In what is fast becoming an institution another packed audience cram into the Flowerpot on Kentish Town Road for a headlining act squeezed onto the smallest of stages. Tonight is the big warm-up for The Golden Silvers, a local crowd waving them off on the eve of the annual NME Radar Tour which they are headlining, the annual leg-up for next year’s breakthrough acts. In a matter of weeks it’s the rather larger Koko down the road that will provide the setting, but for tonight its back to basics; crowd noise and beer taps and the whites of the eyes. It’s turn-back-the-clock time for the soon-to-be-starbound, but tonight is as much about shaking things up as adding the finishing touches.
Gwilym Gold is an unassuming frontman, keeping the between song entertainment to a scratch of the head and a fiddle on the keyboard, so it’s a bloody good thing that his band have hooks in droves. A stirring ‘Magic Touch’ kicks things into gear, the buses thundering past the window while the head nodding starts in earnest – incidentally this is about the extent of the crowd reaction: free gig apparently doesn’t equate to over excitement tonight. ‘Another Universe’ runs into top gear, a closed unit of multiple harmony with the self-assuredness of a band who know they now only have to play such a small venue out of choice. New song ‘Bone Breaking Blues’ fits snugly alongside the favourites, a laid-back groove and trademark breakdown which threatens to outshine the extended outro on ‘Queen of the 21st Century’ which perhaps needs a bigger space to really soar...see, these are the questions The Golden Silvers now get to ask themselves, rather than who has to stand closest to the toilet door. Throw in ‘True Romance’, ‘Please Venus’ and ‘Arrows of Eros’ and it’s glaringly obvious why the NME have teddy picked these as future stars – get them some charisma and you’ve got yourself world beaters.
Music and geography, two disparate school subjects but in pop music often impossible to separate. The Kinks, The Clash, The Libertines; none could exist without London as a conception, a city seemingly populated with colourful characters in Waterloo/Hammersmith Palais/The Cally Road. But their London is a lie, a Dickens v Doherty mish-mash where all is either rose-tinted or rebelled against. Today the streets of London echo with fear, of unemployment, violence and ruin, not poetry, which is why The XX couldn’t have existed at any other time. Their haunting, yearning emptiness is the sound of the burning suburbs who know there are no jobs or prospects left for them to aspire to. ‘xx’ is a time-capsule for the era we are living through.
If Burial is an obvious reference point there is a reason for this; the four kids who make up The XX formed at London’s Eliot School which counts Joe Goddard (Hot Chip), Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and Burial as alumni, and there’s an invisible thread which links them all: a disrespect for set boundaries and a complete distancing from their peers. Make no mistake, The XX sound like nobody else – take the delivery on ‘Crystalised’ (whoever realised that the vocals of best friends Romy Madlet Croft and Oliver Sim could work is a fucking genius) which is pure Massive Attack R’n’B, but the bass is staunchly post-dubstep and the guitar lines intricate and minimal.
As a collection ‘xx’ demonstrates intricate shades of pavement grey; ‘Shelter’ is a requiem from the high-rises, the loss and longing palpable in the plea “can I make it better/with the lights turned off”, and the final, sweeping movement of ‘Islands’ is heart-breaking but dazzlingly beautiful. There’s enough room around each sound to comfortably live in; you lean forward and listen for the pay-off which hits you right in the stomach every time. Andbefore you know it’s under your skin, sound-tracking the night bus and the interminable journey home. Essential.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not barbeques, stifled Big Brother yawns or football transfer silly season that tells us summer is upon us, but the annual announcement of the Mercury Music Prize. This is bollocks, obviously, but it is nonetheless a handy mid-year catch-up with the state of British music. Last year saw Elbow claim the win, with Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Dizzee Rascal and Badly Drawn Boy all taking the prize in recent years; these albums seem to sum up a musical rotation - Klaxons = Nu Rave, the Arctic Monkeys juggernaut, Badly Drawn Boy during the acoustic wilderness - so it is perhaps unsurprising that solo female acts dominate this years list. But is the list much cop? Who's missing? And wasn't 'Glasvegas' released about the same time as 'Bohemian Rhapsody'? Let's take a look, using a handy points system...
Florence + The Machine - Lungs 3/5 Moderately irritating public school/East End slum princess Florence Welch has been on a steady rise since 'Kiss With A Fist' forced everyone to turn and take notice, but her love of end-of-sentence descents makes 'Lungs' a bit of a struggle to sit through in one go. Ladbrokes put Florence at 50/1 in January, which looks like a pretty sound flutter six months on. Spotify: 'Dog Days Are Over'
Glasvegas - Glasvegas4/5
The first band to sing in their own accent since The Proclaimers (according to the press) and the most hyped band since...the week before, but with good reason. A string of tidal wave singles and an awesome live show catapulted Glasvegas straight into the premier league, but there's no escaping the fact that the album ebbs away by the close. I've moved house twice since it was released; it just doesn't feel that relevant any more. Spotify: 'Geraldine'
Lisa Hannigan - See Sew2/5 "Charmingly idiosyncratic" - LA Times "Exquisitely Ethereal" - New York Times "Token Folkie" - NME
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires 4/5 The big sleeper hit of the year so far, released fairly quietly but buoyed by re-releases galore and the fact it's really quite good. Equal parts Brazillian carnival and diamond disco, Friendly Fires have won many friends by being the perfect late night festival band, and because singer Ed Macfarlane dances exclusively with his ass. Spotify: 'Strobe'
The Invisible - The Invisible 2/5 Blogger-friendly and just about sneaking through the cracks, dark-and-dancey The Invisible are something of an outside bet but could turn into this years Burial - from ignored to a sure-fire victor in a matter of days. Nothing too original going on here though... Spotify: 'London Girl'
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men 3/5 Pretty widely accepted as this years' (traditional) surprise addition, a record put together by three friends in a shed. Honestly - no idea. But on initial listens it's like a seabound Bon Iver which can't be bad. Spotify: 'Truth Only Smiles'
Led Bib - Sensible Shoes 2/5Yep, the jazz album which will sell a bilion times more albums because of the nomination, be vaguely credible in a coffee table kind of way until September, after which the band members will be chased out of jazz clubs across the land for selling out. Depressing really.
