News This Week In New Music (7th September 2013)

It’s an accent-fest for this week’s new music round-up. Somewhere the French are smiling as UK musicians lap up their pretty additions to individual letters, using them to enhance their respective art.

Maybe the below are onto something. After all, they’ve managed to stand out in a busy crowd of new songs, videos and emerging acts. Perhaps there’s method to the fancy pants madness these bands are sporting.

Here’s the best of what happened this past week in new music:

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Kiran Leonard - Port-Ainé


Kiran Leonard is a tough one to get your head around. He’s clearly a bit of a musical wizard, up there with Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth in wielding lunacy out of simple things. But whereas the latter might get lumped in with accusations of pretence, and even though he uses a bloody accent for this song title, Kiran seems genuine.

Musically, ‘Port-Ainé’ is pretty simple. Basic strums and pumped-up percussion, forming a casual base for the Northerner to let loose on. When simplicity takes over he actually sounds even more impressive than the nutcase who’s spent his teen years making album after album of big, complex songs. There is something like this out there - that’s the real draw. Consider it to be like being babyfed into Kiran Leonard’s more frenzied charms.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Oceaán - Neéd U


Beneath the smoke is a proper talent. Oceaán, and his R&B croon, sweeps aside all the other tear-strewn players trying their hand at doing emotional songwriting, dripping in cool and a fresh aesthetic. So many people are doing this. Or at least trying to. It’s nigh on impossible to stand out.

But ‘Neéd U’ isn’t just any old song. This video heightens the mystery without doing much else - sort of like those fancy accents - but it fuels the fact that Oceaán is doing something very clever with samples and smoothed-out vocals, when so many others are going stale.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
Jamies Bea


Congratulations to Jamies Bea a for managing to release a song without any accents. Congratulations to ourselves, too (cheers), for getting to the 1 year anniversary of Neu Bulletins; those daily new music guides crammed full of tips and whatnot. Jamies Bea appeared in the Friday edition, sounding like some maniacal clone of Jai Paul. It ought to be possible to clone Jai Paul by now. A fair few have certainly tried. His ‘Dreams’ track embraces all the elements of the XL-signee’s sound - the shrouded vocals, the in-out focus, the funk touch - and does a little something extra. So congratulations, once again.