I’ll be honest with you, I cringe with anticipated guilt whenever anything really beautiful drops onto the Song, by Toad doormat, seeking a review.  I fucking love it when bands take real care over the package in which they present their music, as I hope you can tell by the releases on our own label, but I get twitchy as hell when they give me that same package for free hoping I might wish to review it.

Basically, if I hate what they have done, which has a 99% chance of happening, based on what I get sent at the moment, then that lovingly assembled artifact has been wasted.  Kilter Records had it right with eagleowl – they gave me the mp3s for free, but I paid for my copy of the 7″ single.

So imagine the stab of fear I felt when this dropped through my letterbox.  Honestly, I think it is the most beautifully packaged piece of music it has ever been my privilege to own, and inevitably I was terrified that I might hate it.  Needlessly terrified, it turns out.

I think the term that best describes my relationship with the music of Now Owl is fascination.  Or maybe intrigue.  Or just a quizzically raised eyebrow, I’m not sure.  It’s not pop music, but it is certainly not going to surprise any of you that I like it.  There are experimental aspects to it, it borders on ambient at times, and there is a lot of meandering which has no really obvious direction or purpose, but for some reason it manages to maintain a spring in its step, and it never becomes heavy or dreary.

On a purely technical level, there is good use of instruments like the banjo, whose rattling pluck can cut through the murkiest of atmospheres.  It’s more than that though.  Even when the songs are awash with slow burning ambient noise, being stirred slowly as if it were syrup, there is often a burst of something twinkly, from the keyboards or the computer itself, or a brief flourish of something high-tempo, if still low-key.

Put simply, William Edmonds of Now Owl may not exactly write pop songs per se, but in his use of texture, tone and pace he has a real knack for bringing ingenuity and interest to his music.  He manages to hold your attention better than a hell of a lot of people making this kind of stuff and he does it, I think, by varying the level of urgency with the tracks he layers.  Something low and moany is frequently joined by something skittish and nervous and, without changing what was there before, it twists what you think you’re listening to into something else all of a sudden, and these shifts of perception make this music really engaging.

It’s still not music I’d wave my arms over or get excited about, funnily enough.  It’s more, I think, stuff that I would put on if I particularly wanted to listen to it.  All of it, at once, with a cup of tea and nothing else happening around me.

Now Owl – The Gravel, the Stone and the Marble

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now Owl – Your Body, a Sea of Feathers

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | Buy from here

I keep thinking that this album has way more elaborate and way more dominant orchestration than the gorgeous All Is Well, but when I listen to both side by side, I don’t actually think I’m right.  Songs like Saro and a few others on All Is Well actually have tremendously rich instrumental backing, but the album as a whole still gives the impression of being really bare and stripped down.

Then again, maybe that’s just how I think about it because the first time I really fell in love with those songs was when Sam played the Bowery back in December 2008 and January 2009 (video from his January show here).  He did so with no more than his own voice, and either a guitar or a banjo (and the occasional spot of aerobics) to accompany him.  It remains one of the best and most utterly spellbinding things I have ever seen, so maybe I overlay the impression of that evening with my impression of All Is Well, and thus think of it as more minimal than it actually is.

I See the Sign has nothing of that minimalism, that’s for sure; even its quietest songs have all sorts going on.  Bedroom Community is a unique record label, that’s for sure, having collected an eclectic constellation of musicians into its orbit, from classical composer Nico Muhly, electronic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson and then to Sam himself.  They all collaborate on one another’s work, and I recently attended an amazing showcase of the kind of forward-thinking stuff they generate, when all three performed at the Roundhouse in London.

That was an amazing experience, but it was largely based around Nico Muhly.  In this case, the focus is Sam Amidon, so does it all translate?  My answer would be ‘largely’, I think.  A lot of this is frankly stunning, and the eddying arrangements serve only to give Sam’s voice even more of that macabre folk tale quality than it already has.

