But as much as you have possibly heard of through friends or wherever, there’s just no way to ever know it all. With so many different styles available for the choosing, you should always be trying new things and broaden your musical horizons. With that, I give you my second First Dose mix to try and do nothing more than promote s0me good music and share some of my enjoyment with the rest of the world. Enjoy.

Matthew Ell – Warm In The Winter

This mix includes a bunch of my favorite tracks over recent weeks and months and I’m happy to share em here. To start things off, we’ve got a remix from one of the hottest up and coming producers over the past few years. Maya Jane Coles broke through in the underground UK scene and was recently named #10 on Resident Advisor’s Top 100 Dj’s of 2012. Her remix of “She’s On Fire” seems to be titled perfectly to describe her career as of late, and I’m sure the next few years won’t see her slow down very much. Then in come Mario Bassanov’s deep romantic bass tones that captivated me the moment I heard his work, with remixes of “Feel It Burn” and “Love Saves The Day”, and here with “Feel Me” he again does not disappoint.

From here the mix starts to turn a little deeper with a remix by Lancelot of “The World Is Ours”, followed by another top notch remix by a great producer, Danny Daze, on Flight Facilities’ original masterpiece work, “With You”. (Here’s the original, this is one everybody should hear). Then we take a dive down into one of my favorite personal tracks of late, with Miguel Campbell’s hard hitting “Rockin’ Beats”, currently seeing love from DJs worldwide. If you’re looking for a great original album I highly suggest his recent release, “Back In Flight School”. A great front to back album. Next comes Monitor 66′s (you also need to check this original track out from them) remix of “Nightmare”, following with a great combo of that thick deep bass tone a great popping balance to create a great grovin track.

We continue the heavy tear with The Magician’s remix on his friend Yuksek’s “Always On The Run”, one of those tracks that still gets a high play count by me over a year later. That deep push leads into the bold Maxxi Soundsystem’s “Get Up”, which really just gets down to business (and has been remixed wonderfully by the previously mentioned Danny Daze).

And If there is one track I would want you to check out from this mix, it is most definitely “ELECTRICITY” by Lee Foss from Hot Creations. I cannot describe in words how perfect I think this track is and it is just an absolute must listen and decide for yourself.

From there we begin our gracious exit out with the lighter mood swinings of  “If U Got It” by French Express wonder, Chris Malinchak. Finally to finish things off I leave you with a great pick me up incorporating a combo of heavy classic piano tones, a powerful vocal, and the perfect swing groove to make sure you leave everything you have on the dance floor, “Real Talk” from Anna Luone & Touch Sensitive.

Leave it all out there whenever possible. The great ones will always be those you’ll never forgot, no matter how hard you try.

“I was born by a river in a little tent.” To the standard eye, this is a sentence that can be used to teach grammar and propositions to a 1^st grader. To all of my soulful people out there who truly do get it, this is the opening line to one of the greatest songs ever written.

Lo and behold, Sam Cooke not only revolutionized the Civil Rights movement, but also has served as a major influence in music for many years to come. I’d say #12 on Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ is a pretty awesome feat.

Its legacy is immense and has been covered by the likes of Warren Haynes and the Allman Brothers Band, Otis Redding, Cold War Kids, Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers, The Band, The Neville Brothers, Patti Labelle, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Arcade Fire, The Fugees, and MANY more.

Whenever I hear that opening line, I tend to get a little warm and fuzzy inside.

Just to add to the list of exceptional covers of the song [and me getting all warm and fuzzy inside], last night at the B.B. Kings Blues Club in NYC, I turned around in awe to hear that powerful opening line come out of the soulful Corey Frye of The Main Squeeze.

Every Squeeze show is filled with wonderful surprises and this one included a horn section, a funky set filled with awesome originals both new and old, and their ability to turn any cover into a raging funk experience.

Noteworthy… More than noteworthy actually: Encore (Eyes of the World > Whipping Post) Absolutely incredible. Definitely on my long list of things to be thankful for.

