Emerging - MIYNT, Communions and Have You Ever Seen The Jane Fonda Aerobic VHS?

I started the "Emerging" section of this blog largely to scratch a particular itch I had - while the purpose of "Left and to the Back" is unquestionably to focus on odd, brilliant and esoteric old vinyl finds, the reality is that my life and listening habits revolve just as much as around new material as old. Trouble is, the vast majority of artists I've featured in the section over the year sound as if they owe a large debt to music emerging somewhere from the period 1966-1995. In some cases, I could have presented them as bona-fide lost records from previous decades (and they'd probably have picked up more readers that way).

Stockholm's MIYNT, on the other hand, is brilliantly modern. Latest single "Civil War" (backed by the almost as brilliant "Nick Drake") is a complex, fascinating cobweb of melodic hooks married to a fiercely twenty-first century electronic production. Somewhere in the tangle lie elements of Boards of Canada, classic sixties pop, film noir soundtracks and contemporary EDM, but never once does it sound like it belongs to any one point, place or time. Luxuriously icy to the last and full of surprises, this is a single that deserves to be the launchpad for a major career - it makes this month's bunch of three-chord indie-pop merchants sound like the unadventurous chancers they are.



Staying within Scandinavia - and I haven't chosen to deliberately theme this entry, incidentally, it just turned out that way - Copenhagen's Communions are less bewitchingly futuristic, dropping post-punk basslines and angst-ridden eighties vocals into their otherwise crystalline pop, but "Forget It's A Dream" is a haunting and yearning track which sounds as if it should have been written long ago. It also achieves the remarkable feat of being so packed with ideas that the six-and-a-half minute run time of the song seems perfectly rational and reasonable. Not a note or riff wasted here.



There are also Finnish contenders this month in the shape of the ridiculously yet brilliantly named Have You Ever Seen The Jane Fonda Aerobic VHS, who take garage punk and leave out the guitars (bass excepted), instead choosing to develop their particular flavour of abrasive bubblegum pop with layers upon layers of analogue keyboards. It's unlikely to set the UK Top 40 aflame next week, of course, but "Family Man" is available now and makes it sound as if they're having more fun than anyone else on the planet, fizzing over as it does with energy and whirling keyboard sounds. It's a peculiar nugget for the 21st Century, and even if they never have another good idea, their time will have been well spent on this one.