I still love the absolutely bare, acoustic songs more than anything though, so I find it a bit of shame that there are none to be found here.  Still, given Sam records old folk songs, if he didn’t push his interpretations and his arrangements he would basically be in danger of lapsing into karaoke, so I still think he’s right to make sure he keeps developing.

Funnily enough, for someone usually so determined to strip songs back, my favourite ones here are actually the ones with the most going on.  It’s actually the tail end of this record where I think the whole things starts to get a little bogged down.  The orchestration actually takes more of a back seat, without vanishing entirely, so it ends up being neither here nor there.  Songs like How Come That Blood, You Beter Mind and Pretty Fair Damsel are given surreal, vivid life by their arrangements.  By contrast, on later tracks, such as Kedron and Rain and Snow the extra instrumentation doesn’t really add much, and I find myself wondering why it’s there.

Maybe I just don’t like the later songs as much.  Relief (a cover of a song by the rather rapey R. Kelly) is amusing in a live setting, but I would personally not have put it on an album, and there are just two or three songs around this point which I think are a little sluggish, honestly.

I’m only nit-picking about this kind of thing because Sam Amidon is a fucking amazing artist as far as I am concerned and, consequently, when he sits down to play I pretty much expect perfection.  I do accept that this may not be entirely reasonable, of course, I just can’t stop myself doing it.

And let’s be fair, before you get the wrong impression, I think the first two thirds of this album are absolutely stunning.  I fucking love it, and pretty much all of it.  The more prominent role played by Muhly’s part in the record works fantastically – it’s within a whisker of being overdone, but always stays the right side of the line.  Sam’s voice is as gorgeous as ever, and the odd plucking of How Come That Blood melds perfectly into the beautiful Way Go Lily and then the trilling, jumpy You Better Mind.

That kind of variation of tempo is probably all that the end of the record is missing, but it doesn’t matter.  The first twenty-five minutes of this album are absolutely beautiful, and if I think some of the rest of it doesn’t quite click for me, then who cares.  That’s the point of pushing your music into new places, and I always respect people more for doing that.

Sam Amidon – How Come That Blood

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sam Amidon – Pretty Fair Damsel

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sam Amidon – Pretty Fair Damsel (from his January 2009 Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

This might actually have been my favourite album of 2009.  The trouble was that it was a self-release, which we were in the process of re-jigging a little and re-releasing on Song, by Toad Records, so I didn’t really want to include it in its initial form.

I don’t want to give you the hard sell, so you can read my intial review here.  This is a new version though, re-sequenced, re-mastered and with a few songs clipped out.  I honestly love this record – it’s strange and a little creepy and yet in a sense it is probably best thought of as a pop record I think.  The songs themselves are absolutely packed with riffs and hooks and all that pop stuff, it’s just all somewhat, well… peculiar I guess.  And I love it.

Initial reviews have been *ahem* flooding in.  Well sort of.  We’ve had some really nice ones in The Skinny, Quick Before it Melts and This Music Wins, which I really appreciate.  The real peach, though, came by email from Nicola who has been a massive support to this label in general, and was intending to review it for The List.  She was somehow thwarted due to administrational gremlins unfortunately, but she emailed me this, and I really wish you read more reviews like this in actual magazines:

“Anecdotally, I do have some feedback though. It has been, without a doubt, THE hit album in our house this year. This is predominantly due to the fact that my wee girl (two-and-a-half) utterly loves the opening track. (By which I mean it’s on almost every morning by half seven, and we’re all up dancing). I was tempted to mail you to let you know that at a recent family gathering there were octogenarians up on the floor to the Chills / country strains of Trips & Falls but, you know, babies and pensioners are maybe not yr demographic… (There were plenty of us inbetweeners loving it too, right enough…)”

So there you have it.  If you ever have children and pensioners you want to see on the same dancefloor (actually, that sounds dangerous, how are there so few fatalities at weddings?) then this is your baby.