Until next time,

Sam Sachs

Gentleman’s Rule, or G-Rule, is an up-and-coming 10-man a cappella group based in Chicago. Corey Frye, lead singer for The Main Squeeze, is a Tenor for G-Rule so you know they must be good. Their debut album, Act Accordingly, has been released today. It features 15 covers – a wide range of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Outkast, Peter Gabriel, Bob Marley, and Nelly just to name a few.

Where smaller a cappella groups lack, G-Rule thrives. With 10 members Gentleman’s Rule is able to harmonize in multiple ranges to recreate every aspect of a song. This helps them explore all types of music, with a very full, saturated sound.

In “Pachanelly Canon” they are able to do two very unique (and awesome) things. First, they come together to make a dynamic orchestra with their voices as they play Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” At the same time they are able to beautifully sing Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me” to make an unbelievable combination of sounds from two very different, classic songs.

In another amazing fusion, G-Rule combines Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” with Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=miWJdXIGDVo&feature=endscreen

You can purchase Act Accordingly here.

If you’re not making a stanky face and shaking your head to the beat while listening to this amazing cover by Lake Street Dive, then there’s just something wrong with you. After my fourth consecutive listen of Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” I realized my face muscles were actually sore from stanking so hard (definition of stanking- face you make when you’re listening to something absolutely awesome, often resembles a face made when smelling rotten cheese- she makes it at 3:06).

Lake Street Dive is made up of four incredibly talented musicians from Boston’s New England Conservatory. Their professor put them in a room together and said they were going to be a “free country” band, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say I’m happy that didn’t exactly work out for them as planned.

This cover is amazing because it’s simple, clean, and so beyond original. When I first heard Bridget Kearney playing that familiar bass line, I knew exactly what was about to be played, but in no way did I expect such a jazzy vocal rendition by Rachael Price to follow. The cover is eloquently layered through Mike Olson’s trumpet, and Mike Calabrese’s great drum work, as well as through soothing harmonization (the harmony!) from the entire group throughout the track. Check out more covers (especially Rich Girl) and original music on Lake Street Dive’s website:

http://www.lakestreetdive.com

Going home covered in sweat that may or may not be your own and ears mercilessly ringing might not sound like someone’s ideal Wednesday night, but A$AP Rocky, the A$AP Mob, ScHoolboy Q, & Danny Brown made it completely worth it. The “Long Live A$AP” tour’s Oakland stop was one of the most anticipated events on my calendar, and it lived up to, if not exceeded, my expectations.

Upon arrival, I was amazed by the number of fans lined up outside of the infamous Fox Theatre in the middle of Downtown Oakland, California. After getting lost in the sea of “A$AP” shirts, gold chains, and Timberland boots, I started to wonder if I accidentally found the line for an A$AP Mob recruitment.

The floor area of the venue, where I was standing, was completely sold out. It was uncomfortable and a little too intimate, but one couldn’t complain. Smoke in the air, DJ playing “I Got 5 On It,” loud conversation, and then…the lights went down and Danny Brown took the stage.

As a fan of the bizarre Detroit rapper, I was disappointed when I saw that others weren’t too happy to see him. His hypeman had to literally scream at the crowd to “turn up,” and he did so unsuccessfully; the crowd was literally unresponsive for most of Brown’s set. And you could see the effect it had on Danny Brown; he looked unmotivated, as if he was just ready to finish his set and go backstage. And he did just that.

Worried that the crowd’s low energy would be that disturbingly low for the entire show, I cringed as TDE’s ScHoolboy Q got on stage. But as he soon proved, he
was exactly what we needed. As soon as we heard the infamous “TDE” DJ drop, the crowd changed suit almost instantly. What started as a slow and boring
night, soon became an all out party. Q did songs we were all familiar with off of his “Setbacks” and “Habits and Contradictions” projects. After performing my
personal favorites, “There He Go” & “Druggys with Hoes Again,” which were also the most crowd-pumping songs, ScHoolboy did the unthinkable…he brought out Kendrick Lamar. It made sense though; Kendrick was already in the Bay Area for a performance and signing of his new album “good kid, m.A.A.d city” at Berkeley’s Rasputin’s Record Store, which I also attended.

