With 2009 drawing to a close, the BBC has
already started mapping out who's going to be hip and cool in 2010,
announcing their long list for the BBC Sound of 2010 poll.
In the Beeb's own words:
The list is designed to highlight
the most exciting musical talent for the coming year and the
artists have been picked by 165 UK-based tastemakers.
They each named their favourite
three new acts and those with the most votes were put on the list.
The top five and winner will be unveiled in January.
The longlist features 15 artists, and aside from dark
horse candidates like Rox,
a half-Iranian, half-Jamaican soul singer, and Stornoway, whose sound the BBC describes as
"bloke-folk," they are predominantly electronic-influenced.
The list's electronic bent is part of a trend that has
become impossible to ignore in the last two years. Even though
artists like Joy Orbison, a dubstep producer whose
single, "Hyph Mngo" is likely to appear on many of this year's Best
Dance Tracks lists, and Gold
Panda, whose stubbly, contemplative productions recall both
Polvo and Flying Lotus, probably won't make the top five, their
mere inclusion in a list like this would have been almost
unthinkable just a few years ago.
The acts most likely (in our opinion, anyway) to make
January's shortlist are still relatively traditional, but they
still take significant musical cues from techno and other
electronic genres.
Bands like Delphic, seen in the above video, and Two Door Cinema Club, whose biggest single was
released on electro-rock label Kisuné, feature stuttering samples
and arpeggios; Everything Everything, a Passion Pit-esque band
whose music is overstuffed with ideas and hooks, would have a very
hard time recreating their music without sequencers.
Our other two picks to make the shortlist
feature different sounds, but in terms of their reliance on synths
and similar gear, they're no different. HURTS make grand, disco
lento-inspired pop similar to artists like Soft Sell, Kano and
Tears for Fears, and Frankmusik protégé Ellie
Goulding, who could continue this poll's mini-streak of winning
female artists (Little Boots and Adele have won the previous two),
sings abashed love songs over bright, radio-friendly synths.
Though winning this poll doesn't guarantee
artists anything internationally, it does a lot more for an artist
than, say, winning the Mercury Prize. And it's probably worth all
of the money/payola/outrageously deviant sexual gifts the major
labels lavish on the bloggers, radio programmers, and DJs who
nominated these artists in the first place.
Feel free to leave your predictions for who
you think is going to win in the comments below.