NME
… Lo-fi electronics with deeply human pop sensibilities. The brainchild of Indian-born, Derby-based, bedroom-studio, obsessive Jyoti Mishra; these four-track creations are polished and assured enough to have earned themselves extensive Radio 1 play already. Very weird, very promising.
The Economist
Jyoti Mishra and his first single, “Your Woman”, from a record called “Abort, Retry, Fail?”, went straight into the British music charts at number one (only the fourth debut single ever to do so).
Mr Mishra’s story is one of persistence. Even the government can take a smidgen of the credit for his success. Unlike the well-established artists he deposed, he earned his chart hit the hard way after toiling for years in obscurity. Performing under the name of White Town, he launched his hit song without the help of a big record label. “Abort, Retry, Fail?”, named after the error message given by computers, was recorded in his home on second-hand equipment.Chrysalis, his current record company, signed him only after a British radio station had begun playing “Your Woman”.
Now 30, Mr Mishra has barelyworked since leaving school in 1982. A brief stint on the government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, a programme to help the unemployed which has since been phased out, helped him to set up his own record label, Satya Records, and to keep recording.
A music addict with an encyclopedic knowledge of musical trends since the 1920s, Mr Mishra does not plan to succumb to the glitter of the pop industry. He is already boycotting BBC TV’s “Top of the Pops”
because, among other things, its minions were unpleasant to a friend of his. “If success means that I have to turn into an insensitive megalomaniac, then I’d rather never be in the charts at all.” Geek idealism.
Parasol
Derby, England’s master of the 8-track, Jyoti Misra, is back… armed with 20 amazing new songs. The White Town trademark of brilliantly written, yet simple, unassuming, jangly British-pop is intact. Jyoti writes great songs, not unlike much of the stuff associated with some of his pals on the Sarah Records label out of England.
Parasol has already released three White Town singles… we’re big, big fans. One of the tracks from a Parasol single, Hair like Alain Delon, appears on the classic Spin-Art Records compilation One Last Kiss. Additional White Town singles have been released by Lovely in the U.K. and Elefant in Spain.
Jyoti uses White Town not only as a musical vehicle, but as a means to express and/or discover himself. This is evidenced in the CD’s 14 page booklet where Jyoti takes time to wax philosophic about sex and the other two s’s and to share his lifelong experiences. A surprisingly frank, sometimes odd, read in it’s own right, it gives the listener great insight into the psyche of the man that is White Town… a man who gives and gets the most out of his music
