KYTES – Mister Burns
Similar artists: foals, phoenix, two door cinema club, alt-j, the wombats, little comets, metronomy
Genres: Indietronica, Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Almost all musicians want the same things. This makes it extremely easy for music labels to know what to offer them. It’s easy to negotiate when you know what the opposition is set to demand.
Most alternative musicians want mainstream success. Few will volunteer to remain strictly an underground proposition. This kind of success ought to mean money, fame, and the opportunity to play in front of hordes of people.
Unless they are established names, bands find their largest audiences on festival stages. But can any type of music be used to entertain that kind of group of people? Does experimental jazz-rock tickle the fancy of beer-drinking crowds soaked in the summer sun?
KYTES’ Mister Burns approximates the sound of festival-friendly indie-pop. It’s danceable, lite, youthful music. It’s as fizzy as anything you may find in the charts and just as sweet. But it’s made by people who insist on using guitars for their pop confections. And overall, it is the ideal sound for folks who demand to play in front of thousands of festival-goers.
Lazy Queen – Option to Nothing
Genre: Punk, Grunge
Some of the best songs take mere minutes to be written. Sure, it all depends on the writer and an awful lot on the genre. Leonard Cohen confessed to Bob Dylan that it would take him several years to complete a song. Dylan replied that it usually takes him a few minutes.
When it comes to loud guitar music, songwriters ought to trust their first idea. It’s usually the best. It’s usually the one that sounds most natural. And sounding loose, free, and natural are things that audiences instinctively understand and towards which they react.
You’ll be happy to know that regardless of the decades that have elapsed since the start of rock n’ roll it’s just as difficult to come up with this kind of sound. Armies of writers are employed, occasionally, to craft this for music labels. They usually come back empty-handed.
Lazy Queen’s Option to Nothing sounds revved-up and manic. It’s a sound built with Bleach-era Nirvana as a reference point. It’s meant to thrill you as much as it sounds like it’s thrilling the musicians making it. It’s a combative, destructive rock, and we wouldn’t want anything different.