O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Saturday 16 April 2011
Metronomy
SUMMER CAMP + GHOSTPOET + DUOLOGUE
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/METRONOMY, WWW.MYSPACE.COM/SUMMERCAMPMUSIC, WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/GHOSTPOETFB, WWW.MYSPACE.COM/DUOLOGUEMUSIC
Electro-pop maestros METRONOMY are back in 2011 with a show at Shepherds Bush Empire.
The metronome is not a device known for its deviation. It strikes a predictable, functional pattern. Each time Metronomy release an album, on the other hand, there is a scorched earth change of pace and tone. Yet the pulse never disappears, it just reanimates for a brand new dancefloor.
Metronomy’s third album – and second, after Nights Out, on Because Music – is a belting, unashamed pop album, a gorgeous record full of languid, sunset funk songs, which looks set to propel Metronomy even further than they have travelled thus far. The gorgeous ‘Everything Goes My Way’, featuring the voice of Roxanne Clifford of Veronica Falls, is an understated summer classic. The organ hook that defines first single ‘The Look’ burrows into your head and doesn’t leave. Crucially too, it is an album that is even more danceable than its predecessor.
They started out in Totnes in Devon, after Mount had spent years drumming in “loads of bands, some questionable” at school. Drunk on Björk and Aphex, he locked himself away in his bedroom and started recording on his computer. Lead singer of the band, Joesph Mount still writes all the songs, and keeps a “Kevin Rowland-like” grip on the way they are produced, but live Metronomy is definitely a quartet.
Mount is pleased with the path the band is heading down, although he is still keen to keep things fresh next time round. “I definitely had no intention of doing the same thing again. I like the stuff that changes,” he says. “I still feel like we’re starting out in our career. One day there might come a time when we’ll have released a huge output that people can draw lines between and look for similarities.” For now, though, we can just enjoy the warmth of The English Riviera, the latest instalment in Metronomy’s epic journey into pop’s heartlands.
London based SUMMER CAMP now create the kind of utterly mesmeric, sepia-toned dream pop which seems predestined to form the perfect soundtrack to first kisses and adolescent crushes; romance and yearning. The melancholic “Ghost Train”, for instance, sounds not unlike girl groups from the 60’s wrapped in a warm blanket of lo-fi gauze and dusted lightly with pure pop sugar. This did not go unnoticed by hip London label Moshi Moshi, responsible for discovering and launching the careers of amongst others, Kate Nash, Hot Chip and Friendly Fires, and they released the track in March 2010 to much critical acclaim. ‘A’ Listed on BBC6 music and now named in the top 50 tracks of the year in NME Magazine, Ghost Train is a much adored pop song which cemented Summer Camp’s position as one of the most exciting new prospects of the year.
Recently migrated from the capital city of the West Midlands – Coventry – to the southerly climes of London, GHOSTPOET’s definitely a name to watch in 2011. Born and raised somewhere between London, Coventry, Nigeria and Dominica, Obaro admits that his heritage is important to him, but that it hasn’t consciously affected his musical career: “My parents enjoyed listening to music around the house but never really encouraged it as a career. I kind of pursued listening to various sounds late into the night when the house was asleep.” And as for attempting to pinpoint his tastes… it’s hard to gauge when his palette flips from Badly Drawn Boy’s ‘The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast’ (the first CD he ever bought) to the angular dynamics of the UK grime scene via Iggy Pop, Fela Kuti, Radiohead, MF Doom and Squarepusher.
The softly spoken 27 year-old has already won over BBC Radio 1 tastemakers Gilles Peterson and Huw Stevens with a free EP entitled ‘The Sound Of Strangers’ which also hit a hungry online audience and earned Ghostpoet a coveted spot in The Guardian’s “New Band Of The Day” as well as glowing recommendations from NME, CMJ, RCRDLBL, URB, Drowned In Sound and The Mercury Prize.
London based five piece DUOLOGUE emerged last year from a number of self curated events across the city. Fusing patched up electronic music over stomping guitar-driven marches, rumbling bottom end bass and atmospheric violin and vocals the result is a unique sound and an audio journey of epic proportions. The ethos behind their majestically experimental yet melodic songs is to the serve the sound and make the music centre stage.
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