Looping About Ed Sheeran

The Graph of Ed Sheeran

Last night I caught a chunk of The Mercury Music Prize won by Sampha which seemed to me functional but bland. There was a recorded performance of Ed Sheeran performing "The Shape of You" on Jools Hollands' Later, and what struck me was that here is a guy who is clever at what he does, putting songs together from basic recorded loops, but unfortunaelely what came out for me was just like any other radio filler and will probably be an X-Factor staple in years to come.

Ed Sheeran is a really nice guy, though , gave a great message from Miami. Basically I like Ed Sheeran a lot but find his music bland and boring hence the graph on the right.

He was followed by Kate Tempest performing the apocalyptic "Don't Fall In" who, in my opinion, musically blew him away.





The first time I saw a loop being used in a live situation was John Martyn performing "Big Muff" on Rock Goes To College in the seventies. He just had this acoustic guitar and a few effects and a tape loop box which allowed him to build up his rhythm to amazing effect, that stayed with me, well today, you can see that below.

The a couple of years ago I walked into Think Tank? saw a girl wearing horns on stage who started with some wordless vocals to provide her backing for "The Shadow Line". That girl was Jordan Reyne. I was truly blown away and she is still the moriginal artist I have heard over the last couple of years. Maybe it was the combination of walking in to wait for the main band, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing (who were excellent by the way, thanks for the recommendation Gillian F) , therefore not expecting anything to be blown away by her solo set. I bought three of her CDs so at the top is "The Shadow Line". The official video for it is here, but I wanted to show what she can do live

Have a brilliant Friday everybody.