Tom Odell - Best Of Friends

Cover versions are quite environmentally friendly aren’t they? They're music’s version of recycling. Why waste valuable human resource writing something new when you can just take someone’s good idea, put your own stamp on it and be done with it – you don’t even have to go the bin or recycling station to put the previously used one away.

So here’s Tom Odell’s bit for the environment – a cover version of indie rockers Palma Violets Best of Friends taken from the Daytrotter Recordings, a limited 12" vinyl EP of live covers recorded for Record Store Day. Of course vinyl itself is arguably more environmentally friendly than disposable media forms such as CD’s, with vinyl being seen as more collectable and therefore less likely to be discarded into landfill and even when it is dumped at the tip the material itself is easier to recycle.

However, we digress, this blog isn’t an advert for sustainability, it’s about music.

So take a listen to Odell’s cover. Just his voice and a piano, the simplicity of this recording is more effective than when he’s bashing it out in the middle of the road with a band. Having won the Brits Critics Choice Award earlier this year, featured in the BBC Sound of 2013 poll and not forgetting that he was named as one of Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch back in November 2012, Odell finally releases his album on June 24th.

Tom Odell - Best of Friends

Wilsen - Oblivion

Music blogs are time capsules of history, a diary of the author’s romances, loves and passions for sound on public display for strangers to read. Yet in this world sometimes the first rushes of lustful excitement make us deaf; we think we hear the good, but as time goes on the bubble bursts. “It wasn’t you it was us” we can hear ourselves saying to the artist in question. We’ve changed. We’ve moved on. We’ve found someone else. We can still be friends, we just can’t love you anymore. We got it wrong.

So when we first pressed play on this song we were slightly concerned. In January we introduced our new flame Wilsen. Last year we got hot under the computer bed with Grimes and ended up naming her album Visions as our second favourite of the year. So when we saw that Wilsen had covered Grimes’ Oblivion for the b-side of their excellent new single Dusk there was the opportunity for all sorts of horrendous repercussions. Were we prepared for this coming together? Would we feel the same about both artists afterwards?

The answer was found by pressing play. Wilsen’s version of Oblivion is the sound of magic taken from a box of electronic tricks and transferred to a new world, but one that can coexist in polygamous musical harmony. No need to burst that bubble today then, and instead just use words like captivating, mesmerising, sweet and gorgeous. Oh god are we going to regret all this later? Let’s check back in 2014 to see how we feel about things then, but we’re confident we’ll still all be lovers.

Wilsen - Oblivion

London Grammar - Wasting My Young Years (Video)

After nearly three and a half thousand words over the last three days on the blog, today deserves a rather shorter post as we suffer the inevitable post Great Escape comedown.

Here’s the perfect video to start that comedown with. Undoubtedly one of our highlights of Brighton's new music festival, London Grammar’s performance in a beautiful high vaulted church was as lofty, dignified and inspiring as the building itself and the closest we came to tears and goosebumps all weekend. So here's something to rekindle those emotions; whilst we were soaking up the music the band released a video for the song Wasting My Young Years. 

Is it pop ? Is it soul ? Is it folk ? We really couldn't care, all we know is that everything about this song is insanely beautiful.

London Grammar - Wasting My Young Years (Video)

The Great Escape Festival 2013 - Review (Day 3)

With 20 things already learnt about 2013’s Great Escape in Brighton, (see review’s here and here) Saturday found Breaking More Waves dodging the drunk hen and stag parties, townie clubbers and Morris Men (!) to find more new live music.

10 Facts We Learnt About Great Escape 2013 (Saturday).

1. Discovery at Great Escape isn’t what it used to be.

Great Escape is partly seen as a festival of discovery of new music. One of the concepts of the event is to stumble randomly over tomorrow’s unknown stars in tiny venues playing to small audiences. However, in our wireless web world this idea is probably a little far from the truth. The success of The Great Escape means that nearly every venue is packed (the days of watching Adele playing in a less than 100 capacity coffee shop third out of four on the bill as we did in 2007 are probably long gone) and with the continual development and expansion of Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify and online press including new music blogs, most of the ‘discovery’ for many punters is complete before they’ve stepped out the door at home -even the festival's website had links to every bands music and a complete Spotify playlist. Yet most people are still not prepared to wager £5 to go and see three bands they’ve never heard of on a whim on a rainy Monday night in a pub in their hometown - they prefer the greater 'experience' of an event rather than a solitary gig. Great Escape packages the concept of ‘discovery’ into something different and judging by the rammed venues, people like it.

