Six Shuffle #2 – 7th October 2011

Six Shuffle is a feature where our writers play six tracks from their musical library whilst on shuffle and write thoughts on the track during the track length, no matter what song comes on or how long the song is.

Elbow – Picky Bugger
From their album Leaders of the Free World (the last Elbow album before their songs started being used to soundtrack every montage in TV history) this track is a rare vicious track, with a dark key and swearing – a bit different to the mellower Elbow we know now. I actually really like Leaders of the Free World, as it’s the album that I discovered Elbow from. It’s shorter than I remember though, but I love the clapping at the end.

The Cast of Cheers – Derp
I love this album – it feels like a better, more mature Bloc Party, with their cool factor still intact. There’s a loud level of math-rock to this album, and this track is a winding and flipping version of the shouty nature of the band. It was available for free from their Bandcamp last year, but is very much worth the money that they are wanting to lay it out – it has that excitable nature that debut albums sometimes don’t have, when someone is doing something not entirely new, but certainly something that will get your attention when it comes on. A very good album.

It is also worth noting is the lovely art work (posted below). It’s very Why?-esque, but it works.

Steven Milne – Falling
Ah! A local boy from Aberdeen: a close contender for my next New Scottish Music column. I ran into this album by going to see the Twilight Sad play an acoustic set, and Steven Milne (who is in the band Little Kicks) wowed the crowd with his lovely solo album. It really is a fabulous singer songwriter album and well worth sourcing. This track gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end – it must be the melody on the chorus that does it, and it feels so right and so good. Genuinely a good find and another reason to love my local record shop One-Up. I will get round to writing another column full of new Scottish acts for the winter, and he will certainly involved in the post, this album’s been on my rotation for a while now, and sits proudly in front of my iPod dock CD hi-fi player.

(The) Phantom Band – Folk Song Oblivion
My review of their second album The Wants was a vitriolic run through the worlds of “fucking pop music” and was for a while my favourite bit of writing I’ve done for here. It reads a little petulant and a lot like a music-indie prick acting out, but I kinda still stand by it, mostly that the album is the best British album of the last few years. This is from their debut album, Checkmate Savage, and is a probably the best song they have on that records. The sweeping riff feels like a cloud growing over a mountain, like a folk song mutated thanks to the Mutant X gene. It also feels like Cthulu, swarming a shipwreck. I love it, despite it being linked directly to me lodging my car ontop of a rock one night when going hillwalking and almost destroying my car, and certainly destroying the land owners lawn. Oops.

Battles – Toddler
Um... I’ve not really gotten into the new Battles record, but I loved Mirrored. This seems like a random interlude and is quite nice. It has a feel of one of those mobiles you get on babies beds – maybe that’s where the name came from.

The Twilight Sad – Made to Disappear
This is my favourite track from their second album Forget the Night Ahead. It’s something to do with the drum rhythm being a little off, and different, and it feels so good to drum along. “You said forget the night ahead... but you’ll never find her on her own...” genuinely love this track. It has this slow approach to the guitar that’s quite different to the actual sound of the drums and juxtaposition seems to work in the songs favour. It feels really good.

Interestingly, I am listening to these through my new Etymotic HF2 Earphones, and I have just noticed a little squeal on the guitar at the chorus I’ve never heard before. I love when that happens.

Bonus Seventh Spin
Dananananaykroyd – Some Dresses

Six Shuffle #1 - 28th July 2011

A long time ago, in 2008, I had my own music blog with a friend.  I wrote a lot on it.  One of my favourite things that I did was a feature called "Six Shuffle" - I would play my entire musical library on Shuffle, six times in a row, and have to write something about the song or artist in the time that the song played for, without skipping the track.

It was fun, for me at least.  You can check the archive by clicking here. Be warned, it's wanky and poorly written for the most part, so it should be fairly recognisable as my own writing.  So, here it is: the "rebooted" first edition of Six Shuffle for Tones of Town.

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
The final and title track of the debut album from one of Scotland's greatest recent exports.  The Twilight Sad are up there with some of my favourite bands of all time, simply because they seem to do exactly what I wanted to do if I had been in a band - loud angry Scottish vocals, spooky lyrics, crashing waves of distortion and guitar, and thudding drumming.  They are my own musical tastes distilled into one band, and this track, a long, winding, immersive ambient track, misses a few things that make the band such a favourite of mine... but that is precisely why I like this track so much.  It embodies their range, and also echoes there EP release Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards, It Did. that expanded on most of the tracks from the first record to this slow, drawn out expanse.  It works.

