Vanbot - Vanbot
Between the ease of instant album listening through Spotify and the vast amounts of data last.fm and amazon have on my listening habits, this has been the first year when I've actually started making successful discoveries of artists I'd never heard of through algorithms. Sister Crayon doing Bat For Lashes/Glasser type alt-pop for instance.
Vanbot is both the biggest success of last.fm's recommendations for the year and kind of the easiest - it was recommended on the basis that I listen to Robyn a lot and 'if you like Robyn, you'll like Vanbot' doesn't seem likely to be a contentious statement. At least, if rather than the Robyn of "Konichiwa Bitches" or "Fembot" you prefer the Robyn of "With Every Heartbeat" and "Dancing on my Own" and "Hang With Me", of synth-pop filled with emotion and dance energy until the two become indistinguishable. With songs like the fizzy abandonment pop of "By the Side of this Road", and the chilly "Bitter is the Sweetest Part" (if ever there was a summary in one title...), that's very much the territory Vanbot is sharing
Vanbot is one Ester Ideskog, as the Paypal payment for my CD copy of the album went to - this is clearly a small scale enterprise. That makes it all the more impressive that the music frequently sounds so huge - the colossal beats of "Make Me, Break Me", the building layers of sound in "Ringing" before it collapses into the saddest of soft synth breakdowns at the end, the embracing washes of sound on "Safe By the Numbers". There's always a danger in getting closed into ever decreasing genre spaces if you only listen to things which sound like stuff you already like, so it won't be the only thing I listen to but if it's done as well as this I would be very happy to hear more like Vanbot.
No comments:
Post a Comment