If Starsailor are NOT the most exciting new British Band : then who is?

Goldfrapp!

nice try Alex, (but Goldfrapp released Felt Mountain in the UK last Autumn. Although it was released in the US this year? )

Ooh....good point.

Ed Harcourt put out a mini-album which is simpply superb! I strongly suspect that 2001 will be littered with Coldplay's look-alikes (such as Starsailor, I haven't heard them yet but this is allegedly their most fitting description).

Well, the debut I'm most looking forward to is They Came From The Stars (I Saw Them). Mostly because Tanya's doing the sleevenotes.

Tom, you gotta be kidding.. Tanya putting her cred on the line for a couple bob out of the pockets of Coldplay-lookalikes?! Sheesh. She can't use that Toploader explanation twice, y'know.

I've already warned them I'm not going to be nice to them in the sleevenotes. Don't worry.

They have the best lyric ever in a rock song, though, which isn't saying much.

Can I be so arrogant as to say The Lollies? heh.

Only cause all the bands I really *do* believe are being the future of British music have already released albums.

It's really hard for me to answer this, cause almost all of the unsigned or up and coming bands I follow are friends of mine, so I'm quite biased.

Without being absolutely predictable, isn’t the answer clear: hear’say?

OK, so if I do buy the LP I mayn’t listen to it even once, but Kym and Myleene are currently the only folks whose next ‘performance’ is the one I HAVE to see. At the very least, in the enternal pop vs. rock whatever, they’ve asked a question rock MUST answer or be nothing.

First Myleene threw down the gauntlet in her acceptance-speech for number-one-with-a-bullet, which began “This lifts the lid off the music industry,” and ended “We’re coming to get you!!”

Then on Never Mind the Buzzcocks (repeated tomorrow midnight, BBC2) Kym - in tandem with Johnny Vegas – reduced Mark Lamarr to mere careerist policer of light-entertainment protocols. K and JV between them did everything but rape Sean Hughes with a coke bottle.

alt.rock aspires no higher these days than the tolerated niche equivalent of seen-it-all alt-comic cynics like Lamarr and Porky the Jupitus: “our” Denis Norden and Frank Muir. The question hear’say’re are (surely?) increasingly forcing rock to answer is this: “Isn’t this what YOU’RE meant to be doing?”

ladytron, their debut(though it is made mostly of previously released songs) is my favourite record so far this year. they have one bulgarian, does this disqualify them?

does this disqualify them? No - as long as dual citizenship is applied before Dec 31st.

Sorry, this doesn't quite fit the terms of the question - but The Most Exciting New Band In Britain are Television.

But then, their last gig was on Sunday. They're probably now The Most Exciting New Band In, um, The Hamptons.

By no means the best band in britain at the moment, but showing promise is someone called Martin, on Skint's off shoot Under 5's, the record's called MARTIN - MALE CAUCASIAN (you know I can't get enough of this reflexivity.) The album's like a saucy postcard from Brighton, half an hour in the mind of Martin, something like tricky's white boy alter ego, shambling between old-skool breaks and spy- tinted strings, with more samples than a carpet salesman, he somehow combines the Jarvis's poise with Dr Octagon (his perverse nature and polymorphous tactics); in the same breath a louche lounge singer cross-fades into a psycho confessional, but none of these devices temper the sheer irreverence. Provocative, but smutty. Like a frustrated schoolie doodling on his pad, he erects entire song around the lewd snatches from ‘Rita, Sue and Bob, too’ and a porno film and, tellingly, one from a biology class description of sex. Martin’s the precocious kid who could afford not to take school seriously and took the piss instead.
It reminds me of Bongwater, packed with narrative devices: dictaphone asides, lists, automated voices, dead ends in the telephone system, even the dole office mantra ‘have you done any work in the past two weeks’ A record of life in Britain, he picks up fragments of everyday life (so habitual, they’re ignored) and spanners them into a scuzzy mix.
Its disposable stuff and he knows it (a brute cut-and-paste that has Paul Gambachini talking about ‘Tipper Gore, masturbating with a crucifix’ is just a joke, no more) Aware of his limits, doesn’t want us to dwell, so he keeps it tight. Nothing outstays it’s welcome. (Sorry to go on, but I've never heard anyone ever mention him and I got nothing better to do right now.) Which leaves the title… A clear definition of identity, right? I think about this every time I listen to it. It's a real tease, given the relentless shapeshifting, his habit of obscuring himself and engaging in internal debates. Is he sure who he is? White males are the archetypal wanna-be’s, pilfering from other cultures. I can't decide if it's a personal reminder or a statement.
He's gutter genius, like Johnny from the film 'Naked', touring nocturnal spaces, the seedy end of the city, and ends with a sample ‘I got some stuff to say, most people don’t have anything on their mind’ The promise of more to come? Let’s hope so. Dense, but not deep.

locally i have enjoyed PALE MAN MADE - fall/sonic youth copyists who can sound like swell maps/hawkwind/spacemen 3/royal trux in the same song !!!!!

but MARTIN sounds awesome, K-Reg

Search: So Cool - Martin
(apologies for having gone on)