BBC’s Electric Proms feature a number of Britain’s hottest acts in various contexts, but the likely highlight is Damon Albarn’s Africa Exprez, a collaboration between African pop stars and Brits like Johnny Marr and Hard-Fi. Clearly, Albarn’s dedicated to the music of Africa, releasing quite a bit of it through his Honest Jon’s label and including Tony Allen in his The Good, The Bad, And The Queen project. But is a jam session between Baaba Maal and a guy from Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly the best way to expose a nation to the music of a continent?
While I’m a good boy about keeping up with the pop singles chart, when it comes to classier, indie-oriented stuff I tend to focus on the familiar. Last night I hunkered down with Sun Kil Moon’s April, The Gutter Twins’ Saturnalia, and Portishead’s Third, all great albums from artists who made their biggest impression well over a decade ago. So it’s not a total surprise that I hadn’t heard any of the five nominees for the Mojo Honours’ Breakthrough Act Of 2008. But it gave me an excuse to get familiar with singles from Duffy, Foals, Bon Iver, Pete Molinari, and the Last Shadow Puppets.
Maura needs to chill, because hype is not only the most important subject in music in 2006 2007 2008, it is also, despite all evidence to the contrary, actually a healthy thing for developing bands, something that should be embraced rather than disdained. So sayeth Tim Jonze of the Guardian at the tail end of a screed about “hype bands” and their tendency to complain in interviews about the machinations that have led to the “hype” prefix being attached in the first place. But while it’s undoubtedly annoying to listen to young psuedo-celebrities griping about their sudden spike in acclaim, isn’t a little skepticism a useful tool for a band in the hyper-mercurial world of Web 2.0? Of course not. Don’t be so jaded.
