Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2013: Who I'd Have Picked

I don't think music blogs, in general, are the kind of publications that seek or require any kind of external or pre-existing justification for their existence - but if I ever did feel I needed one for this site, it'd be my close involvement in the set up and first four years of Glastonbury Festival's Emerging Talent Competition [or 'ETC'].

That's where I came to realise what a huge amount of amazing music there is being made constantly in this country and beyond, that I feel a lot of people don't really have a chance of hearing unless they actively go looking for it (but, if you do, there it is... it's not hard). Happily Glastonbury now post their whole ETC longlist of 120 acts, chosen from thousands of applicants by a select band of music bloggers (which is a great way to do it), on their website.

This also means obsessives like me can spend days trawling through all those songs, in the name of seeking out who they'd have put in the finals if it had been up to them. And my own picks are below.

I was careful to avoid learning who had made the actual finals before drawing up my own list, because I didn't want that to influence it either way. As it happens, the official list is of eight entirely different acts, which doesn't surprise me at all - but there could easily have been a lot more crossover.

Some disclaimers:

- This is not in any way intended as a diss to any of the Festival's picks or the finalists themselves (or the bloggers who longlisted them).
- This doesn't mean that these artists 'would have got through' when I was working for the competition. I was one of a panel of listeners who drew up the longlist - some things I loved didn't get through, some things I wasn't personally over the moon about did. Also, most years, the selection of finalists *from* that longlist was done by the main festival bookers.
- If you're one of the bands I've listed here, no, I'm very sorry, I can't get you a Glastonbury slot. Also, don't get too excited, nobody reads my blog ; )
- There was some really great stuff on the longlist that would easily have made the list in place of some of these on a different day. I kept it to eight because that's how many acts are in the actual finals. I think there should be a lot more!

Without further ado, and in no particular order... Who the Heartbeat of a Rabbit blog Would Have Picked from the Glasto Emerging Talent Competition Longlist, 2013:

1. Super Squarecloud
(longlisted by Neon Filler)

2. Nadine Shah
(longlisted by Neon Filler)


3. Katie Cruel
(longlisted by Oliver of Hotcakes.fm)

4. We/Are/Animal
(longlisted by the405)



5. Croupier
(longlisted by Faded Glamour)

6. Sandunes
(longlisted by White Noise)

7. The Gorgeous Colours
(longlisted by Crack in the Road)

8. Packt
(longlisted by Song, By Toad)


Hope you found something there you liked. Please leave a comment.

Here's the whole longlist, and here's who actually made the finals. Who would you have picked?

Glastonbury ETC longlist 2011 - Spotify playlist

Glastonbury Festival's annual Emerging Talent Competition longlist was announced last night.

They've gone for a completely different format than in recent years, asking 41 music bloggers to pick 3 bands each from a given batch.

I'm very pleased to see Hysterical Injury have made the list, kudos to Jon Sidwell of Music Liberation for picking them out. The whole list of 123 has to be whittled down to 8 before the finalists are known. It's great that they've published the whole longlist.

More on all this later, but for anyone who'd like to hear them, I've made a Spotify playlist of all the bands on the longlist I could find - the link is http://bit.ly/GlastoETC2011

If you know of any mistakes here - bands I've missed or mixed up, or if you're in one of them and would like a different track featured, email me at dotdashdash.dashdash@gmail.com or leave a comment and let me know.

*with apologies to the many bands on the longlist who aren't on Spotify.

Running out with snow-white tail (Introduction)

Hello, I'm Wes White... this is the first post for what will eventually, hopefully, if I get it right, look something like a music blog.

This is as much as anyone out there is likely to know about me:

I'm the editor/curator of Attack!!!! magazine, a writer when I can be, and in years past I was heavily involved in getting Glastonbury Festival's 'Emerging Talent Competition' up and running.

Last year (2010) I managed to grab a few headlines (1 2 3 4) with a project for independent musicians called Storm the Charts - and, okay, we didn't take the top 40 down in the end but we did have fun trying.

Oh, and - this is a new thing - I'm also now the manager of Bath-based noise-pop duo The Hysterical Injury - although 'managing' is so far quite a grand term for what I do for them, which could to date more aptly be called 'cheerleading'. In any case, they are FANTASTIC, and you MUST CHECK THEM OUT. Okay? Much more on them in the weeks and months to come, obviously.

Glastonbury's ETC has moved on since my day, via Q magazine (meh) and on to what now looks like a much more interesting format with the shortlist from those who enter being drawn up by 40 active music bloggers. I am really pleased to see that people who are passionate about discovering new music and who are going to be in a position to champion some of the artists who apply, regardless of whether their favourites are named as winners or not, are now in charge of the shortlists there, and seeing some of their blogs is a large part of the inspiration for this one.

The main thing though is I just want to keep hearing lots more music. I've no real expectation that anyone else will care a great deal what I think about it, but if you do choose to follow me, well, thank you very much indeed, I hope we find something good together.

The title of the blog comes from a review of an Archie Bronson Outfit gig I wrote for Artrocker magazine. The title of this post comes from 'Rabbit Kids' by Shrag - they were one of the 40 winners from Storm the Charts.

More soon. Thanks for reading.