Two years ago, I ran a series of guest posts from people involved in Irish music featuring their top 5 Irish acts at that moment. This time around, I thought I’d shift the focus to international and ask a similar question – “Who are your top 5 new artists of 2011?”. Kicking off today and running into next week, musicians, bloggers, record shop owners, journalists, bookers and radio presenters will be answering that question.
Eoin Cregan is Bodytonic’s events booker, press guy and all-round nice guy. Here are his five essential new artists of 2011:
1. Lunice
I actually first saw Lunice play at Sonar 2010 and was blown away. However 2011 was the year he really stepped up both production & show wise. He has his own completely unique style (for the moment) blending bass heavy crunk hip-hop with the more “LA beat” sounds (to keep the heads happy), while demonstrating various hip-hop moves in front of the decks.
2. Koralleven
Every so often Sweden throws out some amazing talent, these guys being the latest. Hard to pin-point their exact style, I guess the words spacey, warm & sometime trippy indie, with a pop sensation.
3. Objekt
Objekt’s roots come from dubstep, having initially been signed to Appleblim’s Applepips label. Of late Objekt’s productions & DJ sets have become more and more techno tinged, pushing a deep chuggy industrial sound, however still retaining his ‘bass/dubstep’ elements.
4. Frank Ocean
One of the standout young new school R’n’B singers to come through this year, alongside The Weeknd. Over slow deep spacey productions, Frank’s vocals are soothing but sharp. He is also related to 2011’s most talked about hip-hop crew OFWGKTA. He had commercial success with his single ‘Novacane‘ and also put out the stunning 64 track Lonny Breaux mixtape, which I’m still making my way through.
5. Danny Brown
The first time I heard Danny Brown I was like WTF is this?! Crazy off kilter hip-hop production, off kilter flow and lyrics. He sounds like nobody else in hip-hop at the moment and I find it really refreshing.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
Great choices.
Danny Brown is magnificent.
“Objekt’s roots come from dubstep, having initially been signed to Appleblim’s Applepips label.”
Pretty much all of this sentence is untrue