In new music blogging there’s definitely an ever-present element of optimism, and rightly so. In reality, we’re dealing with embryonic projects, so you either lapse into silence or stick it all on red and see what happens. It’s only regrettably rarely that a band pops up with such a steady approach and singular sound that the prospect of a debut album starts to look like a seriously exciting prospect, but the more that Glass Animals release, the more that looks to be the case.

“Black Mambo” is their long overdue follow up to last year’s “Leaflings” EP, and it does almost all of the things that Glass Animals are best at. Shuddering textures. A spiralling bass-line. Half shattered vocals. An entire imagined landscape of barely noticeable details. Enough nuances to keep you occupied for years, and enough sinister appeal to instantly grab you. As you may be able to tell, I reckon it’s rather decent. You may have heard of a man called Paul Epworth, and he must agree because he’s releasing the track, backed with the unheard “Exxus” on his Wolf Tone label at a certain point in the future. Hyped.

Reinvention can be the mother of all evils. Just take Lee Newell for example, who attempted to obscure his past in the Thatcher-eclipsing malevolence that was Brother by inventing a gloomy 80s pop tribute. But in the case of Liverpool band All We Are, their traversing from ethereal folk to the irrepressible psych lethargy of ‘Utmost Good’ is already looking like the best reinvention since bread reimagined itself as sliced bread.

The Joe-Wills-produced single is due to drop into the purchasable world on the 17th June, and the timing couldn’t be much more perfect; the hazy fog of melodies that tie together ‘Utmost Good’ are made to soundtrack the daze of a half-remembered summer. Coupled with the warping rumble of the track’s snaking bass-line, ‘Utmost Good’ manages to be both instantly loveable and  enduring, so much so that it doesn’t seem too much to say that singles don’t come much more special than this.

‘Utmost Good’ will be the first release on Obscenic Records. I was fortunate enough to catch up with the band for a feature in this month’s Bido Lito!  to find out about the roots of their change in mood – check it out here.

Apologies for periods of much too silence recently, I’ve been getting mercilessly wrung through the process of university, with little else for respite apart from this incredible collaboration between two of  music’s brightest talents (and biggest fans of the upper case) – so although it’s been knocking around for at least two weeks, I’m going to break all the rules and just make absolutely sure you’ve heard it.

To be fair, you might consider me a pretty biased source of praise for this new REID restructuring of SOHN’s “The Wheel”, having many a time made clear my love for both artists. But I think I’m objective enough to say that I’m not obsessed with this track because it happens to be the work of SOHN and REID, it’s got far more to do with the gloomy synths that hang just beneath the consciousness of this track, and the way that REID has somehow made “The Wheel” danceable, whilst retaining all of its original despair. Capital work.

“On Your Own (Pt. 2)” is the latest darkly comedic step towards Fryars’ debut album, which is looking increasingly like it could be filed somewhere near Autre Ne Veut in your record collection, though of course with the addition of Benjamin Garrett’s unique take on despondent pop music. There’s something brilliantly direct about the bluntness of the delivery, as a deadpan Fryars paints a rather downcast scene in which relationships are false, life is imprisonment, and everyone is ultimately unhappy. Charlie Brooker is almost certainly a fan. “Don’t matter if you’re rich, you’ll die alone” is destined to become the mantra of every creative washed up on the unforgiving pavements of London, but the continued existence of Katie Price does sort of prove his point.

One of the following is definitely true; either I’ve been effectively propagandised, or By The Sea are one of this country’s most underappreciated bands. Their LP from last year was certainly one of my favourite of the year, but on the evidence of this recently surfaced live video of new track “Endless Days”, the band are already moving onto more expressive and developed sounds. “Endless Days” itself somehow has more Real Estate vibes than even Real Estate themselves (which is definitely a good thing), coursing along on waves of languid guitar tones. What is entirely By The Sea though, are the gloomy, almost gothic vocals which eventually erupt into out-and-out frustration.

We are told via the trusty medium of Facebook that “Endless Days” will be part of LP2, which they shall be recording in the summer.

