Elly Unplugged

Ebony Bones

I have been fortune enough to have been brought up spending every Christmas in the warm confides of Antigua and every time I visit I observe how incredibly energetic and upbeat a-feeling atmosphere the Island gives off.

This energy is perfectly captured by a Miss Ebony Thomas (Ebony Bones), who I have had the recent pleasure of listening to. She writes, produces and records her own music in her bedroom, but is not to be mistaken with this years breed of 'bedroom-pop' campaigners. After Zane Lowe gave her single We Know All About U the position of "The Hottest Record In The World Today", Bones became the most played unsigned artist on Radio 1. What to call her genre? It simply cannot be categorized with such a demeaning title as 'Carnival Pop!

The first record I heard by this entirely new type of diva was 'The Muzik', a tinny but contrastingly fiery track. One of the track's themes is defiance, and those united by oppression. The song listens more like a sermon or a Battle speech than anything else, the video cleverly uniting people from all over the world through 'The Muzik'. It has this weird stirring effect in the depths of your soul, Wonderful!



While, We Know All About You manages a funky, but very intimidating emulation of a 1984 world. Ebony Bones could possibly be something COMPLETELY NEW on to the pop culture scene.

Remember this? The CSS video competition

MEMORIES!

My article about Fleet Foxes reminded me of SubPop Record's weird knack of finding talent before anyone else. CSS sprung to mind, I looked up a few of their videos for a memory moment and low and behold I remembered the video contest for their single 'Alcohol'.
For those of you who were not familiar with this, the band and QOOB, whether or not it was out of sheer laziness started a competition to create the singles promo-video.
The winner was a Jared Eberhardt, who triumphed with his stop frame 'bunny' representation of the band.



Creepy or no? Anyway, this contest sparked so many original videos, I thought it was worth remembering;

Subpop Strikes Again

Fleet Foxes are my late discovery, having heard their names so many times before, but only just latched on to them.
This 5 piece band appeals to me not only because of their truly lovely melodies, but also reminding me of the joy I had listening to 'The Magic Numbers' debut in 2005[?]
Have a listen,



Yes, truly, deeply Lovely

The Synthpop Arguement

It seems that the main, if not only thing I seem to be writing about anymore is the emergence of synth pop female stars, and it is true that the 'emergence' has been drastically over-hyped.
So I was delighted to read an amusing review in the Guardian by Alex Miller that muses;

' Wouldn't it be great if Florence had a cock? Or La Roux had foreskin? Or Little Boots had huge balls? Then maybe we wouldn't have to suffer under the weight of endless editorials about the "re-emergence of women in pop". '

Almost perfectly on time, I received a comment from an anonymous user referencing the following article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/may/26/little-boots-la-roux

The article reads,

'Little Boots and La Roux don't speak for synth pop : For all their intelligence, Little Boots and La Roux look and sound like polished pop stars. And they are not forging openings for stranger, more interesting electronic music.'

The main points made are true, these two artists lack 'the abrasive edge, the awkwardness' of their more underground counterparts, (indicates to 'Fever Ray' , The Knife spin off.) It implies that artists such as these are preventing their colleagues from making appearance.

Hang on, I swear the whole point of this genre was that you don't have to be edgy of 'awkward' to be important in music. This is the centrepoint of the movement, creating music that appeals to the public is not a boundary, mainstream music is not necessarily created for a mainstream audience. 'Mainstream' is not a genre, it is just music that happens to allure to the majority of people. 'Abrasive' music is however specifically created to appeal to the sort of people who wrote this article.

I quote Little Boots herself, "There's room in popular culture to do things that are creative and not exactly straightforward, Just because something has got the possibility to appeal to a mainstream audience doesn't mean you've got to be bland." She never pretented to be anything but a ditzy pop-princess.

People have got to stop this anti-hype mechanism; the theory that all music that is pushing the boundaries, but still popular should have been created pre-naughties. This just isn't realistic, attention can only be good for the scene! That sort of view belongs to the 'landfill indie' which this 'Little / Roux' genre is campaigning against.

Critisising these artists for not being underground enough? We might as well critisize Britney for not having a guitar or Madonna for not sounding raw enough!

La Roux Straight To The Number One Spot

This is the time where I can gloat about how La Roux has triumphed once again. Bulletproof is possibly even catchier than her last single and once again, the zinc remix is PERFECT!

There is also a slightly more diverse remix, with a thumping baseline, (that however much I love La Roux, she lacks) :
http://hypem.com/track/849036/La+Roux-Bulletproof+(iamxl+remix)