A Gentle Reminder - Peenko Vs Aye Tunes Gig

Well, it's just under 3 weeks to go till the Peenko vs Aye Tunes gig, so it's probably about time for me to do another post encouraging you all to come along.

There's three brilliant bands on the bill - Campfires in Winter, Mitchell Museum and Kid Canaveral, for only four of your Earth pounds (if you buy a ticket that is, we'll charge you a fiver if you pay at the door).

It's at The Captain's Rest in Glasgow, with a kick off time of about 8pm, on Friday April 30th. Also, if you fancy, you can pop along to The Flying Duck after the gig as finished where Peenko will be DJing for Pinup Nights. Remember, go there after our gig.

Advance tickets can be bought from here, with no booking fee and free postage. Alternatively just send me an email and I can meet you at a pub or gig between now and then and exchange tickets for your cash.

Want to have a wee listen to the bands that are playing? Well you can do that below, and follow the links to Bandcamp to get your mitts on some free downloads too.

So, we'll see you there, aye?

Campfires In Winter - Mortigi Tempo (Live)


Mitchell Museum - Take The Tongue Out


Kid Canaveral - Good Morning

What's On At: The Arches

The first of an occasional round up post where I gather up a bunch of stuff about events happening somewhere and put them all together to stop me feeling guilty about not answering emails. Today it's the turn of The Arches.

Fresh from being the central hub for Hinterland, The Arches is rounding off April with another couple of noteworthy events.

First up is Death Disco on April 17th.
The line up for this one includes Annie Mac, Uffie (Live), Jaymo, Andy George, Boy 8-Bit, Doorly, Josh Jones, Fenech-Soler (Live) and Wavy Graves.

The following Saturday, April 24th, much praised Bristol two-piece Fuck Buttons are in town. I must confess I'm seemingly the only person around that didn't instantly fall in love with Tarot Sport upon it's release last year, but once I got into it, everything clicked into place.
Support comes from Factory Floor, and The Arches is likely to be rammed, so if you fancy it, get your tickets fast.

For more info on either and to get tickets visit The Arches Website

Schnapps: Crossdresser / More To Life Than Peach - Single Review

Hailing from Dornoch, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Castle Douglas, Schnapps have their debut double A-side single out this week, and it's not bad, particularly for a first release.

Crossdresser kicks off with a jangly guitar line, but soon descends into something far filthier sounding, with scuzzy guitar and snarling vocals. It rattles along at a fair old pace, crossing indie-pop with a more underground garage sound. Packed with attitude and wit Crossdresser is a fun little gem.
Other A-side More To Life Than Peach offers some more of the same, albeit in much less frantic style. The vocals on this one veer to close too older Kings of Leon songs for me to enjoy it, which is a shame. Musically is sounds good, I just can't get past the singing.

A very decent debut, just wish the singing on the second track didn't make me think of Kings of Leon.

Schnapps: MySpace

Crossdresser/More To Life than Peach is available to download now, will be released on numbered 7" vinyl on Monday 12th April.
Schnapps will play an in store show at the Apple Store on Buchanan Street, Glasgow on Thursday 8th April at 7pm.

Hinterland Review

Yeah, it's taken me a couple of days to get back round to Hinterland, but it was a busy weekend.
Sunday had a hangover that had to be shaken off, and an intimate gig by And So I Watch You From Afar to attend - curiously enough those noisy Northern Irish buggers were a better hangover cure than I ever expected - while Monday was taken up by Over The Wall's single lunch.

Due to the number of bands seen it'll be a quick run through, rather than anything in depth. Oh alright, it's more down to the number of beers consumed. Incidentally, if anyone had bombed Glasgow City Centre at about half eight, nine o'clock on Saturday night they could have wiped out almost the entire roster of Glasgow area bloggers, not to mention a large amount of band members. Let's be glad they didn't do that then.