We were getting our collars hot about low-key producer FTSE back in the day (ie last month), but the vowel-averse beat creator has genuinely surpassed all expectations with ‘CNT HLP MSLF’. It’s a grimy, pummelling off-centre beat that welcomes you into three and a half minutes of constantly changing electronica. Not only does the track collapse to reveal a tender vocal, but at one point FTSE somehow ends up borderline rapping over a rumbling bassline that isn’t millions of miles away from something that The Weeknd would be proud of. Awaiting news of a release expectantly.

Mixing introspection with something that will see a few people shuffle onto the dancefloor is tough to pull off, which is why we got so excited about Cork based producer REID last year. Recently surfaced new track ‘Wake’ proves right our suspicions that he might just be insanely talented.

‘Wake’ itself is a pulsating five minutes of musical hypnosis; it revolves, rises and falls like a blissed out Chris Hoy navigating the velodrome while rammed with opiates. Considering ‘Wake’ is so detailed, its appeal is surprisingly simple; that high-end melody burrows inside the head for days.

The title of Bristol-based Casimir’s debut EP Not Mathematics seems like a direct mission statement, as these five introductory tracks are governed by a taste for exploration that guides them away from the pitfalls of becoming just what modern music does not need – another typecast Foals-indebted group of introverts flopping their fringes about the edges of dysfunctional indie music.

That Casimir certainly are not, as Not Mathematics has a much stronger sense of its own identity, a fact evidenced from the teasing 120 seconds of false-start ‘Balancing Act’, to the unabashed scale of that chorus that leaps out of ‘Lucid’ with a confidence in their obvious appeal that most new bands just don’t have. It just sounds like Casimir are already not a band afraid to explore their ideas, whether that be the intricacies of a breakdown that threatens to end the time-space continuum, or just the beautiful simplicity of a heart-arresting chorus.

‘Broken Minds Think Alike’ is the best suggestion of this fact, as it introduces itself with a section of minimalist left-field production that could have just stepped off the set of the recent Atoms For Peace record; what’s most surprising is that Casimir already aren’t leagues away when it comes to nailing down affecting and paranoid wonderings.

Essentially, Casimir are holding our attention simply because for such a new band, they’re already so ambitiously exploring the synthetic and the physical within the framework of their own distinct identity, and doing it without trying to be too clever at all. Like they say themselves, it’s not mathematics.

Not Mathematics is out on Monday 4th March on Fear of Fiction.

Today should have been an enormous day or unravelling the myriad of conflicting identities in colonial Indochina – instead, I have spent most of it mirroring the precise percussion of Brolin’s infectious ‘Reykjavik’ using anything within reaching distance: biros, bananas, Gladstone’s memoirs. Anything would do.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Brolin’s maudlin anthem should be so impressive from a production point of view, as it was conceived by Brolin, Luke Abbott and David Pye (Wild Beasts). ‘Reykjavik’ is a wonderful approximation of all their talents, too, encapsulating the icy honesty of Brolin’s voice, Abbott’s minimalist beats, and the magisterial subtlety that you might expect in Wild Beasts’ production.

‘Reykjavic’ is the first sophisticated cut from the Cundo EP, due on 25th March via Double Denim.

So I usually attempt to pretend that my e-mail inbox doesn’t exist simply to avoid the thousands of e-mails containing faux-personal messages from people I’ve never met unconvincingly pretending to love me in order to try and trick me into listening to their jazz-reggae-dubstep fusion. Occasionally, though, I am inexplicably overcome by a benevolent desire to help out my fellow humans, just for the rare pleasure of finding things like Edith Beake’s ‘Always In Love’.

