BBC Introducing... with Huw Stephens in England, Airdate: 18th September 2008

Decoration.

Whew. At last.

Anyhow, for the next four weeks the Radio polls will focus on Radio 1's Introducing... series. You may remember them in their old guise as The Session In The Nations, when the Thursday episode Radio 1's Evening Session would split off into four programmes showcasing new talent in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That started back in 1999, and though the Evening Session is now a thing of the past, the Nations programming continues, albeit that it now goes out at midnight on Wednesday nights so as not to intrude upon Zane Lowe and Colin Murray's four programmes a week.

We're gonna poll the English show this week, then Norn Iron the week after, Scotland the week after that, and Wales the week after that.

Huw Stephens started at Radio 1 with The Session In Wales, which he co-presented aged just 17 with Bethan Elfyn, who continues to host the programme to this day. Huw went on to host one of the not-entirely-well-fated OneMusic programmes that were designed to fill the Peel-shaped gap in Radio 1's schedule, alongside Rob da Bank and Ras Kwame, and is now seen as the station's face of new, unsigned music. He also used to run Boobytrap Records, which was a half-decent label while it lasted. DJ Mencap has probably got the odd anecdote about him, at a guess.

The listen again link for the programme is here, but if you can't be bothered with all that, someone has been nice enough to find all the aforementioned bands via the internet:

Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds - You Let Me Go
Sky Larkin - Fossil, I
Diarmaid O'Meara - Inconvenient & Abominant
Little Comets - One Night In October
Kid British - Elizabeth
Clare Maguire - Strangest Thing
Kotki Dwa - Kiss And Make Up
Golden Silvers - Magic Touch
2 Hot 2 Sweat - Computer Age
Chase & Status ft. Plan B - Pieces
Team Waterpolo - So Called Summer
The Lovely Eggs - Have You Ever Heard?
Baby J ft. David Gibb & Malik - It's Time
Decoration - Our Friends Don't Mix
Microburst - Drenched
Broken Records - Lies
Super Tennis - Pushinsky/Ballhogger/L Ron Hubbard
James Yuill - This Sweet Love (Ruff & Jam Remix)
Bodies Of Water - Under The Pines
Neon Kicks - Miles
The Chapman Family - Sound Of The Radio
Flashguns - Bells At Midnight
The Colonel - Ruckus
DH - Let It Go
Mia Vigar - I Dare You
Tubelord - I Am Azerrad
Cats In Paris - Cold Products

Kid British? please

OK all those band names are terrible, except maybe Super Tennis (Super Nashwan might've been even better)

2 Hot 2 Sweat - Computer Age

Voted for this cos I knew the girl in the band years ago

OK, have listened the first nine. Favourite so far is fairly comfortably Sky Larkin - you need to roll down their MySpace till you get to the video for "Fossil, I", but it's just about worth it. Kind of Charlotte Hatherley-esque except less afraid of hookiness and writing songs that last under four minutes. It's odd, cos I didn't think much of them when I saw them live, but I may just have been dealing with excessive elevated expectations - people round here like them rather a lot.

Of the others - CC&tN are the Young Knives.
2 Hot 2 Sweat remind me of Printed Circuit, but a bit less... interesting.
Clare Maguire starts off interesting, but although I liked it, I found myself switching off after two minutes cos I sort of got the point by then, and I didn't think owt else of interest was going to happen.
Kotki Dwa just annoyed me - mainly it's the vocals, but more the feeling that something interesting could be going on here if only it fairly obviously wasn't. But yeah, the vocals are fucking irritating.
Diarmaid O'Meara is some pretty solidly pulsing techno, albeit that his video reminds me a bit of Father Damo Lennon.
Kid British are sort of ska-pop-indie type things that start off much better than you'd think but kind of fall away towards the end as it becomes increasingly obvious that "Elizabeth" is actually a metaphor for money. And then they explicitly state that it's a metaphor for money. Which is annoying.
Little Comets are another band that have annoying vocals, but "One Night In October" is actually a surprisingly solid little pop tune, gently swaying Afrobeat guitars of the type that are so popular with the kids these days - very warm and sweaty and loveable. Kind of thing I'd recommend to Dom and he'd be all like "..."
And Golden Silvers. The ones that're getting the hype-hype at present, and when they open with a man who sounds EXACTLY - as in, Rizla-sized gap - like Pete Doherty, my teeth went to grind... but as things go on, I start getting reminded of Rheinallt H Rowlands, of all the bloody things. It's a very sweet sort of retro-pop number, kinda hard to describe, especially since the website I've linked to has a music player that refuses to work. The Myspace is here. It's really pretty decent. On this listen, reminds me of Terry Hall.

So yeah, if that don't get you listening...

CC&tN are the Young Knives.
2 Hot 2 Sweat remind me of Printed Circuit, but a bit less... interesting.

CC&tN are a Young Knives with all the redeeming features (yeah, I know, nobody else here could find any to begin with) taken out, and 2 Hot 2 Sweat briefly pretend to be Das Bierbeben armed with that Yamaha instant-"DJ" keyboard that Mark and Lard advertised, until the primary coloured lego block way they click every single preset beat together in a row gets a little too reminiscent of Wiiija scraping up discarded Bis and Brassy b-sides for sampler CDs. I like them the best yet. Them or Diarmaid Ó Meara doing the Irish Daft Punk thing.

(My iplayer gave up after Lovely Eggs, who had me going "is it even legal to be this indie?". I'd probably have loved them a decade ago: so horrible it becomes funny, which is the idea, right? so yr brain is confused into thinking it might be really good after all; the terrible lyrics' eventual collapse into noisy guitar scrabbling as the punchline to a shaggy dog story so excruciating you inflict it on all your friends. In my day the word would've been "studenty", but the students of today are probably less into deliberate ironic slacker awfulness and more into the accidental awfulness of the Kid British track, which may be the worst thing I've heard this week.)

ILM is gonna vote for Chase and Status without listening to the others, right? And I can't really fault that decision, so far.

Chase & Status was one of my least favourite tracks from the 1Xtra poll

accordian, brautigan, bourguignon

Decoration - "Our Friends Don't Mix" (listenable here, should you feel moved to): at first I thought of the Wedding Present, but sorry guys, I really meant Cinerama. Gets some extra bonus points in first verse for sounding a little Mountain Goats as well (I hope J0hn D doesn't read this as he'd most likely hate 'em), throws them all away again with unnecessarily irritating strings and a vocalist struggling to find a happy medium between trying too hard and not trying at all.

Super Tennis: saw their promo pic in the tennis outfits and was reminded of the Foals photoshoot in similar, then thought, well, not like Foals invented tennis, so whatever. But maybe there is something in it, as Super Tennis are a little bit mathy while still being recognisably NME-indie. Only band on this show that wouldn't have seemed out of place at any of the gigs I've been to in the past 2-3 years. Dunno whether this says more about the show's role wrt actual grass-roots UK toilet circuit scene or just what I choose to go to. Probably the latter. I like 'em alright, actually.

Don't really remember anything else from the last hour. Quite liked one of the token electronic tracks but can't remember if it was Microburst or James Yuill.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

so dissapointed that "2 hot 2 sweat" isn't some kind of ultra sleazy nu-new jack swing act...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.