My evening kicked off with The Kays Lavelle in The Sub Club, due to not finishing drinks quickly enough to make it to Ivory Blacks for Make Sparks. The Kays make dark, emotional music that manages to tug at the heartstrings without being obviously or overblown about it, and on Saturday were sounding the best I've heard them. They won't be everyone's cup of tea, but they do it for me, and Saturday's performance just moved my anticipation for their soon to be released album up another gear.

A quick dash round the corner and we caught the last half of Little Yellow Ukuleles. It was pretty much business as usual from them - songs that make me want to bounce around like mad and an increasingly confident performance. Always a pleasure, and they always put a smile on my face.

Another dash back round to The Sub Club and the first let down of the night. I really wanted to like Midnight Lion, but I just didn't. No worries, with so many bands on show there was bound to be one I was underwhelmed by, and on Saturday it was Midnight Lion that took that dubious glory. The forty billion people crammed in trying to take pictures might have enjoyed them, but for me it was an early exit and off to The Arches sooner than planned.

I'd really been looking forward to Ambulances, probably a bit too much. In the cavernous surroundings of The Arches their sound got a bit lost and muddled, and the band seemed a bit shaky. If my expectations hadn't been set so high they would have been fine though, and hopefully they'll come back to Glasgow and play somewhere that suits them better soon.

Making a change from running around we opted to stay in The Arches. Caught about two songs worth of British Sea Power without paying much attention to them - they've never been a band that have done much for me - before heading back into the other side of the venue.

French Wives also suffered a bit from the venue's sound, but managed to battle through it well enough to be my favourite band of the day. Every time I listen to this band I fall in love with them all over again. If anyone happened to be near the wee drunk guy in a parka that sang along for a few songs, I am truly sorry you had to witness that...

After a quick jaunt to catch the end of The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, who was fine and Home sounded good, my night was over.

All in all this year's Hinterland was a huge improvement on last year. Scaling down to just the one day might have reduced the number of bands playing, but it's a whole lot more sensible. As is making the venues a stones throw from each other, instead of being expected to get from The Art School to Stereo in under a minute to catch someone this year you just had to go round a corner. Last year I was in a couple of frankly pitiful crowds, I'm pretty sure staff outnumbered punters when I saw Fangs (and I still rather envy the people that weren't in the room for that one) while this year crowds seemed at least healthy, at least for the bands I saw. I'm sure not being nearly as pricey as last year helped a lot too.

I do have little complaints about it, like the lack of a big band or artist that caught my imagination, but that's just me. Given the number of people I've seen talking about Jeffrey Lewis and so on others obviously thought differently than me on that one. I didn't see everyone I'd have liked to see, but scheduling all the bands so I could get to everything would have been pretty much impossible.

Paul Haig Day II

First of all, why Paul Haig Day? Over to JC of The Vinyl Villain, the originator of the idea, to explain.

"For those of you who don't know why a number of us are doing all of this today, it has its genesis in some unhappy times back in Spring 2009 when this and many other blogs were being bombarded with all sorts of DMCA notices that led to postings and accompanying mp3s being removed without warning. One such incident on The Vinyl Villain involved a Paul Haig posting and a few days later, completely out of the blue, I received an email from Paul's manager saying that they were both bemused by the whole thing given they were the copyright holders of the track and hadn't made any demands for a takedown. Furthermore, Paul was in fact totally relaxed about bloggers promoting him and his work through making mp3s freely available.

As a way of saying thank you for these words of support, I asked if folk would be interested in designating April 6th as Paul Haig Day when we would collectively write about him and make some songs available. It proved to be a success, and so I thought it worth repeating the venture in 2010."

A lack of planning ahead and technical issues on the day stopped me from properly taking apart last year, happily no such issues have held me back this year.

Paul Haig is a Scottish composer, musician and singer. Originally a member of Josef K, a band whose influence can be heard all over the first Franz Ferdinand album, as well as in a number of other bands, Haig has since gone on to release a number of albums covering a wide range of styles and sounds.

