Ones To Watch: Jake Bug to Crushed Beaks

This week’s cutting edge music takes us from the grooving jazz discos of Columbia to the swinging porch county music hotbed of…er…Nottingham.

Jake Bugg http://jakebugg.com/
Jake Bugg single handledly puts to shame the legion of young male singer songwriters peddling the sub-Stereophonics cod-emotional nonsense littering the nation’s open-mic nights, and the charts for that matter. The 18-year-old from Clifton, Nottinghamshire, has the gravelly voice of swinging porch county blues, and the guitar style of railroad cart. While his songs may be simple, and you do wonder exactly how many Trouble Towns he’s been to, there’s an individualism to his songs which is inspiring. He has supported Michael Kiwanuka and Example on tour, and showed them up as the throw away pop stars they are. His retro crackle is an achingly exciting development in modern pop.

Julio Bashmore https://www.facebook.com/JulioBashmoreMusic
The Bristolian producer has been lurking in the underground for three years, cultivating a pounding blend of bass riddled house which marrys dynamic rhythms with deep frequencies. A string of singles, EPs and remixes has brought him to the attention of the dance elite, and now as the producer behind Jessie Ware’s 100% he’s destined to emerge as the UK’s Diplo. His latest release, Au Seve, is an irresistible exercise in dramatic house music, each layer of beats allowed to explore their own emotions. The carefully caressed attention to detail involved in his music, rather than the App Store blandness of EDM, marks Bashmore as dance music’s most exhilarating figure.

Poolside http://poolsidemusic.com/
Los Angeles doesn’t do dance music, but when it does it glistens with Martini freshness and oceanic openness. Filip Nikolic and Jeffrey Paradise’s – what a name- decadent disco grooves meander at the speed of an 80 to 130 Balearic coach trip, their club Tropicana rhythms adding a nuance of refined leisure. The only thing American about debut album ‘Pacific Standard Time’ is its polished sheen, as its electro is remarkably European – think Air in Studio 54. This is down to Nikolic’s bouncing bass, honed through is time is Danish dance poppers Junior Senior. They make Metronomy’s breezy English Riviera sound like a Dagenham warehouse rave.

Ondatrópica http://ondatropica.com/en/
The inclusion of Ondatrópica is a bit of a cheat as they’re less of a band and more of a project based around London producer Quantic and Colombian musician, Mario Galeano, but their gritty South American groove jazz is going set to see them as the hip rag-tag cousins of the Buena Vista Social Club. They’ve brought in Colombian musicians from the legendary Discos Fuentes studios and juxtaposed their traditional styles with beat boxing and live hip-hop loops. They even chant a punch drunk Black Sabbath cover, renamed I Ron Man, on their eponymous debut. They’re remarkably capable of catering for beat-heads and world music purists alike.

Crushed Beaks https://www.facebook.com/crushedbeaks
Despite what the sound engineers at Hyde Park concerts would have you believe, rock music is meant to be loud, and Crushed Beaks take being loud very seriously. Their single Sun Dogs has the guitar and drums at such a loud and fuzzy volume the vocals are barely audible, while on the comparatively poppy Grim the vocals are fine, you just can’t work out what they are. Formed through a love of Italian horror films, the London duo of Alex Morris and Matthew Poile manage to combine the immediacy and shock of these slashers, but happily only leaving ears bleeding. With some many fuzz-gaze bands opting to be ethereal and dreamy it’s a delight seeing a group immersing their scuzzy noise in excitable ferocity.

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  Michael Kiwanuka is hardly a ‘throw away pop star’ – have you even heard his album?