New Music: BBC Sound of 2015 Longlist Revealed

SOAK

I know it’s really lazy to bang on about an artist’s age, and at what point in their life they were doing things, but fuck you, this is my post, and I’m bitter and I saw death on the weekend. At 14, Bridie Mond-Watson started performing and got the ball rolling on a songwriting career, whilst studying and skating on the side. I was smoking weed, being a bedroom poet, hanging around on internet forums, deluding myself of musical talent, and growing shoulder length hair. Now I’m 24, look how it’s all changed! Hahahahahaaaha (tears). Anyway, at 18, SOAK’s songwriting has matured into truly beautiful, tender, and emotional musicianship and melodies way beyond her years. Her songs may be delicate, but you can hear they’re going to last.

 

Stormzy

As if with Novelist’s inclusion in the Sound of 2015’s long list, Stormzy is another display of just how far British rap has come since its grime heyday, but also how grime has quietly been evolving outside of the limelight and pushing its boundaries bet never forgetting its firmly British routes. Stromzy is already renowned for his incredibly dexterous flow, but also his forward thinking attitude to more commercial music and his complete dissociation from the slick, and over produced sound of American hip hop. Stormzy is the next step in grime music, proud of its grittier and harder sound, but unafraid to appropriate the commercial and mainstream sides of R&B to expand grime beyond the underground.

 

Sunset Sons

It’s the classic story of band formation; singer named Rory plays Coldplay, D12, and Queens of the Stone Age covers on a piano between washing dishes at a French surfing resort and catches the attention of a Geordie named Jed before the two, plus two more, form a covers band and tour the alps. Then of course they started writing their own songs and immediately kickstart exponential label buzz that sees them being followed around by industry types who rarely leave London. Upon hearing Sunset Sons’ music it’s hard to see why not, it has soundtracks, advert-synchronising, and most importantly chart ready anthems written all over it. A dead-cert for something big for 2015 in the vein of One Republic and earlier Maroon 5 (in a good way).

 

Wolf Alice

2015 should be Wolf Alice’s year, because by rights 2014 should’ve been theirs already. The four piece from North London have done their fair share of evolving in their short time, or perhaps more aptly transforming; regularly transitioning between Alice and Wolf – yes, I’m making a lazy werewolf comparison. The bang began life closer to home with a stripped folk-pop sound, before gathering numbers that brought a heavier, noisier, and rockier beast into the fold. There’s something about a wolf in sheep’s clothing here, but I’m not that lazy. Wolf Alice are simultaneously capable of being as pretty and beautiful as folk as well as vicious and reckless as grunge, all the while able to hint at the atmosphere of bands like The xx. That one video doesn’t do their range of sound justice.

 

Years & Years

With a more than good year for bands including the likes of Jungle, 2015 is going to be the year of a whole new breed of R&B/house acts, and Years & Years are going to be leading the charge with their incredible blend of the aforementioned R&B and house, but lashings of funk, synthpop, disco, and influences as far and wide as Diple, Flying Lotus, Jai Paul, and Radiohead. There is a distinct futurist and experimental core to Years & Years pop music, but pop music it is with crack cocaine melodies, anthemous choruses, atmospheric synths, driving rhythms, rises, falls, drops, dancefloor aesthetics, and everything you could want to cross the line between radio smash hit and club banger.