Edith, so she tells me, used to be in a synth-pop band called Sunsquints who were featured on a few incredibly hip American blogs, but after losing almost her life’s work in Uganda last week (!), decided to put out some of her remaining material. As brilliant as this back-story is, it fortunately pales into insignificance in the shadow of her music; ‘Always In Love’, is an especially submersive trip that will have you hooked even before the bulk of the song’s appeal is patiently revealed. What begins as a yearning for escapism reaches a peak of something approaching euphoria as her otherworldly melodies collide with a wall of production that even Grimes might be proud of. It sounds so futuristic that I almost can’t believe that Edith wrote this in 2010 – either I’m years behind the game or she’s years ahead of it. Either way, it just begs the question; what does the stuff she’s writing now sound like?

Unfortunately, the disconcerting reality is that so many of the new bands that us music blogs construct new ways to be hyperbolic about won’t actually make it round to making an album of any note that will be remembered in one year’s time, let alone ten. So the fact that THUMPERS are having to give away faultlessly put together disconsolate pop songs like ‘Velveteen’ that didn’t even make the cut of their debut 7”, ‘Dancing’s Done’, is more than encouraging.

It’s hardly like melodically driven indie pop is much of a startling revelation, so it says a lot that that description actually comes nowhere close to conveying the appeal of the London based duo. Essentially, it’s a simple idea, but one that THUMPERS are doing immeasurably better than most of their contemporaries. ‘Velveteen’, though more reticent than their singles, draws you into a patiently more insistent vocal which swells into an emotionally charged male/female chorus. It feels unmistakably disconsolate, yet somehow euphoric, and for pulling off that balancing act alone, you may as well go and pick up their debut 7”. You never know, if all goes according to plan, you may even find yourself picking up an LP of theirs’ one day – for my self-respect, let’s hope so.

Big Black Delta made a big impression on us back in the dark days of 2011 with“Huggin’ & Kissin’”, which drove one avid listener to offering the wise comment “so 80’s! Hot!” on our Soundcloud, which remains our favourite/only comment to this date. Perhaps it will be eclipsed by the reaction to new track “Side Of The Road”, which actually is quite 80s in its balance between Depeche-Mode-esque gloom and an unexpectedly carefree chorus. It’s yet another clever pop song cloaked in an eccentric mindset, but there’s no way to completely hide the pop mentality that juts out into his industrial production. If you’re still around on April 8th, consider copping his debut album which arrives that day, or catch the man himself performing at SXSW.

Leicester/London based producer FTSE has been making promisingly murky sounds for months over on his Soundcloud page, but yesterday’s unveiling of new tune “Float” confirms that his thick, shuddering soundscapes are more than just promising – he’s sort of got it all worked out already. “Float” itself is a grimy, restrained tune that steadily builds towards a dense, groove laden climax. It’s not all about his present, though – his banging “Begin” Mixtape is available on a name your price basis over at Bandcamp, which is an even more in depth introduction to FTSE’s shadowy beats. It’s more than worth slinging a few quid that way for the quality of standout track “SIRVYVIN” – a simultaneously thudding and fragile track that muses over the breakdown of a relationship. It’s often argued that the trouble with some electronic music is that whilst technically impressive stuff is easy to come by, it’s far harder to convey emotion, but one listen to “SIRVYVIN” or “Float” should allay any fears that FTSE is facing those same problems.

[My Band’s Better Than Your Band]

Drenge continue to excite and terrify in equal measure with the towering muscularity of “Bloodsports”, a song so imposing and yet evocative that it should have sound-tracked any of the many massacre scenes in the new Tarantino film. The name,“Bloodsports”, is even an inspired one-word-critique of the film. But although they didn’t make the cut for Django Unchained, the Sheffield boys have been coming good of late, having announced a tour with Deap Valley across February and March, and apparently they are currently adorning the Radar pages of NME this week. Get on their Facebook, check their tour dates, and go and expose yourself to some visceral thrills.

We couldn’t be more glad that the originally-Australian George Maple has been sucked in by the musical black hole of London, because she’s starting 2013 by drawing together a couple of 2012’s finest traits. On “Uphill”, she’s skilfully drawing together the fragile, honesty-laden vocals of Jessie Ware and understated washes of production that allow room for her pensive thoughts on the indistinct line between friendship and romance. As far as we’re concerned, there’s no doubt about it, and friendship definitely isn’t an option, we’re head over heels already. Just don’t be fooled by the fact that the name Jessie Ware keeps popping up, because although there are vocal similarities, the introspective electronics that surround her lyrics make “Uphill” distinctly George Maple.

