These Fresh Faves were picked by our readers over the weekend – and reviewed by Fresh On The Net’s TONY HARDY this week. You can hear all these tracks in a single Soundcloud playlist here.

A word from Del: Thanks to everyone who submitted tracks last week, top calibre as always! If you want your tracks to be considered for airplay on my Exile FM show, please send me an email with your bio and audio files. Clean radio edits only. Thanks folks! Over to you Tony.

BEAR BEAT – Midama

Are you sitting comfortably? Let’s begin with Bear Beat. It’s hard to escape the increasingly pervasive AI overviews when you hit that search button these days and I had to smile when Google’s AI picked up on the FOTN entry, declaring: ‘It is a track from a musical artist, not related to the annual Fat Bear Week competition for brown bears, despite the similar-sounding name.”

Anyhow, this particular Bear Beat is a producer and DJ who dropped a first single in 2022 and went on to release a debut album this summer, entitled Ascension. Though previously spotlighted as an Eclectic Pick here, Bear Beat makes his Fresh Fave entrance with “Midama.” A short brooding opening gives way to a reggae beat punctured by a single piano note and a warm Patois vocal over. The track is interspersed with ambient textures and rap verses to create a pleasing whole. As Bear Beat says on his Spotify page, headphones are recommended.

Official | Instagram

FORTYGEES – Kumbo

A fellow Fresh Faves first timer is Fortygees [that enough f’s for you?] whose song “Kumbo” topped this week’s readers’ poll alongside Haley Holgate. Raised in the UK with Nigerian heritage, his sound blends rumba, afrobeats and dancehall/reggae while throwing in a pinch of hip hop into the mix. Finding out much more about Fortygees presented a challenge though, even for the AI.

“Kumbo” is a gently inviting song highlighted by a muted vocal with an ethereal edge to it which plays out over a quietly lopping beat. Vocally he slips into a soft, easy rap midway which hardly disrupts the intrinsic flow of the song. I found “Kumbo” to be a lightly hypnotic piece of music with a celebratory undertone to its undoubted charm.

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GABRIELLE SEY – Colourblind

Next up is South London singer-songwriter Gabrielle Sey, another FF debutante in her solo right having shared billing with Brapurple here on 8 May (Motorhead Day, though that’s not exactly relevant info!) I had the pleasure of seeing her at a new music night in the perhaps incongruous setting of The Ned, a former bank building in the City of London full of posh folk wining and a-dining. My memory is of a highly distinctive voice and songs that felt like proper growers.

“Colourblind” is an expansive song that reads like part diary, part declaration; a process of working through life’s uncertainties and coming to terms with who you are in a positive way. I find it life affirming; uplifting lyrically and beautifully projected by Gabrielle’s characterful vocal, richly expressive and wise. The twists and turns in melody, rhythm and tempo are a delight and help to propel the song through five and half minutes without anything feeling undercooked.

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HALEY HOLGATE – ORANGE TREE

Now, a returning Fresh Fave and one, by coincidence, who I reviewed here in September last year. I commented then that Northern Beaches, Sydney native Haley Holgate was a relative newcomer to recorded music having released her debut single “A Good Feminist” just a year earlier. She consolidated it with a 7-track EP, titled Your Madonna, last autumn and has reappeared now with a 3-track acoustic EP.

The EP’s title track, “Orange Tree”, is an all-acoustic effort in contrast to some of the empowered indie pop-rock she flirted with previously. Here she is in contemplative mood simply aided by a plaintively picked acoustic guitar accompaniment. Hayley’s gossamer vocal compares her arborist failings with the affairs of the heart. It’s a simple construct maybe yet beautifully heartfelt and touched with a subtle nuance (“It didn’t, couldn’t grow”).

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KING CEDAR – THE OIL FIELDS OF SAN PEDRO

Alt-folk artist Stephen Macartney hails from Bangor, Northern Ireland and plies his craft under the aegis of King Cedar. He has nowt to do with US pencil company Cedar-King nor the cedar tree retailer King Cedar (the AI was quite cutting about the latter named!) I have to agree though that there is more than a touch of the classic Laurel Canyon songwriting tradition about Stephen’s music while, for me, his writing touched on the quiet sensibility of Denison Witmer.

“The Oil Fields of San Pedro” continues the mellow feel of the week’s Faves so far. It is one of 4 tracks on King Cedar’s latest EP, No One More Dead Than The Other. I must admit I wasn’t sure where to look on the map for San Pedro but I think we are talking a road trip just south of Los Angeles. King Cedar’s fireside vocals have a soft precision to them to balance the warmth of delivery. He has a lovely turn of phrase (“I am someone else’s song, written into heartbeats” and “Of youth, I was wrong. We all only get so long”) and a knowing wisdom that underpins the song’s carpe diem sentiments.

