>Today’s New Band – Large Number PLUS! MATHS DOOM!

>Here’s an opening line you don’t often read in music articles: Statisticians, please skip a few paragraphs right now, because you’ll already know this bit. For the rest of us whose uselessness with numbers is in direct relation to the length of the angry queue that forms as we struggle with a handful of coins to pay for the newspaper, read on.

So here’s a statistical fact – if you are in a room with 22 other people, there’s more than a 50% likelihood that two of them share the same birthday. No, I don’t really understand either. For a detailed explanation, complete with the kind of equations that makes my throat tighten and eyes boggle involuntarily, look here and weep at your pathetic grasp on the workings of the universe.

If this is the type of information that makes you suddenly realise how hopelessly equipped we are as humans to absorb our true unimportance in relation to life, the universe and everything, I apologise. But just think about how many times you’ve been in exactly that situation for a second. Then think about how many opportunities for big, fun, joint birthday parties you’ve missed.

This all leads me to conclude three things. Firstly, the Maths geeks you mocked at school already know this and so have been having a lot of carefully plotted fun that you’ve missed out on. Secondly, if you don’t understand this theory, it means that when the Great Nerd Revolution takes place, mouth-breathers like you and me will be first against the wall. Thirdly, this revolution will destroy the music that we love, because Maths + Rock = DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Or does it? Today’s New Band, Large Number, might be a sign that the Rise of Mathematical Aggression is already here. Large Number‘s songs might have been made by decoding the human genome, converting the code into one monstrously huge numerical sequence, and then letting a computer turn that number into sounds. But probably not. Large Number is actually a very talented woman called Ann, but I like the idea of computer-human hybrid auto-sound-production more.

Song Shy English Hitler is a warping, shimmering, electro-bizarro-creep, with a well-placed volley of verbal insults over the fabulously cranky sounds. It hops all over the place, the beat humming at different frequencies with crazed abandon, suddenly speeding up or slowing down on a whim. Hockenheim In The Rain, big and splashy, grunts and whistles with furious momentum, and keeps stepping up gears lazily until the pace is both languid and frantic.

Large Number: where we all began to realise our awful, algorithmic fate. Listen here!

>Weddings, The Chuckle Brothers and Today’s New Band – Dada Yakuza

>I’ve got to the age where all of your friends start to get married. At the weekend, I’m going to my third one this year. There was supposed to be a fourth, but the bride and groom-to-be got stroppy and split up. Once my initial disappointment at the vanished possibility of a free bar subsided, I was actually quietly pleased. Three weddings in one year is exhausting enough. God knows what it’s like for the bride and groom themselves (and that sentence, I’ve just realised, works both as a rhetorical musing and a statement).

From what I’ve seen this year, weddings are usually 10% for the couple’s benefit and 90% for everyone else’s. You might want to get married whilst wingwalking on a biplane over the Grand Canyon, dressed as Paul and Barry Chuckle, but the hard-earned familial clout of Auntie Mabel and Granny Ethel’s desire for a church wedding with meringue dresses will usually win out.

It makes me wonder if this same dilemma is broached by bands. Sure, most bands at the start just ‘play what we like playing, so if anyone else likes it, that’s a bonus,’ and most of them trot out that banality to the NME with ever-impressive gusto. But some bands must arrive at a point where they start playing to the gallery, or else there would be no explanation for Coldplay‘s transformation from mildly-interesting indie band to world-straddling MOR, AOR behemoth.

I think Today’s New Band, Dada Yakuza, are an example of a band that does both. It has to be for the crowd – music this brilliantly mental can only be designed with a roomful of heaving, sweaty bodies in mind. BUT – their music is so un-selfconscious in its slavish devotion to just getting on the dancefloor that it’s not worried about what other people think.

Perhaps they’ve managed to straddle the divide. Perhaps they don’t even think about it in the first place. Perhaps I’m just trying to read too much into their fabulously BANGIN’ CHOONZ.

With the latter thought in mind, it would be unfair to delve any further into their music, other than to say, it’s wonderfully messy, loud, ridiculous and stupid, in all the best kind of ways. Dada Yakuza are noisy, hard, carefree and intent on having a good time, and if you can find a better way to end the week then don’t click here. But I bet you can’t.

>Today’s New Band – Ghost In The Water – CENTENARY SPECIAL!!

>Almost astonishingly, today we publish the 100th band to appear on A New Band A Day. A Centenary! A Double Golden Jubilee! This is a (very) minor achievement of sorts, considering my attention span is comparable with that of the proverbial goldfish, and the transient nature of the Tubular Interwebs. However, it’s a happy occasion I suppose, even though I didn’t receive a telegram from the Queen.

