Top tunes from TWO WEEKS RUNNING, BEN SEE, KEZIA, TOM HOLLINGWORTH, ROBINSON, VIRGIN SOLDIERS, PHATBONES, THE INTERCEPTEURS, THE KATANAS, NERVE AGENT, TOM MITCHELL, KATE DOUBLEDAY, THE SHERPAS, MICKEY GLOSS, WILDEE, BANG BANG ROMEO, THE HOTSPUR PRESS and GHOSTING SEASON.

Every Sunday night/Monday morning on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2-3am you can hear a selection of my favourite new tunes from the BBC Introducing Uploader in an hour-long music mixtape. Some of the tunes are recommended by BBC friends and colleagues, others are handpicked by me from our inbox here at Fresh On The Net.

Each of these mixtapes is available free when the radio show ends at 3am via the 6 Music Downloads Page. You’ll also find archived episodes there from the previous 4 weeks. As of this week, the full tracklists and start times are now published here at Fresh On The Net with a link to each artist’s website. These are the listings for Monday, 15th July 2013 – recent mixtape tracklistings can be found via the MIXTAPE tab above – earlier listings are on the BBC website.

TWO WEEKS RUNNING – Inhale Exhale [Starts: 00:13]
http://www.facebook.com/twoweeksrunning
Two Weeks Running are an alternative rock band from Bolton who have clocked up over 40,000 views on their YouTube channel and reached Reverbnation’s Alternative Top 10, since they formed in 2011. Ealier this year Lammo singled the band out for praise at the BBC Introducing Masterclass. This is a brand new track that follows up their second EP Beats For The Heart which was released this Spring. They play a live set on Sean McGinty’s BBC Introducing In Lancashire this Saturday (July 20th – show starts 8pm) and will also appear at the Town Centre Outdoor Stage as part of the inaugural WIGAN 10K run on Sunday September 8th.

BEN SEE – Scribble Book [Starts: 09:42]
https://www.facebook.com/BenSeeMusic
Ben See – a big favourite here at Fresh On The Net and no stranger to the BBC Introducing Mixtape either – is a bedroom musician from South London who makes music with his voice and nothing else. Some of the tracks have more than eighty different takes of his voice playing back at the same time, so recreating them live requires loop machines, samplers, Kaoss pads, vocoders and too many microphones to count as you can see in this video. He eventually hopes to assemble a collection of singers – or maybe even collaborate with a choir – to perform his work live in realtime at some point in the future. As well as performing acapella under his own name, Ben also uses the moniker Moment.Sound.Blur a side project in which he blends vocals with electronica, including a track on the recent compilation Night Bus, put together by Jamie Isaac, in which a collection of South London producers each soundtracked a journey home.

KEZIA – Drunk Tank [Starts: 08:08]
http://www.keziaofficial.co.uk
Cornish songwriter Kezia appeared on our Mixtape back at the beginning of May with her song America – the opening track on her selftitled 6-track EP made with producer John Cornfield (Muse, Supergrass) – which had been released just one month earlier. Drunk Tank is the closing song from that same release, and (as she told us at the time) the melancholy past of the ex-mining town in which she grew up tends to infiltrate the way she sings and plays. Kezia plays the Fieldview Festival in Wiltshire on August 2nd and will appear at Cornwall’s Leopallooza Festival near Bude two days later on August 4th.

TOM HOLLINGWORTH – The 9th Step [Starts: 09:55]
http://www.facebook.com/therunningchelsea
Tom Hollingworth – who also performs as THERUNNINGCHELSEA – tells us he writes songs and then “re-writes them live”. This track comes from his latest album In The Future, We Will Spinn – available digitally via his Bandcamp page. All income from sales of the album – and fair play to Tom for making it all income, not just all profits – will be donated to the charity PAPYRUS, which works to help prevent young suicides through education, counselling and outreach. That’s pretty close to home for me personally, and to a good many people I know. Mr Hollingworth will be performing next at Cluny 2 in Newcastle, where he’ll be opening for Evening Hymns on August 24th.

ROBINSON – Superlove [Starts: 13:28]
http://www.robinsonsmusic.com
I’ve been following the progress of songwriter Andy Robinson (known simply by his surname) ever since he gave me his first two albums at the BBC Introducing Masterclass in 2011. Even allowing for my natural prejudice in favour of almost anything called Robinson, I was struck at the time by the clarity and directness of Andy’s writing, singing, production and performance. This is the upbeat opening track from the followup – his third album Willamina Machine which is released this Monday July 22nd. Robinson‘s next live show will be in London on August 8th opening for Blackbeard’s Tea Party & Light Falls Forward, followed by a gig at The Elgin in Notting Hill on August 21st.