Kendrick took an already “turnt up” crowd and put us on another level. He performed “A.D.H.D,” which everyone knew the words to. We sounded like a
vulgar choir, singing those familiar profanities in perfect unison. And as a treat, Kendrick performed “Backseat Freestyle,” which is my absolute favorite song off of his new album. Everyone’s phone was up, taking pictures of this rare appearance; immortalizing this historic event. It was the perfect way to end an amazing performance by ScHoolboy Q. After confirming that he’d be back later, Q was off stage.

The wait for A$AP Rocky to perform was irritating; we waited about 15 to 20 minutes as the stage was set up. It doesn’t seem like a long time, but when the
energy is high in a room of over 400 people, minutes seem like hours. House lights go off. An eerie hush falls over the crowd. There is a backdrop on stage
that we can barely see. We hear the familiar voice of New York Native, A$AP Rocky; but we can’t see him.

“…I met lords.” As these beautiful, and almost biblical words are spoken the lights begin to flash as the entire A$AP Mob stood on stage. While we clapped and
screamed, Rocky ran from the right side of the stage wearing army gear, as was the rest of the mob.

Why was the theme so militant? A$AP Rocky told us that we’re in a “war” right now, a war “to be understood.” He didn’t preach for long before he followed the
footsteps of ScHoolboy Q, bringing out Kendrick Lamar to perform their new collaboration, “Problem.” The set up was entertaining. Rocky began the song and
stopped in the middle of the hook. He seemed distraught and unable to do the song. He told us it didn’t feel right without his brother there. After asking the crowd and the rest of his crew “where the f**k is Kendrick?” The Compton representative ran out in his SF Giants hoodie and leather pants. Once again, we sang along spilling f-bombs left and right!

The night was coming to an end but the energy in the venue was still hovering in the air. People who would usually yell in pain rejoiced as A$AP Rocky and the mob stage dove and landed on a few heads, including mine. They performed everything from “Purple Swag” to “Gotham City.” I never heard the latter, but after seeing them perform it, I fell in love.

“I know where I’m at,” declared Rocky. He informed us that he brought a special guest. The beat to “Blow the Whistle” by Oakland’s Too $hort began to ring through the theatre as the man himself came on stage to perform the song already playing. But that wasn’t the end of the surprises. Rocky told us he had ANOTHER guest as “Function” by Vallejo legend E-40 began to play. The pioneer came out and joined everyone on stage to give us his verse from the popular party song. As I sang every single word along with two of my favorite Bay Area artists, I caught the A$AP Mob pointing at me, giving me props, and recognized my overall “hyphyness.”

With the hype growing, Rocky had the lights turned down and said, “we have come to our last song.” “Peso” began to play as he thanked us for being down with him since day one. We all knew the words, “I be that pretty mothaf**ka, Harlem’s what I’m reppin’. Tell ‘em quit the bitchin’, we gon’ make it in a second.” He rapped. We rapped. And as the song and lights faded, we found the exits, and went home with memories.

3 Groups To Czech Out That You Probably-Most-Likely Haven’t Heard Of:

1. Delicate Steve – (http://soundcloud.com/indiehoffman/sets/delicate-steve-positive-force/)

Delicate Steve is pretty much just a smelly guy from New Jersey named Steve who is really delicate. According to brilliant Spotify, Steve-O “realized one day that he had enough gear lying around his home studio to record an album of his own and decided to go for it.”

Steve did gopher it, and he nailed it like a hammer hammering a nail with precision. He’s got this Dobro-style slide guitar that imitates a 80s hair band baby crying for orange soda on a Saturday night. It will titillate your mindlessness in a field of purple pumpkins. Bro.

2. Mind Tree – (http://soundcloud.com/mindtree/mother-nature-1)

I’m going to go off on a tangent, I mean a cosine, or was it a sine? Yes, a sign that you ought to Czech out Mind Tree’s album, Our Identities
Lie In Glow Sticks. My gypsy friend who lives in a tree told me that “Mother Nature” is the hit on the record. It’s nature’s narration accompanied by a software program, probably. Fuck DJs. My gypsy friend is an owl.

