Return to: Home

The download

Published 13 February 2006

I wasn't surprised by most music industry "tips for 2006". New Strokes album? Yawn. Arctic Monkeys? Yawn. Prediction lists are always problematic, though. They are accurate guides to chart success, for sure, but that's because those doing the "predicting" are normally the same people who compile the window displays in HMV or choose the Radio 1 playlist.

One act being hotly tipped is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It may have the best name in ages, but the band doesn't really deliver on its much-hyped eponymous debut, which has just been released. Too much of it sounds like Radiohead's rather staid first album, Pablo Honey, and let's not forgot that Radiohead pre-The Bends were like Marx pre-the Manifesto: all bouche and no pantalon. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's single "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" offers marginally superior angular rock circa 1983, but do you really need any more of that in your life?

As for my own hot tip, I'd recommend Battles, a peculiar New York supergroup that recently signed to the cult British label Warp. Check out the single "B+T" at www.bleep.com - it's an undeniable melting pot of invention, boasting one band member's thrash-guitar ethics mingled with the arch subtlety of another's avant-garde projects. For what you might call "experimental hard core", their music is really rather funky. "SZ2" is a nine-minute jazz odyssey with real verve and purpose. That's right, such a thing exists.

However, I can't emphasise enough that 2006 will belong - in the cultural histories if not the Billboard charts - to grime and dubstep. This doesn't just mean Plan B, Lady Sovereign, or any other bit-of-fluff crossover maverick; it means everyone who is making London in 2006 the most exciting crucible of new music since, well, London in 1976. As with punk, it's not easy to keep up with an ever-evolving sound; but then in the 1970s there was no internet radio. Luckily, however, we have the fantastic www.rinsefm.com.

Post this article to