Fear not, we’re not promoting stabbing and gang violence yet – we’ll leave that for Grand Theft Auto IV. Well, that’s if you believe The Sun anyway.
For this week’s musical offering, we remain in Manchester. Everyone loves Manchester; it gave us Oasis who made two decent albums many years ago. We also got a comedy grump in the form of Morrissey. The meat hating rocker has many a follower.
But those two particular artists lack a certain sound. It’s the hint of any electronics, or if you’d prefer to call them, ‘those computer-sounding bits.’ Ever since New Order got all pissy with each other, the city needs a new dominating electronic-influenced band. We may have just found one with Daggers.
While we’d like to say one day that we were the voice that elevated Daggers into the mainstream, we have to be honest and say that the big boys in the media have already beaten us to it. Among their fans are The Independent, The Guardian and, to a lesser extent, the NME.
So what has generated the band so much attention? Unlike some bands that are more popular for their haircuts and blinding coloured trousers, Daggers have a self-dubbed Disco House sound going on. Yup, it may be another confusing genre, but we can sum it up pretty easily for you. Be it a real genre or not, it’s plain and simply fun. Not only is the music catchy, but overpowering on synths or guitars. It’ll also get all the kids up and dancing at the local disco – be it an indie shindig or a rave up in a barn.
Usually we don’t pick bands with only a few songs on their MySpace page. But we are so impressed by them we thought we’d do so anyway. And it helps that the available remixes are all top notch. The two studio tracks are a DJ’s dream to mess around with. Each part of the song has something that can be manipulated and turned into something else.
After Midnight has all the potential for a progressive dream and base remix or even a chunky breakbeat number. We do get strong feelings of New Order when listening to this song. The entire nu-rave scene is dogged by bands overusing their Korgs and samplers and simply sounding like a second-rate dance act. Daggers don’t fall in to this trap, in fact they make other electro pop bands sound daft and bereft of ideas.
It’ll be a travesty if Daggers don’t burst through into the mainstream. In their favour, they are from Manchester which is always full of A&R men looking for the next big thing. However, we’ve always found that when people say “that bad from Manchester is ace,†they are usually talking shit. Too many bands from cities with historic musical backgrounds automatically assume they will get somewhere. Listening to this band, though, they could be from any old shithole and still ride high – their sound is that bloody good.
If you live in York, Sheffield or Manchester then you can go and see them for yourself! They are on tour towards the end of this month and if their energetic sound is already capturing our imaginations thanks to a few badly compressed MP3s, a live gig should be a hundred times better.
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