CoCo and the Butterfields – Battlegrounds

“Fip Fok”

Tom: Butterfields?

Tim: From Kent, some buskers that decided to form a band in the genre of Fip Fok, which is apparently a blend of folk, hip hop and pop. Fairly sure no-one else in the entire world goes by that, but all the letters are there, I guess, so why not?

Tim: Now I liked this from the off, because the first two notes are the same as the first to from Little Talk, one of my favourite songs ever, and whatever you want to call the genre, the sound isn’t that far off – brass, similar vocal sound, and even some “hey!” shouts in the chorus.

Tom: I’m not sure I hear the hip-hop influence in there — but okay, sure, pop-folk, yes. It sounds a bit like Noah and the Whale, which is roughly the same genre.

While I can’t claim to be an expert on folk music, those sound like proper folk vocals as well — the timbres and styles match perfectly.

Tim: Though speaking of the vocals, I don’t know why male/female vocal pairings are so rare, because they can work so very very well.

Off the top of my head, successful matches include Matt & Melanie, Ben & Kelly, even Gary & Agnetha. From Europe, we’ve Tor & Bettan, Oda & Wulff, and of course Eurovision victors Ell & Nikki. They sound interesting, unusual, and generally really good, and to be honest, I wish we had more of them. Because then we’d have more of this.