2. Chvrches may be a ‘buzz band’ but they are such because they have A.M.A.Z.I.N.G songs.

As we predicted yesterday their set at seafront club Digital was massively over-subscribed. Those who did get in witnessed a band taking a myriad of classic influences (Prince, Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk) and turning them into a glossy synth dream fit for 2013 fully justifying their position as our no.1 one to watch for 2013. With a bandaged hand Lauren providing the sweetest of vocal melodies on future pop classics like Now Is Not The Time and Science & Vision, Chvrches put an electronic bullet to the slogan ‘don’t believe the hype.’

3. Girls Aloud are now cool and kitsch enough for a Brighton club DJ to drop Sound of the Underground into a mainly hip hop and r’n’b influenced set.

This actually happened. We danced a lot.

4. The UK has its own very accessible version of Arcade Fire.

Eliza & The Bear’s afternoon set at the cave like Haunt was another packed out show, the band showing a dynamic stomping enthusiasm with their joyously uplifting set. Guitars, trumpet, keyboards, mass chants and big sing-a-long tunes that bind so tightly together that it makes you wonder why they’re not already playing arenas, alongside Embers they’re one of the best new guitar based bands we see all weekend. Euphoric is an understatement.

5. The Great Escape has many imitators but it’s still the most impressive.

With pretty much every large city in the UK now having its own multi-venue festival, the Great Escape still leads by a country mile. One of the reasons for this is that its still one of the best managed. With so many venues running its critical for stages to run to time in order for punters to be able to see what they’ve chosen to see and with very few exceptions every venue at Great Escape runs bang on, with impressively quick set up times by the artists themselves.

6. It was a good night for Denmark.

Around the same time that Emmelie de Forest was winning Eurovision for Denmark with Only Teardrops, another Danish chanteuse was pulling musical blows with punchy youthful attitude and winning Brighton over at Great Escape. Sassy pony-tailed singer Karen Marie Ørsted, performed as if she was dancing on hot coals and her life depended on it. Pilgrim glistened with sweaty, brassy, electronic grooves and whilst MØ’s tunes may not have quite enough pop hookiness to take her into the mainstream, those who like their electronic music that little bit edgier will find a lot to love about MØ. 

7. Lulu James has good shoes (and an incredible set of pipes)

The award for best costume of the festival has to go to rising 21 year old Geordie soul-pop star Lulu James. With a pair of shoes that were covered in paper flowers and a combination of leotard and webbed effect prince charming pantomime jacket James looked stunning. Despite suffering technical problems on stage her club bound soul grooves sounded perfect out front. Britain’s answer to Beyonce? Well maybe not quite, but certainly she might be giving Katy B and Jessie Ware a run for their money by the time the year’s out.

8. There’s still a problem with free gigs.

Running alongside the Great Escape is the Alt. Escape, a series of free gigs, showcases and parties that anyone can attend irrespective of if they have a Great Escape ticket or not. In some respects this is a brilliant opportunity for bands and those who want to put on a show; with Brighton being so busy over Great Escape weekend it virtually guarantees a decent sized crowd. Yet as folk singer Rhodes discovered on Saturday afternoon at The Mesmerist, a large audience who haven’t paid to get in doesn’t equate to silent attentive listeners. The levels of chat in the room were almost unbearable – maybe he would have been better playing to a small crowd of paying customers who were actually interested?

9. In real life Moko dances just like she does in THAT video.

She really does. (Hear her below)

10. The Great Escape is still great.

The Great Escape unquestionably remains the biggest and the best new music multi-venue urban festival in the UK. Go there and fall in love with live new music all over again.

Moko - Homesick

The Great Escape Festival 2013 - Review (Day 2)

Day two of Brighton’s Great Escape Festival brings more music than you could possibly cram into any day. But we tried.

Following our review of Thursday’s proceedings, here are 10 more things we learnt about the Great Escape 2013.

1 .Finding time to eat at Great Escape can be a problem.

Unlike some outdoor music festivals where the biggest queues can often be found by either the toilets or the food vendors stalls, being an urban festival there’s plenty of choices of places to eat. Yet if you want to see as much music as possible at Great Escape, taking an hour out to grab some food seems like a horrid waste of time. Thankfully there’s a downtime period between about 5pm and 6.30pm each day, so our tip is eat a humongous breakfast, grab a quick sandwich on the go at lunch and then use that downtime wisely in the evening.