VIRGIN SOLDIERS – Therapy [Starts: 16:57]
http://www.virginsoldiers.com/
Virgin Soldiers is a six-piece band with male and female members from London, Kent and Sussex and a mission to combine strings with acoustic rock. Their debut 4-track EP Safer Ground was originally released in April 2010 and this year they’re revisiting it with a series of remix singles with the project name of #Lovestrock. Therapy will be the fourth release in this series. Virgin Soldiers will be the main support for Toploader at the Fusion Festival on 27th July 2013.

PHATBONES – Get It Live [Starts: 20:17]
http://www.facebook.com/pages/PhatBones/31094262033
Ghanaian-born Ivan Datsa now resides in his hometown Haywards Heath where he makes music under the name of PhatBones. He has always been musical and early in childhood became the youngest-ever drummer in his school’s drum-line. By 13, Ivan had already developed a taste for hip-hop under the influence of artists such as Busta Rhymes, Dr. Dre, Ludacris, and The Wu-Tang Clan. Before long his own activities had expanded into freestyle battles, beatboxing and body popping. Once a group of schoolfriends had conferred the name PhatBones on him, the young Ivan never looked back, and it’s a pleasure to welcome him to our mixtape with this excellent new track Get It Live.

THE INTERCEPTEURS – Christine Gorham [Starts: 29:27]
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Intercepteurs/96962669511
The Intercepteurs formed two years ago although their frontman John Martin had retired from playing music in 1928 after playing a Radio 1 session (with The Pulsaters) for Mike Reid in return for a record company advance of 6 Freddo chocolate frogs. Christine Gorham is the ‘secret’ track from The Intercepteurs‘ album Aunt Peggy Goes Motoring, released last December. Their next scheduled gig is in London at the Dublin Castle on October 18th. The lineup is completed by bassist John Taylor, Sue Martin on sax, cowriter and keyboard player Helen Russell, “one man ska explosion” Robb Blake on guitar and vocals, and Dan Dibben on drums.

THE KATANAS – Chained [Starts: 26:55]
http://soundcloud.com/officialkatanas
Siblings Hope and Millie Katana are singers, songwriters and actors – based in Manchester and born to a Kenyan father and English mother. Their mother, Jan Katana exposed them from an early age to the music of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson and Boyz II Men and Soul music has remained a lasting influence on her daughters. Singing in a choir vbetween the ages of 9 and 12 helped Millie and Hope get a feel for harmony and vocal arrangements. Through participating in a talent search confucted by the CBBC show Clash, The Katanas became the youngest-ever performers to appear at a Radio 1 Big Weekend festival.

The Katanas played the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury 2013

NERVE AGENT – Marmalade [Starts: 30:21]
https://www.facebook.com/NerveAgentMusic
“Our band is almost two years old” say Nerve Agent. “A gig we played in our hometown, Stockton at a record shop called Sound It Out was featured in a documentary by the BBC”. The band’s members are James Burke, 18, Jack Shepherd, 18, Robbie Jones, 18, and James McCann, 17: they released their debut album Baskerville in May which is available both on CD and digitally at a price of your choosing at http://nerveagentmusic.bandcamp.com. They are making a series of videos of tracks from their album: the first of which is the puzzlingly named opening track “Crossword Lice” which can be seen here.

TOM MITCHELL – Run into the Ground [Starts: 32:44]
http://www.mitchellmusic.co.uk
A supporting guitarist of more than 20 years, Tom Mitchell is now a singer-songwriter in his own right and released his 4-track debut solo EP Ruthless Thing in February on which his aim was to create “shimmering acoustic guitars and melodic harmonies support highly personal lyrics laced with sharp observations of love and injustice”. It’s available both on CD and download from his Bandcamp page. Upcoming gigs include hometown shows in Bristol at Thekla (July 28th), The Hare (July 30th), The Blue Lagoon (August 14th) and a London show at The Islington on September 8th.

