As the commercial re-birth of British indie enters its fifth year, there must be some worries about the long-term viability of the movement - can Britpop sustain itself indefinitely? Of course the top bands will do fine, just as the cream of earlier musical trend waves is still visible: the Charlatans from the Madchester era, the Boo Radleys from shoe gazing, Dinosaur Jr and Buffalo Tom from the Boston-area boom, the Cure from the, um, middle ages. But if Britpop is capable of maintaining interest and sales levels, the music must begin to transform so that another ice age doesn't take hold as happened at the close of the shoe-gazing period.
The vast difference between Audioweb and Suede, the band usually credited with inaugurating the current Britpop era, shows that the idea of Britpop remains flexible enough to carry on for at least a while longer. Audioweb's combination of bursts of guitar and other trappings of indie with a loping dub beat is good news for listeners now, and should demonstrate to cynincs that the future of Britpop need not entail infinite permutations of Oasis, Ash, Pulp, and Elastica.
Anyone who finds Britpop's re-hash bands boring can find solace - and a rollicking good time - in Audioweb's self-titled debut, an album that showcases a band not satisfied to latch onto an existing sound.
Audioweb hail from Manchester and, like fellow Mancunians Black Grape, meld dance and traditional indie styles. Unlike the sound on Black Grape records, the mixture on Audioweb is very balanced, rather than tipped towards dance. The male vocalist combines Ian Brown of the Stone Roses, Bernard Butler's partner McAlmont, and HR of Bad Brains: gentle melodic lines, silky vibratto and soaring falsetto, jumpy ragga growls.
The music is almost all played live, from break beats to bass to electric and acoustic guitars, engaging in a way that sampled music sometimes fails to be. Standout tracks such as "Time" or the lead single "Sleeper" transpose flashing guitar lines onto rumbling bass while retaining a lightness of touch that keeps them clearly out of the camp that combines metal and hip-hop: an artful jab to counter the knock-out punch of a Dub War or Sensor.
