New Music Sunday

In my never ending quest for mucho musical goodness I bring you another random selection of genuine quality schmutter (it's a cockney thing, but I'm not...a cockney that is). Anyway...

Lucky Soul are up first...and first is a position that they well and truly deserve. As a massive fan of Mari Wilson (back in the day), St Etienne, The Pipettes, The Rumble Strips, 60's girl groups...you get the idea...Lucky Soul are a gem. Sophisticated pop, beautiful arrangements, classy vocals and a look to match. I defy you not to listen them and feel that the world is a better place. The Sound of Summer? Oh yes you lucky souls...

Beat Union, hailing from my dear old home town of Birmingham, are about to release a classy hybrid of 80's New Wavedom and Punk called She's The Gun. It's chuffin ace. They already sound like a band that could easily fill a stadium and it looks like they're catching the eyes and ears of bigger fish than my humble self. I've yet to see them 'in da flesh' as it were but I'm expecting great things. Watch this space (well not literally obviously...unless you have nothing else to do for a few weeks).

Look out...here come a million billion. Plucked from one of my endless trawls across t'net I know little about them other than the fact that they come from New York and appear to make whatever music they feel like on any given day. Witness the electro madness that is Squid compared with the lush, slightly Tindersticksyness of Volcano Season.

Arthur Russell is up next. Although sadly no longer with us, I've been getting more and more into his music recently. He was a cellist by trade, but then got bitten by the disco bug (naughty bug...you can get cream for that) and combined all this with a way of producing music that just sort of added layers of loveliness onto bits of 'oooohhhh...what the fuck was that'ness. Simply a genius.

Young at Heart Chorus is less of a band...more a tribute to the human spirit. There was a documentary about them on TV a while ago...if you didn't catch it the basic gist of the project is to get 'older' people (seriously older people...I'm talking older than me here) together in a choir to sing modern hits. It sounds really mawkish writing about it and the clips on their My Space page only really tell part of the story but basically there's something magical about someone near the end of their days singing Fix You by Coldplay (not one of my favourite acts as regular readers may know). Just a bit of context...in the Fix You clip the old dude singing was supposed to be doing a duet with his best buddie...but his best buddie had died a few hours earlier...

Finally, to prove that this posting isn't unduly fixated with the dead and and dying, I give you...yes you...Kavinsky. His current EP, 1986 (like most of his stuff), sounds not unlike an outake from Bladerunner dusted off by Jan Hammer then fiddled about with by Daft Punk. So there. Eclectic? Moi?

My work here is done.