KATE DOUBLEDAY – The Dunes [Starts: 35:43]
http://www.katedoubleday.com
“Quite often i like to tuck myself away on a train along the Cambrian coastline” Kate Doubleday told us last month “Sometimes i forage for songs in the hedgerows, put them into preserving jars and wait for them to mull.” This particular song, she adds, “was partly inspired by the work of local botanist Dr John Warren-who researched whether the wildflowers known as Sea Campions wave at insects or not. I’ve tried to evoke a summers’ day on the Ynyslas dunes, revealing some of the mysteries of the landscape”. You may remember that Kate moved to Mid-Wales in 2007 and stages her performances in wild and remote locations across the country. In August her Wild Away Tour will see Kate performing at six Wildlife Trust Reserves with Marie Smith on cello and vocals, Trevor Lines on bass and ukelele and Dan Wilkins on guitar and kora. The list of venues is so breathtakingly original, it bears repeating in full:
13 August 7pm – The Attenborough Nature Centre – Nottingham
14 August 7pm – Westport Lake Visitor Centre – Staffordshire
15 August 7pm – Brockholes Nature Centre – Lancashire
16 August 7pm – Potteric Car – Yorkshire
17 August 7pm – Wigg Island – Cheshire
23 August 7.30pm – Welsh Wildlife Centre – Carmarthenshire

THE SHERPAS – Soiree [Starts: 39:54]
http://www.facebook.com/TheSherpas
The biog section on The Sherpas‘ Facebook only contains quotes about their music by (1) Peter Hook from New Order (2) the Russian IndieBirdie blog and (3) somebody called D.Durand, who urges us to “Look for the band’s forthcoming Soirée EP, which drops June 27th.” Thing is, fellas, a description of your music is not a biog. It tells us nothing useful about who you are, what you do and why you do it. We can decide for ourselves how “totally unimaginable” we find your music the moment we click “play” on this mixtape. The Facebook page does at least reveal they’re from Exeter and Seaton, and consist of Pierre, Ben, Chris, James and Jake. Also that their collective band interests are “Jackets, Mcflurrys, bacon and lemonade”. So now you know.

MICKEY GLOSS – Are You Happy [Starts: 43:40]
http://www.facebook.com/mickeygloss
“Mickey Gloss left the east coast of Australia for London amidst the chaos and disorder of the riots in summer 2011. Signposting the anarchy and energy is lead single ‘Are You Happy?’, where wry social commentary meets garage psychedelia in a distillation of antipodean sun and London melancholia. Are You Happy? is released August 5th through H Badger Records and will be available on digital download along with the B-side ‘Run’. It samples the sound of the riots at street level, and showcases the singer’s explosive vocals against a backdrop of spiky guitars and manic synths. A fierce introduction to a compelling live band.” Blimey.

WILDEE – End Of The Road [Starts: 46:10]
http://soundcloud.com/wildee-mc
“I am a 22 year old artist living in Jersey, Channel Islands and have been making music for five or six years now” says Josh Wilde, aka Wildee. “I started off as a drum and bass MC at the age of 17 – and though I now write more songs than D’n’B, I still perform live in that genre and as a Dubstep MC. I have a big gig coming up on the 11th August, playing the main stage at GEN:E:SIS DJ Festival at Fort Regent. So many big names – I’ll be playing alongside Drumsound and Bassline Smith!! Gonna be sick!”

BANG BANG ROMEO – Cemetery [Starts: 49:08]
http://www.bangbangromeo.com
According to Bang Bang Romeo‘s PR, the band aim to make “big atmospheric sounds with an anthemic feel, punctuated with powerful male and female vocal hooks, leaning heavily upon the sounds of the 60’s – creating moods commonly associated with a Tarantino soundtrack.” This, we’re told “gives them a unique vibe promising to tear the Indie scene apart… (with) their own brand of Alternative Indie with a melodic yet dark and emotive style.” The future, they go on to tell us “bodes well for one of Britain’s most exciting new bands. An upcoming tour of dates, including support for Dexters and Night Engine as well as further shows with This Feeling and the Tramlines Festival will continue to build on Bang Bang Romeo’s reputation as a powerful live force to be reckoned with.”

Bands. Please. Don’t tell us how great you are. Instead, why not tell us how INTERESTING you are – see How To Write A Band Biog.

THE HOTSPUR PRESS – The Ring [Starts: 52:33]
http://soundcloud.com/thehotspurpress
“My name’s Daniel Quezada Manchester and I write and perform music under the name The Hotspur Press, occasionally accompanied by other musicians. This track was recorded and produced by Thomas Rowland with additional percussion by George Webster. Please enjoy.”

GHOSTING SEASON – Apophenia [Starts: 56:30]
http://www.ghostingseason.co.uk
“We’re Ghosting Season, from Manchester. We make electronica and techno, but take our influences from Krautrock, 80s synths and taxidermy books. We’re currently in the studio finishing up our second album at the moment, but will be playing a few dates later on this year. Cheers! Gavin and Tom”