3. Black Girls – (http://soundcloud.com/blackgirls/st-simon)

Not black. Not girls. It’s five racist white guys. They call it “snuff rock” but that just sounds like smokeless meth. I’d call it “funk/soul” or “easy alternative” or “why am I using so many quotation marks.”

Well, now I’m famous, I guess. For being hilarious and having remarkable taste in music, that is. This has been my first dose on FIRST DOSE, but expect many more. Or no more. Expect the unexpected.

To set the scene – Bethany, Spencer, Ben and myself are situated in Madison’s best green room – courtesy of Segredo. There is a Red Bull paraphernalia everywhere, and we’re sitting in front of a gigantic painting of a whale.

FD: (Pointing to a bottle of coconut water) Is that stuff actually good?

OL: (In unison) Life saving.

FD: Ok so to start off, how do you guys pick who plays each night? Because not all three of you necessarily play each night, right?

Bethany: We definitely try to.

Ben: Rock Paper Scissors.

Spencer: Usually on a night like tonight we’ll just grab a piece of paper and throw our names into a hat. There are some dates when one of us will really want to start off or end the set, but 90% of shows it’s just by chance.

Ben: Rock Paper Scissors.

Bethany: We flipped a coin over facetime once. But the change in order keeps us on our toes, especially after playing as many shows as we have together.

FD: So you’ve been playing together for about 10 years, tons of dates, where’s your favorite spot to play?

OL: (In unison) Smart Bar.

Bethany: We used to go there before we were even DJ’s, we would spend every weekend there.

Spencer: Yeah we’re based in Chicago and there’s no other vibe like Smart Bar. Funktion-1 soundsystem, deep, dark, grimey basement, no other vibe like it. But if you didn’t know me and Ben went to school here at UW-Madison, so we’ve played The Majestic and The Terrace at the Union, that was an awesome coming home type of deal. But then KK thursday nights, when our frat threw parties, you know the scene.

FD: Which frat?

Ben: Gotta keep that a secret [laughs].

Spencer: We had a good amount of other DJ’s around us in that relaxed scene, but once you go out and buy two turntables, a mixer and some records. That’s how you know if you’re really serious about DJing. If you really, really love music you’ll put the time and efoort into digging for records you really want. Not just going on the internet and downloading the hottest shit off of Beatport.

FD: So you guys are vinyl hunters?

Bethany: Yeah we lived on Orchard street in Chicago, that’s where we get our name from. Tiny one way street, and all three of us happened to live on it. Gramaphone Records happened to be right across the street. So we’d hang out there constantly, and it was the type of place where we would go in after a weekend at Smart Bar, and we could ask the guy behind the counter “Hey what’s that song that goes buh-nuh-nun-uh-nuh” and the guy would disappear for a minute and return with exactly what we were talking about.

FD: So how’d living in Chicago for so long affect your guys sound?

Ben: Well originally we were very anti-Chicago. We loved the city but not the sound. At first we would build sets and we wouldn’t play anything that was high tempo or with those classic “wailing diva” vocals. That’s when we got the downtempo tip and realized we were different. But because it’s such a hub for music we did pick up a lot, like the German techie stuff was a big influence.

FD: Did you guys ever collaborate with big names from the Chicago sound?

Spencer: For the most part no. We’re often on the same billing, but not a lot of collaboration. We love Chicago, but we’re trying to create our own following and trying to something different from the traditional Chicago house music.

Ben: But it’s still been big for us, because before we moved to Chicago I don’t think any of us were listening to house, or at least on the regular.

Spencer: Definitely, I was way into funk and soul and hip-hop, and Ben was listening to, well what wasn’t Ben listening to. And Bethany went to school in Arkansas, so… [laughs]. But we’re probably never going to live anywhere else. Been there for a decade and never going to leave.