Anyhow, I love this, it is now available to buy and I really hope you’ll enjoy it as well.  There’s a video for And in Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants at the bottom of the page as well – it’s an all-out multi-media PR blitz!

Trips and Falls – How Do You Do…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Trips and Falls – And in Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Trips and Falls – Prelude to a Shark Attack

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Song, by Toad Records

Judson Claiborne are actually friends of Jill from Sparrow & the Workshop, and it was during their Toad Session that I first heard of the band.  Now, a couple of years on, they have a shiny new release, with spooky artwork and a proper PR company to send it me.

There’s a lot of Midlake in this – more than I remember in fact – but that’s no bad thing if your tunes are solid, which in this case they very much are.  There’s a fair bit of Luna to some of the guitar work as well at times, and in general I suppose that’s as good a place to roughly place the band as any: roughly on a line drawn between the dreamy, harmony-rich Americana of Midlake and maybe even Band of Horses, and the less dense, slightly more unsettling guitar music of bands like Luna.

They shift through the gears quite deftly, without ever really feeling like they’re dramatically wrong-footing you.  A little like their melodies, the atmosphere of the record just gently nudges you around, without ever giving you too much of a shove.  Although I will admit that occasionally it could do with a little nudge itself.

This is a bit of a tortured analogy, but bear with me: it feels a bit like a nascent solar system, in a sense.  Songs like The Freeze Up and a couple of the later tracks don’t entirely escape the gravity of the central cluster of matter, and could maybe do with settling into a slightly more distant orbit, just to prevent the whole album collapsing in on itself.  Get what I mean?  Sometimes I guess the consistent overall sound of the record risks dominating the songs themselves a little, and I think one or two could do with a little breathing space.

That’s a bit of a picky point to make though, and I don’t want to distract from my overall enjoyment of this album.  The actual tunes (yes, I know, the important bit) are sound, particularly in the first half.

There’s also a real believability to the voice.  Christopher Salveter’s vocal has genuine presence, a rich, unhurried solidity to it, which I think gives this album a core of emotional resonance.  When someone sings in a voice which feels as natural as this it just lends that extra bit of charisma to what they say, and that’s one of the greatest assets Judson Clairborne have.

Judson Claiborne – Twilight Spirit

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Judson Claiborne – One Hundred More Than One Hundred Times

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy direct from Societe Expeditionnaire

Phew, what a fucking brain fuck of a weekend that was.  From the house gig (and drinking) on Wednesday night, to the Wide Days conference (with lots of drinking) on Thursday night, to the work night out (with an awful lot of drinking) on Friday and finally the launch night for the new Meursault album on Saturday night (at which there was, somewhat inevitably, an awful lot of drinking) I think that by the time Sunday rolled around I either needed to never drink again, or just embrace it and pour beer on my bloody cornflakes.

Still, the gig was fucking incredible, and we’re pretty much out of the limited editions already.  The sooner those fuckers bugger off on tour so I can get some rest the better.

Friday 16th April 2010: John Knox Sex Club, Deserters Deserve Death & Jocky Venkataraman play TrampolineWee Red Bar.

at the Sex Club?  Fair enough.  Euan wrote about Jocky Venkataraman when he was looking after the site last Summer, and I really liked the sound of him then.

Saturday 17th April 2010: Zoey Van Goey, Chris Bradley & X-Lion Tamer play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms, with 17 Seconds DJs.

A bit of a 17 Seconds Records special at Limbo this week, with Ed DJing and two of his acts on the bill.  It’s an eclectic lineup, with a bit of indie from Zoey Van Goey, some singer-songwritery stuff from Chris Bradley and techno-pop (or whatever, exactly, you’re supposed to call it) from the splendid X-Lion Tamer.  I have to question the hyphenation of the name, however, because it looks a lot to me like Tony is claiming to tame ex-lions, which doesn’t strike me as being all that hard.

