WORLD OF JAZZ, POP AND ROCK Part 5
THE BEST MUSICIANS AND TOP BANDS IN GREAT BRITAIN TODAY
22.
Pet Shop Boys
The
1980s' most enduring pop act have always refused to slump into
irrelevance, weathering the sneers of rock snobs who dismiss them as
camp ironists. Despite recently embracing their old nemesis, the guitar,
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe remain unapologetic champions of the joys of
pop, allying thrumming club beats with timeless songwriting craft to
make something moving and lasting out of the allegedly disposable.
Sound:16 Songs:17 Gigs:15 Style:6 Attitude:11 Total: 65
23.
Four Tet
Head
and shoulders above the continuing deluge of music created on laptops,
Four-Tet began life as an alternative outlet for Kieran Hebden of
post-rock trio Fridge. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hebden is also
an adept musician, as a recent appearance with folk singer Vashti Bunyan
proved. Rounds, the third Four-Tet album, is a futuristic and emotive
mix of oblique hip-hop and gauzy folk.
Sound:19Songs:13 Gigs:8 Style:7Attitude:17 Total: 64
24.
Lemon Jelly
Even
when they sample the faraway reports of American astronauts or a Russian
choir there is something in the flavour of Lemon Jelly (Nick Franglen
and Fred Deakin) that is quirkily English. Here, as some boffin belts
out on Lost Horizons, their second album, "All the ducks are swimming in
the water, faldaralderaldo, faldaralderaldo." If this album were an
armchair, it would be orange and inflatable. There is nothing
exceptional about Lemon Jelly's folky electronica; it doesn't so much
push boundaries as graze happily inside them. But it does so
beautifully, with a loopy glee that will get you in the end. Sound:15
Songs:14 Gigs: 10 Style: 13 Attitude:12 Total: 64
25.
Belle and Sebastian
"Belle
and Sebastian were the product of botched capitalism," announced the
sleeve notes of the Glaswegians' second album. Stuart Murdoch was on one
of the Major government's back-to-work training schemes in 1996 when he
assembled his dream band, one worthy of standing next to his heroes the
Smiths, Leonard Cohen and Felt. Literate, flamboyant and mordantly
witty, they have lost band members and direction over the years, but
their new, Trevor Horn-produced fifth album finds them again living up
to Murdoch's grand vision. Sound:16 Songs:19 Gigs: 10 Style:6
Attitude:13Total: 64
26.
Richard X
The Blackburn-born producer may only have one idea - slam together two
incongruous songs to produce an improbably catchy third - but it has spawned
a genre. Richard X has rag-and-boned some of the best singles of the past
year, including Sugababes' Freak Like Me and Liberty X's Being Nobody. How
long he can keep up the mixing and matching depends on his boredom
threshold. Sound:17 Songs:17 Gigs - : Style:12 Attitude:17 Total: 63
27. Muse
If
Brian Blessed were a rock band, you suspect he would sound like Muse. From
humble beginnings as a kind of cut-price Radiohead, the Devon trio have
flourished into a bombastic, over-the-top rock band. Their most recent
album, Absolution, underlines their ambition and their audible disinterest
in accepted notions of good taste. It's difficult to tell how far their
tongues are wedged into their cheeks, but it's equally difficult not to be
swept along by their ludicrous, operatic goth metal. Sound:14 Songs:11 Gigs:
14 Style:10 Attitude:14 Total: 63
28. Rishi Rich
Given
that Britain is a world centre of Asian music, it's surprising that more
Asian artists have not entered the mainstream consciousness. Along with
Punjabi MC, London-based producer Rishi Rich is among the first to buck the
trend. Already famed as a producer of bhangra, he has shifted with ease into
working with pop aritsts, melding R&B and traditional Punjabi music to
considerable effect for Mis-Teeq, Craig David, Liberty X and Ricky Martin.
The result is not a world music curio, but startling, original pop
music.Sound:17 Songs:16 Gigs: - Style:10 Attitude:17 Total: 60