B-Town is the name given to an indie music scene based in the Digbeth area of Birmingham, United Kingdom. [1] [2] B-Town bands include Peace, Swim Deep, JAWS, Sugarthief, and Spilt Milk Society.
Contents
B-Town is the name given to an indie music scene based in the Digbeth area of Birmingham, United Kingdom. [1] [2] B-Town bands include Peace, Swim Deep, JAWS, Sugarthief, and Spilt Milk Society.
Some local commentators have suggested the term is an invention by London-based journalists to talk the wider Birmingham music scene up as a fad, [3] pointing out that "there have been bands going strong in Birmingham for years" [4] and highlighting the variety and strength in depth of the music being created in the city. [5] Evil Alien—a band who have been identified with the scene—have criticised it as "just media hype and a silly name somebody has given it all", commenting that "B-Town is the worst nickname for this great city I have ever heard and it makes me cringe every time I hear it". [6] In July 2013 Cavan McCarthy of Swim Deep claimed that the term started off as a joke, invented by himself and Harry Koisser of Peace while driving back into Birmingham from outside the city, and that "now everyone says it and we’re a bit embarrassed about it". [7]
Critics have pointed out that many of the scene's leading bands don't sound very similar, [5] though others have identified a common element as how the bands "all incorporate a slightly flippant attitude to their music, not concentrating on polishing their records to perfection, but playing for the joy of creating music and for entertaining their audiences." [8] The NME has commented how "nonchalance courses through the scene’s veins like quicksilver ... some scenes come roaring out of the traps; B-Town seemed to roll out of bed, insular and uncontrived, smirking at its own in-jokes, smelling faintly of K cider and intent on nothing loftier than the pursuit of a laugh." [9]
Britpop was a mid-1990s British-based music culture movement that emphasised Britishness. It produced brighter, catchier alternative rock, partly in reaction to the popularity of the darker lyrical themes and soundscapes of the US-led grunge music and to the UK's own shoegaze music scene. The movement brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British popular cultural movement, Cool Britannia, which evoked the Swinging Sixties and the British guitar pop of that decade.
Gothic rock is a style of rock music that emerged from post-punk in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The first post-punk bands which shifted toward dark music with gothic overtones include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure.
Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent record labels, by the 1990s it became more widely associated with the music such bands produced.
New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication, before becoming an online brand which includes its website and radio stations.
Nigel Timothy Godrich is an English record producer, recording engineer and musician. He has worked with acts including Radiohead, Travis, Beck, Air, Paul McCartney, U2, R.E.M., Pavement, Roger Waters and Arcade Fire.
Indie pop is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and subsequently generated a thriving fanzine, label, and club and gig circuit. Compared to its counterpart, indie rock, the genre is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free. In later years, the definition of indie pop has bifurcated to also mean bands from unrelated DIY scenes/movements with pop leanings. Subgenres include chamber pop and twee pop.
Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band formed in Sheffield in 2002. The group consists of lead singer Alex Turner, drummer Matt Helders, guitarist Jamie Cook and bassist Nick O'Malley. Former bassist Andy Nicholson left the band in 2006 shortly after their debut album was released.
Post-punk revival is a genre or movement of indie rock that emerged in the early 2000s as musicians started to play a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock inspired by the original sounds and aesthetics of post-punk, new wave and garage rock. It is closely associated with new wave revival, and garage rock revival, with the three often put under the umbrella genre of new rock revolution.
King Adora was a rock group formed in Birmingham, England in 1998. The band released debut album Vibrate You in May 2001 and follow-up Who Do You Love? in March 2004. The band was notable for their short, riotous live shows. Lack of label support and changing tastes in the UK guitar music scene led King Adora to split in 2005. In 2010, the band reformed to play shows in Birmingham and London, but have been inactive since.
New rave is a genre of music described by The Guardian as "an in-yer-face, DIY disco riposte to the sensitive indie rock touted by bands like Bloc Party." It is most commonly applied to a British-based music scene between 2005 and late 2008 of fast-paced electronica-influenced indie music that celebrated the late 1980s Madchester and rave scenes through the use of neon colours and using the term 'raving' to refer to going nightclubbing.
Michael Geoffrey Skinner is an English rapper, singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. Best known for the music project the Streets, Skinner has also released music as a solo artist, as part of the D.O.T. with frequent collaborator Rob Harvey, and under the pseudonym The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light.
Everything Everything are an English art rock band from Manchester that formed in late 2007. Noted for their eclectic sound and complex, sociopolitical lyrics, the band has released six albums to date — Man Alive (2010),Arc (2013),Get to Heaven (2015),A Fever Dream (2017),Re-Animator (2020) and Raw Data Feel (2022) — and has been widely critically acclaimed. Their work has twice been shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize and has received five nominations for Ivor Novello Awards.
Witch house is a microgenre of electronic music that is musically characterized by high-pitched keyboard effects, heavily layered basslines and trap-style drum loops, while it aesthetically employs occult and gothic-inspired themes.
Peace are an English indie rock band, formed in Worcester. The band currently consists of brothers Harry and Sam Koisser.The band began to receive critical acclaim in early 2012, from publications such as The Guardian and NME, who compared them to The Maccabees, Foals, Wu Lyf and Vampire Weekend. They were considered part of the B-Town movement, along with bands such as Swim Deep, Jaws and Superfood.
Swim Deep are a British indie pop band formed in Birmingham, England. The band currently consists of Austin Williams (vocals), Cavan McCarthy (bass), James Balmont (keyboards), Robbie Wood (guitar), and Thomas Fiquet (drums).
Where the Heaven Are We is the debut studio album by British indie rock band Swim Deep, released on 5 August 2013 on Chess Club Records, a subsidiary of RCA. It peaked at number 20 in the UK album charts and received mostly positive reviews.
Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
JAWS were an English indie rock band formed in Birmingham, England in 2012 after singer Connor Schofield had posted a demo (Cameron) online that received enough positive feedback to encourage him to start a band with friends from Halesowen College. They have often been identified as part of the Digbeth-based B-Town scene.
Sports Team is an English alternative rock band based in London. The band consists of lead vocalist Alex Rice, rhythm guitarist and vocalist Rob Knaggs, lead guitarist Henry Young, bassist Oli Dewdney, drummer Al Greenwood, and keyboardist Ben Mack. According to The Guardian, their songs "romanticise Middle England" and idiosyncrasies like Wetherspoons, flip phones, the M5, and fishing.
Hardcore punk in the United Kingdom began in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the second wave of punk rock in the country. The scene produced many successful and influential hardcore punk bands throughout the 1980s such as Discharge, GBH and the Exploited and led to the pioneering of genres such as grindcore, street punk, crust punk and D-beat.