X-Lion Tamer – Life Support Machine

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 18th April 2010: Inspector Tapehead, Natalie Stern & The Japanese War Effort at the Roxy Room.

Inspector Tapehead have agreed to release their (bloody brilliant) debut album on Song, by Toad Records some time around August this year.  I still have no real idea how I am going to pigeonhole their music for the easy consumption of lazy journalists when I send out the promos, but I think ‘fucking ace’ should do the trick.  It will certainly be the jolliest record on the label by some distance.

Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Bozo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 18th April 2010: Angus & Julia Stone & Alan Pownall at Cabaret Voltaire.

I honestly find Angus & Julia Stone a bit nice for my taste, but you might be keener on that yourselves.  Also of interest is Alan Pownall, who I don’t know that much about, but in The Others has produced a truly gorgeous song:

Alan Pownall – The Others

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 18th April 2010: Manky Bands at The Hive.

I was given an interesting (and entirely good-natured, don’t worry) dressing down by a fella called Murray, perhaps better known as Edinburgh promoter Manky Bastard, on Thursday.  He was just pointing out that my Drowned in Sound piece on Edinburgh (and this site in general) was pretty narrowly focussed, in terms of genre and the community which it represented and stuff like that.

He’s absolutely right of course, but the trouble is that I really only write about music I like, which means that it is by nature going to be somewhat limited in scope. The problem is that because of being so busy with the expansion of the blog and the label (we’ve recently grown to the status of ‘micro-indie’ apparently – a fine achievement if ever there was one – is there such a thing as smaller than an indie?) that I just haven’t been able to go to gigs at all for almost a year.  You can probably tell this from the decline in live reviews on the site.

This means that I am just not out and about sniffing out new things like I should be, and consequently I know barely a single thing about the bands Murray is so keen on and, to cut a very long story short, he recommended this gig as being a really good representation of the scene he himself is working within at the moment.  That, for me, is as good a reason as any to attend – it’s about time I challenged what I already know I like.

It’s annoying though, because I cannot find the actual fucking lineup written down anywhere.  I think they actually require you to sign into the damn website to see the bloody listings.  And if that is the case then they can fuck off, quite frankly.  Unless I am being dense, in which case the slow onset of old age and the technological paralysis which goes with are encroaching even faster than I thought.

Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Audio: below

This was without a shadow of a doubt the most scary level of military efficiency that anything even slightly Toad-related has ever achieved.  Mumford & Sons were playing to a sold-out Queen’s Hall in the evening, so we had to have them in and out of the door within an hour and a half, and we actually bloody managed it!  As the likes of the Pictish Trail, who left Toad Hall completely plastered after his session, can testify: this isn’t really what we’re good at around here.

So, not only did they go to extreme lengths to actually make time to record this, they did a fucking lovely job of it as well.  If you watch the video for Untitled, embedded below, you’ll see that they rattled our floors so hard that something actually falls off the shelves behind Marcus at the end of the video.  Gavin has done a lovely job of the recording and mixing, and many thanks to Dylan for the photography and Matthew for help with the filming.

As usual with the Toad Sessions, there is a full set of pictures on our Flickr page, Dylan’s own choices on his Blueback Hotrod page, freely downloadable and shareable mp3s of the session tracks below, a full podcast of the interview (with playlist at the bottom of the page), and videos of the individual songs themselves embedded below.  I’ve also made a video of the whole day, with bits of interviews and excerpts from the songs, and that is embedded at the top of the page.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #117 – Mumford & Sons Toad Session

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mumford & Sons – Untitled (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mumford & Sons – Dance Dance Dance (Neil Young Cover) (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mumford & Sons – Awake My Soul (Toad Session)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Podcast Playlist:
01. Mumford & Sons – Untitled (Toad Session) (04.26)
02. Vampire Weekend – UR a Contra (13.29)
03. Love.Stop.Repeat – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (17.52)
04. Mumford & Sons – Dance Dance Dance (Neil Young Cover) (Toad Session) (21.54)
05. Billie Holiday – God Bless the Child (26.42)
06. Eels – In the Beginning (29.49)
07. Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page (Toad Session) (36.27)
08. My Kappa Roots – It was Rough When the Rain Came (41.19)
09. Mumford & Sons – Awake My Soul (Toad Session) (50.23)

There’s something wonderfully uncomplicated about this gorgeous EP by Burnt Island. It’s not simplistic or basic or anything like that, it just has a confidently slow pace and an effortless manner – they just make it all seem so easy.