The Beatles - We Can Work It Out
This is a stark contrast to The Twilight Sad.  Taken from Past Masters Vol. 2, or the indie-est selection of Beatles tracks you can get this side of the Stereo versus Mono debacle that plagues their back catalogue.  I made the mistake of keeping the Stereo mixes as they play havoc with my left-ear deafness - it sounds like the Fab Four are screaming in my right ear with a band playing just slightly off to the left, in a different room.  Anyway, this song is one my favourites from the band, partly due to the changing pace of ryhthm, and the sweet melody that permeates through the track.  Also, an accordion?  Points given.

The Horrors - I Only Think of You
This neatly ties to a Tweet I made a few weeks back:

 

I have barely listened to any Horrors material before the release of the recent album Skying, and I did feel dirty listening to their third LP before their first and second, so I acquired them and started listening to them... but they made no impact.  This track is over 7 minutes long, and in that run time it feels like nothing happens.  It is like a cover of How Soon is Now? or My Bloody Valentine that never quite made it.  The production feels like 20 years old, which isn't a bad thing... but it feels so bloody boring.  Maybe in context it works, but as a solo track... meh.  Also, I am yet to be convinced by Skying, but it's at least slightly more interesting on first listen that this track.

Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

Ah, Kid A... the best/worst Radiohead album there has ever been - in my eyes, it's their Magnus Opus, but my best friend finds it abhorrent.  He is an ardent Bends/Pablo Honey fan, and can't even really listen to OK Computer.  However, in a spate of that "you SHALL like what I like" I have tried to force the later Radiohead releases upon him, letting him hear Knives Out, or Reckoner, and this, one of their most beautiful songs ever put to record.  Some suggest Nude is better, or Street Spirit, or even the recent Codex, but this for me is such a fabulous pop song, with exquisite instrumentation and a clever structure, especially in the face of the rest of the album.  You can draw the lines from this to Nude, I guess, seeing as they are from similar time periods in the bands lifespan.  I really enjoy Kid A and Amnesiac, as not only are they good records, but my gateway albums into electronic experimentation and various other artists, which I think they were and are for a lot of music fans. 

Boards of Canada - Paul Russell's Piece

Speaking of moving into electronic music, Boards, already circle jerked by me on this blog, appear here in one of their shorter, rarer cuts.  The track just ended... moving into...

Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy

Apple really need to look at their random algorithm.  I have 50Gb of music at my disposal and they pick two Boards tracks.  I am not complaining.  Dayvan is one of the stand out tracks from the band, and their most famous track - it's adorned hundreds of BBC programmes since it's 2006 debut.  It appears also on the 2006 EP Trans Canada Highway, which I love.  It's not my favourite Boards track, not by a long way, but it's certainly one that I love to hear, and smile when I know it's coming up.  The previous track in the shuffle is actually from their first "release" if you can call it that, whilst its canonical presence within the Boards discography is still discussed amongst fans.  See, it comes from A Few Old Tunes (Side II) which is a bootlegged tape of cuts from before the band had made a true release.  The story suggests that it was handed out to friends and family in the 1990s.  It has a sister; Old Tunes Vol. 2, both of which I downloaded a long time ago - I don't even know if a real copy still exists. There is still a lot of mystery surrounding the release, which I happen to love.

Bonus Seventh Track

Incubus - Magic Medicine

Sunday New Music Challenge 1

A few Sundays ago I felt that it was a good day to try some new music; I had eMusic credits, some money to burn, and the idea that this week I'd like to listen to something good.  So, I did this on Twitter:

In return I got three suggestions in due course from @PPlasticHelmet, @Jook and @marckeetect.

So, unto the new music!