The Horrors - Primary Colours 5/5 If the eponymous debut by The Horrors was the ultimate example of all mouth, no trousers in all it's impotent shame then the follow-up is the absolute embodiment of force-fed humble pie. Gone are the sub-CBGBs goth posturings, replaced by a maelstrom of shoe-gazing muscle and super-intense timelessness. The best comeback since Lazarus etc, 'Primary Colours' sums up the gloom found in the six o'clock news and the prevailing shift towards introversion after a decade of celebrity over-expression, but proves that there's no such thing as a lost cause. Definitive, multi-layered and completely unexpected, it gets my vote. Spotify: 'Sea Within A Sea' Bat For Lashes - Two Suns 3/5 A casualty of the Klaxons year, Natasha Kahn's debut 'Fur & Gold' was widely belived to have been robbed by the multi-coloured Ballard obsessives, but I think 'Two Suns' is even better. Bjork vs Kate Bush in a cloud fight, this is dream music and gloriously out of step with what everyone else is producing. Well it worked for Antony and the Johnsons... Spotify: 'Daniel'
Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum 1/5 A slightly bizarre inclusion, coming just as the main population decide to embrace the Northern-wannabes while everyone else attempts to shrug them off as a misplaced adolescent man-crush. Oasis-lite, pints in the air and piss on the shoes, but perhaps with a flash of something more interesting hidden away. Just a flash, mind. Spotify: 'Underdog'
La Roux - La Roux 3/5 Is this the reason Little Boots was left off this years list? Er...probably. You've probably forgotten the really bad cover she did with Franz Ferdinand at the NME Awards, but I certainly haven't - a squealing quiff didn't shout 'writer of best British album' at the time to be honest. The singles have been an adrenaline shot to the face and the lightning-fast take-up of her Warehouse Project tickets suggests I'm missing something mega...much like with the Spiderman films. Spotify: 'I'm Not Your Toy'
Speech Dabelle - Speech Therapy 4/5 ...and finally the next album I'll be getting into, sounding somewhere near Portishead or something else Bristol and trippy. An album I wouldn't have tried if it wasn't for the Mercurys...which is the idea, yeah?
So after a tiny fanfare, here it is: Episode One of Pros and Cons. The idea behind Pros and Cons is a sporadic debate on subjects the participants might not truly believe in - the Pros of stationery traffic, or the Cons of The Beatles, for example. It's hopefully going to pop up slightly more regularly than occasionally but less frequently than often, from a different location each episode. In other words, big plans which we will struggle to maintain.
On a 'balmy' summer evening last week myself and a certain Andrew Jackson went down to the South Bank to record a brand new podcast, provisionally titled 'Pros and Cons'. It sounded really rather good (sound quality as much as actual content...) and should be appearing here in the coming week, so keep an eye out for that. Once I work out the editing. Heads up: it's got a killer theme tune. Antiques Roadshow eat your heart out.
One year on from the low-key launch of this site...nothing happened. Well, moving to London and getting a job happened. But now the fun starts...
No Robots is a haven for the new: new music, new TV, new film, new everything. I'm Harry, I live and work in London and I need to keep my brain working a year after graduation. This is what No Robots is for. Maintaining sanity.
Hello. I'm Harry and about 54 hours ago I finished university.
No university = spare time + rapid loss of brain cells = No Robots No Robots is for new music, music you will love completely for a short amount of time and music you will love for longer, as well as the things that make me tick. Like this: Post Numero Uno.
I genuinely still use Teletext, presumably making me one in a select crowd of about twenty. I check Teletext before the internetfor music news, seriously. It comes in tiny bite-size chunks and you can have it on in the background while you eat your cornflakes in the morning. Through uni I didn't have the time to sit and read the essays posted on Pitchfork, I just wanted to know what was happening so I could get on with my day. Maybe that'll change now I'm done, but somehow I doubt it.
The best thing about Teletext is that it doesn't drown news in indie posing. The problem with online music news is the pages of comments underneath - I want the news, not the lmfao lol brigade. With Teletext you get six colours and massive squares. Beautiful. PLUS you got to watch TV in the background. Amazing.
It's a simple fact that Teletext is what will remain when the internet breaks. No it hasn't got Facebook, but it does have cinema listings, holidays and the weather; back in the day it even had Bamboozle, the crazy press-the-coloured-buttons general knowledge quiz. But it also had 30 pages of film times, and if you missed the one you were after you were waiting half an hour for it to come back round. The new swish purple Teletext doesn't have these bizarre quirks, and - to be fair - it's surprising it's survived this long; why hasn't the internet taken it's place?
No Robots was going to look like Teletext but I realised I might be in the minority for a reason, so I outvoted myself. But the music that will be featured here is intended to be easily accessible and perfectly formed. Like Teletext.