Like truculent teenagers though, we don’t want to celebrate this too much, and would prefer to remain sulkily opposed to convention, whilst secretly longing for participation in it. Thus, Today’s new band was going to be, appropriately, one that embodies ANBAD‘s core ethos. Then it became clear that this would mean the appearance of a band that is anxious, annoying, deliberately obtuse, and with dubious personal hygiene, it was decided to just stick a good band on, like usual.

So with none of those things in mind, here’s Today’s New Band, Ghost in the Water, and they’re probably just about right if you’re interested in, you know, having a good time, whilst reflecting on life’s foibles. Hallucination is another one of those great songs that is the product of a lifetime consuming as many different types of music as possible.

It’s the song you’d want on at your wedding, pleasing everyone equally. Your uncle will dig the 70’s grooves, your stuck-in-the-Eighties cousin will crack his hip breakdancing to the synth squelches, and even your 16 year old Nu-Rave, ex-Emo, waiting-for-the-next-big-craze nephew will be fake-reminiscing about the Second Summer of Love in no time.

If this makes Ghost in the Water sound like one of those semi-generic French electro combos that seem to be genetically predisposed to grind out BANGIN’ CHOONZ and BANGIN’ CHOONZ alone, you’d only be half-right. The 4Traks remix of Cardinal Red is a weird splicing of folksy yearning, 80’s poodle-rock soloing and Bambaataa keyboard stabs. Even more weirdly, it works.

It’s a risky business, stirring all those discrete elements into one big melting pot, but thankfully Ghost in the Water have got away with it. Find yourself playing ‘Spot the Musical Influence’ here!

>Today’s New Band – Facteur ROAD TRIP GIMMICK ENDS TODAY!

>That’s right folks, this week’s borderline-awful ROADTRIP! gimmick is drawing to a close. And yet, for all its conceptual craptitude, we’ve dug up a lot of ace bands so far on our virtually-drunken, imaginarily-debauched trundle around Northern Europe. Sweden’s Envelopes, Norway’s Hiawata! and Poland’s MR BEEP have provided us with a ADHD-fat-kid-in-an-ice-cream-parlour sample of Upper-Euro music, and brilliant it all has been too.

Thus, before we head back to Cyber-Calais (Yes, this is getting tedious now), for the ferry, we’ve stopped in France for one final hurrah, and look who’s Today’s New Band – it’s Facteur! Now, as the observant of you ANBAD readers will readily acknowledge, if there’s one thing we ~~hate to~~ regularly do, it’s to recycle old musings and pass them off as new. So, without further ado – just what is it that makes French dance music so awesome? We may never know – it’s certainly not the legacy of Johnny Hallyday – but Facteur aren’t concerned, and certainly aren’t hanging around to find out, as they’re too busy thrashing wildly around the room, losing themselves in their ridiculously thumping songs.

Pick any of the songs – any – on their Myspace page, and you’ll be yearning for the dancefloor instantly. If you can’t imagine yourself going chicken oriental in a nightclub to their frighteningly CHOON-tatsic remix of Asshole by Giko, you may have exhausted your brain’s supply of serotonin, in which case, call a priest and wait calmly for death. It’s Friday night. Go nuts and dance in your bedroom to his brilliant tunes, and worry about how daft you look afterwards. You deserve it.

>Today’s New Band – Teenage Bad Girl

>What is it about French dance music that makes it so distinctive? No-one does ‘funky’ in dance music like the French – perhaps it’s all the fine food, fine wine and fine weather they have there. It’s hard to imagine a band as sullen as Joy Division emerging from a country where you can visit the Loire Valley for a smashing sunshine top-up. On the other hand, when you hear the songs that today’s new band Teenage Bad Girl make, it’s easy to understand that they haven’t felt the crushing despair of living in Macclesfield like Ian Curtis. They just want to Have A Good Time All The Time.

Listen to virtually any ‘bangin’ tune’ on their Myspace page www.myspace.com/teenagebadgirl and it’s hard to do anything other than form a ‘T’ shape with your arms and shamefully scream”CHOOOON!”. Like all the great French dance music, it’s got all the elements of crappy 70’s funk music and made it awesome.

So it might sound like other French music. So what? French dance is so far ahead in terms of fun than most attempts at electronic music, it’s silly.

—Don’t forget, ANBAD is running a reduced service this week, due to being on holiday and eating a lot of dried cod in Portugal. Full service as per usual next week—