Pulse: New Music You Need in 2015 #1

Dan Mangan + Blacksmith

Dan Mangan has quietly been surely been more than making a name for himself for a number of years now. In his home of Canada he’s a multiple award winner of JUNO awards, the Polaris Music Prize, and even more. Beyond that he’s even scored the Simon Pegg starring feature film Hector and the Search For Happiness, and written for Huffington Post Canada and The Guardian (arts section).

Where he stands now though, is as Dan Mangan + Blacksmith – John Walsh, Gordon Grdina, Kenton Loewen, and often JP Carter, Jesse Zubot and Tyson Naylor. Where Dan Mangan + Blacksmith stand is a number of brilliant singles under their belt, ready to unleash their album Club Meds in January, 2015. Where they stand then is ready to take 2015 with their emotional stories and social commentaries built on hazy loops, synths, piercing guitar melodies, and sparse but sparkling spaces.

Heyrocco

The trio that make up Heyrocco – that is to say Nathan, Taco, and Cool – might not take themselves altogether too seriously. What could this presumption be based upon? Oh, I don’t know their self-described genre being ‘Disney Grunge’, the fact they call themselves ‘South Carolina’s 1st Rock and Roll Band’, or that their bio reads ‘bunch of shit kids riding around in a van’. Yes, I use Facebook for research.

Anyhow, their website describes them as your girlfriend’s new favourite band, and if you didn’t think that she or you would be into ‘Disney Grunge’, you may be surprised. The band play straight up melodic rock and roll that is open and honest about its debts to grunge, college rock, and garage/indie. These three just want to play music, tour, party, sing about those things, and hopefully get girls in the process. Heyrocco just wanna have fun.

Ibeyi

‘Ibeyi is pronounced ee-bey-ee. In Yoruba, Ibeji translates as “twins”.’

Ibeyi are French/Cuban singer-songwriting, twin-sisters,  Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz, who also happen to be the daughters of Cuban percussionist Anga Díaz of Buena Vista Social Club fame. The duo are aged just 19 years old and are already proving themselves as more than capable musicians and songwriters – the singles the pair have released this year prove that.

Currently recording their debut album ahead of a planned release next year, the sheer uniqueness of Ibeyi’s sound is going to make them and their debut album a striking high point of 2015. Singing in English, French, Spanish, and Yoruba (a Nigerian language that travelled to Cuba via slavery), their music is just as multicultural and just as universally alluring for it.

Cuthead

Cuthead’s album Total Sellout, released this year is a master class is genre-hopping-bending-and-mixing, instrumental collage music as tracks move through passages seamlessly despite the contrasts between them and the content within them. Each track is made up of a kaleidoscope of colourful beats, loops, samples, and synths, resulting in an album that as a whole is a collection of cut and paste kaleidoscopes laid over one another.

The album is exemplary of Cuthead’s career up until now through EPs, download only albums, productions, and collaborations that have seen him limitless in genres he will work his way through; trip hop, house, electronica, dubstep, techno, instrumental hip hop and more. The cohesiveness of the collage that is Cuthead on Total Sellout will see him really come to prominence through 2015.

Punching Swans

Remember when Pulled Apart By Horses were getting all boasty about having punched a lion in a throat? Well, this three piece are punching swans constantly. I mean, it’s all there in the name it’s ‘punching’ not ‘punched’. Punching a lion in the throat once is crazy, true, but forever punching swans? That’s just fucking insane. Plus, that’s like treason or something too, right?

Anyway, this treasonous, threesome, of Anatidaen abusers dropped their debut album of surreal and agitated math rock back in 2012, but this year saw them release the schizophrenic sophomore Mollusc. Take-an-eye-out angular riffs, disco grooves, frenetic punk energy, microphone in the madhouse vocals, and any other mania you could shake a snake necked swan at.