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Liam Bailey

Spotlight

Although many people know Liam Bailey from his appearance on Chase and Status’ grime/dance crossover hit ‘Blind Faith’, his solo material has a more traditional quality. Using almost entirely live instrumentation, he creates songs that are reminiscent of the heyday of Detroit Soul. Unsurprising then that the person who first championed his sound was Amy Winehouse, who released his first single on her label and produced one of the tracks on his eagerly awaited debut album Out Of The Shadows. Comparisons with the retro compositions of Michael Kiwanuka are inevitable – and they are well founded. Both have classic crooning voices and their records have an unmistakable, timeless production quality.

In November 2012 Liam put on a sold out show at the Union Chapel and bought the packed venue to a standing ovation, not once but twice. To end the show he performed a stripped back rendition of the aforementioned ‘Blind Faith’ featuring a Cello and his acoustic guitar, that could not have been more different from the thumping original…

Our personal favourite track is ‘Please Love Me’. Kicking off with a bass line that brings to mind The Coral’s classic ‘Dreaming of You’, it develops into something altogether more Motown, with horn led crescendos and lush instrumentation. His tenor vocals cut through to tell a classic love story; admittedly a story we’ve all heard before but why mess with the formula? One line seems particularly apt – “time is all we need” – and with time we predict that Liam Bailey will be the name on everybody’s lips. His album still has no official release date (frustratingly!) but if it’s half as good as tracks like ‘Please Love Me’ and ‘It’s Not The Same’ it will be worth the wait. It seems that the album has already been recorded, but for one reason or another the record company has cold feet. Hopefully his recent successes might warm those toes a little.

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Alis

Alis
It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but while the debut album from Alis received a fair amount of pre-release attention, barely anywhere seemed to bother actually reviewing it. When you listen to said record, "Hybrids in the Attic", it becomes even harder to understand. A collection of cleverly articulated tracks ranging from the trance-inducing vocal layering of 'Silver' to the dubstep prowl of 'Ox Garden', which develops into a techno gallop halfway through, it's a record that also contains its fair share of pop-friendly (or at least Rinse FM-friendly) moments - 'Before You Know' being one succulent example. Born Sabina Plamenova in Italy to a pair of Hungarian violinists, Alis first started performing music under the name Subeena, releasing on the peerless Planet Mu, performing at the Boiler Room, putting on a night at Corsica Studios and being comped by Surgeon on his Fabric mix. All of which, alongside the fact her main residences during this time have been Berlin and London, would appear to make her perfect Resident Advisor-fodder. There are parallels with the excellent Emika too (another who dwells on the Ber-Lon axis), playing with a similar mix of dubstep and minimal techno elements and revelling in the sonic precision of both genres. Perhaps the name-change disrupted some of the hype, or maybe "Hybrids..." got stranded in the album-release no man's land that is the festive period. Either way, listening to a track like 'Kalim's Revenge', which mixes Four Tet-style plinky techno with elements of acid house, you suspect that people won't be sleeping for long. Who the fuck is Alis? You'll find out soon enough...
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Spotlight

EP Address: Datassette, Sudan Archives, Mighty Lord Deathman and more…

We look back at some of the best EPs released over the summer, including debuts by Sudan Archives and Mighty Lord Deathman…

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