FD:What’s it like touring with this dynamic? Two of you [Bethany and Spencer] are married, and Ben’s here too. Sharing hotel rooms? What’s the deal?

Spencer: [Laughs] Well what adjective do you not want us to use?

FD: My mother lets me curse now, so I don’t see why you can’t on the site. 

Spencer: It’s everything.

Bethany: It really is a family, we’ve been doing this together since day one. We never really try to think about getting bigger or whatever. We always say that this could be our last show so, it’s just love, it’s family, it’s friendship. We all know our role in making music and traveling together.

Spencer: We’ll answer that question again at the end of this tour, because this is only night one. [Laughs]

Bethany: This is actually the first time, in all these years of touring that we’ve gotten two hotel rooms, we just, you know, never really thought about it. We’ve done this forever in a plane together, in a room together, in a taxi together, on a bus together, I don’t know how we didn’t kill eachother.

Ben: Just shows how strong our love is. We get paid relatively nice fees to come to cities to play, and we can sit around in one tiny fucking hotel room for two days and not get on eachother’s nerves, you know?

FD: You keep saying that your mantra is “this could be the last show”, why?

Bethany: This started off as just a fun habit, just what we were doing. And we never thought in Chicago that anybody would have us DJ at their club. So when you do something like this and it actually happens, it’s weird. The motto is “Chicago Hates You”, so we figured we were just doing our thing. And then it hit us when we were playing Red Rocks in Colorado and we needed something to keep our heads on straight. So it helps us give it our all each night.

Aaaaaand they seriously gave it their all. They played to a packed house at Segredo, and with heavy synth lines and rotating spinners, they wowed an eager and full crowd.

Blaring Idols :: Danny Brown

The intent here, the driving force, will be the reconciliation of the divine music of the past—reaching as far back as names like Bach, Scarlatti, and more—and the worthwhile sounds of today—exploring efforts by creators in all genres, unrelentingly—the ideal result being that at the center there remains purely and simply good art, and everything else can effectively fall by the wayside. Preferential treatment may be exerted, but this is to be expected when conducting a column rather than sociological research. My hope is not to give you blind suggestions based on no personal acquaintance but to accompany each suggestion or exploration to follow with an honest discussion as to why I feel drawn toward these sounds over others, why I think something is particularly innovative even considering the vast ocean of music out there that I could focus on each week, and why, Oh why, you’d care to listen to some stranger about music today.

My hope—to correspond with my intentions—is that along the way these things will essentially take care of themselves. Say one track posted makes you psyched, and another causes disdain, one description of—just for instance—an episode in Glenn Gould’s life when he was addicted to anti-depressants reels you in, while a discussion of the rumors surrounding Elliott Smith’s death leaves you wanting more. Eventually, with time and much acquaintance between us, you’ll know what to look for in these weekly jaunts into music new and old, and hopefully we’ll all discover some strange, interesting, compelling, horrific, beatific, and important sounds together.

A little background on the author himself: I’ve written in some form or another with varying degrees of seriousness for around six years. I’ve published a novel called The Persistence of Crows about the development of a lost young man named Henry Alfi, and a great deal of essays/reviews/short fiction published on websites like HTMLGIANT, We Feel Pretty, The Open End, and Delphian Inc., where I also maintain a weekly column called ‘A Cabana of the Mind,’ exploring various sects of culture and art. Above all these things, though, I obsess. Be it a trip to a resale shop and an opportunity to collect a stack of previously unseen VHS tapes, or a perusal of Amazon’s dirt cheap paperbacks for Avant Garde European literature about suicide/outer space. I find myself drawn towards most any and all seriously-conceived art, and on a weekly basis my obsessions can prove so consuming that I’m rendered useless to do anything but watch films, read books, and listen to music for hours on end.

That last bit will prove important here. I’m now taking it on as an extension of my natural weekly inclination to truly obsess over certain musicians each week to give forth a column—henceforth titled “Blaring Idols,”—that is not only readable and entertaining, but personalized and filled with music that you might otherwise ignore, or even worse not hear at all.

