Hometown: Southampton.
The lineup: Will Ozanne (music, vocals).
The background: You might assume from his alias that Will Ozanne is a 24-year-old from LA's Compton district, but he's not, he's from Britain's south coast. Although we say that, but there is an area in Southampton, where he's from, called Compton. This is not to be confused with Compton Bay off the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight – which incidentally Ozanne has named a song after (On Compton Bay) on his debut album, the Keychain Collection, due in February 2012. It's a down-tempo dance record full of recollections of places and sounds – and just stuff, really, including Tissues and Fivers, an actual title from the album that concerns items his grandmother's dog used to eat, and as such it has a similar quality of evocative electronica to Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children.
It was the Mercury-nominated Ghostpoet who first heard about Gang Colours. He invited him to remix his debut single Cash & Carry Me Home, then alerted Gilles Peterson, his boss at Brownswood Records, to the young producer, who began making beats aged 14 and was as in thrall, growing up, to the arthouse pop of Laurie Anderson as he was to the itchy twitch of UKG (local heroes Artful Dodger were a big influence). This summer, the label released Ozanne's debut EP, In Your Gut Like a Knife, and since then he's been busy making that album. It's a record of mournful James Blake-style vocals, dubstep beats and ambient piano, recorded live, so that it picks up random sounds – "anything from the creaking of the chair I'm sitting on to my mum hoovering in the other room," says Ozanne. A highly textured affair, the album is also full of clicks and cuts, glitches and bumps, to counterpoint the music's smoothly bruised blues. Oh, and it's remarkably, relentlessly slooooow. "Whenever I used to get an album, I'd always be drawn to the slower song," he explains. "Dizzee Rascal's Boy in da Corner – I loved that track Brand New Day, it was just really simple and quite emotive."
Hence, the torpid pace of opener Heavy Petting, which is our kind of chill/witch/dub/hip-hop/R&B mash with its mangled voices and sense of being haunted – by the past, people and memories. The sounds, the production, the general lushness are all pleasing, the piano playing is Satie-esque, and the little ticks and sonic tricks will delight anyone who still listens to music over headphones. Can we make this our fourth prog act on the trot this week? Alight at certain points on second track Forgive Me and it could be a prog band from 1974; then again, it could be a Mille Plateaux collection from 2004. But this isn't mere coldtronica – as titles such as I Don't Want You Calling suggest, there is heat behind the synthetic veneer. Meanwhile, Botley in Bloom takes you back to a childhood you never experienced, as does Rollo's Ivory Tale, with its puddle splashes and tweeting birds. No, not that kind of tweeting, silly.[source]
The lineup: Will Ozanne (music, vocals).
The background: You might assume from his alias that Will Ozanne is a 24-year-old from LA's Compton district, but he's not, he's from Britain's south coast. Although we say that, but there is an area in Southampton, where he's from, called Compton. This is not to be confused with Compton Bay off the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight – which incidentally Ozanne has named a song after (On Compton Bay) on his debut album, the Keychain Collection, due in February 2012. It's a down-tempo dance record full of recollections of places and sounds – and just stuff, really, including Tissues and Fivers, an actual title from the album that concerns items his grandmother's dog used to eat, and as such it has a similar quality of evocative electronica to Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children.
It was the Mercury-nominated Ghostpoet who first heard about Gang Colours. He invited him to remix his debut single Cash & Carry Me Home, then alerted Gilles Peterson, his boss at Brownswood Records, to the young producer, who began making beats aged 14 and was as in thrall, growing up, to the arthouse pop of Laurie Anderson as he was to the itchy twitch of UKG (local heroes Artful Dodger were a big influence). This summer, the label released Ozanne's debut EP, In Your Gut Like a Knife, and since then he's been busy making that album. It's a record of mournful James Blake-style vocals, dubstep beats and ambient piano, recorded live, so that it picks up random sounds – "anything from the creaking of the chair I'm sitting on to my mum hoovering in the other room," says Ozanne. A highly textured affair, the album is also full of clicks and cuts, glitches and bumps, to counterpoint the music's smoothly bruised blues. Oh, and it's remarkably, relentlessly slooooow. "Whenever I used to get an album, I'd always be drawn to the slower song," he explains. "Dizzee Rascal's Boy in da Corner – I loved that track Brand New Day, it was just really simple and quite emotive."
Hence, the torpid pace of opener Heavy Petting, which is our kind of chill/witch/dub/hip-hop/R&B mash with its mangled voices and sense of being haunted – by the past, people and memories. The sounds, the production, the general lushness are all pleasing, the piano playing is Satie-esque, and the little ticks and sonic tricks will delight anyone who still listens to music over headphones. Can we make this our fourth prog act on the trot this week? Alight at certain points on second track Forgive Me and it could be a prog band from 1974; then again, it could be a Mille Plateaux collection from 2004. But this isn't mere coldtronica – as titles such as I Don't Want You Calling suggest, there is heat behind the synthetic veneer. Meanwhile, Botley in Bloom takes you back to a childhood you never experienced, as does Rollo's Ivory Tale, with its puddle splashes and tweeting birds. No, not that kind of tweeting, silly.[source]
Wow !!! I like that pic.Love the feature and thanks for the post. sell my house
BalasHapus