A Voyage of Discovery

I've discovered a lot of great new artists (and not-so-new artists) this year, but it occurred to me the other day that my methods of discovery have become a lot more passive of late. Most of the bands who have joined my iTunes library in 2015 got there because I happened to encounter them at a festival, or because somebody emailed me a link to their album, or because I heard everyone saying that Wolf Alice/Kendrick Lamar/whoever had just released the album of the year.

What I don't do very often these days is sit and actively search for my new favourite band. I used to spend hours trawling through Listmania lists, reading music magazines, and typing random words into last.fm radio in the hope that I'd come across something spectacular; nowadays, I lazily let most of the new music I hear find me.

In an effort to remedy this, I decided last night that I would sit down, click my way through the internet, and listen to whatever I found. The web is full of music, and of links to yet more music, so I figured that a musical Wiki Walk would quickly serve up a whole bunch of songs that nobody else is talking about.

All I needed was a starting point, and happily, I had one right on my doorstep. Fresh, who describe themselves as "a punk band from West London", recently followed me on Twitter, and so I opted to begin my journey on their Bandcamp page and, well, see where I ended up.

Here are the notes I made as I listened and clicked...

Track #1
Passing by Fresh
freshuk.bandcamp.com/track/passing-2

This singer's voice sounds vaguely familiar. The guitars sound big, much bigger than I expected, as if there are flames coming out of the amps. It's good stuff, though very stop-starty. Oh, and very short, apparently. What next? Here's a link marked 'Recommendations'...