It’s unsurprising that Wirral duo Two Sunsets credit the Beach Boys and Beach House as influences – on “Searchlights”, melodies bleed into a fog of drowsy electronica that lands somewhere between the two bands, and yet manages to sound nothing like either. Instead, “Searchlights” leads you away into a world of its own, plunging you into a disorientating reality of hypnotic beats, revolving hooks and vocals buried under entire oceans of reverb. It’s been many months since a talented new band with such a fully formed aesthetic came out of Liverpool – hopefully they’ll continue to just craft perfectly realised tunes like this.

The duo, made up of Sean Butler and Phil Bridges, release “Venetian Skies” on The Great Pop Supplement (By The Sea, Still Corners) at the end of February… I’ve been lucky enough to hear it and can only say that it’s such a good introduction to their disorientating, nostalgia-heavy pop music that it’s even worth keeping an eye on their tumblr until it surfaces.

Dante

It was pretty frustrating that Dante, the source of what could arguably be our most understandably overplayed song of 2012, “Won’t Go”, spent the rest of 2012 staying quiet, save for an announcement in October that he’d signed a management deal. Well, the manager had better be bloody revolutionary, because after months of waiting, quite a lot of Dante’s soulful hooks would make the first few months of 2013 much better.

Dan Bodan

Whilst we’re on the subject of Europeans who are making a good case for us staying in the EU, Berlin resident Dan Bodan is another who appeared from seemingly nowhere to release some truly exceptional music. The perfect poise of melodrama, subtlety and vulnerability made the muted LCD-Soundsystem-meets-Bon-Iver of “DP” something really special. Anything resembling an album full of his sentimental electronics would be much appreciated.

Childhood

The general feedback from the Palma Violets/Childhood tour was that the NME-endorsed Violets were slightly upstaged by the more considered and melodic romance of Childhood. Whatever be the comparative merits of the two bands, the carefree tones of “Blue Velvet” bode well for Childhood’s future.

Syron

Simply the fact that Syron managed to make her skewed garage work at Fear Of Fiction Festival, watched by no more than eight awkward onlookers, is proof enough of the quality of the tracks that she’s got up her sleeve. There’s no shortage of artists attempting to capitalise on the simultaneous success of pop and bass music, but the intricacy of her production and the integrity of her vocals puts her miles ahead of the rest.

Teleman

I cannot lie; Pete and the Pirates never were for me. Yet in Teleman’s introductory track “Christina”, three-fifths of the now-musically-deceased indie outfit seem to have landed somewhere between euphoria and melancholy that surpasses their previous work. It’s hardly shockingly innovative to wistfully describe amorous encounters, but Teleman seem to do it with a disarming innocence and simplicity that is something approaching timeless.

Fryars

Benjamin Garrett has got to be the definite buzz band by now; he has been oscillating in the pages of blogs with some constancy for over five years now, and it’s about time that his odd pop music was given the breakthrough it deserved. And though I am still not the oracle that other outlets may profess to be, I have to admit that it looks like Fryars may at last break through to some degree, based entirely on the patiently built brilliance of “In My Arms”, which will apparently see a release in the Spring, backed with the equally inventive “Love So Cold”.

Ninetails

There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing a genuinely good band, a band whose appeal is so nuanced that it seems likely that the 21st century’s microscopic attention spans may pass it by, actually succeed. Anyone who’s been watching will tell you that the reaction to Ninetails’ “Slept And Did Not Sleep” EP has been nothing short of unexpectedly rapturous, so much so that it actually might restore some of your faith in the world. Perhaps it is still possible for a band to quietly get on with making thoughtful and slightly polarising music, and still swivel enough heads to make a future out of it. Ninetails are definitely making a good case for it, and will hopefully continue to this year.

