MySpace Trawl - Wroooaar!

When we look at bands being all moody, we’ve come to realise something. Where have all the girls with attitude gone?

Hecklerspray knows that there are plenty of girly singers around at the moment, but they all seem to be weeping over a dead plant or delivering a turbo-charged period rant about their boyfriend being a twat.

Wracking our brains, we can’t think of any female solo artists out there making music that aren’t a) the eye candy in the band (Abi from The Zutons) b) taking their clothes off to sell music (most crap generic dance songs) c) developing some sort of rebellious attitude (Peaches or M.I.A). So imagine our joy to discover Wroooaar! - a female who is making music doing none of the above! And to make things better, it’s one of our favorite styles of electronic music – chiptune!

We’ve covered chiptune in the past, and it’s slowly becoming another annoyance of ours. In the beginning, it was an exciting and strange sound that pretty much told the music world to fuck off. Using unconventional instruments such as the Gameboy and circuit bending techniques, the genre was miles ahead of everything else in terms of creativeness.

Sadly it then got boring when more people joined in and downloaded a few software patches and emulators. Most people believed they could capture the same sound and style as the artists already established in the chiptune field. Just like watching an X Factor audition, far too many are under the illusion they are producing world beating music. We’d like to remind them that it just sounds like an Atari Spectrum freezing and making all sorts of spastic-sounding noise. It basically has no sort of firm production, tune or structure. Imagine a pissed-off wasp banging its head against a lamp, that’s how annoying it can get.

In her own words, the brilliantly named Wroooaar! takes on the world with a laptop, some software that is too confusing for us to understand and a microkorg keyboard. The result is a brilliant selection of upbeat happy tunes that really do makes feel we are trapped in an old computer game like Rainbow Islands. Or Mario tripping off a bad mushroom.

The songs have a great selection of variety to them, ranging from beat-filled chaos such as Gagagirl that will no doubt confuse the nu-rave kid at any party this song is on at. We’ve tried dancing to the skittering breaks and we pretty much ended up looking more stupid then normal. Yes, a thing like that is possible.

Our pick of the litter is the newest addition to the Wroooaar! MySpace page – Sunset Dreams. The gentle melody has a lush sweet and sugary feel to it. And as we sway from side to side the pulsing drums enter and sound like their coming to upset the pleasantness already in the song. Fear not however, as the two conflicting ingredients of the tune do battle, the eventual outcome of the song is a sound that has all sorts of crossover potential to it. The dance kids will go nuts for it and the indie kids will surely become dance music curious as they seek out a totally different and unique sound. They all probably think electronic music sounds like Scooter. Thank God that’s that not true, ay?

Other little belters on the MySpace player include w0nd3rl4nd. To us it seems like the hyper cousin of Sunset Dreams after drinking too much Sunny Delight. Though we’re sure the creator of these tracks couldn’t agree less with us.

Skeptics of electronic music who claim “it’s all done by smashing a few keys” will be glad to know that there Wroooaar! has uploaded a few videos of herself performing some keys in her blog. Whilst you watch, you can become jealous of someone who can play more then the triangle and recorder and is more talented then you.

Hail the girls in music! It’s not just all about fat sweaty blokes hunched over laptops and cramming themselves with pies. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring you more top quality stuff like this. Or failing that, we’ll abandon all hope and erect a seventy foot high Amy Winehouse statue made entirely out chip forks.

For more:

Wroooaar MySpace Page