Tonight at 20:30 will see the return of my radio show to the airwaves of the student radio station in these parts; Fresh Air.  The station will be broadcasting through the Festival, and I myself have slots this evening, to kick things off, as well as Sunday 15th, 22nd and 29th (at the earlier time of 19:00-20:30) when Ruth will presumably be back.  The full schedule is (sort of) here.

We’re hoping to have live guests and stuff like that, and have Lach pencilled in for the 15th, to help publicise his Antihoot show, and have yet to line up anyone proper for the other two weekends yet.  We’ll hopefully get there though.

Anyhow, tonight Dylan will stand in for Ruth, and we will be previewing the Festival and talking pish about what music things are happening here throughout the month of August.

Listen Here – Live from 20:30BST

As ever, the tracklist will be updated live below and if you have any trouble with the feed you should be able to get rid of it by pausing and un-pausing the player.  Alternatively, you can find the station on iTunes as well, listed somewhere under college radio stations, I think.

1. Honeytrap – Little Johnny Winter
2. Mark Lanegan – Methamphetamine Blues
3. FOUND – Let Fidelity Break
4. Eels – Souljacker
5. Roky Erickson and Okkervil River – Goodbye Sweet Dreams
6. The Japanese War Effort – Summer Sun Skateboard
7. Arcade Fire – City With No Children
8. Inspector Tapehead – Yarvil
9. Yusuf Azak – Turn on the Long Wire
10. King Post Kitsch – Walking on Eggshells
11. Milk – Wilma, There’s Been a Fire!
12. Benni Hemm Hemm – Retaliate
13. Lach – I Want To Be With You

Night night!

Japanese genius James Scott (who may not actually be Japanese) recently, and with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, snuck this little gem out into the midst of the internet behind all our backs.

Well shame on him. Because it’s fucking ace.

This is a fuzzy, summery, haze-pop masterpiece, reminiscent of a static-smothered slice of Yo La Tengo’s lush album Summer Sun. And it’s free.

Title track Summer Sun Skateboard is about as good a song as I’ve heard from Jamie.  It hints to me that the lad has an exuberant pop masterpiece in him somewhere too and, even better, that if he were to record and release it he would do so only after fucking the shit out of it with noise and fun and exciting musical weirdness.

The rest of the EP is a tad more hazy, dreamy and downbeat than that, drifting into a reverie infused with hiss and buzz.  It barely knows whether it wants to be an experimental soundscape, glitchy electronica or lo-fi pop, and I think that’s where he’s nailed this EP so neatly.  The interplay between those elements is judged to perfection – the soundscapes soften the electronica, the electronica fucks with the pop and the pop enlivens the soundscapes, resulting in an enigmatic collection of songs which tease to perfection, but which in the end deliver with as much punch as anything I’ve heard from the Japanese War Effort so far.  Brilliant.

I wish I had a shitload of money to spend on fun, because this really needs to be released on multicoloured 10″ vinyl.

The Japanese War Effort – Pool Attendant

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Download for free from Jamie’s Bandcamp page.

Alright, this time for real.  I reviewed this album, or at least a very close approximation of it, a few months back when Dustin Hamman first got in touch with me to invite me to have a listen.

Generally I don’t review albums until they are actually available for purchase, because things don’t spend that long at the top of a blog page and I think that maximises the opportunity for impulse purchases.

So after a lot of work You, the Darkness & Me finds a home on Hush Records, one of if not the best record labels to be found in Portland’s everso fertile music scene.  Good, is all I can say, because this is a fucking lovely album.

Going back to my original review, there is a lot of Gothic folk-noir about this but more along the lines of Elvis Perkins than Timber Timbre.  That I am comparing Run On Sentence to two of my favourite bands of the last few years is entirely appropriate, because I think this stuff is right up there with recent work by both of those bands.

It positively drips with emotion.  There’s something in the performance which pretty much promises that he really, really means it.  In the initial review I said that the flamboyance of this album and the borderline melodrama of some of the emotional crescendoes went a little over the top for my taste, but over time I think that has changed.  Yes, it is an emotionally expressive album, but not excessively so; it just took me a little while to get used to it.

My friend Ritchie from Loch Lomond, another Portland band, tells me that Dustin Hamman is one of the few people he knows who can truly pull off a solo acoustic show with genuinely compelling charisma, and without sounding like ‘just another singer-songwriter’, and listening to this I can really believe it.

So, now that you can actually do so, please go an buy this record.  You won’t be disappointed.

Run on Sentence – I am the Blood

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Run on Sentence – Out in the Woods

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Hush Records

Instead of mp3s this morning I have a small pile of videos for you.  I think PR people and labels seem to like videos as the song can’t be downloaded (although it can easily be ripped), so it kind of enforces a streaming-only policy.  Also, we live in a multimedia world these days, so in that sense it also seems logical enough to me.

The only issue I have with it is that the downloadable mp3, for all it represents giving away a bit of the album (and a lot of people worry about giving away the whole thing, a piece at a time, which I think is an almost entirely unfounded worry), that mp3 can sneak its way into iPods, complation CDs people make for their mates, this playlist and that playlist, people’s podcasts and pretty much any other way of passing things around that you can think of.

The free mp3′s great drawback – it is hard to track and almost impossible to control -  is also its greatest benefit.  That lack of control allows a band to exploit the maximum benefit of network effects and genuine viral behaviour (which is a lot harder to exploit than just a marketing gimp dubbing something ‘viral’ and wishing that made it so).

Then again, whilst that’s great in many ways, and very flexible, there is still one issue which might well tip things in the future.  In the world of sharing and passing things round it may well have become easier in the last few years – with the way Facebook has developed and Twitter has emerged – for links to be shared than a cumbersome mp3 file.  So these days if you’re really looking to encourage viral sharing then the balance seems to be tipping just a little towards things people can share simple links to, in favour of a 5Mb music file.

I think the issue may be more related, these days, to who you are trying to reach.  I still think anyone in the media (and nowadays who is and who isn’t is a very blurred line indeed) pretty much needs to have something they can use – not just share but actually use – whereas if you are trying to actually nudge social sharing into action then maybe the multimedia approach is better because why would people email mp3s about when they can actually post a big shiny bauble on their Facebook feed.

The videos we have today are from Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern, who has a new album in the works.  Also, there is To America, the new single from Honeytrap from their forthcoming album Petrushka. They said during their Toad Session that they wanted it to be rougher and more raw than their last album, and it really does have that clattering, ramshackle quality to it.

Finally, there is a video from a fellow I’ve never heard of before called Keaton Henson. He reminds me a bit of local lad Thomas Western actually, and I really like the videos.  More to be seen here if you like this one.

For those of you not so keen on the cut and thrust of the bleeding edge of alt-folk, there is the opportunity to do something to satisfy a couple of the other senses this week.   On Thursday 5th August there is a bit of a foodie event taking place at the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street, called World Kitchen. Also, on Thursday, after having your ears assaulted by my dubious DJing skills, you may wish to pop down to the Wee Red Bar for the inaugural Chops club night.

Myself and Mrs. Toad are taking a bit of holiday too, bravely leaving our house and retarded cat in the hand of Mrs. Toad’s brother.  It works quite well actually.  He crashes with us for a bit, we get the house and cat looked after, and he gets to make a bit of money renting out his house during the Festival.  And then I’ll be back just in time to bugger off to Haarfest in Anstruther for a week and erm… well, there is a Festival in Edinburgh in August isn’t there?  It looks like I might actually miss most of it, although by an odd coincidence  I will be around every Sunday.

And that is a convenient happenstance, because for the month of August Ruth and my good self will be returning to Fresh Air Radio for our Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show with Toad and Ruth, with shows from seven to half eight in the evening on Sundays the 15th, 22nd and 29th August, and a kick-off preview show which will be broadcast (Ruthlessly, unfortunately) this Wednesday 4th August from half eight.  As usual we’ll be looking to get guests and live music on the show, starting with legendary New York anti-folker Lach on the 15th, who will hopefully play a few songs and chat about Lach’s Anti-hoot, his Festival show in which he will be trying to recreate the spirit of New York anti-folk in Edinburgh.  Kinda like the Bowery, then.

Wednesday 4th August 2010: Calvin Johnson, Ben Butler & Mousepad and eagleowl at Pilrig St. Paul’s Church.

Pilrig St. Paul’s is on the corner of Leith Walk and Pilrig Street, and is just the latest in a long list of gorgeous venues sniffed out by Jillian and Emily from Tracer Trails.  It will also be the venue for this year’s christonafuckingbikeimohsoveryexcited Retreat Festival (free sampler of some of the bands involved to be found here), so this will be a chance to sneak preview the place before committing to a weekend of unspeakable joy and drunken liver-punches later in the month.  I know little about this particular lineup, I have to confess, apart from the fact that Calvin Johnson shares a label with the utterly unspeakable and profoundly punchable Jeremy Jay.  But I assume Mr. Johnson himself is a hell of a lot nicer or the Tracer Trails team would never be dealing with him in the first place.

Thursday 5th August 2010:Born to Be Wide Festival Special at the Electric Circus, with all sorts of DJs and bands.

This night is a preview night for Retreat, the Forest Fringe and Acoustic Edinburgh and a general statement that, Festival and imported musical exotica aside, there is plenty of awfy good stuff to be found here the rest of the year too.  There will be mini acoustic sets by a selection of bands on the hour, interspersed with equally mini DJ sets of local music toilers such as myself playing five-song sets of our favourite Edinburgh records. Enfant Bastard, Meursault, Emily Scott and the brilliantly named Haftor Medboe stand out for me on the list of artists booked to play.

Meursault – Love or Limb

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Friday 6th August 2010: Villagers at Sneaky Pete’s.

Villagers were very nearly reviewed on Song, by Toad when they released their debut album a month or so ago.  I found it all just a tad too nice, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be genuinely interested to hear them live.  A live performance is often a little more raw than a recorded song, which often leads to me quite considerably preferring a live setting for some of the current rash of polished folk-pop.

Villagers – Becoming a Jackal

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Friday 6th – Sunday 15th August: Acoustic Cafe at the Roxy Art House.

This acoustic mini-festival starts this weekend and runs through to the end of the following one.  On Friday we have Iona Marshall and the Last Battle, