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Sofar Creative 35-47 Bethnal Green Road London E1 6LA T: +44 (0)203 417 6539 E: info@sofarcreative.com

SC TREND REPORT #2

Sofar is a movement of secret pop-up gigs taking place in living rooms every day around the world. These carefully curated nights showcase the best emerging talent from over 40 cities in an intimate and spellbinding environment like no other standing at the forefront of what has been called a global phenomenon (The Times). Sofar Creative is the Talent and Licensing division of Sofar Sounds - using Sofars incredible and unique global A&R network of fans, artists and music professionals to both discover new emerging talent and monitor developing industry trends worldwide. This report is the second in a new series designed to provide insight and advice into the current UK trends in licensing music for advertising.

CURRENT TRENDS: SCANDINAVIAN POP

KEY NEW TRENDS: AESTHETIC REVIVALISM

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Icona Pop

Temples

A LAST THOUGHT: THE ENUNCIATION GAP

The rst Temples EP was - by design recorded entirely in analogue (that is, sound signals stored on tape as a continuous wave, as opposed to a digital step). More interestingly, the same can be said for the entirety of Daft Punks recent mega-release. This is a marked divergence from the duos traditional approach of digitalised sample beats - updating traditional disco funk with the pumping thrust of French House. This sort of retroism is of course nothing new, having been with us for well over a decade or so (see: The Strokes/Libertines, Jack White, Mark Ronson etc etc), and due to the comparable convenience of licensing a new artists we will no doubt see The Strypes on adverts sooner than The Yardbirds or Wilko Johnson. But this is a dangerous game to play. Music is about evoking and communicating, and pastiche becomes as such when it fails to bridge this enunciation gap. The trick then revivalism and cheap imitation. For example, which of the two is Random Access Memories? A) The ultimate artistic expression of a groups career nally awarded the opportunity to record the panoramic soundscape they always wanted to make. B) An indulgent derivative, reductio ad absurdum into the most overly referential elements of their sound palette. The answer may be too early to tell, but as ever will lie in the same place it always does: quality of songwriting. But great songwriting is paradoxical, being both easy to spot in the moment. This though is the question advertisers should be asking whenever deciding on a retro over a Retro track is the song actually any good? The question is far harder to answer than it might rst appear, but an audience will always reward you for giving them something they would not expect. Especially when theyve learnt to expect everything.

Blazing a trail through an early list including Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Girls and Glee in the US, to Sky Movies in the UK and eventually both Samsung and Microsoft worldwide, Icona Pops I Love It has grown to become one of the biggest sync tracks of the year (reaching 7 in the Billboard Hot 100, and scoring a UK Number 1 in the meantime). Proof if proof were needed of how an artists career can be successfully launched through a strategy of key commercial placements. That being said, a good groundwork has been well paved for such success, with Swedens biggest new producer duo benetting heavily from the

growing wave of cool, female fronted, alternative electro pop acts making their way down through the Baltics and across to the UK/ US. In a sound rst established by artists like The Knife, Austra, Lykke Li and Nikki and The Dove, weve seen a wholesale invasion from singers such as M (recently used in the new Kopparberg ad), Faye, Truls, Sirena, Kate Boy, Amanda Mair and Say Lou Lou. Ubiquitous in both the music blogs and beyond, these new female voices embrace the ice-topped clarity of that Scandinavian sound from ethereal whiteouts to booze fuelled sauna parties. And like a particularly serious snowstorm, expect them to stick around for some time yet

Elsewhere, the ever-present revivalist drive continues apace, with several sub-genres emerging over the past 3-6 months to again recapture those classic sounds of the late 60s and early 70s.

1. Disco Funk

As you may have heard, a couple of French producers recently released a rather successful record. Five years in the making, Daft Punks Random Access Memories has gone on to become the most streamed album of all time, bringing back disco funk to the masses in the process. Indeed, four to the oor beats, open hi-hats, syncopated electric bass and bouncing threenote chords seem to be everywhere with labels practically falling over themselves to pick up their very own Daft Punk v2 and capitalise on the moment. Whether that be newly formed acts (Tuxedo, Saint Pepsi, Goldroom, Body Language) or long in the tooth regulars suddenly nding themselves bang on trend (Escort, Breakbot Grum, Shake Aletti, Little Boots, Glass Candy, !!!, Lasertom) the pickings are rich. The new trend is not without precedent, having cropped up again and again over the past year in the underground anthems of acts like Todd Terje, Lindstrom and the young wonder kid Madeon. Even the most in demand DJs are now pledging allegiance to the ag look no further than the popularity of the Tweek-a-holic series from Numbers head-honcho Jackmaster. For the time being then, disco does not suck. The good news of course is that when it comes to licensing, a candy shop atmosphere prevails. But of revivalism, and cheap pastiche? And how to tell?

2. Psychedelia

With the analogue production values fuelling vintage guitar tones and Phil Spector wall of sound techniques; acid trips down Carnaby Street are back on the menu. Enter Temples from ah-hem Kettering with their psyched out blend of retro hallucinogenic pop and is Jacco Gardiner from Hoorn (its in Holland), again perfectly capturing that overgrown English garden sound perfected by Syd Barrett et al. It all strikes perhaps a note of regressivism, particularly when compared to the more forward looking neo-pyche records of the past couple of years (think: Tame Impala, Django Django etc).

KEY NAMES TO WATCH

Its never been not cool to cite Krautrock as an inuence with artists like Neu, Tangerine Dream, or Kraftwerk providing easy fodder to aspiring hipsters in their driving mix 4/4 rhythms, avante garde credibility and electro-rock synthesis. However, in several new acts emerging across the UK, that portentous namedropping is perhaps beginning to ring at least somewhat more true. New recordings from ex-indie popster Esser, Hackney hipsters East India Youth, Astral Patterns, Salfords GNOD or Brightons TRAAMS all stay true to that late Kraut sound, with genre staples Toy further employing their post-psyche talents foundations set down by The Horrors on their second album, Primary Colours four years ago.

3. Krautrock

Sivu - Better Man Than He Sofar London (#259)

NO - So Scared Sofar Los Angeles (#277)

JULY 2013

And keep an eye out for Marika Hackman - Cannibal Sofar London (#239) George Ezra - Angry Hill Sofar London (#221) Max Frost, Cyril Hahn, Joel Compass, The Orwells, Merchandise, PAWWS, The Weeks, Bipolar Sunshine, Money, Femme, Lorde, John Newman