Happy Birthday To Me

(There's more proper posts coming, I swear)

I know you don't care, buuuut, it's my blog, so there :P
Anyway, it's my birthday today, pushing me one step closer to being middle aged.
Anything around that I should buy? Recommendations welcome.

Frightened Rabbit

Frightened Rabbit are four blokes from Selkirk, brothers Scott and Grant Hutchison, Billy Kennedy and Andy Monaghan.
Tons of things have been written about them, both in Scotland and beyond, since the release of their debut album Sing The Greys in 2006.
Rather than cover old ground, I'll just add my tuppence worth by saying that they are really, really good. I'm ashamed to add that they'd slipped under my radar until I saw them supporting Sons and Daughters a wee while ago, shortly before the release of second album The Midnight Organ Fight, where they opened the show and were miles better than the second support act Black Kids.
The Pop Cop has a great interview with singer Scott Hutchison here, while JC from The Vinyl Villan has a live review here.

Frightened Rabbit Website - Myspace

Sample Songs:
The Greys - From Sing The Greys
The Modern Leper - From The Midnight Organ Fight
Behave! - Live version, available on eMusic. Original version on Sing The Greys

New(ish) Arab Strap!

The first of two promised download only releases from one of my most favourite bands ever, Arab Strap, is now available from the Chemikal Underground Records online shop.

Titled Music From Rogue Farm, it's a short wee thing, 11 tracks totalling 17 minutes, consisting of instrumental pieces put together for the short animated film Rogue Farm (which you can find out more about here)

It isn't essential stuff, but for a fiver it's a nice little rarity from a fantastic band.

You can buy it here and listen to samples too.

A Brief Diversion...

As you will no doubt know by now Bo Diddley died on Monday. There's a ton of information and obituaries out there should you want to know more.
Bo Diddley is obviously not Scottish and so is somewhat out of the remit of this blog, but his passing does give an oportunity to post the following:

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Bo Diddley Is Jesus
Available on Barbed Wire Kisses

Errors

Right then, time to get started here I think. For the next week or so I might be messing around with the format a bit, but bear with me and we'll settle into something resembling normality soon enough.

Today Glasgow's Errors finally released their debut album It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever on Rock Action Records. It's been a while since we got a release from them, not counting the single Toes a few weeks ago, so it is fair to say that this album is pretty highly anticipated round Aye Tunes Towers, especially since 2006's How Clean Is Your Acid House? EP still gets played to death.
Unfortunatly for me HMV haven't sent me my copy yet, so I can't tell you if it is good or bad. My money, based on previous releases, is on good.

If you are in Glasgow you might like to note that on the 13th of June there's a launch night for the album in Stereo. I'm planning on being there, so if you are heading along, say hi. Details and tickets can be found here.

Errors Myspace

If You Buy One Record:
At this point I'm planning on reccommending an album that you should buy, but since there's only one out, by default I'm going to be saying It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever. This bit will make more sense when I post about a band with more than one album out, I swear. In the meantime, It's Not Something... is available from some of the shops listed in the right hand sidebar and the usual download type places.

Sample Tracks:
Mr. Milk (from How Clean Is Your Acid House?)
Maeve Binchy (from the Salut! France single)

What Is Aye Tunes?

"Where am I and what do you do here?" I hear you ask.
Well, the simple answer is that Aye Tunes is yet another music blog, storming into the already bloated blogosphere. Unlike some other blogs you won't find and hot new pre-release albums here though. In fact, you won't find any albums at all, unless it is something I've been given permission to post. Instead I'll pick a track or two from each spotlighted artist.

Aye Tunes aims to focus on the best of Scottish music, new and old. "The best" is, of course, a very subjective term, so we won't always agree on the contents. Dissenting viewpoints are always welcome, either in a comment or an email. Also, for a small country, Scotland has a rich tapestry to draw upon musically, so don't expect all your favourites to appear here right away, it'll take me a while to cover all the bases, if I ever can.

As well as established artits, I'd love to put a bit of focus on new, up and coming bands. To do that I'll need your help. If you are in a band, or know of a great one that you'd like to see covered here, do please let me know!

If you represent one of the artists involved and would like me to remove a posted track, that's fine, just drop me a line and I'll pull it as quickly as I can.

The mp3s posted here are for a short time only and are intended for people to evaluate the music, and not as a replacement for buying music. If you like what you hear, support the artists involved by buying the music, going to shows, buying T-shirts etc.

There are some links to buy music in the right hand side sidebar, as well as contained within some of the posts. In the interests of full disclosure I'll confirm that some of these are affiliate links, used to not only promote the artists, albums and websites, but also to help fund this site. The money earned by myself from these is minimal, I won't be giving up the day job any time soon!

If you have any questions, or there is anything else I can help you with, please do email me, I'll be delighted to hear from you.

Launch Date

After a (too long) delay, Aye Tunes will finally be going live on June 1st 2008.