Alas, we all know this is unlikely to be the case. New Years Eve, unfortunately, does not act as a cast iron door, muffling out those musical undesirables that previously haunted the airwaves. As much as we enjoy the thought of slamming a door, hard and fast, right in Cher Lloyd’s stupid face, it just won’t happen.
We can’t promise that during 2012 you won’t be hooked up to your weekly X-Factor drip and you’ll still probably neck alcopops as you stumble along to the sounds of a ‘Swagger Jagger’ remix in your debauched drinking establishment of choice. We also can’t change what is already written in stone; Madon-, we mean Lady Gaga, will still dominate the charts. Until ITV responds to our constant emails asking for a Vision Talent Show, and then we somehow attract a TV audience of eight million viewers every week, we won’t change mainstream tastes. Fear not. For what Vision can offer is predictions for which new, exciting musical tastes will arise this year. Yay!
Much of what last year offered will still dominate the coming months. For the electronic genres, though, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Looking for an answer to the explosion of Dubstep, a force which polarised music fans between love and hate, a myriad of productions quietly began to redefine the boundaries of what it meant to be defined as ‘electronic’. Crossovers, genre meshing and sampling have had a mini revival which we expect to go stratospheric this year.
R&B is as fresh as it has been since the mid 1990s, due to the hard work of North American producers and vocalists, fighting to make sure their genre isn’t killed off by an unfortunate recent association with crass house music.
Expect music to respond more and more to the contemporaneous instability of global political and economic situations, in ways which it never has before. Marginalised artists often have the most to say, those in neo-folk, soul, and East Coast U.S. Rap are making us all question if the ways in which we live are sustainable, in both an emotional and practical sense.
In response to these new directions we have picked five (relatively new) artists we believe symbolise the latest in innovation and leadership on the musical scene.
Beth Jeans Houghton
Listen to: ‘I Will Return I Promise’
Beth Jeans Houghton is the proud owner of a fine array of wigs and some disturbing cover art; she’s an extravaganza of bad taste. The Newcastle Upon Tyne singer/songwriter has been hovering under the radar for years, gradually accumulating fans with flamboyant support slots for King Creosote, Tunng and Bon Iver. With her much awaited debut finally appearing this February, fingers crossed 2012 will be the year Houghton’s splendid, sample heavy folkadelia gathers some mainstream attention. We’re enchanted by this fine-boned eccentric whose Vashti Bunyan lilt and charming, meandering folk songs make her far stranger and more interesting than her southern kitchen sink nu-folk contemporaries. Houghton’s music is sprawling and gloriously strange, weaving irresistibly transcendent tendrils around anyone lucky enough to catch her live.
Lana Del Rey
Listen to: ‘Born to Die’
With new album Born to Die due to be released at the end of January, it’s safe to say 2012 will be a big year for American singer Lana Del Rey. Known for her trademark pout and deep, sultry voice, she won the accolade ‘Next Big Thing’ at the Q awards, after the viral success of ‘Video Games’. With her sexy style and controversial opinions she’s captured our interest. Not afraid of the risque, her music videos are evidence of why we’re so eager for whatever comes next. Often compared to Nancy Sinatra, she exudes an unusual maturity, setting her far above her contemporaries.
Mele
Listen to: ‘Beamer’
This young Liverpudlian producer has been making larger and larger splashes in the musical ocean, catching the attention of much bigger fishes (Toddla T, Major Lazer, Annie Mac etc.) all of whom want a bite of what he’s got to offer. Seemingly possessing an encyclopaedic knowledge of every musical genre (the decent ones anyway): his DJ sets have wowed, reaching prominence for smashing apart the famed Boiler Room Podcasts (download for free on iTunes.) What impresses most though is his sensitivity to the fast paced, multifarious nature of contemporary culture, somehow capturing this within his sound through his hip-hop sampling; bass tampering and wiggly wiggle. Expect huge things from Melé this year as he uses the parameters of acid house and hip-hop to gather together everything inbetween.
The Weeknd
Listen to: ‘Thursday’
This brainchild of Abel Tesfaye, who performs and produces under the pseudonym ‘The Weeknd’, is everything that is good about about R&B right now. His fanbase exploded last year after giving away his album House of Balloons for free in March, quickly followed by the even more popular ‘Thursday’. In December he gave away Echoes of Silence, the third part of his 2011 album trilogy, causing his official website to crash. It isn’t just his rapidly multiplying fanbase that has impressed us at Vision. The softly-softly approach he has taken to remoulding the parameters of R&B, leading both Lady Gaga and Florence and the Machine to commission him for remixes of their work, means the hardest of hard knocks are sobbing . Even Drake worked with him on ‘Take Care’. Amazing! With another album promised this year, as well as a Coachella slot, The Weeknd is destined for a stratospheric rise.
Kendrick Lamar
Listen to: ‘Hiii Power’
“You know we are crack babies ‘cus we were born in the eighties,” raps Kendrick, falling into nostalgic solipsism. His mixtape Section 80 is littered with them. References to the inherent contradictions, vast differences in wealth and rife sexism within his country of birth, the rather unmarvelous United States, make him the perfect vehicle to carry our own reservations about contemporary global conditions. Born in Compton at the height of racial tension and vast urban poverty in the late eighties, it is obvious Kendrick has a chip on a shoulder and is going to use his “hip-hop to hypnotise” people into at least considering some of his harsh truths. With an ear for a good production, garnering recent praise from Pharrel Williams, his pragmatic flow and political pontificating should reach a wider audience this year. We hope.