Abida Parveen

One of the foremost exponents of Sufi music in the world, Abida Parveen is notable for branching out from traditional feminine roles in eastern music such as kafi and ghazal in to usually more male dominated areas such as the gawwali. It’s a shift she carries off with ease however, aided by a particularly, inarguably stunning voice and a vivid musical imagination which have helped her achieve legendary status in her native Pakistan. Her songs, such is the genre, contain many plaintive offerings to God – fitting, given that her voice is strong enough to have even non believers scratching their chins.

 
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Archeo Price

 
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Barefoot

Barefoot Confessor don’t like dance music. They don’t like house, techno, nothing. In fact, they claim to have only enjoyed the work of Amy Winehouse and Kings of Leon in the past five whole years. But they seem to like their own music rather a lot, and offer a decent list of reasons why you should too. First off, the influences – everything from Michael Jackson to Morrissey. Then, there’s the sheer, bloody minded ambition – anything less than the true stardom that afforded that pair will not do. What’s exciting rather than annoying and brash about this is the genuine air you get that they’ll remain true to artistic goals, in the same way that their heroes did when they were at their best, rather than chasing the evil dollar for its own sake. Best of luck to them.

 
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Barrington Levy

There’s a lot of competition for the title of Jamaica’s greatest singer of all time, but Barrington Levy, feisty fellow that he is, reckons he claims it. To be fair, his case is a strong one – his late eighties work with producer John Screw saw him become not only beloved of his homeland, but the planet at large – ‘Broader Than Broadway’, the lad’s greatest hits collection, is one of the finest collections of reggae one could own. Reggae stations and dancehalls throughout the world, especially for the past few decades – here is your king.

 
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Belief

A name like that just nullifies the effect of whether an artist is ‘keeping it real’ or in it for the right reasons right from the start, doesn’t it? Clever fella, Belief – he’s one of the few modern rappers who acknowledge the root of their craft in working class American folk music, of a sort. And he wants hits, but not at the expense of his past, his roots, his beliefs, if you will. That ambition, we reckon, should be admired, as should the music on 'Dedication', the debut record the boy’s own label Worker B Records will unleash in to the wild imminently. It’s a celebration of friendship, of innovative soundscaping, of hip hop as art.

 
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Bill Monroe & his Blue Grass Boys

Bill Monroe invented bluegrass, and we can back that up with facts – the whole genre derives its title from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, themselves taking their name from a peculiar ecological feature of their native Kentucky. A career that spanned over six decades began by hassling every radio station he could, often in person, to play his tunes, but soon saw him deemed an innovator and spearhead of a bluegrass movement started in the mid forties that shows no signs of petering out. The breakneck tempos, crazy banjo breaks and sophisticated harmonies of Bill Monroe have long been imitated in bluegrass, but rarely, if ever, have they been bettered.

 
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Bob Neuwirth

Unlike so many singer songwriters who would build an entire career on the acoustic guitar and mumblings (alright, moanings) about girls, Bob Neuwirth is admirably far less short sighted. Heck, we’re not even sure if the term singer songwriter does a guy who’s also a documentary producer, painter and improviser any justice at all. His roots are in the blues, but his history is a wide and varied one, including words like ‘Woodstock’, ‘Dylan’ and ‘The Velvet Underground’ alongside others such as ‘brilliant’, ‘pioneer’ and ‘inspiration’. It’s a tale worth brushing up on.

 
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Boo Hewerdine

Touring tycoon Boo Hewerdine is a fan of the road, and on scratching his music you can value why. His folk pop is so approachable it transcends onto any listening pallet with alleviation, unwinding into a compelling choral suggestion which knocks into place at all the precise moments. Earnestness is something Boo has engulfed with his tunes, offering nothing shy of honesty and a crack at what songwriters such as Andy Gower strive for; that complacency for the everyman, spelled out with articulation that instigates as much as overwhelms. Plain cut folk pop, Hewerdine is a fine standard for troubadours making poetry led life on the road.

 
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Candi Staton

Friend of Groove Armada, and disco legend, Candi Staton is the kind of voice you’d expect to, and love to, hear crop up all over the shop with a savour of character in her veins, you truthfully can’t get enough. Immediately delectable, leaving Tina Turner gasping, Staton is a true icon that has seen the crest of the Billboard chart for three decades, with her classic ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ long standing as a dance archetypal. With the balance of soul legends and an ear for a lyric and beat, its tracks like ‘You’ve Got The Love’ that prove her music actually is inexhaustibly limitless. An energy all of her own, Candi is a shufti at music perfection; a genus experimenter, she seems to always be moving into new sounds with a passion, her eyes well and truly open to the revolutions around her. The Madonna of soul, this is a woman you need to hear.

 
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Dry Riser

Shh! Dry Riser are in the studio, recording stuff, and we don’t want to put them off. We’re quite excited to hear how an EP equally influenced by the guitar histrionics of Muse’s Matt Bellamy and brilliant quirk pop of everyone’s favourite Scientologist – no, not Tom and Katie, Beck! – turns out. Dry Riser’s drummer is called Jack Daniels, which pretty much guarantees rock and roll superstardom in itself, but a hard slog around many of the UK’s major cities supporting everyone from Boy Kill Boy to the Crimea shan’t have hindered proceedings. Now, let’s leave them to it – these boys are busy.

 
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George Benson

An accomplished jazz guitarist with a vaudevillian flair, George Benson is maybe best known for a collection of tracks that he’s rented his voice to over the years but one mustn’t forget his range of jazz instrumentals. Scatty, hesitant and graduate, his songs often taunt the listener with solemn bass lines and catchy piano walks that take the sound onto a playground of brown-bottled stupefaction. The anticipation of his songs make them a little too dark, even surreal, to be placated as anything towards dinner-jazz, the harshness of his keys belting out a resonance that would be homely telling a story in the background of classic filmstrips.

