Last year Raj and I went to The Great Escape in Brightonfor the first time. It was a super, fun experience for us having the chance to check out a variety of emerging electronic pop artists, and one that we hoped to repeat in the future. Personal commitments, unfortunately, meant we couldn’t attend the festival this year. However, my absence hasn’t dulled my enthusiasm for Europe’s biggest annual showcase of up-and-coming new music talent. As such, I have been keeping a keen eye on a selection of newcomers via the festival app, whose music seemed interesting to me. I thought I’d write about the best of them, all the same. If there was one thing I regretted missing out on during our trip down to the festival last year, it was that I didn’t get to see any Australian acts. The Aussie’s were again, represented at this year’s festival by some, excellent newcomers and I have become pretty interested in two of them, G Flip (who I have already written about) and Haiku Hands.
Melbourne and Sydney natives Haiku Hands are bringing the left-of-field pop vibes to the fore. The collective’s track “Not About You” has been kicking around for about six months, it’s a nice slice of quirky pop imagining that’s highly rhythmically, fashioned and buzzy. Styled with the kind of talk-sing, lyrics, and similarly oozing with the punchy singing style made cool by Janet Planet, from fellow Aussie party band Confidence Man. The reason I chose to wait before writing about the band is that the debut track, while good, feels in a way, quite gimmicky. I’ve wanted to see how far they were going to push this angle, prior to the quirky modernity wearing off.
I learned more about the band from the follow-up release “Jupiter“, which is far less rhythmically driven than it’s predecessor, but by no means lacking a similarly catchy, energetic style. Swapping-out percussion elements for the strokes of indie-pop guitars means there is a real, alt-pop edge which cuts through the dance stylised melodic gaze of the track. People who have caught Haiku Hands live are saying, they bring the moves to the party. The music seems to have an unrelenting, thirst for being diverse, blurring genres and all that. Again, I am curious, of where they are going to take inspiration from next. Twisting and turning from one style to the next definitely, is the stuff which if done well, will keep me switched-on to them, and engaged.
Connect with Haiku Hands
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/haikuhands/
Twitter: @haiku_hands
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haikuhands/