SOHN

Arriving with a startlingly fully realised sound isn’t a bad way to introduce yourself to the world, and there’s no doubt that London & Vienna resident SOHN had everything worked out before he unveiled “The Wheel” three months ago. The glitchy marriage of the synthetic and the cerebral was pitched exactly right, and even landed him a deal with Vagrant, ensuring that we’ll hear more from him.

AlunaGeorge

What more is there to say about AlunaGeorge? Since the London nightlife-drenched duo were included in the BBC Sound Of… poll everything that could have possibly been wrung out of the short career of two young people has been professionally over-analysed and spun out as if they’d released a succession of genre-defining albums. Perhaps at this stage it’s better just to let the music do the talking until you’ve got interesting to say, especially when your music is worth letting speak for itself.

Kate Boy

The shadow that The Knife cast across Scandinavian music becomes more obvious the more surly and dramatic pop music that you hear from the area. And if Kate Boy’s “Northern Lights” is anything to go by, that influence can only be positive, especially if it leaves you with fiercely individual music like this that can safely be described as pop without subscribing to any of the lazy philosophies which help artists get near the charts these days. This is painstakingly and passionately constructed pop music with a dark, beating heart.

Haim

Haim have been at the top of everyone else’s lists so it’s only fair that they sit at the bottom of mine, if only to restore some balance to the universe and because their appeal and path to success is so obvious that it isn’t even worth describing, rather than because I don’t actually like them as much as the others here (in truth, I’m still foolishly infatuated)  – all I can do is refer you to their Soundcloud which should tell you all you need to know, if you don’t already:

So go and ‘like’ them on Facebook, bombard them  with excruciatingly detailed updates of your day-to-day life on Twitter, or whatever it is you are supposed to do to keep tabs on artists in 2013. Just make sure that you listen to them eventually, because although we can’t honestly give you that popular hyperbolic introduction which promises you that you will listen to nothing else in 2013, and that they will usher in a new era of trans-national harmony, they’ve made some great music and are very likely to go and do the same again pretty soon. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Part II is found here.

Glass Animals

Glass Animals’ sparse debut EP on Kaya Kaya rumbled in its own very unique way, tying together scraps of shattered electronica and otherworldly pop music. But I was still shocked when I caught them a few months ago, because their live set was on another level of rib-cage-rattling, bass-driven inspiration. If they can translate even some of it into recorded music, they’ve got the beginnings of a very special album.

Swim Deep

Rebellious gangs of romance-preoccupied boys is hardly new ground for pop music, and Swim Deep don’t even necessarily put a markedly different spin on it. They just do the tried and tested formula incredibly well, with their own irrepressible sense of melody and carefree, surf-rock edge.

Saint Lou Lou

Infatuation is the word that immediately springs to mind. The moody videos, the physical heart-ache that lines every lyric of “Maybe You”, the seduction of the spaced-out production; it was impossible not to fall for Swedish duo Saint Lou Lou’s introductory track. And so we had to go and break the rules for them based on just the one track, but really, how could you possibly think that the two people who wrote the below track aren’t in possession of some rare songwriting talent?

Drenge

The surprise package of Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia for me was Sheffield duo Drenge, who have got that raw passion that Japandroids do so well, but channelled more into visceral and immediate riffs. They tour with Deap Valley early in 2013, and if nothing else go for the precise fury of “People In Love Make Me Feel Yuck” which, whilst we’re on the subject, was almost definitely my favourite song of 2012.

Outfit

In the hierarchy of coveted awards, shortly behind back-to-back Ivor Novellos lies back-to-back Not Many Experts new year endorsements. Maybe. Anyway, Outfit are the first band to force me to enthuse about them two years in a row. The reasons are simple and often described on these pages, but there’s more cause for optimism than usual in 2013. “Two Islands”, of course, was borderline flawless in its inventive appraisal of isolation, but 2012’s ANDREA EP saw the band matured and ready to take their core principles to new places; the disjointed funk of “Drakes” or the danceable frustration of “Everything All The Time”. However, the fact that the process has taken something so rare for new bands, time, might be their greatest strength. Where some of the names on these sort of lists are tied into the schedules of some pretty cynical marketing campaigns, Outfit seem to have escaped the tireless conveyor belt culture of the music industry to properly craft a debut album. I’m no oracle, but it all bodes well.