To start out I wanted to explore the works of someone absolutely contemporary, someone still making music that’s different, strange, challenging and perhaps even groundbreaking: Detroit’s own Danny Brown. While sharing very few surface qualities akin to those acts previously mentioned—Brown’s asset is his voice, and regardless of the quality of his production (it’s always good, trust me) listeners flock to the odd mania of his inflection and penchant for storytelling before anything else—he’s absolutely as cutting-edge and pivotal as those I noted for his status within the context of current hip hop culture.

With groups like A$AP Mob and Odd Future—perhaps more pointedly, artists like A$AP Rocky—doing what they can to give a new face to a very muddled and even occasionally confused genre, Danny Brown is now right at home bringing slightly warped, drug-addled, and often perverted rhymes to a public starved for good-fucking-music that blows holes in your headphones and doesn’t apologize.

An easy comparison would be to artists like Luke/2 Live Crew/Digital Underground, perhaps even the bay’s Mac Dre or Too $hort for his lucid tales of sex and debauchery, and yet the delivery is almost too manic to throw him in with those rather laidback rappers of yore. The artist I think most about when I listen to Danny Brown is actually Ghostface on the original Wu Tang stuff; he’s painfully loud and brilliantly sarcastic in his delivery and whether he’s belittling his contemporaries with tracks like “Radio Song,” or “Monopoly,” or simply affirming his status as the Adderall Admiral with the eponymous track or “Blunt After Blunt,” this is the swagger of 90s geniuses pushed into the now with a bigger “fuck you” hoist atop its chip-toothed crooked haircut than ever before.

His 2011 album XXX was hailed as one of the greatest 50 of the year by Pitchfork and the recipient of countless accolades. Brown stated he wanted to “see how far he could push listeners,” by experimentation and taking things a bit farther than his previous release The Hybrid—it definitely features all the merits Brown possesses on XXX and anything since, but all in all you can feel him cutting loose entirely after The Hybrid and it’s a beautiful thing. Perhaps one of the most refreshing elements in Brown’s general schema is his unique intelligence, citing influences on “Die like a Rockstar,” like Kurt Cobain and Basquiat, and Brian Wilson, and dissecting contemporary rap relentlessly on “Radio Song,” with an incisiveness usually held back by artists in favor of just talking about another fucking party.

I think for several years I’ve shied away from listening to as much hip hop because of a noticeable aberration from the sounds apparent when I was a devout fan: artists like Cage and Non Phixion and Pharoah Monch and others were asserting their styles in ways that didn’t hold back, didn’t shy away themselves from the very guts of rap mastered by predecessors like Big L and Wu Tang. I loved it growing up and learned to live within the parameters of what made “good shit” and “bad” and became as much of a head as one can be, but something suddenly made me renounce that faith for older punk acts or metal bands until I found myself buried under a serious obsession with classical music and countless creators within that framework. I also note the shift in myself from doing piles of drugs and drinking incessantly while I listened to hip hop to reading a great deal and watching serious cinema when I began listening to the classical performers, etc. I think this caused a natural fear of going back to rap for fear it would somehow change my interests away from those things that made me happy and essentially turn me into a muttering teenaged idiot again. I didn’t want that—don’t want that, actually—but lately I’ve found myself not giving a shit to a great degree when considering what I’m listening to; instead preferring to occasionally examine why.

So why do I listen to Danny Brown, or Vast Aire, or A$AP Rocky? And why do I not immediately shudder at the thought of listening to this music that I have next to nothing in common with? Well, basically, it’s fucking good. Walking around listening to Danny Brown is as empowering as it once was to walk around listening to Bad Brains when I was younger, and far more pissed off. Listening to Danny Brown discuss sex or other rappers or Juggalos—in a brilliant feature on Vice where Brown attends The Gathering—is as compelling and original as it once was to listen to Henry Rollins boast about eating healthier than anyone around him and thus positioning himself to be a “hard target,” for the police.

I listen to this guy because he’s the greatest motherfucker going of late and Kanye West is growing boring as all hell with his megalomania. I listen to this guy because going for a walk listening to more John Cage—though endlessly informative and likely the more intellectual pursuit—can wait, for now I’d like to listen to some perfect stranger tell me about his debauched escapades the way Big L or Nas used to rap about actual fucking stories, the same exact way. DJ Khaled is not producing tracks with tangible stories that the listeners can grab onto and join in on; it’s a tradition of rap in the 90s that hasn’t gotten a great deal of play lately because listeners haven’t exactly demanded it. That’s just the thing, however, nobody demanded Danny Brown, and yet now that they’ve had even a mild taste, I doubt he’ll be short of listeners for a very long time.

-Grant Maierhofer

More and more artists from the UK are gaining worldwide acclaim and introducing the unique sounds born out of the exciting and eccentric underground music scene in London. Raw talent can be found at an increasing number of open-mic nights and parties hosted by the artists themselves who have stopped waiting for the majors to catch up and taken it into their own hands.

Often labelled as gritty, the UK hiphop scene has come a long way since the inception of grime, which shouldn’t be overlooked. The term F64 is ingrained into every Londoners vocab since the rise of the street-shot style videos from SB.TV, inviting every upcoming rapper to spit a ‘fresh 64’ bars

As websites, blogs and mainstream media followed, doors opened for producers, singer-songwriters and rappers. As a result we’ve seen genres blend and labels disappear as the rise of the new modern hiphop sound takes over.

SBTRKT
Starting out playing at the infamous nightclub ‘Plastic People’, Aaron Jerome is the masked musician and producer known as SBTRKT, who collaborates with musician and vocalist Sampha. The self-taught duo from London have created a sound bringing together dubstep, electro, house, soul and techno all underpinned by intricate percussion. Signed to Young Turks label, SBTRKT have remixed tracks by M.I.A, Basement Jaxx and Radiohead to name a few, but the track that caught the attention of Drake was ‘Wildfire’ featuring Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon. Drake remixed the track which opened doors and the ears of a whole new audience. SBTRKT is currently working on a new album but for now keep up to date on their SoundCloud.

Mikill Pane
Redefining British hiphop, London rapper Mikill Pane has captured audiences throughout the UK with his quick, witty lyrics and charismatic personality that comes through on every track. With a refreshingly honest outlook and five critically acclaimed EP’s under his belt, Mercury signed Mikill Pane quickly became the talk of the town after featuring on Ed Sheeran’s ‘Collaborations EP’ with the track ‘Little Lady’. His alternative take on rap means he’s as comfortable alongside electronic synths as he is with an acoustic guitar, complete with a hilarious sense of humour, there’s never a dull moment with Mister Pane. He’s also worked with Example, Paloma Faith, Yasmin and P Money and is working on his debut album ‘Blame Miss Barclay’ for release later this year.

Daley
He’s got soul! Singer songwriter Daley has accomplished a smooth sound that combines jazz, funk and R&B with experimental and pop. With an impressive vocal arrangement his performances appear effortless as he reaches incredible notes. He landed on my radar after a cover of Maxwell’s ‘Pretty Wings’, knowing and loving the original so well it was a risky move, but to say it paid off is an understatement! He’s since released a flawless ten-track EP ‘Those Who Wait’ and more recently announced his first official single, the energetic ‘Remember Me’ featuring Jessie J with an infectious bassline and catchy hook. Daley is signed to Universal Records and is currently working on his debut album, watch this space.

Clement Marfo and The Frontline
The seven-piece hiphop/rock collective from London headed up by MC Clement Marfo bring an explosive energy to the stage like no other. With influences ranging from N.E.R.D to Blink 182 they have a unique ability of fusing their individual strengths into an inimitable sound. They’ve supported everyone from De La Soul to Florence & the Machine, Plan B and Rizzle Kicks. The feel-good track ‘Champion’ made huge waves for them and they’ve since been signed to Warner Music and have released the raunchy ‘Last Night’ which will be available on November 26th.

Last Night