Welcome to the world of the Honey Ryder Band, an act that have quite an impressive CV under their belts. Their career to date has seen them make an impact on several club charts, perform to over 200,000 people at gigs, and gain some strong radio support from Radio 2. There also seems to be a lot of talk about how independent this band are, and how they’ve secured prestigious shareholders in their ‘product’, and international deals through their independent hard work and determination.

After several top 40 singles, the band prepare to release their new single ‘Rising Up’, hoping no doubt, that it will build upon their past achievements. How will it fare? Well there’s only one way to find out! ‘Rising Up’ has quite a long intro, so at first I thought I was going to hear an instrumental track, but eventually the vocal kicked in. The lead singer has quite a deep, husky voice, which fits well to the style of music, though this, and some of the beats used in the song were a bit predictable for me. I don’t think it adds anything new to the chilled out/ambient dance music genre, though the second half of the song has some nice instrumentation, which gives it an edge. The production is tight, and remix outfit Fat Buddha have done a good job there so I did quite enjoy this track, it just feels like I’ve heard it all before.

There was one thing that did raise this track up a notch from its contemporaries though, and that was the video. Although I’ve never watched Monty Python, the Honey Ryder band are obviously big fans, and this video is their tribute. It has the feel of a cult cartoon/animation, with some quirky scenarios/characters. I was quite captivated, and although it’s not what you’d expect to accompany a club tune, it certainly works. So that’s one song that’s good, though not wholly original, and one video that’s very different and amusing. Not a bad result really?!

‘Rising Up’ is available from October 26th. For more information on the Honey Ryder Band visit http://www.myspace.com/honeyrydertheband.