We enjoyed Basement Fever’s company so much last week, we’ve invited another of our favourite music sites, and may we say, one of the prettiest sites on the net, over for tea, biscuits and awesome new music. Today, The 405’s New Music Team will be bringing you three of their favourite artists throughout the day. Here’s the third and final one (and our favourite!):

Saskatchewan

Orlando based five piece, Saskatchewan reach out through a thick hazy fog and bring you with them into the syrupy dream world that they’ve seamlessly glued together. It’s a world constructed of haunting organ riffs, reverb soaked oohs and ahhs, and understated guitar lines that push everything forward.

Do you ever have dreams where you know something’s not quite right? Maybe you’re walking through an ethereal forest at night, following a faint glow you can’t seem to reach. You feel as though something bad might happen at any moment but it never does. There is a certain paranoid and eerie edge to Saskatchewan’s dream world at times that captures this feeling perfectly, particularly on the A side to their latest single, Skinny Dipping.

The band is currently working on their debut full length which they are expecting to have ready for release in early 2012. In the meantime you can go check out the handful of singles that they have released over the past year!

And so, we wrap up The 405′s blog takeover. If you’ve enjoyed it, make your way across and bookmark their site. It’s a must for new-music lovers.

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The 405 hijack

UK based online Music/Art/Film magazine dedicated to exposing the most exciting new talent from across the world.

We enjoyed Basement Fever’s company so much last week, we’ve invited another of our favourite music sites, and may we say, one of the prettiest sites on the net, over for tea, biscuits and awesome new music. Today, The 405’s New Music Team will be bringing you three of their favourite artists throughout the day. We’ve had the first. Here’s the second:

Little Racer

You can find all kinds of wonderful music in New York. Very rarely does NY disappoint with its creative exports. And with Brooklyn’s new alt rockers, Little Racer, it looks like the city has produced another gem.

Little Racer combine all the grit and basement youth of The Strokes and Garage et al with other genres such as soul, surf, R&B and pop – the result, something amazing. The three-piece record, produce and mix all their sounds themselves in a modest home set-up.

They were recently signed up by the fabulous label Young & Lost Club and have just dropped a free download via the label. A single is expected to drop soon alongside a bunch of London shows.

So, that’s the second post from The 405. If you missed this morning’s, make your way over here and if you stick around we’ve got another one on its way… If you’re enjoying yourself, head over to The 405 itself..

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The 405 hijack

UK based online Music/Art/Film magazine dedicated to exposing the most exciting new talent from across the world.

We enjoyed Basement Fever‘s company so much last week, we’ve invited another of our favourite music sites, and may we say, one of the prettiest sites on the net, over for tea, biscuits and awesome new music. Today, The 405‘s New Music Team will be bringing you three of their favourite artists throughout the day. First up:

Slow Down, Molasses.

Canada is well renowned for producing folk-pop collectives bursting with fantastic pop songs and, well, band members. If Slow Down, Molasses are anything to go by, such a reputation is set to last.

The band’s music, self-described as ‘folk drone-pop’, is a delicate, brooding mix of striking instrumentation and stunning melodies, the result of which is nothing short of beautiful.

Despite the obvious logistical difficulty of touring, the Slow Down, Molasses seven piece recently made it over to UK shores to beguile British audiences with their intense, live performance.

Check out more from Slow Down, Molasses at their amazingtunes.com profile.

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The 405 hijack

UK based online Music/Art/Film magazine dedicated to exposing the most exciting new talent from across the world.

Influential blog, Basement Fever, hijacks amazingtunes.com today with three musical gems for you! Your pensmith is founder, Jake May. Just over a year old (the blog, not Jake), it’s his platform for sharing some of the best new music from the UK and beyond that he stumbles upon. Third and final tip:

Pandr Eyez

Like those ‘Escape To The Country’ type programmes, my third and final selection is what we’ll call THE WILDCARD. (Did you that sense of excitement make its way to you there? I hope so.)

Not WILD in the sense that the band were in fact formerly a water tower – converted into living accommodation with the latest green technologies to become an environmentally friendly home and economically sensible investment – but in the sense that I only first heard them last week. Okay so that’s actually a bit at TAME but, please, forgive me?