PETRELS - Haeligewielle

I am a man of varied musical tastes, and I really want to expand my samplings of various genres.  I have slowly delved into "IDM", also Minimal Techno, as well as Bleep and Glitch, but another one is ambient - I enjoy Oren Ambarchi and Fennsz, so more of this type is currently what I would like.  My musical tastes are jarring, if anything, and once you compare this album to my previously listened to entire Hives back catalogue in one sitting, this felt like a sudden intake of sharp fresh breath on a December morning.  It felt like ice, like air-con in musical form with a dark streak. It is swirling, dark, deep, and grandiose - a soundtrack to the soul.  The album is seven tracks long but it really feels like it should infinitely loop forever.  Simply put, exactly what I like.  Electronic ambient is right up my obtuse muso street, and this release is excellent.
Get this album here.

BUNKY - Born to be a Motorcycle

When giving myself the challenge, I mentioned that it should be an album that I "might like" - and when I fired up Bunky for the first time I was distracted by friends that were over chatting and relaxing. I said "Let me put this on, it's new and I've not heard it before" and within the first few tracks I had been asked "Who is this?".  I didn't really know - the funny thing was that this was the point of this whole thing, and Bunky is exactly what I wanted.  I love the use of the brass section, I like the playful lyrics, the breathy and shouty vocals, and I also really like the strutting nature of the tracks as well.  Wikipedia, my old friend, tells me that the band are from San Diego, and the name of the band is a combination of the words "bunny" and "monkey", so no real help there.  Bunky do sound like a band having fun, which is good, and feel like they have little pretence either, which is really good.  Very, very enjoyable.
Check Bunky out here.

SCRITTI POLITTI - Early

Oh. I had heard of Scritti Politti once before; their name has been mentioned with derision by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in one of their XFM Radio shows.  This album, which seems to almost not even exist outside of Mediafire, Pitchfork, and the fact I can listen to it, makes me quite confused.  Also, the album  feels like it should be interesting, in a way. I listened to Scritti Politti whilst I was sketching a fictional city's transportation network (something I do for fun) on a break during work and it's disjointed, scattered... it is obviously intended as political, and as an apolitical person it doesn't strike me as anything interesting.  I am sorry to say that this kind of music, with its barked lyrics, loose structure, and middling instrumental performance, which is obviously part of the whole deal, doesn't work with me.  It is beyond what I like in my day to day life.  In essence, the complete extent of political music that I like is Rage Against the Machine and that's 'cause they say fuck a lot.  Not for me, I'm afraid.
Scritti Politti's Myspace. :D

Your Favourite Writers #3 - NICK

Who are you?
Nick Dunkeyson. Yes, that is my real name.

Where are you?
N19, init.

How are you?
Pretty good, beyond the fact I'm spending my Friday evening fiddling around with a blog.

What are you?
Public sector enemy-of-the-right-wing-press; defiantly mid-twenties; music fan; sports nerd; computer game nerd; generally a nerd; hopefully vaguely likeable; totally pretentious.

How do you listen to music?
With my ears, hahaha. Erm, I listen on my commute (and return commute), sometimes on computer at home, go to gigs. I guess most people do.

How long have you been listening to music?
I guess I properly got into music around 2002, but obviously I'd listened to (and owned) odd bits before then. But mainly 2002, A-Level days.

First album bought by yourself for yourself?
Lightning Seeds – Jolification. Which I'm not remotely ashamed of.

Who were your “gateway” band?
Turin Brakes or Doves, I guess. Certainly The Optimist and The Last Broadcast were two of the first albums I played over and over again. Actually, maybe it was Coldplay, because I did listen to Parachutes masses too. Yeah, one of those three.

Favourite moment in any music ever for sending shivers down your spine? And why?
Christ, I set these questions and I've asked still myself a super-hard one. So I'm going to pick a few: Salif Keita – Yamore feels like it transports you to a hill overlooking Bamako or something, and you get the awe of this amazing foreign sight, except in music. Erm, Gorillaz – El Manana always gets me, there's just such tremendous sandess in that song. And of course loads and loads of Sigur Ros, with probably the chorus from Starálfur just pipping that moment when Untitled 3 takes off, and the moment Hoppípolla kicks in a close third.

What music would it surprise people to know you like?
This is going to sound like I'm taking the piss, but I genuinely really really rate Blue by Eiffel 65. It's a bit unsophisticated, but it's catchy, it's simple and incredibly effective, and damn – it's how all that Europop should've been. It's not trying to be anything it's not, and for that reason, it's not a guilty pleasure, it's just a damn fine song.

Remember music videos? What's your favourite?
Chevy Chase and Paul Simon crack me up on You Can Call Me Al,but for music and and a visual idea coming together, I'm gonna have to for No Surprises.

