Happy Friday! It’s time to choose MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week!
This is a round-up of the best global bands we found this week. You have a week, until next Friday morning at 9 a.m. USA Eastern Standard Time to vote for your favorite new artist on MTV Iggy, using the bottom poll!
The band with the most votes will be have prime real estate on MTVIggy.com this week, along with a tell-all interview!
Have fun and good luck!
Kuhrye-oo
Photo Courtesy of the artist
Kuhrye-oo, from Montreal, impressed earlier this year with his self-titled debut EP from UNO NYC, which chopped up r&b, drum’n’bass, and subterranean synth, yielding a beauty that bordered on poetic. The man behind the music is Calvin McElroy, a member of Montreal’s Born Gold, as well as a member of Grimes’ band. But for his solo work, he ditches the hyper-glitch of Born Gold, for a more soulful, even melancholy vibe.
Nazarenes
Photo Courtesy of the artist
Nazarenes record passionately spiritual reggae music. The Ethiopian band has a spirit that haunts their songs and a strangely cool fire when they sing together. And when they do it in the ancient Ethiopian language called Ge’ez it can induce chills. Their jams bubble with dub heat or gleam with vintage horns. Sometimes both. On the stand-out track “The Lord Said” the brothers bring a late ’70s soul feel into their reverie, an addition that somehow makes it sound even more timeless.
Gay Anniversary
Photo courtesy of Slovenly Records/Credit: Natali Papadaki
Gay Anniversary, hailing from Greece, usually barreling along at ’80s hardcore speed with shout-y vocals reminiscent of that era but their sound is fueled by distortion, noise and a generally bugged-out sensibility that has more in common with garage punk. The album, New In Class,oscillates uncontrollably between very violent garage and really weird hardcore. (Weird hardcore has always been with us, of course, but bands like Gay Anniversary make me think we need to start calling it that more, to coral it, for safety’s sake.) Corrosive materials should be clearly labelled.
Helado Negro
Photo Courtesy of the artist
Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange) has cropped up under different monikers, usually sticking to experimental, quirky, understated soundscape tinker music — as well as some sculpting. The Brooklyn artist’s most current, lasting title however is Helado Negro, or “black ice cream,” and the name has made the biggest internet footprint of them all. His 2011 solo album Canta Lechuza or “owl sings,” aptly titled because much of the album was derived from field recordings surrounding Lange’s Connecticut cabin hideout. The whole package was soothing to its core.
Caravan Palace
Photo Courtesy of the artist
Caravan Palace put out their first album in 2008, accompanied by a clever stop-motion music video for the single “Jolie Coquine” in which cardboard cutouts have an old-school swinging dance party. The Parisian band, followed it up with a second album, like Panic, earlier this year, which takes the sound deeper into hard electronic realm, from the glitchy analog synths of “Dramaphone” to the Justice-worthy bassline in “Clash.” In concert, the band plays live clarinets, violins, guitars, and vibraphones alongside fat and funky bass synthesizers and electronic drum pads.
Voting Booth!