of genres without being quite as good as either’, or something to that effect. But luckily, certain musical folks are better at pitching a little bit of strange into the mix…
Holiday For Strings
Take the new quintet, Holiday For Strings , comprising members from Kitsune’s Thieves Like Us stable and John from Young Folks-loving Peter, Bjorn and John. This pop-loving group of misfits make the kind of krautrock-infused Gallic pop music that only Scandinavians seem to be able to do well. Given their international credentials, there’s also the odd lo-fi NYC electronic flourish. Kinda like Pacific! meets Sebastien Tellier in a hotel lobby during Nuit Blanche. Really, they’re that good.
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The Strange Boys
It’s not only the poppy rock chaps doing it right, mind. My Toys Like Me have been around for a minute now, touting their double-edged, hyperactive electro-tomfoolery that’s actually ‘pretty serious’. Getting a bit of attention for a while now, it’s their new album, Where We Are, that sends them into the territory of brilliance. Grabbing bits of 8bit glitch, Little Dragon soul, cockney enunciation, dutty basslines, Marvin Gaye-esque equivication, and more off kilter ideas than an asylum for benignly unhinged children, it’s all too much to take in initially, but unfolds like Jasmine in hot water after a couple of listens. More than worth it.
Hmm…perhaps I should get some of that Canadian honey after all.
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