Do you care about album artwork any more? You do? Great! What's your favourite, and why?
Well, I don't really. But if you press me, Clem Snide – End of Love really nails the kind of slightly sad nature of the song; it's a bunch of family polaroids, but it's presented in a way that feels like something lost.

What's guaranteed to get you on the dancefloor?
The Walkmen – The Rat, LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends, TV On The Radio – Wolf Like Me. In the latter's case, it's also quite likely to earn me a shin injury resulting in a two-weeks-later-guess-I'd-better-visit-A&E-then moment.

What's guaranteed to get you off the dancefloor?
Depressingly, music I don't know. But I'll definitely take a step back if someone puts on Pavement or Guided by Voices or something.

Who's your favourite person as a person in music?
Everyone loves Guy Garvey, and so do I.

Best injury caused by music?
Anyone who's ever stage-dived and not been caught. Watching Jack Black hurl himself face-first on the floor was the only enjoyable moment in the super-creepy wince-fest that was School of Rock.

Best music caused by injury?
Luke Haines claims he didn't deliberately throw himself off a wall when touring Now I'm A Cowboy, but in any case the fact he was in a wheelchair for however many months probably contributed a hell of a lot to the gloriously acerbic sneer-fest that is After Murder Park. Bleak, darkly humourous and with this undercurrent of bile, it's British mid-nineties guitar music par excellence.

Most you've ever embarrassed yourself in the cause of music?
When at Uni in Nottingham, in my old band, yeah, I insisted on going on stage with a double vodka and guava juice. Guava, for those that don't know, produces a juice in a quite feminine shade of pink. In hindsight, mega-cringe.

Imagine someone you fancy, right. What band is it they say they love that tips your over the edge?
Maybe Sigur Ros. I'm a sappy old thing really and it'd be the idea of cuddling up to someone listening to Takk...

Worst band you've ever seen live?
The Magic Numbers were pony, but the worst I've ever seen was this band called Gisli, who supported the Beta Band on their farewell tour back in, what, 2004? JESUS FUCK they were rubbish. Mid-tempo, boring, overlong songs. Thankfully they were never heard of again.

Did you just fart?
No.

You did, didn't you? God almighty. I'm trying to do a music questionnaire here.
Leave me alone.

Tell us your favourite story you've ever heard about some musician.
I was always amused by how Talking Heads – or rather, David Byrne - tried to write and record the vocal for Blind. It's one of their later, not very good songs. Apparently what they did was got him all dressed up like an office worker, sat him behind a bureau and had him improvise loads of stuff over the music. By all accounts it went on for hours, until he was sweaty, everyone was veering on the edge of sanity, and then called it quits.

After all this effort, after all this hard work, what did they get out of it? Well, not much. Most of it was ditched, and all they had was the daft “Blind blind blind blind!” chorus, for which “naff” just doesn't cover. We learn two things from this: one, bands will resort to desperate measures when they're running out of creative inspiration (like the previously brilliant Talking Heads were), and two, affectations and trying to be different just for the sake of it do not work.

Favourite soundtrack to anything – film, computer game, TV show, commercial:
Well, I wrote a whole blog on the Final Fantasy soundtracks, so yeah, those.

Whistle the theme from “Midnight Cowboy” for me.
Sod it, just listen to it for yourself.

Your Favourite Writers #2 - ROSS

Who are you?
Ross is Boss

Where are you?
The Cente of Funk (aka, Biggleswade)

How are you?
Perfectly cromulent.

What are you?
On Halo: Spartan General Grade 1. In real life: Lapwing Commander

How do you listen to music?
With my ears and sometimes a CD player or whatever is currently clogging up my hard drive.

How long have you been listening to music?
Ages. Since this morning I reckon.

First album bought by yourself for yourself?
Now 29 ON TAPE! - (tryhard indie bellend)

Who were your “gateway” band?
The Prodigy. I remember getting 'The Fat of the Land' for Christmas and being very excited and then playing it to death. I'd never heard anything like it before - completely blew my mind. They were perhaps the only band I was interested in, until discovering Blur and The Manics (only ‘Everything Must Go’).

