Friday Freebies - 10.10.2013

Woo, first Friday Freebies of the year, what a momentous occasion! Or not. First one I've remembered to do in a while, which is probably more momentous.

Let's see what we've got this week then, along with a few things I've missed previously.

The Plimptons
Sadly, The Plimptons have announced their intention to pack it in, with a farewell gig at the end of March being their last outing. Shame that, since they are one of the most fun live bands around, but at least there's one last chance to catch them on stage. Meanwhile, The Plimptons have made their last - in all senses of the word - album The Plimptons are Cynical and Bloated available to download for whatever price you fancy here.

Gums!
There's at least one Plimpton involved in Gums! and I didn't get round to posting their recent freebie when I came out, so here it is, a bit late. New Year is a free download here.

The Paraffins
Another old favourite round this way, The Paraffins have stuck out a live album, Armed Response, as a pay what you want download here. Recorded on phones and ghettoblasters, the results are somewhat rough. If you'd prefer something more polished then the first album from The Paraffins, Snout to the Grindstone, can be had for your choice of price at the moment too, here.

James Clark Jones
Taking a diversion away from our shores to Canada we have James Clark Jones, although his roots are firmly in Scotland, so don't be afraid of something from elsewhere. James has made his latest album available to download for what you like this week only, so head over here quickly. He'll be paying another visit to Scotland soon, so if you like what you hear keep an eye out for that.

Magnetic Island
While we are going round other countries, it's off to Brooklyn to pay a visit to Magnetic Island. I never did get round to writing up a best albums of 2012 list for the blog, but if I had, and on lists I submitted elsewhere, Magnetic Island's self titled album from last year took a top five place. You can grab a collection of all their singles for whatever you want to pay here.

Monster Island.
Sticking with bands I really like with Island in their name, time for a quick stop in Manchester. I mentioned the then upcoming new album from Monster Island a few times in the freebies before it came out, but never got back to telling you when the album was actually out. Well, the new album from Monster Island. is currently available. It's right good, and you should go and get yourself a copy of The Retaining Wall for free here.

Armellodie Records
Armellodie release some of my favourite records. This year shows no sign of that stopping, with new stuff from Cuddly Shark and Galoshins imminent. For a flavour of the label grab their free 2012 sampler here.

Luminous Monsters / Guanoman
Not many people can release a split single with themselves. Since Luminous Monsters and Guanoman are the same person, they (he?) could, and did, and you can get hold of it here.

The New Fabian Society
If you never got around to getting a copy of the first EP from The New Fabian Society then I've got good news for you, it's currently available to download free here. If you've missed out in the band in geenral up till now then it's not to late to get caught up. Have a listen, they are rather ace.

mylittlebrother
After something a bit more laid back and poppy? Then you could do worse than check out mylittlebrother's new EP. Hey Stethoscope is a name your price download here.

2012 Readers' Poll - The "Winners"

If you missed it, the winners of Best album, band, solo artist, single/EP, new band, blog & podcast/radio show are here.

This set of results is for the lucky ones who "won" the new categories added this year. I did consider not posting these to be nice, then remembered that I'm not nice.

This post is sponsored by burning bridges and pissing on chips. I didn't pick the winners though, so don't take it out on me.

Worst Album/Single/EP:
Despite not being released last year, the award goes to Bwani Junction - Fully Cocked.
In second place, it's Mumford & Sons with Babel! They can sob themselves to sleep in their nice bed made of money.

The Sergeant Award for Worst Band/Solo Artist:
We have a tie! The award is shared by Bwani Junction, and Fatherson.

The Peenko Podcast Award for Worst Music Blog/Website/Podcast/Radio Show:
Glasgow Podcart. Second place, The Pop Cop.

That's my arse booted then. Remember, I just count things, I didn't do the voting.

Fiiiiiiiiiight!

2012 Readers' Poll - The Winners

Sorry, there's no glitzy results show, no D-list celebs presenting an award, or even a logo.

We'll a least try and get through this without Emeli Sandé turning up though.

Votes were cast, I applied the same formula I've always used to them, got a headache, and wondered again why I don't use a formula that requires less counting, but now, here, a wee bit late (now there's a surprise) are the results of the Readers' Poll for 2012.

Voting was anonymous, which led to some hilarious bitchy answers, some of which I'll repeat here, others I won't.

On then to the winners! Later on I'll come back to the losers, in a separate post covering the "worst" categories that were added this year.

Best Album:
1. Meursault - Something For the Weekend (Buy)
Following up their win in the BAMS result, Meersalt prove to be the favourites of my readers too. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.