2. Embers don’t do things in small doses.

All things considered Manchester band Embers’ set at Above Audio shouldn’t work. It’s ridiculously early for rock music (12.30), the venues layout is appalling, far longer than it is deep, with the band separated from the crowd by a five feet high wall and no proper stage as such. Yet Embers blow both minds and ears. Their huge cinematic soundscapes are mountainously impressive, as if Sigur Ros has become a fully-fledged rock band. This is big music. With the addition of a violinist their unblinking fervour sonically references Chichester’s Hope of the States in so far as their sound is enormously expansive and dramatic. It is undoubtedly one of the best things we hear all day. New single Part of the Echoes (streaming below) packs punch after punch and afterwards we’re left stunned and numbed.

3. Sometimes going to see a band ‘just to pass time’ isn’t a good idea. Especially when you could be enjoying a coffee and cake.

Whilst Great Escape’s downtime should mean a chance to recover and refuel, for those who never want the music to stop, the outdoor Hub stage (a converted airstream caravan) keeps going all day. Unfortunately Poland’s Enchanted Hunters make us realise we should have followed our own tip in 1 above. Imagine a twee Bjork in a bad dream playing alt. folk and with flutes. They have a song about being dumb and walking in a forest. That says it all really. A sit down and an expensive frothy latte may have been less rock n roll, but would have been far more enjoyable.

4. A girl and a guitar still pulls a crowd.

Marika Hackman was sweetly overwhelmed by the size of her audience in the Unitarian Church, telling the at capacity crowd she expected about three people. Despite her rather serious face whilst playing (which she joked about) she displayed a neat line in comedy if the music doesn’t work out. “Sorry I’m such an awkward tuner. Not like the fish.” Her meanderingly polite songs are almost medieval in their sound and the longer she plays the more appealing her sparse plaintive tunes become.

5. We might have just seen a future star in Josef Salvat.

Is it too early to start talking about the BBC Sound of 2014 or Blog Sound of 2014 list? If it isn’t then we’d like to mark the card of Josef Salvat as an early contender. Dressed in a pastel blue suit, like the Miami Vice version of Hurts (without shoulder pads), his self-assured and lyrically uncomfortable atmospheric pop songs sound like what Theo and Adam should have been doing in 2013 if they hadn’t decided to try and become a stadium rock band. The man looks like a star and performs with the sneer and venom of a star. One to watch.

6. There’s still hope for the Klaxons.

After their appalling second album, Klaxons returned to the live scene at Great Escape in the aircraft hangar sized Corn Exchange. With a set that was heavy on first album hits and some new songs as well, the new songs sounded less aggressive, more electronic and appeared to have a semblance of a hook and a tune. 

7. Sometimes astral ethereal electronic floatiness is hard to find in a stuffy scuzzy upstairs room in a pub.

Lorely Rodriguez (Empress Of) was clearly excited to be in Brighton for her debut UK show and maybe it was this excitement that translated into a performance that was much rawer and less full of the celestial loveliness of her recorded work. A rammed room seemed to adore her, but we’d have liked less bounce and more beauty. On record Empress Of might sound like The Cocteau Twins vs Grimes but in reality there's still some way to go to meet those dizzy dreamy heights.

8. Brolin could join Marika Hackman to do a stand-up routine.

The minimal soul and beats of Brolin may sound magical and mysterious and he may keep his identity hidden by sporting a menacing silver crucifix adorned mask, but strip this away and in terms of a live show there’s quite a character that seems at odds with the gentle coy beauty of hush gems like NYC “I am smiling under this mask, the trouble is when I smile I look like I’ve had a seizure,” he jokes. Later he apologises for the size of his miniature keyboard, which he says has shrunk. Unlike most bedroom / laptop producer types Brolin really seems to be able to pull it off live. Accompanied by a drummer / electronic beat maker he shadow boxes the air and takes himself right up to the crowd, even getting the tiny packed room to sing along at one point.

9. San Zhi make very pretty pop music.

They just do. Lovely little melodies that get under the skin.

10. Queues at great escape are inevitable. But you don’t have to be part of them. (We didn't really learn this, we already knew it, but lots of people are still learning)

Yesterday we heard rumours and grumblings on twitter of many venues being at capacity as the evening wore on, with lengthy queues and many one in one out situations occurring, even for delegate badge holders. Somehow Breaking More Waves missed all of this. Our tip: If there’s someone you really want to see, arrive very early and as the evening goes on limit your venue hopping. Over the last 48 hours we’ve seen 28 bands and haven’t stood in a queue once. It’s all about planning in advance and arriving early. 

(Top Tip: If you’re reading this before Saturday evening and are planning to see Chvrches at Digital tonight we recommend you arrive before doors open. It’s going to be one of the hottest tickets of the weekend).

Embers - Part of the Echoes