Favourite moment in any music ever for sending shivers down your spine? And why?
Actually, I’m going to say a quite recent one, as I was going to just say “whenever I’ve seen Brand New play live” but I saw Them Crooked Vultures last year at Download and I’d had a few shandies, but their performance was absolutely mesmerising – possibly a weird combination of drunken excitement and brilliant music, but I’ve never felt quite like that before, it was a weird euphoric bliss. So yeah, their whole set was one big spine-tingle of WOW.

What music would it surprise people to know you like?
Even though they look like terrible douchebags I really like 3OH!3 and their ridiculous rapping and frat boy PARTY WHOOO antics.

Remember music videos? What's your favourite?
‘You’re Not Alone’ by Home Grown. It’s kind of a parody of typical pop-punk videos – always some little hidden in-joke dotted around in the annotations; i.e. lots of mocking directed at the drummer and a close up of Dan (which he hates).

Do you care about album artwork any more? You do? Great! What's your favourite, and why?
Yeah I care about artwork, it’s part of the record, it ties it all together. It’s packaging, it’s something to relate to the music you’re listening to. Plus, it’s good for your stupid friends who don’t know which album certain songs are on, so you can say “it’s on the album that has the fat naked man in a box on the front.”

Favourite? STANDARD

What's guaranteed to get you on the dancefloor?
Anything associated with DJ Lethal.

What's guaranteed to get you off the dancefloor?
Anything that doesn’t ask you to take it to the Mathew’s Bridge.

Who's your favourite person as a person in music?
Without a doubt, it’s John ‘Speedo’ Reis. He’s the Swami of punk rock and one of the nicest dudes I have met, a true gentlemen and a fantastic guitarist.

Best injury caused by music?
Saw a band called Arnocorps about 5 years ago in a small venue near my home town. The singer wanted a stage invasion; I scrambled up there with several others and found myself hugging the singer – then suddenly I was sitting on the drummer’s kit and he started hitting me in the back with his sticks. I couldn’t move for several seconds due to the cram of people, but was quite relieved (as was my back) to be free. I ached a fair bit the next day, but that’s rock ‘n roll.

Best music caused by injury?
Steve Snere of These Arms Are Snakes; completely ruined on whatever drugs/alcohol he’d been consuming before the gig, acting like it was the last days of Rome. His knuckles were bleeding, he’d probably been rolling in broken glass and I witnessed him smash his back on a monitor near the end of their set, but by god, he put on amazing show, mostly due to injuring himself during the night. Nutter.

Most you've ever embarrassed yourself in the cause of music?
Probably my awful singing voice – had to follow one of my friends who can actually sing at a karaoke night and I pretty much murdered ‘Enjoy The Silence’. I was out of key, forgot half the lyrics and started doing some ridiculous hand-dance moves and dropped the microphone several times. I got a sympathy clap from the guy running it.

Imagine someone you fancy, right. What band is it they say they love that tips you over the edge?
Rocket From The Crypt.

Worst band you've ever seen live?
Lots of competition for this. In the smaller bands stake, it was a group called Lion Sex. Two of them thought they were in Steel Panther – quite the opposite lads. One of them even had a wireless bass. Try-hard glam rock, that everyone in the venue and I mean EVERYONE looked bored to tears with. I felt embarrassed, the band must have felt embarrassed, the claps were surely out of sympathy. After a woeful cover of ‘I Fought The Law’ they finally stopped which was for the best. One of the first times I’ve seen a band properly die on stage.

In the bigger bands stake, definitely Five Finger Death Punch at Download in 2010. Possibly the worst band I have ever seen. Someone needed to tell them that nu-metal was about 9 years ago, obviously didn’t get the memo and their macho-bullshit dross they call music was so awful and contrived I was glad when their set was cut early due to a load of fans swarming the stage. I genuinely have no idea how anyone could consider this band as a favourite, let alone wear a t-shirt of theirs, but the amount of belms I witnessed wearing them was staggering.

Also, Stone Temple Pilots – either get to rehab or stop performing you old cokehead.

Did you just fart?
Yeah, apologies.

Tell us your favourite story you've ever heard about some musician.
I’ve always found the fact when Papa Roach first started they didn’t have a guitarist, but instead had a trombone player really, really funny. Imagine if they’d kept him onboard for ‘Infest’?

“CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES *PARP*
THIS IS MY LAST RESORT *PARP*
SUFFOCATION *PARP PARP*
NO BREATHIN’ *PARP*
DON’T GIVE A FUCK IF I CUT MY ARM BLEEDIN’ *PARP*
*Trombone solo*

Favourite soundtrack to anything – film, computer game, TV show, commercial:
Probably the Halo Reach soundtrack; wonderfully overblown in places, yet quite moving in others. Hats off to Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori for making just breathtaking soundscapes.

Whistle the theme from “Midnight Cowboy” for me.
I tried to, but I ended up humming the Jurassic Park theme really loudly instead.

YOUR FAVOURITE WRITERS #1 - MARK

Who are you?

Mark Peter Shields

Where are you?

Houston, Texas, by way of Glasgow and Aberdeen.

How are you?

Fine; tired, and too hot.

What are you?

Young, bearded, skeptical Scottish-man.

How do you listen to music?

Headphones whilst working, or in the car on the way to work.

How long have you been listening to music?

First album was bought for me in 1995 (Hits 1996 and Now' 35 I think, both on double cassette), so around 16 years in total, but really listening music probably only since 4th Year at High School, which was in 2001, so ten years or so.

First album bought by yourself for yourself?

Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows

Who were your “gateway” band?

Certainly Coldplay, at first, and then others from that acoustic-era in the beginning of the last decade, such as Turin Brakes, Starsailor, and maybe Kings of Convenience.

Favourite moment in any music ever for sending shivers down your spine? And why?

Both the buzzing synth line from LCD Soundsystem's Someone Great and the drop to a lower key in Ashes in the SNow from MONO's Hymn to the Immortal Wind.

What music would it surprise people to know you like?

It would surprise many that I love Celtic Fusion and have seen several bands that perform such music, like Peatbog Faeries. I also regularly go to the Celtic Connections festival that takes place in Glasgow in January of each year.

Remember music videos? What's your favourite?

Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity is the best.

Do you care about album artwork any more? You do? Great! What's your favourite, and why?

I love artwork that is a photograph and has no title or band name written on it, that is the best. Currently I really like the Phantom Band's The Wants cover, but also the new Mark McGuire compilation has very good artwork.

What's guaranteed to get you on the dancefloor?

Anything by Franz Ferdinand, Lostprophets, or Belle and Sebastian.

What's guaranteed to get you off the dancefloor?

A song that uses autotune.

Who's your favourite person as a person in music?

Jarvis Cocker or Roddy Woomble; it's the music and the beards.

Best injury caused by music?

Black eye and hospital visit when playing drums and losing, quite spectacularly, the control of the right handed drum stick, and almost blinding my self in one eye. Or, if you can count it, my impending deafness. I suppose you could ask me later in my life which.

Best music caused by injury?

Eh... no idea.

Most you've ever embarrassed yourself in the cause of music?

On a first date trying to use my guest-list entry to go and see This Town Need Guns when my name wasn't on the list. Luckily, I knew the promoter and guy holding the night, who let us in, but for a short while it was touch and go. And it was a fairly dreadful gig.

Imagine someone you fancy, right. What band is it they say they love that tips your over the edge?

Not a band, but a genre; post-rock.

Worst band you've ever seen live?

The Star Spangles, in 2002, in Edinburgh.

Did you just fart?

You did, didn't you?

God almighty. I'm trying to do a music questionnaire here.

Tell us your favourite story you've ever heard about some musician.

I went to a night where Roddy Woomble was DJing, and he was on fairly late as the bands had ran late. There wasn't that many people left milling around on the dancefloor, except for me and my friends. He put on an amazing Celtic folk song, and I decided that I'd go and ask him about it. He later admitted that he was trying to clear the dance floor and go home, and they'd let him play anything he wanted, so was playing that. We conversed about his attempts to clear the dancefloor and how they'd been fairly successful.

Favourite soundtrack to anything – film, computer game, TV show, commercial:

The entire LA Noire soundtrack is amazing because of the 1940s Jazz that it uses which is absolutely brilliant, and I am listneing to it a lot, but I think the best gaming soundtrack is Shenmue's. I don't really like TV or film soundtracks.

Whistle the theme from “Midnight Cowboy” for me.

I don't even know what that is.