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MARED – CONSEQUENTIAL

Like King Cedar, singer-songwriter from Llannefydd, North Wales, Mared (Williams), is also new to Fresh Faves. With a parallel career spanning original solo work alongside musical theatre, Mared won the 2021 Welsh Language Album Award, made her West End debut in Les Miserables at London’s Sondheim Theatre and has appeared at the National Eisteddfod.

Mared writes on her Instagram page that she wrote “Consequential” in her childhood bedroom over Christmas holidays one year, challenging herself to write a narrative and stick to less chords! There is a lovely intimacy to her voice which is characterised by a breathy die-away quality yet can just as much command attention. I particularly liked the measured way the song builds with strings, keys and percussion weaving imaginative patterns.

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PINK FOOTAGE – Click

Blimey. It’s a week for FOTN newbies. Enter Liverpool foursome, Pink Footage, but after a mellow run of six, it’s time for a dose of staccato rock. Mind you the band’s Bandcamp page threw me with an image of an eight-piece unless you realise that they are all in the picture twice. Cunning. Then again, I also came across a photo with twelve of them when they emerged with a debut single in August 2023.

“Click” certainly did so with FOTN voters this week. It opens with a strong fuzz-fuelled riff which is reintroduced at intervals and punctuated with clipped phrases, distortion and primal full-on energy. If I am to believe Pink Footage’s Bandcamp page, “Click” is about ‘the mostly universal experience of the unfulfilling, boredom fuelled masturbation session.’ Plus, the nihilistic pursuit of scrolling Reddit. Careful with that mouse, Eugene.

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PROPS – Everything Is Okay

This has not been the easiest week to find out info about many of our Faves. Cue South London solo musician Props who according to his Facebook page ‘basically writes punk nursery rhymes.’ Ah, I smell a maverick genius between the lines, of which there are comparatively few. He calls “Everything Is Okay” a big stupid pop song in a FB post and credits, if that is the right word, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson as inspirations for it.

The song kicks off with big pop chords which come back in the choruses. The downbeat sing-speak verses provide a nice contrast to the comparatively euphoric outrage of the latter. Props’ lyrics are artfully clipped, observational and damning about the state of the nation, and the bad actors who have come and gone. There is a hint of optimism in the final verse: “I’ll just stick on some tunes and pretend everything is okay.” But everything is o… no it’s not.

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TEMPLE OF SHIBBOLETH – In The Shadow

Enter Temple of Shibboleth, the latest FOTN newbies with a band name that suggests they might have toured with Quintessence in another age. The Devon-based quintet boasts an all-female line up with a goodly splash of brass and woodwind in the mix. According to the bio (ah, there is one), The Temple of Shibboleth came about when (band leader) Billie Bottle ran away from the circus in 2020 and learned the art of traditional housekeeping while caring for wise woman in Devon. Now that’s a tale.

This all seems to set up an expectation of jazz, pop and prog with a dose of folk and West Country mysticism thrown in. The stabbing piano that opens new single “In The Shadow” heralds incanted vocals up lit by bright harmonies and peppered with stop-start instrumental phrases, and even a short jazzy solo. They may sing “we don’t know where we’re going” but it’s an interesting ride that keeps your ears on alert throughout.

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VICKRAM BHAMRA – Reminisce

We reach journey’s end with a final new Fresh Fave who has previously made the Eclectic Picks column. Vickram Bhamra is producer and composer from Leeds who declares “a passion for chill, lounge, lo-fi and electronic music.” Debuting with the album, Experimental Sounds in 2023, his music has embraced some additional styles along the way.

“Reminisce” is a track from Vickram’s new album, Melodic Vibes, which takes you on a journey from laid back tunes to more upbeat terrain. The track opens with a piano motif that provides the root of melodic progression. Shuffling beats add a relaxed, languid vibe to echo the track’s title while, used sparingly, electric guitar cuts through to give the instrumental added spice in the same way that certain memories can be golden.

Bandcamp

PS from DEL: If you’ve submitted a track that hasn’t been picked for the Listening Post, our team has definitely listened to it and there’s no need to send it again: feel free to send us an even stronger track another week. The same goes if you were picked for the Listening Post but didn’t feature in our Fresh Faves.

But if we’ve recently featured you in our Fresh Faves – please wait three months before sending us another track, so we have space to help other deserving artists… For more info see Robinson Has A Good Old Moan.