2. PAWS - Cokefloat! (Listen)
Meursault were way ahead in 1st place votes, while PAWS were most people's second choices. This was good, since it meant I didn't get any weird anomalies of everyone's third favourite album finishing second because of my points system or anything.
3. BMX Bandits - BMX Bandits In Space (Listen/Buy)
I must admit I didn't see this one coming. I'd expected someone like Django Django to swan in to the top three, but no, here comes Duglas T. Stewart and friends with a pleasant surprise. Albeit a surprise that will soon cost me money, as I realise I've not yet bought a copy of the album.

Also, to the people who voted for The Just Joans and Now Wakes the Seas, you are both anonymous, so I don't know who you are, but you are welcome to claim a free kiss from me for being my kind of people.

Best Single/EP:
1. Adam Stafford/Rick Redbeard - Split 7" (Listen/buy)
Hooray! Most votes were for the split single as a whole, but any for Rick or Adam individually were counted in here too, just in case anyone asks. Cracking single, buy one if you haven't already.
2. Frightened Rabbit - State Hospital
3. Withered Hand - Heart Heart
Nestling in at around number five on the chart would have been Withered Hand's Inbetweeners EP, but I don't go down that far. Still, a good innings from Mr Hand, who is always very welcome around here.
Special mention to Randolph's Leap, whose Hermit EP was only just beaten by fellow Fence release Heart Heart.

Best Band:
1. PAWS
2. Meursault
3. Kid Canaveral
=3. The Twilight Sad
In a very close category - there was only a few votes between first and third - PAWS gain some measure of revenge for the earlier best album voting, by shoving Meursault into second, while The Twilight Sad and Kid Canaveral were inseparable to claim joint third place. Kid Canaveral won this last year, that'll teach them to dare going into the studio for ages to make a new record. Meanwhile, one person will not be happy when they check the results for worst band, based on who they voted for in this category.

Best Solo Artist:
1. Withered Hand
2. Adam Stafford
3. RM Hubbert
I swear I did actually count up the votes for this one, and not just write down three solo people I like. Withered Hand has jumped up the charts since last year, moving from his 2011 place of third to displace last year's winner, Adam Stafford. Again, this was a close one. So much so that Adam could have snuck a victory if I'd been mean enough to discount the vote for "Withered Han".
To the one person who voted for Randolph's Leap as both best band and best solo artists, although you are technically fine in doing so, that was cheeky.

Best New Band:
1. Chvrches
Well, I saw that coming a mile off. Ch-five-rches won at a canter.
2. The Bad Books
That one I did not see coming. Impressive work from a band with only a fistful, if you have big hands, of gigs behind them. Either that, or it was just all their pals that voted in this category. Either way, good on them, 2013 should see them actually put out some music, I hope.
3. Plastic Animals
=3. The Spook School
=3. Young Philadelphia
Three way tie! The Spook School won this category last year, so hearty pat on the back to them for still being new 12 months later. Young Philadelphia and Plastic Animals both did gigs for me last year, but again, I promise I really did count the votes. Obviously I do approve of their inclusion though.
In fact, The Bad Books, Plastic Animals, The Spook School and Young Philadelphia have all played either an Aye Tunes gig or an Aye Tunes/Scottish Fiction/Peenko one at some point, so I must be a genius or something.

Advert Break
This looks like a good time to mention the next Scottish Fiction Presents: Aye Tunes Vs Peenko gig, since Plastic Animals are apparently still on speaking terms with me, and are joining us again, along with King Post Kitsch for their first Glasgow outing, and The Yawns (one of my best new bands of 2012) who will be launching the shiny vinyl release of their self titled album. It'll be dead good. 13th Note, January 26th. Facebook thingy here.

Handsome poster by Bob Rafferty

Best Music Blog/Website:
1. Aye Tunes
Oh for fuck sake, I forgot to tell you not to vote for me this year didn't I? Let's pretend this never happened and start over.
1. Song, by Toad (link)
2. Peenko (link)
3. The Pop Cop (link)
As with last year, all horrible humans. That's every year the poll has been running that Song. by Toad has won. I happen to agree, it's my favorite blog.

Best Music Radio Show/Podcast
1. The Toadcast (link)
=1. Edinburgh Man (link)
2. Vic Galloway (link)
Last year's winner The Toadcast this year has to share the trophy with fellow Edinburgh based podcast man, Edinburgh Man. Vic Galloway bounces back up the chart this year.

That concludes the "best" categories. I'll now take some legal advice before returning later tonight with the votes from the "worst" categories.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty Four - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Oh thank goodness, that's this thing finished for another year. Now I can get back to the important work of hardly ever posting anything on the blog.

For the final door of the calendar I've picked out one of my favourite Christmas songs, with a few different people putting their own spin on it.
The song is Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry and Phil Spector for the latter's A Christmas Gift To You album, still the best Christmas album made if you ask me, singing duties fell to Darlene Love.

