On Sunday 24th BBC 6 Music and Hype Machine are joining forces to unveil the top 25 artists of the year so far in the 2012 Music Blog Zeitgeist. This will be broadcast on Tom Robinson’s (award winning) Now Playing show from 6.00pm to 8.00pm. For more details check HERE follow 6 Music’s facebook page HERE and follow the #Blog6Music hash-tag.
We’ve been asked to contribute by naming the three bands who have impressed the most so far during 2012.
As you can imagine, it’s a difficult task, after all we could go for one of the diverse band emerging from Manchester such as the wonderful garagey C-86 girl group thrash of PINS, the epic brooding menace of Embers or the Indie-dance-pop cross over of Swiss Lips. Or perhaps we could venture down to the south for some dark new wave electronica from Curxes or the possibly the quirky “swing-folk” of Jennifer Left . We could stay local and wax lyrical about the ethereal folktronic vibe coming from the likes of Stealing Sheep and Bird, but alas we can only pick three.
And so over the coming week, in the run up to the show we’ll be picking the musical trinity who have made our spirits soar and our hearts skip a beat, starting with….
Velvet Two Stripes :
Regular readers will no doubt be aware of our admiration for this band who are still in their infancy yet have the sound of seasoned veterans. With nods to The Kills, The White Stripes, The Velvet Underground, The Mary Chain et all and bubbling under the surface you may understandably think Velvet Two Stripes are the latest Brooklyn buzz band. Therefore it may come as a surprise that all three band members hail from a small village in Switzerland and somewhat inconceivably, grew up listening to dreadful boy bands!
Thankfully they soon discovered music with slightly more substance and suitably inspired by artists like The Ramones, BB King and Janis Joplin Sophie, Franca and Sara formed their own band. Straight from the off they seemed to intuitively know just what makes a great song. We described Supernatural the lead track from their début EP as ” one of the most visceral, dirty, genuinely head f**kingly cool tracks of 2012. Filthy genius” and ” a dirty, sleazy, sexy, prowling curb crawl of a record.” You can also download a freebie of “Hellhound,” another great track from the girls HERE and read our interview with lead singer Sophie HERE
Part 2 coming up on Wednesday ;)