Song, by Toad

Ladies and gentlemen there were some issues with this week’s appearance on The Waiting Room – DC’s 10pm-midnight slot on Error FM. Firstly, I was away and hugely disorganised, so DC had to record his bits in my absence and then sellotape my segment in later. This wasn’t so much of a problem of course, as it prevented him and that Fisk character from moaning about my song choices, which has its benefits.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 2nd April, 2008

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Unfortunately it means I have no idea if I answered the question properly at all. I mean, indie dance? What? I tried to get information out of the lads beforehand but they weren’t very specific, so I just kind of winged it. Whenever I’ve been to indie clubs in the past they haven’t played a type of music I would have been able to identify as ‘indie disco’ as such, they’ve just played indie songs with a bit of a consistent, bouncy rhythm so that you can dance to them. Even The Smiths wrote a good few songs you can dance to, and if ‘hang the DJ’ wasn’t designed to be an end-of-night dance hall sing-along then I don’t know what was.

Supergrass – Caught By the Fuzz
The Smiths – Panic
The Smiths – This Charming Man

That said, there are a few dancey bands who I guess I would call indie – it just depends on how loosely you apply your category terms I guess. Personally I throw these terms about pretty carelessly because let’s face it, who really cares what specific type of music it is that you’re listening to, so yeah okay, indie disco I guess. Fisk played Stereolab, who are a group I really like, but didn’t play the likes of Saint Etienne, who I would have thought fit that category pretty well, as do groups like Goldfrapp, Blondie and The Long Blondes (the new album really is just dance floor indie – it’s not great, but it’s dancey stuff).

Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us

That said, I’ve been in clubs where they’ve even played stuff like The Rat by The Walkmen, which is based around the band battering shite out of their guitars for most of the song, and people, myself included, leapt around like maniacs. That wasn’t even remotely dance music by any genre definition, but it proved to be a hugely popular song to dance to at the time. So there you go. Come to think of it, this would probably have made a much better, more considered response to the question at hand, but I had to rush it and given my 20 minute slot I’d never have had time to get all that rambling in there anyway. So sorry DC, not sure I hit the nail on the head with that one, but I’ll do better next week, promise.

The Walkmen – The Rat

And tell Fisk that Orbital are bloody awful.

Day Two >
Day Three >>

The reason the truly excellent Campfires & Battlefields took over all things Toad this weekend is that I was away with Mrs. Toad, and he very kindly volunteered to keep things ticking over in our absence. You will surely all join me in thanking him for his excellent job, and I guess you may be at least slightly curious as to what exactly we were up to.

Well a large number of people in the Fence Collective have known each other since childhood and, despite gathering many other folk along the way, are still very firmly rooted in the Fife town of Anstruther where many of the original members grew up. So, despite the increasing prominence of the Collective’s musical endeavours, with the success of King Creosote, Found and James Yorkston, they all still like to get back together once a year for a weekend, get completely cabbaged and play lots and lot of music.

Mrs. Toad and I have been to the last three of these and we both love them, but for different reasons. She likes going to a seaside town for a weekend, where she can go to one or two gigs, but basically abandon me to my musical enthusiasms and read the FT from cover to cover. I like going to a festival where half the bands are mental, half are inspired, half are awful, half are beautiful and you genuinely have no idea what you’re going to see from one gig to the next. I don’t think I know anyone other than the Fence lot who take even a fraction as many chances with music, or who are anything like so confident to put on something completely left field and bizarre, safe in the knowledge that it will get a fair listen and genuine appreciation from their audience.

One of the things about being married of course is that I was not just travelling up to Anstruther as a music fanatic, I was also going there as a (briefly) dutiful husband. Mrs. Toad and I have gone for a meal at the absolutely fucking wonderful Cellar Restaurant every one of the three years we’ve been to Homegame, and so we did again. It’s expensive, but it’s a ritual and a treat and we love it. You have a seat with a G&T, browse the menu and the wine list, and eventually wander through to the dining room and spend all night over one of the best meals you will eat. They don’t turn the tables, so generally we’ve been the last out. This year we went along early though, and after a lovely few hours where things were a little more Mr. Creosote than King Creosote, Mrs. Toad returned to the cottage and, for me, the festival commenced.

I’d rather disappointingly missed Art Pedro unfortunately, whose set coincided with our esculent* escapades, but that was a sacrifice which had to be made. I am determined to see him play at some point however, but this was not to be the time.

Art Pedro – Girl From School

I did make it for Down the Tiny Steps, fortunately. You should all know how highly I rate these lads by now, so I won’t go into it too much, save to say that their lineup is even more slimline now than it was the last time I saw them. The hole in the lineup left no corresponding hole in the music however, which is a sort of bizarre Scot-hop folktronica. Sort of. It’s superb for late in a day of drinking and listening basically, because it’s eminently danceable and gorgeously wistful at the same time. Ideal for that reserved indie sway, which is about as close to dancing as I get most of the time. Fortunately for the Tinies, others were not so shy.

Down the Tiny Steps – Revenge

After the Tinies and before we repaired to the Pink House – for a party where I ended up swilling whisky from a hip flask out of one hand and red wine from the bottle with the other and presumably talking monumental amounts of garbage throughout – there was time for a show-closer from Jon Hopkins. I doubt many of you know of Mr. Hopkins, and neither do I, particularly. I know he is a very steeply rising star in the world of production and has been faithfully described as being a thoroughly down to earth and friendly chap despite this. I also know he has done a number of superlative remixes of Fence songs, in particular King Creosote’s Circle My Demise for a De-Fence release last year. I am not massively into laptop music most of the time, but at that stage of the night, drunk and giddy, I really enjoyed his set.

The rest of the evening, as you can imagine, was a bit of a blur.

Jon Hopkins – Circle My Demise

* I have to confess that I dug this one up in the thesaurus. What an excellent word, though, don’t you think?

Yes, seriously, Armenia.

You know how I feel about World Music and it’s terrible associations with fuckwits from the 80s trying to show how intellectual they were, so you, as I, might be somewhat surprised to see this album getting a mention on Song, by Toad.

Most folk music is, to some degree, either storytelling or dance music but this is neither really. I had to look up the location of Armenia on a world map, I have to confess, and given that it sits in a little cluster of states North of the far Eastern end of Turkey and bordered by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran I suppose the nature of the music starts to make sense.

There’s none of the raucousness often associated with folk music, and precious few lyrics either, but the style is clearly a mixture of Eastern European and Middle Eastern. It’s ghostly – slightly scary in that sense – and opts for the mystical drift over the stomping rhythm. I find myself vaguely imagining solitary mountain goatherds, huddled in their blankets, shrouded in mist and smoking a pipe with the stillness of the neighbouring rock formations. Funnily enough, I imagined this before I discovered that Armenia is indeed covered by the the Lesser Caucasus Mountains, so there must be something inherently mountainous about the music itself, although don’t ask me what that is.

I don’t want to say too much because I have neither the historical nor cultural knowledge to make meaningful comments really, but have a listen. This is not your Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Afro-beat Wankstain Toss-fest that generally springs to mind when World Music is mentioned around these parts.

Apricot Tree – Can’t Breathe in This Life Anymore
Apricot Tree – Karabakh Ploughman
Apricot Tree – Dle Yaman

The only places I can find to buy this are here and here, but they both look like distinctly dubious Russian download sites to me, so I’d be very careful before handing over credit card details if I were you.