Cougar Microbes

Last week London based singer/songwriter Lail Arad was set a cool challenge by Q Magazine: throughout Wednesday she had to create a mixtape made entirely of legally downloadable tracks. It was awesome to find out that the Cougar post on Oddysey was included amongst an eclectic mix of great music.

For more information on the Challenge click here and also check out the final mixtape here.

Here are a couple of choice selections by Lail Arad, live gig review coming soon.

TRACKS:

King Charles – Love Lust

Lawrence Arabia – Apple Pie Bed

For a few years now the name Rosie Oddie has been popping up on those ubiquitous “Ones To Watch” lists and as a hot topic of conversation on the lips of friends in the know.

Having ditched the previous working title of ‘Rosie Oddie and the Odd Squad’ for the slicker Oddyssey moniker the singer and her gang recently released their ‘Black America‘ EP.

The title track would be a suitably edgy sequel to Kim Wilde‘s 80′s classic ‘Kids In America‘ almost 30 years from that singles original release . ‘Companion‘ starts of as an intimate affair and peaks into a full blown dramatic number that could easily be the next Bond theme.  ’Alan‘ takes on a retro 60′s quality and is suitably larger than life and satirical.

Rosie’s raspy delivery channels an unexpected and often brilliant cross between the styles and deliveries of Cerys Matthews of Catatonia fame, Róisín Murphy from Moloko and Paloma Faith managing to be both sassy and mischievous . In the meantime the band showcase a big confident sound that lends a theatrical (and dare I say almost burlesque) characteristic to their output.

Having demonstrated that they can be  larger than life on record now is time to for me to catch the London outfit live; if those same friends from before are to be believed this should be quite an experience.

For more tracks check out myspace.com/oddysseymusic