Scottish Bands for the Summer

Like it or not, the large percentage of my musical wares that I keep on my iTunes and thundering through my earphones and speakers are from my home-country. It was partly due to the fact that I grew up there and have an affinity to push those who are from the same crucible of life that I came from, but also that there's just been something about the music that Scotland has been producing in the last few years that has resonated with me.

Resonated with my fucking soul.

If I was to list the bands on my current iPod that are Scottish, you might blush with embarrassment for me because I am so biased, I shouldn't even be writing this, putting pen to paper or even putting cursor to LCD screen, but recently there's been another burst of bands from Scotland that have blown me away, in various ways, and some of them have been around long enough in my ears for me to finally write a bit about them and be like "aw yeah, look at what I have listened to that you haven't, so get on it and listen to these now!".

If I am lucky you'll like them. Which you will because if you don't I'm going to grab my honours and get them round your house and pan your windows in. But you will like them, because they are all amazing.

FOUND
It's rare for a band to drop into my lap randomly without me remembering where I heard them first, but for some reason Found are exactly that. I can't remember where they came from, be it from a Last.fm recommendation, a review, supporting a different band, but they were synced to my iPod a while ago and haven't left. Hailing from Edinburgh the band have been around for ages, really, and I kicked myself for not investigating their music earlier... but maybe they didn't exist before I had heard them, and have been planted into the memory of things afterwards, so that's not my fault. Clever trick. I have been mostly taken in by their third long player Factorycraft that was released earlier this year on Chemikal Underground, the bastion of Scottish expression that they are. Listen to this and then head here to get it.

OVER THE WALL
Kiss me. No, seriously - kiss me right in the face. If you haven't already, you will be stupid not to after I've told you about this other tiny band that hails from Glasgow. OVER THE WALL are like, the best ever sex you've ever had, but it was video taped and you are watching it on a Saturday Morning, with Phillip Schofield and Gordon the Gofer introducing it. It's quite amazing pop-electronic-fun and, well, also has something that I love - melody. If you were to listen to the album Treacherous long enough you'll end up wanting to rush out and buy it - this happened to my friend in Texas who literally bought the whole album after hearing the track Istanbul twice. So listen to it here and buy the album here (Sorry for the Myspace link, ugh).

Find more Over The Wall albums at Myspace Music

INDIAN RED LOPEZ
Aberdeen, represent. I first saw these gentlefolks powering through a set supporting a band in Aberdeen, and since then have seen them a few other times, picking up a CDR or two along the way and FINALLY they have managed to get a record out and by the thunder of Thor it's pretty special. I've yet to pick a copy up (I will pick one up from my local record store in Aberdeen, the bloody brilliant One Up, when I get home OR grab one from their Bandcamp page) (linked at the bottom). So what do they sound like? Well, I think it's like a more electronic or experimental Twilight Sad, but that's my useless attempt at sounding like I have any idea how to describe their pulsing rhythms and grand vocals that bound across the soundscape. Live however, they sound entirely a different beast, so loud and thudding, like a hell march set in 1990s Falaraki. I'd listen to the album and see what you folks make of it, but they are excellent. And from Aberdeen, did I mention that? So listen to them here and then go and buy their album from here.
Empty Your Lungs and Breathe by IndianRedLopez

FATHERSON
What is it with going to Idlewild play concerts and being barraged by some of the best support acts I have ever seen? In going to Idlewild concerts I have been introduced to The Walkmen, Stapleton, The Twilight Sad, and now Fatherson. From Kilmarnock (which for some music writers is close enough to be called Glasgow, but I know different) this trio came at me like a bolt of hot sweaty thunder, like an erection in the middle of watching a triple heart bypass. It was such a surprise to hear the loud-quiet dynamics from such a close knit group of young fellows. I quickly purchased the EP Where the Water Meets the Land and decided that I really liked them - I mean like I want to make them a mix tape like them, they are that interesting. They have since released another thingmy online, Town For Tourists are due to release the self-titled EP in July 2011. I guess you could go and see them live, if you so fancy it... They are great. So listen to them here and go and get their EP here.

So, now that you've heard them, GIVE THEM A HUG at a live show:
FOUND, OVER THE WALL and FATHERSON are all playing the Summer Nights festival run of shows at the incredible King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. Get it on.

INDIAN RED LOPEZ at Box in Glasgow - 25th June 2011 AND Snafu in Aberdeen - 30th June 2011