Focus Music Notes. "Out of the Blues". Popular music through the decades

Willy Moon  released his debut album ‘Here’s Willy Moon’ through Island Records on 8th April 2013. ‘Here’s Willy Moon’ was written, recorded and produced all on his own (with a few tracks being produced by Pulp's Steve Mackey) and he doesn’t blend different sounds; he smashes them together. There’s no middle ground. It’s as if rock’n’roll had been deep-frozen in 1965, just before the Beatles discovered acid, and abruptly reanimated 45 years later by a laptop hip hop producer. Willy Moon doesn’t like to waste time. His debut album, ‘ Here’s Willy Moon ’, is less than 29 minutes long. Only one of its 12 songs lasts more than three minutes and not a single note is squandered. No bets were hedged during the making of this record. "My album is short like my songs. I always loved the relentlessness and excitement of that first Ramones album and there's something of that spirit in there. I think it will surprise people who've only heard Yeah Yeah, there's some slower,...

Willy Moon’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ was a sharp and stylish opening gambit from dapper 21 year old Willy Moon, which has already clocked up over 400,000 plays on Youtube and had Rough Trade record shop call it the “best single of the year”. Since then, this sharp-dressed rockabilly Moon has been working on new music in his home studio, and ‘Yeah Yeah’ is the first result. Taking its cue from the early hip hop block party blueprints laid down by Afrika Bambaataa and his Zulu Nation, the track is a riot of explosive beats and blues shouting built around a sample from Wu-Tang Clan’s classic ‘Wu-Tang Ain’t Nuthing Ta F’Wit’. The result is the missing link between Sun Studios and Def Jam, a rowdy, highly compressed cut-up collision that sounds like Grandmaster Flash throwing down with Carl Perkins. Don’t step on his blue suede shell toes. Willy has recently taken his distinctive sound live playing at YoYo and an NME Awards show at Heaven and Camden Crawl. A killer club remix comes from ...