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Monday 10th February 2014
bite
Hey BBC, try the sound of silence? T facebook.com/bathimpact
he BBC’s “Sound of…” lists have always been a bit of a bullshit thing. Obviously they’ve picked some huge artists over the years, 50 Cent in 2003 (Electric Six came second which is my favourite thing about “Sound of…”), Adele in 2008 and Jessie J in 2011. But really weren’t all of those artists a bit famous anyway? Before their respective wins, 50 had already been signed by Eminem and featured on the 8 Mile soundtrack, Adele had released 19 and Hometown Glory, and Jessie J had released Do It Like a Dude. It doesn’t take Brian Epstein to work out they were going to sell records. They’ve also got it horrifically wrong (anyone ever heard of the Bravery?). So almost from the beginning it’s pretty fair to say that “Sound of…” was more a chance for some journalists to prove how down with the kids they were and score some indie tail (“yeah, I basically discovered Bloc Party”) than a real showcase of as yet unheard talent (if it was down to talent Chance the Rapper would have got each position in the top 5 this year). Either that or they’re just wrong (this year they’re both, see Chance the Rapper). Still, at least when it started it was slightly relevant. In 2003 the internet was still just the loading screen inside the clunky white box that the talking paperclip lived in and record labels were reining supreme. If someone wanted to release an album they would see if they could get signed, go off to the studio and then go through a few months of marketing and promotional things. Most bands got fucked off by label executives who bathed in Jacuzzis filled with money, champagne and only the whitest, purest Eastern European hookers. It might have been a one sided, exploitative system, but things got done almost the same way every time. In that system a “Sound of…” competition makes sense as all the albums will come out when they’re supposed
to and you can predict who’s going to be big and when. However, the internet kind of got a bit bigger than the clunky white box (anyone notice?) and that, along with a few other things, has slightly changed the music industry. Labels are still pretty huge, but in no way are they the be all and end all like they used to be. Some kid in a Dundee bedroom could be working away most evenings on a pirated copy of Fruity Loops making house music for the fun of it. One evening he or she chucks it up on Soundcloud or Bandcamp to see what their friends think and a day later millions of people have listened to it. If they have a silly video about cabbage or Richard Nixon to go with it then it might go viral and within a week everyone and their talking Fox will have seen it and boom, they’re the real Sound of 2014. Maybe that’s a joke, but we all know it could happen. More artists are going independent and more are holding their labels for ransom. Death Grips did it best with No Love Deep Web (cracking album, even better cover), but already in 2014 the brilliant Angel Haze has self-leaked an album after being annoyed with her label. Then you’ve got the fucking queen (Beyoncé, obviously) dropping an album that no one outside her close circle had any idea about, thereby ruining everyone else’s promotion or predictions of who’s going to be number one that week. So it might be a nice procrastiread and it might give some exposure to a few good artists, but really “The Sound of…” lists are just no longer relevant. I mean for all we know Kanye West, Paul McCartney and Lennie Henry have started emailing each other and are planning to drop a 90s dubstep inspired concept album about going down on Piers Morgan. What would your precious list do in the face of that gargantuan beauty indie journalists? Cower down and die, that’s what! Anyway, we’ve already had the biggest music story of 2014 because Outkast are back and nothing else matters.
khaki_soul
a page of the meandering thoughts of boy genius Thomas Gane
This will be the main folk breakdown instrument of the next Mumford and Sons EP
bite’s Sounds of 2014 1. Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un release a Simon and Garfunkel cover album, as well as their hit single Go Down South (and take no prisoners). 2. Millions die as Beyoncé drops her next album straight into people’s brains, the concentrated dose of fabulousness and magnificence was too much for anyone who voted Tory to handle. 3. Rebecca Black releases Sunday in April, a dark and reflective folk song about the effects of Alzheimer’s in later life, before inventing an entirely new day that nobody else can pronounce. 4. The 1975 and Alt-J combine to write an EP so hipster that it can only be heard if you have surgery to turn your ears into triangles. 5. The McBusted tour descends into jealous infighting which ends with the on stage execution of Busted and inspires McFly’s multi-platinum Christmas Number one , Five Bullets in his Brain.
Shiver me Tinder. Where is my soul?
I
try my best not to be vain. I don’t spend much money on new clothes or aftershave or a personal assistant who tells me how pretty I am on the hour of every hour (although that’s half down to me not having the money). I mean I try and eat a bit healthily and do a bit of exercise from time to time which is partially vanity, but also down to the fact that my friends all think I’m the one most likely to die before I’m 30. Still, in the same way that I catch myself playing with my hair in the lift mirror at work, last night I found myself clicking the download button on Tinder. I told myself it would be a 24 hour thing. I would Tinder Tinder. One day to see what the fuss was all about, write the article and then swipe left. Judge it and dump it. That’s probably not going to happen. I’m already a bit addicted and I’m more than a bit ashamed. It’s so easy and so shallow and I hate that I do it. I’m not paying attention to it, I’ll just be watching Peep
Show and absent mindedly swiping right, right, right, left, right, left, left, right, left and suddenly it’s 1am. I’ve judged hundreds of people within a few seconds of seeing them like it’s a silly game and I hate myself a bit more than I did yesterday. But then it is a silly game. I never see the people, they never know if I’ve gone left or right, if I’d shag, marry or avoid. It seems harmless. My flatmates and I even play games with it. Best name, how many duck faces in a row, funniest picture, how ridiculous can you make the sex jokes before the guy who thinks he’s in quits. It’s all a façade. There’s nothing to gain, there’s no point or reason, but it feels kind of nice deciding what you think about someone based upon fuck all. I’ve managed to avoid reality TV up until now, but I can feel Tinder’s icy hands dragging me down. The most ridiculous thing about it is I started to find myself caring a bit. I started making up little rules. Cute animals, pic-
tures at festivals and actually funny pictures were all automatically a swipe right. All professionally shot photos or ridiculous poses were a left. A casual party shot was a right, but not if it looked really forced. Even worse I started to panic when after a few hours I didn’t have any matches. I started changing the pictures, I added a bit more to the about me (it had previously just been a copy of Charlie Kelly’s dating profile from the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode) and contemplated liking some Facebook pages to get a few more shared interests. I eventually got a few matches and started some conversations, but it was nice to know my self-confidence could be knocked so easily by an app I’d treated as a joke a few days ago. I dread to think what this might morph into once Google Glass and other wearable technology takes off. Swipe right and it projects an image of you two banging right into your frontal lobe whilst the iGasm un-
derwear we all have in the future gives you both a sharp dose of robo-pleasure. It’ll be the end of society. No one will go outside or do anything because we’re all having virtual sex with downloadable Ryan Gosling’s and Emma Watson’s. Okay maybe that won’t happen and I’m over reacting, but despite how much fun it is I’m not overly fond of Tinder. The judging aspect is pretty bad, but the fact we’re now too lazy to fuck if it can’t be initiated with a swipe of the finger is pretty damming on us all. It’s one of the only truly enjoyable things that’s absolutely free and we’re letting smartphones dictate it. Get out there and meet people! Buy each other drinks, dance, fuck (if you want to), share a cigarette afterwards and chat shit to the pillow! Live through yourself, not through Tinder! Then again, I might just be bitter and sexually frustrated. I’ve also checked Tinder five times while writing this, so who am I to judge?