Love's version is properly brilliant, as she belts it out. Hers is the one you here over the opening credits of Gremlins.
Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

As you'd expect with such a well known and popular song, many others have turned their hand to it over the years. I always think there's two ways you can with a cover version of the song. You can stay faithful to the original, but this needs your singer to go all out. Slow Club took this approach for their version, and it worked out pretty well.
Slow Club - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

The other way to go is to slow things down. For their Christmas Carols radio session many years ago Arab Star took that option, and made everything bloody miserable. How very unlike them. Excellent version though, featuring backing vocals from one Lauren Laverne.
Arab Strap - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Rounding off our collection is a version from a couple of years ago by the excellent Now Wakes the Sea. This one replaces sax and big drums with subdued horns and distorted bass to good effect, and has been a firm favourite of mine since first hearing it.
Now Wakes the Sea - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

That's it for the advent calendar this year. You can find everything from the past 24 days, and quite a bit from the past few years, by clicking on the handy Christmas tag on any of the advent calendar posts, this one included.

Have a very happy Christmas, vote in the Readers' Poll if you want to, and hopefully I'll be back before New Year with the standard album of the year lists that all music blogs must do.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty Three - Loop Line

Nearly finished, nearly finished...

Today's Christmas song comes from the submission pile, and is ace. Loop Line are American, and their Christmas single follows in the tradition and roughly the sound of Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You. That's the best Christmas album ever, so a good thing to draw inspiration from.

The songs will cost you fifty cents (that's like 30p or something?) but are well worth such a tiny amount of money.
Stream below, download here.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty Two - Verse Metrics

It's almost time to finish off all the treats and toss the cardboard and plastic packaging of the advent calendar into a landfill site for another year. Almost, but not quite.

Leading us into the last days are Verse Metrics, long terms favouties of the blog, and former gig guests at that. After a fairly lengthy quiet spell Verse Metrics popped up again recently with a new EP, Radians. It was, rather unsurprisingly, worth waiting for.

For Christmas, Verse Metrics have had a go at covering Mogwai. You can hear and download the results below.



This comes from a wee Christmas compilation put together by A Badge of Friendship. You can find the rest of the compilation here.

Readers' Poll 2012

While I try to find time to write up my best of lists for the year it's time again to have the traditional* Readers' Poll.
There's a couple of changes this year. The main one being that hardly anyone bothers to email in answers, so I've set up a wee survey page to fill in instead. Since I'm limited to 10 questions a few of the more redundant categories have been cut out this year. I could have kept them in, but after encouragement from people who probably just want to see me burn bridges and get a kicking, this year for the first time I've brought in "worst" categories. I'm well aware this is just asking for trouble, but I said I'd do it, and I'm a man of my word.

Quickie rules &regulations type things: 
Answer or skip whatever questions you want, but if a bunch of people answer one question with the same answer it'll be pretty obvious ballot stuffing.
No ballot stuffing! If it isn't obvious I probably won't notice it though.
You can vote for bands, albums etc from anywhere, they don't have to be Scottish.
Polls close on December 28th, after that I'll count up the results and post them around new year.
This is meant to be a wee bit of fun, so don't moan about the results when posted!

 Aye Tunes Readers' Poll 2012 Categories

Best Album - choose up to three, 1 being your favourite, etc. Same goes for all the "best" categories.
Best Single/EP Basically anything that isn't an album.
Worst Album/Single/EP - Pick one only, whatever you've liked the least from the last year. Same goes for all the "worst" categories but one.
Best Band
Best Solo Artist:
Worst Band/Solo Artist
Best New Band/Solo Artist -New is very subjective, if you first heard of them this year, that'll do.
Best Music Blog/Website
Best Music Radio Show/Podcast:
Worst Music Blog/Website/Radio Show/Podcast - big category, so you can pick up to three.

You can fill out the poll over here, or, if I haven't messed up the embedding, right down below.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

*I've ran it the last two years, that makes it a tradition.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty One - Dinosaurs Are Shit Dragons

Here's the new Christmas song from Dinosaurs Are Shit Dragons. It's called Crying and Wanking (at Christmas) and is available to download here.

I don't think I really need to add any more.

Advent Calendar, Door Twenty - Eureka Machines

l loves me some Eureka Machines. Both their albums released to date have been on my year end best of lists - I still need to whip this year's one into shape - and their third album is currently in the works, you can find out more about that here.

Here's their take on an old festive favourite.

Eureka Machines - Silent Night

Advent Calendar, Door Nineteen - The Spook School

Today we've got one of my favourite Scottish bands in the advent calendar, The Spook School!

Considering that for a big chunk of the year half of the band have been off galavanting in foreign lands, they've been surprisingly busy. October saw the release of a 7" single, and they followed that up this month with a release on tape. Both are fab.