I think what they’ve mastered, which makes this so good, is the art of the Tiny Surprise.  Eels are very good at this as well – there’s hardly been a Big Surprise in Eels’ music in about the last ten years, but E has consistently maintained his knack for a subtle shift in melody or rhythm which, although slight, is just enough to give his songs something enigmatic and satisfying, no matter how familiar his arrangements have become over the years.

Within a song or two you can pretty much tell how the rest of Music and Maths is going to unfold, in a general sense – it’s all gentle, lovely, largely acoustic indie-folk, if you’re looking for a vague pigeonhole.  What the band do brilliantly, though, is take what is a very familiar template and fill it full of little shifts and eddies and distractions, so each song is full of little moments which make you sit up and take notice.

Not infrequently these moments come from the fiddle, which is simply but beautifully played, without any flourishes and showing off.  In fact this applies pretty much to every aspect of this music.  The singing is not overly beautiful nor attention-seeking, electing instead to simply deliver the song, deliver it well, and do no more than that.  Nothing is over-embellished or florid; there’s not a hint of rock ‘n’ roll attitude about this, nor a trace of musickyness, it’s just there in front of you, plain as you like.

Tracks like Hiding Out show that the band can bring up a fuller sound when they want to – in this case sounding just a little like The Veils, actually – but this is something they rarely ever choose to do, and I like that.  It just serves to give this EP a restrained and comforting feel; the impression that everything is just as it should be. I’ve listened to this band’s material before, and I am pretty sure I sent them a ‘thanks but no thanks’ email.  Listening to this (which may or may not be the same stuff, I can’t find the email) I find myself wondering what on earth I was thinking.

Burnt Island – Man on Fire

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Chaffinch Records

What an enjoyably confusing EP this is.  Exu_Wow by Deathpodal starts out as a nice, slightly meandering record, in no rush to get itself moving and generally giving the impression of a nice, pleasant twenty minutes of laid back, just slightly experimental indie with guitar which reminds me, if anything, of some of the less resolutely pop efforts of the mid-nineties.

By the time Squirrel and the Fox starts, that impression is pretty much cemented.  The guitars are prominent again, and a nice, rumbling cello underpins it all.  It’s not so much that this is bad – quite the opposite, it’s actually very good – it’s just that by the time the next song is over you realise that it is really nothing like the full picture of this EP.

Every Superstition Shall Be Removed reminds me of the Metalcast we recorded here a few months ago.  Specifically, it reminds me of the kind of early, shouty Pavement and Nirvana which a lot of people who crossed comfortably between the metal and the indie worlds might have listened to.  It’s either metal played by someone with a very large number of indie and slacker rock influences, or… well, rearrange the genres in that sentence as you will, you’ll be there or thereabouts whichever order you put them in.

Sycamore follows, which is a short instrumental number, with shuffling cutlery in the background and slowly clanking piano to the fore, before There is a Diagram for This, the EP’s longest song, brings matters to a close with something of a mixture of all that has gone before.  If Exu_Wow was long enough to justify the term, you’d say this song was the EP in microcosm.  In fact it is sort of like a reprise of that which has gone before, starting with the nice, comforting guitary indie, building to a screaming climax and then finally petering out into a two minute instrumental fade.

