DARKSTAR live
(Warp – UK)
GHOSTPOET live
(UK)
HITNEY WOUSTON
(sound:frame, Vienna)
DARKSTAR
Darkstar in 2010 are an upgraded model of the Darkstar which released the much lauded single ‘Aidy’s Girl is A Computer’ at the end of 2009. That song and previous single ‘Need you’ / ‘Squeeze my lime’ were extremely well received and set the band apart from the dubstep scene they grew out of hinting at a nascent song writing talent and a mastery of oozing synth drones.
The synths remain, but since then, the band have adjusted their focus, and added a lead singer James Buttery to the production and writing team of James Young and Aiden Whalley.
Their debut album ‚North‘ is a brave, low-key pop masterpiece, which discards with the cheap thrills and treadmill ideas that many deploy to access success. Instead, ‚North‘ will creep up on you with each listen, seducing you with achingly gorgeous, synthesized song writing.
As their first long player, Darkstar have produced an album many bands with many more releases and experience under their belt can only dream of. Elegant, downbeat, breezy, sometimes melancholy and bleak, sometimes optimistic, ‚North‘ will surprise many, a classic record for short days and long nights, what is more, their live show and it’s groundbreaking presentation is currently in its early stages but gathering momentum fast.
GHOSTPOET
Migrated from the capital city of the West Midlands – Coventry – to the southerly climes of London, Ghostpoet looks set to make his mark on 2010.
The soft-spoken 24-year-old has already won over BBC Radio 1’s foremost taste maker Gilles Peterson and his Brownswood recordings with a handful of off-kilter, loopy electronic ditties blessed with his delightfully rambling musings on modern life.
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.”
Don’t sleep on this young, inventive, British artist – he’s destined for greatness.