Now, here's their Christmas song, Bah Humbug! You can name your price for a download here.

Advent Calendar, Door Eighteen - mi mye

Repeating myself with a post from last year again today. Complaints to the usual address.

mi mye's Christmas album from last year was ace, so here it is again.

merry christmass and sorry for all the trubble i cosed is available to download for free on Bandcamp.

Advent Calendar, Door Seventeen - The Last Battle

I really shouldn't leave these till after I get home from work when I don't get home till eleven.
Anyway, squeezing in just before the midnight deadline - the deadline that I do occasionally gleefully ignore anyway - is the latest door on the advent calendar, with 3 (three!) songs behind it.

The Last Battle's Christmas offering is a three track single, The Last Xmas. You can download it here for free.

Advent Calendar, Day Sixteen - Colin's Godson

Another day, another pretend door to open.

Today we've got Colin's Godson. It's been a busy wee year for this band, they've gone to Space, through time, and, um, ahoy? They've also provided me with quite a lot of entertainment with their records, with a special mention going to the fab packaging the albums come in.

Now in what will surely be a career highlight for them, they get to be the illustrious 16th band this year to have a Christmas song on here.

The Colin's Godson Christmas single, Xmas 1993, is available to download here.

Advent Calendar, Door Fifteen - Campfires In Winter

Today we carry out an Aye Tunes Christmas tradition, by reposting, yet again, the Campfires in Winter's Christmas Song, complete with disclaimer.

I post this every year, and make no apologies for doing so, as it is still one of my favourite things in the World, and never fails to make me smile.

In the words of Boab from Campfires In Winter "it's about 2 guys getting pished, one of them decides to burn down the tree and pretends to be a bear and asks the other one to join him. It's a lot of shite."

Campfires in Winter - Christmas Song

Here's the equally brilliant video.

Advent Calendar, Door Fourteen - Andrew Pearson

Ooh, there's only ten more of these to go after today. There's two things that arise from this: 1. if you've got a Christmas song you want included here you better get it to me quick and 2. have you bought me my Christmas present yet?

Speaking of presents, I should really get my own shopping done. Expect a murderous rant on Twitter tomorrow as I venture into the shops of Glasgow trying to find something to buy my girlfriend.

Back to the calendar though, today we've got Andrew Pearson with a delightfully titled Christmas ditty. I'm not sure this is available anywhere else yet, but in case I'm wrong I won't plaster BLOG EXCLUSIVE all over the post. Blog exclusives annoy me anyway, but that's a moan for another day.

Andrew Pearson - Jingo Balls (Whore Whore Whore)

Advent Calendar, Door Thirteen - Half Man Half Biscuit

Today's Christmas song isn't a Christmas song at all. It is, however, ace, so I'm tossing rules out the window.
Feel free to file a formal written complaint to our PR department.

Half Man Half Biscuit - All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit

Advent Calendar, Door Twelve - How To Swim

Hey, it's 12/12/12! That's special or something. It means America agrees with us on what the date is.

Enough of that though, we've got more imaginary doors to be opening on a kid on calendar.

How To Swim can always be counted on to provide some Christmas goodies, and so it continues this year.

Their latest festive collection, Sleigh Tracks, is available to download for your choice of price here.

Advent Calendar, Door Eleven - Porch Song Anthology

One of my favourite festive songs of recent years, Christmas Is Cold by The Porch Song Anthology is one of the best things about December. Any excuse to listen to it far, far too much is good for me, and this month makes it a bit more acceptable.

The band, consisting of some former Telstar Ponies and other, have been awfully quiet since the release of  their Late Mournings EP last year, but I'm hoping they'll resurface sooner or later.

Porch Song Anthology - Christmas Is Cold

Advent Calendar, Door Ten - Scottish Fiction

As noted before, this is another thing that'll cost you money if you want a copy. The second Christmas compilation from gig putting on buddies Scottish Fiction is available now, with money raised going to Shelter.

Songs from loads of good people make up the compilation - The Orchids, Behold the Old Bear, Flutes, Esperi, Kevin P. Gilday, Lovers Turn to Monsters and Siobhan Wilson - which you can buy for £3 or more here.

Advent Calendar, Door Nine - Olive Grove

This post, and the next one, contain things you'll have to pay for if you want to own. Not much money is involved though, and cash raised goes to charity, so stop your bloody complaining, right?

Those horrible lovely people at Olive Grove Records are first in on the act, getting the bands on their roster to contribute a Christmas song each for this EP, with funds raised going to Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Packed full of goodness from The Son(s), Jo Mango, State Broadcasters, and Randolph's Leap, you can get the EP for £2 (or more if you wish) here.

My personal favourite is Randolph's Leap covering The Muppets. I love me some Muppets.