Exciting Times For Brighton Born Music

Doll and the Kicks - Photo by Mary Rhiannon Pryce

So time has come for me to write my first article for Brighton Fusion, a few days before our next Podcast goes live to our worldwide audience, which now regularly exceeds 300 listeners per show. This is all very exciting for me as I have had the dream to write articles about music for quite some time, but I have never had the portal available to me.

You might have noticed that there are a lot of bands in this beautiful sea-side city of ours and our show tries to highlight this as best as we can with over 90% of the music played on the last five shows coming from Brighton based bands.

There were times when bands, if they wanted to make it, moved to the big smoke and settled down in some small, filthy and overpriced house in, let’s say, Brixton. None of the major record companies ever sent their agents any further afield than the border that is the smoky ring of the M25. If you thought that your music was brilliant enough to deserve air time on the radio or nationwide sales of your albums, you had better got hold of some London gigs.

A lot of things have changed since these days and Brighton is making a big name for itself on the musical map. More and more bands decide to ditch their quest for a record deal and do their own releases. A brilliant example of this is Woodland Recordings which house such artists as The Great Park and The Diamond Family Archive. They press their own albums and they sell quicker than you can imagine.

Of course we do have bands from Brighton who are making it big. The Kooks for example who, even though they are not actually from Brighton, were based here and all met at Brighton Institute of Modern Music. The Levellers are another good example of home grown talent.

My insider tips for this year, should you not know about them already, would have to be /Passenger who, after a long tour in the States, are back in the studio to record the follow up album to their brilliant debut “Wicked Man’s Rest”, you can catch some of their b-sides on Penflick Podcast show #3 and #5. The second one is Doll and The Kicks. Doll and her band are playing tonight at the Brighton Coalition and it is free entry. Doors open at 10pm and DATK are on stage at 11pm, but get there early beacuse it is going to be a very busy night. My guess is that this gig will be one of the last small, and indeed free, gigs they’ll ever play. Their debut album is due for release in the near future and they embark on a massive tour supporting Morrissey starting in March. Myspace UK has also named them in their Top Ten Bands To Look Out For in 2009 list. If all goes well they will come in to the studio and do an acoustic session for us before they go out on tour and make it to super stardom. If you want a sneak pre-view of their upcoming single you can catch them on show #4.

Janice Long had them in for a live session on her show on Radio 2 just last week and my insider friends tell me that Janice is very excited about the band and that she was dancing around in the studio when the band played their songs.

Bands to look out for in the future are too many to mention, but never forget the brilliance of 12 Stone Toddler, Los Albertos, The Grams and Red Shark In Vegas. The latter which are doing a live session on the next podcast.

As always I would ask you to join our Facebook group, to receive regular updates about our show, and help us make the show even bigger and better than it has already become by sending invites to all your friends and send us suggestions for bands and for features for the show. For now, this is it from me, I am now going back to writing the score for an upcoming BBC show, then to sort out the playlist for Penflick Podcast #6 which will be aired next week.

/Milton

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