I like this.  I don’t exactly like all of the sounds, and in isolation I might not actually like all of the songs.  But this isn’t a collection of songs, it is a whole piece of work, and one which lulls you in nicely before wrong-footing you with one of the most well-executed flourishes I’ve seen in a while.  I like the way Every Superstition… doesn’t just surprise you from a musical point of view, it fundamentally changes the way you view the songs around it, acting as the fulcrum of the entire record.

Very clever.  And very good.

Deathpodal – There is a Diagram for This

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Big Cartel

Homegame this year was a distinctly danceable affair for me.  Not that I did dance (I wasn’t that drunk) but the bands I enjoyed the most were the ones like Findo Gask and Django Django who are most definitely very friendly to those of the dancing persuasion.  I had to miss Silver fucking Columns though, because it clashed with the Cold Seeds gig which, being a record released on our label, I really had to attend.

Homegame was in fact the first ever Silver Columns gig, and Johnny and Adem were nice enough to sit down with us on the morning of the show, give us a cup of tea* and chat a bit about their new project.  Listening to the live footage, I think this is going to be a cracking album.  I know I’m much more into my whiney folk at the moment, but stuff like this serves to remind me that my Mum raised us with Erasure, ABC, Bronski Beat, Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, so it’s not like infectious dancefloor electro-pop is a massive stranger to my ears.

Many thanks are due to Dylan for filming both the interview and the gig.  The title shots for each video are taken from his photos from the gig, the full set of which can be found over at Blueback Hotrod.

*Alright, it was Lapsang Souching with milk, but I appreciate the thought.

Well it’s finally time to get that bastard Meursault album out there for people to enjoy – Christ, it’s been a trial sitting on this for so long.  I really have learned how leaks happen in the music industry now.  Never mind malice, it is just virtually impossible to keep something you’re really excited about to yourself for as long as is needed to organise a proper album release.  This album was recorded in December and January, and was basically finished by mid-February.

Since then, we’ve had to restrain everyone involved (from the band, to people like myself and, Dylan and Wee Matthew who have all been playing our own copies, to members of the press and assorted other industry people who’ve we’ve had to give copies to) from making it widely available before the actual release.  This is surprisingly hard because of course people are just bloody excited about it – frankly, how any album fails to leak is beyond me, really.  We’re tiny – imagine how many people have to keep something under their hats when the record is being released by even a moderately-sized indie.

This week also sees a full day of music business seminars at the Voodoo Rooms.  On Thursday Olaf and Derick from Born to Be Wide will bring us a full day of seminars, surrounded by a cloud of showcase gigs around the city.  The seminars will be: Speak to the Management, How to Get on a Festival Bill, What Next – Preparing for the Future, and Essential Legal Advice.  I have been to a lot of the Born to Be Wide seminars and I can’t over-emphasise how useful they can be.  Even if you don’t end up acting on anything in particular at the time, it’s useful to know where to find that kind of advice should you need it in the future. So far we’re in contact with publishers and lawyers for the label because of Born to Be Wide.

The List have a more complete preview here, and you can buy tickets for the event here.

I honestly can’t find much else out there beyond this couple of gigs – I must be missing something obvious, surely?  Please feel free to point and laugh in the comments, as usual.

Thursday 8th April 2010: Hopeless Heroic & FOUND at Electric Circus.

This is the Wide Days closing party, featuring the fabulous FOUND who seem to make more noise now that there are fewer of them, somehow, and a a certain baldy-headed mystery man we can’t mention here for contractual reasons.  FOUND were excellent at Homegame, incidentally.  Far rockier than I’d imagined, but very, very good.

Saturday 10th April 2010: Meursault & Conquering Animal Sound at Cabaret Voltaire.

Supporting will be the excellent Conquering Animal Sound, who have just completed their own single launch mini-tour.  I think Meursault are intending to play the entire new album start to finish, but I could be wrong.  They’re even lugging a bloody piano down to Cabaret Voltaire for the purpose, so I would recommend not missing this one.

Meursault – Crank Resolutions

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.