TIPPER OF THE WEEK: ANDY HAGGERSTONE

We continue to shine the spotlight the biggest and best emerging acts from across the UK. Each Monday, we ask one of our esteemed tippers to select five of their hottest tips to be featured on the site throughout the week.

Next up we have Andy Haggerstone. Andy is co-founder and managing director of Kaleidoscope, an artist management company (Callum Pitt, Grace Gillespie, Shields) and record label based in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a partner in Blank Studios, a recording studio in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley. Delve into Andy’s tips below.

 

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LOCK

Lock hooked me in with their debut track ‘Click’ a couple of years ago, but on the musical front they’ve been relatively inactive since (just one release a year since 2015). However, I believe they’ve been busy with broader concerns, setting up LOCK Magazine, which aims “to champion female musicians and bands, whilst also showcasing the amazing writing, illustrating and photography by both our male and female team members”.

 

ORKID

I’m probably a bit late to the Swedish indie-electro-pop party here, but I really like this latest track from ORKID (I assume she’s named after the way Noel used to refer to Liam, and not the plant?) I’ve long been a fan of Canadian electro-pop artist LIGHTS, and there’s some similarities here; it’s instantly accessible pop stuff on this track, and really infectious. Very easy to see why Spotify have given a lot of backing on playlists.

 

THE CACTUS CHANNEL

This one popped on on Hype Machine recently, though it’s an old track I think. Love the Pino Palladino-esque bass performance. Really love the mix of psych and jazz here; there’s a really good dreamy quality to the track.

 

HONEY NOTHINGS

There seem to be a lot of bands with ‘honey’ in their name right now, so I’m going to tip them purely on the basis of speculation about the continued appreciation of that word’s stock. Also, this track came up on my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify, and what I was pleasantly surprised by was the fact that the track mixes a range of genres – there’s some math rock influences in there, some dream-pop, some psych… plenty to keep me interested.

 

FEVER DAYS

So, I have to confess from the outset, this is a band I’m working with. However, I’m massively impressed with this debut track (out 26th October), and the demos they’ve sent over to work on are outstanding, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what they come up with for next year. FEVER DAYS started as Oli Green’s bedroom production project, but has now morphed into a band, who are starting to find their feet a bit live after debuting at Evolution Emerging Festival. They’re gigging a lot locally, so keep an eye out for them if you’re based in the North East.