Regular readers of my distracted piffle will know by now that I drive a red van with a tape player in it. This has led to a few changes in listening habits, not least because I hardly have any tapes left at all.  A bit like what happened to my vinyl back in about 1995, my collection has been shoved in a box at the back of a cupboard, and I honestly didn’t think I would ever play them again.

Unlike my vinyl, though, my parents didn’t eventually get bored of having it lying around the house and then throw it in the fucking bin.  Yes, they did that.  To my vinyl.  Not that I blame them really, I’d copied it all to tape (oh wait…) and was a student at the time, so there seemed little imminent prospect of me ever having a record player again.  How times change.

Now not only do we have a tape player in the van, we have actually bought one for the house, too.  I bought it off eBay for about fifteen quid a couple of years ago when I first got my hands on the Japanese War Effort’s brilliant Snowbird album, which exists only on cassette.  So for a long while, that tape player was simply a Snowbird Playing Machine, and in a sense the album itself, far from the eminently reasonable two pounds I paid for it at retail, had ended up costing me nearer twenty.

However, the box of tapes in our house is actually still stuffed away under the stairs somewhere, so at the moment the van’s tape player is subsisting on a pretty meagre diet.  In fact, due to the fact that even the van tapes have ended up buried under a pile of old crap somewhere under one of the back seats, I have actually only been listening to one single tape for the last month or so, over and over again.

I made this tape towards the tail end of the nineties and I called it, with tongue somewhat in cheek, Let’s Bop With the Brits.  It is basically just a collection of British music which, for one reason or another, was starting to sound quite old-fashioned by 1996 or so.  There was some Morrissey, some Inspiral Carpets, some Wonderstuff, some Gene, one solitary Stone Roses song, a couple of tracks from Parklife, hopefully you get the gist of it.

Anyhow, yes, for some reason I have had that one tape on repeat constantly for the last four weeks and I now know the words to most of the songs pretty much off by heart, never mind the playlist itself.  With modern music libraries comprising thousands and thousands of files, I am not sure when the last time is that happened to me.

Morrissey – Certain People I Know

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Gene – Be My Light, Be My Guide

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Blur – End of a Century

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When I hear of things being influenced by the Eighties, I always find it a bit of a double-edged sword.  I think when you were alive and heard things the first time and (crucially) felt the excitement back then as well, then it becomes infinitely harder to give a fuck about the inevitable re-treads and re-evaluations twenty years later.

This is shot through with quite a few Eighties influences certainly – at one point you could almost kid yourself you were listening to Peter Gabriel, albeit only sort of – but they are mashed together into a wash of electronic noises. It is certainly a forward rather than a backward-facing record.

I actually find this music, including my reaction to it, rather difficult to describe.  The synthy background slows and hesitates, shifting from the nearly-epic to the faltering and lo-fi, and this kind of perpetual indecision hovers around the music too, which shifts gear from the obscure and experimental to something bordering on pop.

It feels like it’s grumbling away at me, almost as if Josef Fritzl’s daughter turned out to be an amazing synth pop band and you can just hear her cries for freedom through the floorboards as the medication slowly kicks in and she drifts off into a narcotic stupour.

And if that analogy doesn’t really make it clear, I like this a lot.  I have bought it on vinyl.

Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart

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Website | More mp3s | Buy on vinyl from Geographic North | Buy digitally with a shitload of remixes from eMusic

Alongside Trips and Falls, who ended up on Song, by Toad Records because of it, this is one of the briefest, most awkward promotional emails I have ever received.  It pretty much said, in all caps, ‘I have an EP.  Listen to it.  Here.’

Oddly enough, that kind of uncomfortable introduction often bodes far, far better than a slick, well-formatted PR email and so, once again, it proved in this case.

I know when something is flavour of the month it is tempting to hear it everywhere, but I hear a lot of similarities to Perfume Genius in here.  It has that same lost, ghostly feel to it, which simultaneously evokes feelings of dread and warmth.  This is more to the spooky side however, frequently lacking the comfort of Mike Hadreas’ stuff.  I even hear shades of Edinburgh lad Wounded Knee from time to time, although that is far more fleeting.

The instrumentation is quite dense for something where the atmosphere is still quite open and spacious, but not all the time.  In fact, the sudden rushes of more complex, messy emotions give this EP a really satisfying dynamic.  Izenberg obviously has more intimidating, emotionally challenging places he can take you, but his sparse use of this trick gives it all the more impact when he does finally decide to open up.

I know a rough, enigmatic four song EP isn’t much to go on, but there’s something in this which I find really exciting, and I really hope there is more to come from Allister Izenberg in future.

Allister Izenberg – Lonesome

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MySpace | Download EP for free here

Given I have now sworn off festivals with a population over about five thousand, I think it’s only fair that I start noseying around some of the smaller ones and seeing what they have to offer.

