>NB: Since publishing this post, Julian and I have conversed via email. Julian’s actually a good guy whose frustration with the music industry’s reluctance to give bands time to develop got the better of him, and I was just the person he vented his spleen to on the spur of the moment.
I don’t blame him for his frustration – I share it – so happily, him and I have the same basic ideas and views on music, and all is well. However, the core points of the post remain important, so I’m keeping it up, though with this caveat.
Excitingly, I got my first hate e-mail the other day. It was from a man called Julian Deane, who apparently runs a company called Raygun Music Management. He manages a few decent bands. Julian said that ‘most of the bands on ANBAD are shite’ and that ‘any idiot can post a Myspace address every day‘.
Hate mail is rewarding in so many ways – it means that something I’ve done has riled someone enough to actually spend time letting me know how they feel. Hate mail has as much impact as the praising emails that I get, in that it further confirmed that ANBAD is on the right track – by aiming not to please all of the people all of the time.
I’ll happily admit that not all the bands on ANBAD are as ‘good’ as the others, but only if you define ‘good’ by, say, the likelihood that lots and lots of people will like them, which in some people’s eyes also translates into ‘potential for record sales’.
ANBAD isn’t about taking part in some sort of dick-swinging contest, desperately trying to find the next big band before anyone else. There are loads of websites doing that. We just want to find bands which sound like something we haven’t heard before. That’s the only criteria, really. If a band does go on to bigger things, just like early ANBAD alumi Dinosaur Pile-Up appears to be doing, we’re more than happy.
With all that in mind, maybe you’ll like Today’s New Band, or maybe you won’t. Hopefully, you’ll think that We Fly Ships sound like something that you haven’t entirely heard before. We Fly Ships are perfect week-ending material, half relaxing and half bangin’, just like all good weekends should be.
Sometimes they manage both of these opposing feelings in the space of one song – World in Reverse spends the first, loopy, misty minute threatening to explode, and then transforms into something big, fuzzy and enveloping. Listen to it and try to resist being groped by its tempting grooves and luxurious melody. You’ll wish that you could be listening to it a lot louder in the same way that Orbital‘s albums are never quite as earth-shattering as their live, loud counterparts.
The Bears Are Dead is, frankly, a wonderful mixture of warm synth washes, clattering drums and manic dog-barking. Yes, it’s verging on the boundaries of sanity, but that’s usually a good thing. It sounds like an early Spiritualized song remixed by Adrian Sherwood which is then remixed again by, oooh, Mr Oizo.
We Fly Ships are as warm, loving and intimidating as getting a hug off someone who’s E’d up to the eyeballs. Snuggle up to them here – maybe you’ll be enraged enough to write me a stroppy email. And then read ANBAD – The eBook and work yourself into a frenzy of righteous anger.