Angel Haze

After the success of Kendrick Lamar, suddenly everyone’s a hip-hop connoisseur, and they all seem to be tipping Angel Haze to do big things in 2013. I’m yet another of these people, but it’s because of rather than despite my lack of expertise in hip-hop that Angel Haze is so worth checking out; her delivery is so tight and her words so well chosen that her music transcends the traditional boundaries of the genre.

Frank B

My trips to XLR8R are worth it because of yearly findings like Frank B. “Chain Of Fools” was the perfect opening statement; bouncy enough to stumble its way into a club, but soulful enough to satisfy some serious scrutiny. The only question now is how he could possibly follow it up, and I’m looking forward to finding out in 2013.

Faye

Pop music’s constantly having to redefine itself in the face of stifling cynicism, but Best Fit Recording’s Faye is such an exciting prospect precisely because she isn’t trying too hard. She sticks to uncensored honesty, an emotional resonance and her undeniably powerful voice, and lays behind it understated production that allows all those other qualities to flourish. It sounds misleadingly simple, but the beauty is in the simplicity, the balance of it is what’s incredibly difficult to pull off – and it’s because Faye has so emphatically got it all right, again and again, that she deserves your attention this year.

Death At Sea

I am often, and probably fairly, accused of being in the possession of ‘Liverpool goggles’, which miraculously make every artist from Liverpool (apart from the Wombats, strangely) sound at least 100% better than they actually are. Whether this is the root of my love for trusty old Gerry & The Pacemakers or not is hard to tell, but it can’t have caused my falling for the gritty disorientation of Death At Sea, who’ve been continuing their own nautical theme by swimming in national praise in 2012. This is a time of year where the old pointless “guitars are coming back/dying/dead/never existed” ‘debate’ is carted out for precisely no reason, and it really is irrelevant as long as bands like Death At Sea keep producing the euphoric heights of “Drag”. Would-be-Guardian writers can keep angrily hypothesising at each other, the fun’s at down the front, wherever Death At Sea are.

Indians

4AD don’t make a habit of getting things wrong, and in Copenhagen’s newest export, Indians, they’ll definitely be continuing that tradition. The project of Soren Lokke Juul, Indians somehow sidesteps genre categorisation, and instead defines itself by the fragile melancholy that runs through all his work, whether it be a left-field pop effort or a straightforward folk track. His debut album, “Somewhere Else”, is out in January.

The tip off for K H U S H I came in the form of an e-mail which simply linked to the Soundcloud in an approach which stretches the term ‘understated’ to the boundaries of laziness, but it was all that was needed. The London based singer-songwriter saturates his romantic odes with such understated passion that nothing else is needed. Add to that his silky, naturally melancholic voice that takes prominence in each of the heart-breaking four tracks currently available online, and you’ve suddenly got someone who’s worth keeping all your eyes on in 2013.

AND, as if that weren’t enough (and it is), factor in that the increasingly impressive talent behind K H U S H I is also responsible for the Jai-Paul-challenging Strong Asian Mothers project. Each artistic approach is as worth checking out as the other – K H U S H I for affecting folk, and Strong Asian Mothers for twisted electronic pop – we just can’t wait to see what he might come out with next.

If the monumental bastard that is the triple dip recession has left you looking for Christmas presents in increasingly thrifty places – then consider your search to be over. Jack Robert Hardman’s icy introductory track “Plymouth” is currently available on Soundcloud for the very reasonable price of free, and therefore makes the ideal slanted folk/pop crossover present for the demanding music connoisseur. But even if you’ve already finished your Christmas shopping, consider picking the track up anyway, because its poise between emotive, multi-layered melodies and something that sounds very much like pop music is pulled off really well. Another man to keep an eye on during the next year.