 
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James/Dean

Not to be confused with actor and screen icon James Dean, James/Dean is actually a Nashville duo making contemporary country music that tenders a candle to Bruce Springsteen and, subliminally, a juddering fist at ‘Always The Sun’ era Stranglers. Their 2001 ‘Over the Edge’ album is animate with towering pop tracks that are as dreamingly amenable as they are vividly written and carried off with vocal elegance. A radiant exemplar of skilfully conceived and ridden songs, James/Dean transmit the vernacular variety that should find them as cream rising to the top of country music; already critically commended, their albums being tremendously received, they’re a band to somewhat talk about.

 
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Kool and the Gang

Kool is a guy called Robert Bell, and his Gang are a close knit bunch of some of the most talented R&B / disco / funk / whatever, so long as I can dance to it music that the world has ever known – and amongst the most successful, too. During their mid nineties hey day, they managed to provide the funk movement with a degree of credibility other bands could not provide – quite simply, not one critic could deny that this band could really play. Most of the world found it difficult to refrain from dancing to the likes of ‘Ladies Night’ and ‘Celebrate’, and as any DJ will tell you, that’s an affliction the planet gladly suffers from to this day.

 
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Lowell Fulson

With maybe the exception of T-Bone Walker, Fulson (also known as Fullsom and Fulsom) was the most momentous character on the 1940s and 50s West Coast blues scene. His music was very much guitar led, as apposed to the long-established piano or sax orientated sound of the time, the shift being ahead of the arc in every way; the sharp dip of his riffs being a now commonplace in free blues. Listening to the music of Lowell Fulson you can get a grasp of what grassroots blues should sound like; gracefully rough while stretching across into jazz just enough to touch on unfastened melodies and its sagacity in lack of restrictions.

 
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Michael Packer Blues Band

Gigging since 15, forming legendary group Papa Nebo at 19 and still making great music some 58 years on, it’s fair to say Michael Packer has lived the blues alright. Not that he’s been upset the whole time, you understand – it’s difficult not to have a smile on your face when you spend the best part of a decade in a band called Free Beer. Now the leader of his own blues troupe, the imaginatively titled Michael Packer Blues Band (no nonsense, we’ll give it that, but it’s hardly Free Beer is it?) this particular calling for Packer’s work is about to release its eighth album. And we predict it won’t be their last.

 
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Nana Vasconcelos

The music of Nana Vasconcelos is so far isolated from what we’ve accepted as ‘world music’ in the west that it’s a real treat to discover. A fitting honour to grassroots Brazilian sounds, the music is bare bones minimalistic tribal rants played on rudimentary instruments that comfortably break in behind Nana’s vocative vocal. Not so much songs as they are sounds, this collection will give an authentic example of classic Latino music, ‘Aboios’ superlatively showing what makes Vasconcelos so dependently brilliant, throwing arms around his ancestral hymns for a classic tizzy of compositions.

 
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Pete Zimmer

 
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Princess Superstar

This youthful talent is certainly of a contemporary twist enough to make splashing bounds into the belts of the suggestible. A slanted concord with Salt n Pepa and New Young Pony Club, this act has a frolicsome wheel of pop behind her tunes which push them into a spotlight that in today’s cross-genre madhouse will result in an optimistic reception from clubs and record spinners. Catchy and electrifying, her vibrant lyrics go with a riding beat and jovial clatter so well it’s almost likable to a mid-album Madonna. A satisfactory look at nostalgia that doesn’t lend to being cheesy or inane, Princess Superstar has a valiant song load that could trip you over at any moment of a happy summer afternoon.

 
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Pureape

 
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Souls She Said

Any band that can play rock music and retain a degree of epic British modishness is a rare and exciting thing, so rare in fact when you hear Souls She Said you’ll be reaching for the Jimmy Eat World far more lackadaisically. A harebrained Die! Die! Die! throw at the austerity of dark punk they can deliver a pop sweep from under the bedroom covers of heaving, writhing and mesmeric guitars that blind you, noticeably on ‘Riverbloat’ and ‘Sunken City’. Engagement is smeared across their catalogue, backdoor adverts for 6-string digression and aptitude for the insane; half chirpy indie rock and half down and out psychedelia, Soul She Said are a forceful explosion onto the concrete that any duo should be euphoric to find among their accomplishments.

 
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Stratos

 
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The Future

A few band names scream ambition in a way that, say, The Kooks just doesn’t. The Future is one of those names, and The Future are one of those bands. Whilst their moniker might suggest forward thinking, there’s actually a debt owed to past synth pop groups such as the Eurythmics, but they’ve studied their mentors well enough to impress the likes of producers Alan Moulder and Flood (famed for work with the likes of PJ Harvey and U2), the collaborations giving the duo an air that is almost, warmingly, cinematic.

 
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The Murders

 
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Wyze Sonz Entertainment

These young rappers, who call themselves Wyze Sonz and form Wyze Sonz Entertainment, are bringing a new sound to the industry… More and more changes are occurring in music, forming new trends among listeners and slowly destroying the old sound structures that belong to older generations. Nowadays we witness great fusions and innovations in hip-hop, and every new artist of the genre is trying to do his/her best to be different and loved by the audience. Wyze Sonz (actually there’s also a ‘daughter’ in the project), have united under Wyze Sonz Entertainment or Wyze Sonz Cartel and are bringing their fresh ideas to the industry. With their unique rhyme-technique of street-tale expression and reggae influenced instrumentals, Wyze Sonz will be appreciated by any hip-hop admirer.

 
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