I have loved Homegame and Pickathon, narrowly missed out on the Insider and Kelburn, but I think I will be making it to this one: Doune the Rabbit Hole on the 30th and 31st July.  I don’t really know the organisers, but they’re two young lads from Glasgow taking a chance, apparently, and my friend Ed from the Roxy is now helping them out too.

Add to that the fact that there are two Toad Records bands on the bill – Meursault (who are at Truck this weekend too) and Inspector Tapehead – and two Fence ones too – Francois and the Atlas Mountains and Rozi Plain – and I think that this will do very nicely for me indeed.  Oh and Doune Castle is, I believe, the location of the insulting Frenchman and the English knight whose mother was a hamster and whose father smelled of Elderberries (see below).

And if you fancy it you can get discounted tickets from me, here, now. Generally they’d be £48, but you can get them from the link below for £38 if you fancy coming along.

[Edit: The Mammoeth album launch night and my pal Morgan's first ever gig ever anywhere ever have been added to the bottom of the listings.  Sorry chaps.]

That Summertime music wasteland has very much settled on Edinburgh in the last couple of weeks, leaving absolutely sweet fuck all on the calendar on a boringly regular basis.

Fortunately, August is shaping up to be very interesting indeed, with the return of the ear-caressing, liver-punchingly contradictory Retreat Festival now booked in for August 28th and 29th.

Whenever anyone mentions retreat I can’t stop myself thinking of Admiral Ackbar saying ‘I saw it.  All craft prepare to retreat.’ in Return of the Jedi.  Erm, but, er, don’t worry.  I am going to take my pills and have a lie down.

Friday 23rd July 2010: Don McGlashan & Daniel Abercrombie at Cabaret Voltaire.

I first found out about Don McGlashan back in about 1995 or 6 when his band The Mutton Birds played King Tut’s in Glasgow.  One of my flatmates had a pal from school visiting and we were at a bit of a loss as to how to entertain her, so we took a flier on a gig at Tut’s on the back of little more than a couple of positive paragraphs we found in the local press.

It was an ill-considered and entirely spontaneous expedition, but we all absolutely loved the band.  McGlashan himself would occasionally play a euphonium on stage, and as well as adding to the music, it added a lot to the intrigue of the live performance.

I have to confess I have no idea what he’s been up to since the last Mutton Birds album I bought (back in something like 1998 or something like that) but I remember this particular discovery with real affection.

The Mutton Birds – The Heater

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The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels

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Saturday 24th July 2010: Mammoeth album launch at the Wee Red Bar.

Russell from Mammoeth’s previous incarnation was one of the first times a local band got in touch with me to ask me to review their music.  I think Alex Cornish and Rob St. John were the others.  Anyway, some three years later, here is Russell’s debut album, and the debut release on Mini50 Records – apologies for missing it out the first time around.

Mammoeth – Trigonometry (Live on Fresh Air Radio)

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Sunday 25th July 2010: The Barrett Wise 3 & The Janet Effect at the Roxy Art House.

The Janet Effect are my friend Morgan’s band.  I remember being in Holland in 1997 when he picked up a guitar for the first time, and after all these years he has finally got his shit together to start a band!  And do a gig!  I know!  They may be absolute shite, they may be brilliant, I have absolutely no idea, but I am going to be along anyway, whatever happens.

The Luyas are good, but a little hard to describe.

They don’t really remind me of anything else, but if I had to pick a point of reference I guess it would be Animal Magic Tricks, not so much in terms of the sound but in terms of the overall “feel” of the music. It can be challenging at times, but all the more rewarding for that. Owen Pallett is also in the same ballpark, and apparently the Luyas are associated with him in some vague way.

Like Pallett, the Luyas are stunning instrumentalists and expert knob-twiddlers from Montréal. Their music is inventive, dreamy and atmospheric, but also angular and brittle, like icicles. I imagine them rehearsing and performing by candlelight.

The Luyas are fronted by Jessie Stein, who sings (or perhaps “vocalises” is a better word) and plays a peculiar instrument called a Moodswinger, which its Dutch inventor describes as “an electric 12-string 3rd bridge overtone zither,” whatever the hell that means. She’s playing it in the video embedded above, so if you’re interested in cool gear you should check it out. It looks vaguely guitar-ish but sounds more like a piano or a harp.

To be honest, Jessie Stein has a pretty limited vocal range. She’s no Benatar. But her hushed singing has a crackly fragility that suits this music very well once you get used to it. The other Luyas are Pietro Amato on French Horn, Stefan Schneider on percussion, Mathieu Charbonneau on Wurlitzer organ and otherkeys, and sometimes Sarah Neufeld (from the Arcade Fire) on violin.

Unfortunately I don’t really have a proper Luyas record to review here. They released a full-length album back in 2007 called Faker Death, but in my opinion it doesn’t hold a candle to the music they make today, which is much more ambitious. They have an excellent 7” single out,and according to their MySpace a new album is scheduled for release in the autumn, which is good news indeed.

The video is from last March, and it shows them performing my favorite of their songs, called Canary. I really like what I’m hearing. Keep your ears open for this lot.

My brother heads off today, so I figured we’d take one last chance to do a podcast while we can.  This is mostly new stuff and inbox though, so I am not sure how he’ll react.

Actually, he was in the room last week while I went through my inbox, played stuff, replied to emails, deleted things, and so on and so forth.  I think his response was that he simply wouldn’t be able to handle the avalanche of shit I have to get through, and that it would simply turn him off music completely.

I don’t mind that, I have to confess, because although some people do send me wildly inappropriate things, after two hours of listening to one ‘psychedelic rock band who are blazing a trail across the LA scene right now’ after another I then open an email from Allister Izenberg, which was possibly the most terse, abrupt and non-sugar-coated promo email I have ever read, even including Trips and Falls.  It was such a bad email actually that even before listening I had a sneaky suspicion I was going to really like the music, and boy oh boy was I right.  It makes all the ‘rock, hip-hop, funk fusion’s next big thing’ emails easily worthwhile.

Toadcast #131 – The Brocast

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01. Hot Lava – Pink Lemonade (02.52)
02. Burnt Island – Hiding Out (07.42)
03. King Post Kitsch – Monomaniac (11.26)
04. Glass Animals – Leaflings (19.17)
05. Allister Izenberg – Little Swan (24.24)
06. Television Keeps us Apart – Voices (33.22)
07. Ola Belle Reed – High on a Mountain (41.01)
08. Clarence Ashley – Cuckoo Bird (51.54)
09. Willard Grant Conspiracy & Telefunk – The Cuckoo (54.23)
10. Soft Cat – Blackbird (62.41)

Yes, the whole family is currently here at Toad Hall, inspecting the place and making sure that we are running our relationship in a satisfactory manner.  I have had advice on everything from which chores to do in order to make Mrs. Toad happy when she gets back from God Bless America (about an hour ago) to how to order my working day now I am a gentleman of leisure.  Oh what jolly fun it’s been.

Mrs. Toad got back to a demand from a debt collection agency for the sum of forty pounds, which included the statement “this amount includes an adminisration fee of forty pounds”.  What a great business to be in!  You send people letters claiming that the very act of sending them a letter obliges them to reimburse you for sending it.  I am in the wrong fucking business.

I sat and played my folks some old Smithsonian Folkways stuff the other night actually, which was rather fun.  I played them some Sam Amidon as well, and some Alela Diane and some Jackson C. Frank and some stuff from the gorgeous FOUND Toad Session.  I am not sure that being sat down and told to listen to a series of songs I am convinced they Must Like is quite what they came here for, but hey.  If they’re going to lecture me about domestic duties, I am going to force them to listen to music all night.

And once again it is Friday, de-lurking day and King’s Wark for our tea day, so all is well with the universe.  Oh, and Mrs. Toad is home as well, which is very good news.  I do miss the bad tempered old bag when she goes away.  So please come out of hiding and answer five silly questions before wasting the rest of your Friday afternoon talking shit, when you really should be at work being productive.

1. Biggest pretence about your life you still maintain in front of your folks.
2. Most unreasonable thing you make them tolerate when they visit you.
3. Time before the novelty wears off.
4. Most preposterous debt collection conversation you’ve had.
5. Who do you write like?

Five songs from when I lived at home:

Kim Carnes – Mistaken Identity

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Culture Club – It’s a Miracle

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Alison Moyet – Love Resurrection

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Hazel O’Connor – Will You

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Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time

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This is a relatively low-key, but really excellent release from Swedish band Television Keeps us Apart.  It is rather unassumingly released as a free download, with the option to purchase a CD should you so desire, and generally comes across as a band gently saying hello rather than battering down your door.

Even the intro to the album – well, mini-album really – is slow, building a simple keyboard on top of steadily building layers of hiss, until  the vocals finally cut in half way through the song.  It’s a nice, confident way to start a record, if you ask me – making people wait and wait before you give them any real information about what they’re listening to.

I said there was a lot of shoegaze around at the moment, and this record supports that statement.  There’s been a Scandinavian fascination with British indie music from the mid-eighties onwards around for a while and, like our football which also seems to fascinate them, they seem to frequently do it better than we do ourselves.

The guitars sound like someone sawing timber, the beat is slow and tinny, and the vocals roughed up. The electronics and underlying abuse of gain and distortion take this rather distant mix and give it a grumble of warmth, meaning that despite all the obstacles put in between the actual tune itself and the listener, this album has a very friendly, approachable feel.

Shoegaze is very often loud, somewhat anti-social guitar music, and I haven’t been into anything loud for a while, but if this stuff starts to come back properly I will be a very happy bunny indeed.

Television Keeps us Apart – I Hate My Friends

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Television Keeps us Apart – Pounding Hearts/Pounding Machine

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MySpace | More mp3s | Download digitally for free | Buy CD from Series Two Records

I don’t really need to add anything to this, do I?