Last year's Relive album is, for me, the best thing he's produced in years, and proves that there's still plenty of life in Paul Haig. You can download the title track below to get a taste for yourself.

Paul Haig - Relive

Pail Haig and his management have very kindly the blogs taking part this year an exclusive track to share, a remix of Trip Out The Rider, the opening track of Relive, Haig's most recent album.

Paul Haig - Trip Out The Rider (Remix)

A further remix by Fred Deakin of Lemon Jelly, will be made available as a very exclusive 7" single later this year.

Paul Haig: Website - MySpace

Born To Be Wide Present - Wide Days

This Thursday in Edinburgh the Born To Be Wide team are putting on a series of seminars and showcase gigs, all under the title of Wide Days.
The seminars include HOW TO GET ONTO A FESTIVAL BILL, I AM THE LAW – ESSENTIAL LEGAL ADVICE, WHAT NEXT? PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE, SPEAK TO THE MANAGEMENT and a Q&A with Gavin Bain. Bain is infamous for being one half of Silibil 'n' Brains, two Dundonian rappers who after being mocked for using their own accents spent two years faking being American, earned a chunk of money and toured with the likes of D12.
There's a lengthy list of people involved in the speeches with a proven pedigree on the subjects, so they look to be interesting and informative.

Following the seminars there will be a few evening gigs taking place at the Electric Circus, Sneaky Pete's and Cabaret Voltaire. Confirmed to play are: Found, Meursault, Carrie Mac, Holden, Aaron Wright, Panda Su and Hopeless Heroic, Gavin Bain's new band.

Wide Days tickets are available here, where you can also find lots more information about who will be speaking at the seminars.

This Weeks Thing

Much later than usual, and with it being Easter Monday probably incomplete. Some records might have slipped to being released on Tuesday instead of today, if so I'll do an update tomorrow.
Also this week I'll make another bold attempt at getting some records reviewed, and report back on what I thought of Hinterland.

Records:
Pretty busy week for new releases really, including one excellent album and a cracking single.
The excellent album would be Avoid Zombies, the second album by Super Adventure Club. I've not got round to reviewing this yet, but it lives up to the promise of the single from a wee while ago that I loved. Great stuff.
As for the cracking single, that's the new one from Over The Wall, Settle Down. I attended the launch party for this at lunchtime today, which was quite splendid, and had some nice sandwiches. The record is good too.
Also out is These Old Traditions, a mini album by Stevie And The Moon, Home and the Wildhunt, the debut album from Woodenbox With a Fistful of Fivers and the gorgeous split single by Conquering Animal Sound & Debutant that I've talked about a few times before, and should be properly reviewing when my copy arrives in the post.
Remembering, the new album by Love.Stop.Repeat is also released this week.
Their full debut album is due shortly, but in the meantime Sparrow and the Workshop have a new single out, I Will Break You. Crystals Fall, the album, follows on April 19th.
Finally (that I can see from digging around) Schnapps release their double A side debut single Crossdresser/More To Life than Peach. It's out today on download, while the 7" will be released on April 14th. There's an instore gig at Glasgow's Apple store on Thursday (the 8th) and another in Avalanche in Glasgow next Monday, the 12th.

Gigs:
No one wanted the gig guide back, but here's a quick one for the week anyway.
On Wednesday, Glasgow explodes, again.
At Bloc there's the latest Detour Scotland podcast launch gig, with Oliver Stays, The Void and more. Over at Stereo there's a Ten Tracks gig, with Aye Tunes favourites Louise McVey and Cracks in the Concrete playing, along with Fur Hood and La Somnable, all for the super cheap price of £1.
Also on Wednesday there's the Glasgow leg of Meursault's album launch shows - the Edinburgh leg takes place on Saturday - at The Captain's Rest. These shows will be your first chance to pick up the new album before it gets a full release.