Pandr Eyez are a boy-girl duo from London making music that will probably have words like “rad”, “fresh”, and “slick” chucked at it, and if I myself was a new genre inventor I might suggest RnBgothgaze, or something equally as peculiar. The fact of the matter is that they’re making interesting music and writing good songs. Songs that are dark yet exciting; experimental yet listenable; ‘goth’ yet ‘pop’. Or something like that.

Keep an eye on these over the next few weeks and months, and watch out for an upcoming EP out through Cascine. In the mean-time feel free to cast an eye over the likes of even more artists, like: YRRS, Tashaki Miyaki, Gorgeous Bully, Halls, Bos Angeles, YOOFS, Gum, Crushed Beaks, and Dolfinz.

So that’s it for the Basement Fever hijack. If you enjoyed Jake’s musings there’s plenty more at his site. Make your way over. We’ll have more blog hijacks for you soon.

Influential blog, Basement Fever, hijacks amazingtunes.com today with three musical gems for you! Your pensmith is founder, Jake May. Just over a year old (the blog, not Jake), it’s his platform for sharing some of the best new music from the UK and beyond that he stumbles upon. Second tip:

Mozam Beaks

The point of music blogging, most would argue, is to push new music; to help the smaller acts to get some of the success that bloggers feel they deserve. But sometimes I struggle to let go of the past – and Mozam Beaks is an artist that I’ve been pushing for a good few months that people still haven’t latched on to quite as much as I think they ought to. Perhaps a little naively (and perhaps even somewhat maniacally), I’m hopeful that one day – if I keep shouting enough – they might start paying attention.

It’s a good cause to keep shouting about though, I think at least. Mozam Beaks is the work of one guy from Boise, Idaho, and he’s been making what is in my opinion some of the most interesting and original music of the last year or so. Difficult to categorise, Mozam Beaks brings together a wide range of sounds that really shouldn’t work together (think prog-rock-type guitar solos combined varyingly with disco-ish bass and synth lines, bongos, elevator-style piano, and even sampled bird sounds) – but that somehow really, really does.

It’s ambitious, it’s interesting, and it’s really enjoyable – and one day he’ll be bigger than Lady Gaga*.

*Probably not true.

That’s the second hijack from Jake and Basement Fever, if you missed this morning’s, make your way over here and if you stick around we’ve got another one on its way.

Influential blog, Basement Fever, hijacks amazingtunes.com today with three musical gems for you! Your pensmith is founder, Jake May. Just over a year old (the blog, not Jake), it’s his platform for sharing some of the best new music from the UK and beyond that he stumbles upon. First tip:

Joanna Gruesome

A five-piece formed relatively recently in Cardiff, don’t let Joanna Gruesome‘s pun name fool you – they are a band to be taken seriously; writing songs with genuine heart and with an honest love for the sounds they are making.

Influenced quite clearly by the twee lo-fi 90s scene (they themselves reference Beat Happening and The Cherry Smash as bands they’re fond of – as well as noisier acts like My Bloody Valentine and Galaxie 500) the band write pop songs, but with melodies buried deep below layers of distortion. Although it’s something that has been done before, and even quite recently (bands like Yuck and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart might spring to mind), it’s by no means a gimmick or for them to fit into some kind of scene. The group are genuine fans of DIY, recording their debut EP (downloadable for free on bandcamp now, and being officially released on Art is Hard soon) in the garage of their friend and sometimes stand-in drummer, hence the somewhat scruffy sound of their songs.

Their lo-fidelity sound, though not making their songs the most suited to the ears of the nation nor the radio, can work in their favour too. That listeners have to work hard to find the tunefulness of each song is a characteristic meaning songs reveal their beauty slowly with each and every listen being a rewarding one, with new guitar lines appearing that you might not have noticed previously, perhaps.

The noisy nature of their music might mean that the band are unlikely to ever win over the nation, but they needn’t worry – my heart is all theirs.

Check back later for more new music tips from Jake and Basement Fever. In the meantime, make your way to the blog itself!