Not Many Experts

For those of you who felt like Part I just wasn’t enough, here’s Part II to calm your nerves – because all of the best series are duologies, just like… … The Miss Congeniality series and…  the world wars? Struggling for evidence here, maybe the following music will prove that I’m right.

Without a doubt this is one of the strangest mixture of bands that I’ve ever put together, and shows a eclecticism in music taste that may make me slightly worried for my mental stability. However, fans of organisation, don’t be scared off, my OCD-like tendencies have forced me to put them into some sort of logical order. Closer to these words you will find the most obvious or accessible, and the more left-field, obscure and unlikely are towards the bottom. As if I even need to mention it, but they’re all predictably brilliant, in my personal opinion, so if you don’t agree then just assume that you’re wrong and move on (for the avoidance of doubt, my tongue is in my cheek). I should also say that I’d love to write many a rambling paragraph on all of them, but one of the things about time is that there is just simply not enough of it. Fact. Over the year, though, we’re going to be following these artists and letting you know whether they prefer Frosties or Corn Flakes, why they chose the name that they chose, which other artists they sound like, and all of those other little details that any music lover needs.

Just to be clear, there were absolutely no criteria, with the one exception that Brother, Mona, and anyone else who is written about purely because men in suits threw cash at them had to be excluded, deleted from my iTunes, and their drum kits stolen to stop the noise. The final measure did not quite go according to plan, though. So instead, fill your ears with the below to keep them safe; 18 new artists who have the potential to make our years. And if they don’t Radiohead will, so it’s win-win.

Fixers – Iron Deer Dream

Kyla La Grange -Vampire Smile

Foster The People – Helena Beat

Sparkadia – Mary

Wooden Heart by The Kill Van Kulls 

Face In by Dutch Uncles

Serious Lover by Solid Gold Dragons

Niki And The Dove: Winterheart

Sometimes It Kills by Visions of Trees

Wise Blood – BIG EGO

Moddi – Magpie Eggs

Evan Voytas – Tomorrow Night We’ll Go Anywhere

Zoo Kid – Ocean Bed

Ensoniq Funk by Chad Valley

Miarches by Forest Swords

No Clear Reason by Gang Colours

Pariah – Railroad

I could go on forever, so I should stop. If this shows anything, it’s just that posting 10 new acts for 2011 that you’re excited just can’t be enough because, in reality, no matter how good 3 demos are, nobody could have really known that the Drums’ record would turn out more tepid than… tepid water. Or that Sleigh Bells’ album would have turned out to be one of the best of the year. If anything, that just makes the prospect of how things are going to turn out this year just that bit more exciting… Following them all closely… But not as menacingly as that sounds…

Last week we declared that Entrepreneurs’ “Uv Been Robbed (Joking But Not)” EP was the best we’d heard all year. This week, we can’t stop listening to Pariah’s “Safehouses” EP and are considering challenging last weeks assertion… Word of mouth spread the name of Pariah late last year wide throughout the music community, with many suggesting him as the obvious successor to Burial, and he is now even described on his press release as “hotly tipped”. We were finally turned onto him via the home of moody electronic atmospherics, No Pain In Pop. Now, however, Pariah will be releasing his “Safehouses” EP in October on the already legendary R&S records, early home of Delphic and James Blake.

Comparisons to Mount Kimbie, James Blake and other post-dubstep artists are easy to make, but Pariah’s quivering, optimistic tone is distinctly his own. There’s nothing flashy or ostentatious about the music he’s making, not an enormous wobble in sight (luckily), but the genius of his music is that he’s doing relatively simple things exceptionally well, with the result that it has an instant appeal that has eluded many of his peers. It’s almost indecent to choose a favourite on such a strong EP, but “Railroad” is a powerfully percussive track will stutter and shake its way into dark, sweaty basements everywhere come the end of the year. * More importantly, though his press release only claimed that he was “hotly tipped”, the evidence on this EP suggests that Pariah has already justified early whisperings and established himself as one of the most skilled producers around.

Pariah – Railroad by NotManyExperts

*(Fittingly, “Railroad” was also the soundtrack to me sat on the floor of the inexplicably rammed train from London back up to Liverpool late last night, and at the exact moment this track came on somebody running off the train knocked one of my shoes onto the track. I feel sort of inclined to blame Pariah, but I guess it may have been a coincidence.)