As ANBAD has spiralled onwards over its bewilderingly long/short (see Friday’s post for explanation), the criteria for selecting a new band has changed.

This change is probably in sync with my own increasing boredom of ‘traditional’ rock’n’pop’n’dance music – whatever that is these days.

All I can point to is a feeling that, after a few years of hearing the same drab mistakes made by the same sorts of drab bands over and over and over, I find myself looking increasingly towards the edges, and using less sensible criteria for selection.

Thus: Roku was picked as today’s new band on a number of obtuse bases. I’ll set them out below the player, so you can see if there is method in the madness, or merely madness in the madness. At the end of the article is a Very Important Point.

1. Roku has a song called Not Enough Seoul, and thus ticks ANBAD’s all-important ‘pun’ box;
2. Roku is from the Bronx. I once got lost in and around the Projects in the Bronx – an alien Brit in a daft red coat standing out a mile – and yet everyone was very pleasant and welcoming. Moreover, they were entirely uninterested in shooting me, which was pretty much all I’d heard about the place;
3. Roku’s music, like Drowsy, glitters with reality and life. The beats are crooked and don’t feel quantised within an inch of their life. This is a song of low-gloss but high-feel: it’s careful but loose, warm but angular, dozy but snappy.

Here’s the important point at the end: if a slew of irreverent but personal, non-musical reasons increase the chance of discovering good new music as much as any other, are we wasting our time trying to use algorithms, PR, pluggers, etc to do the same thing?

MORE: localroku.bandcamp.com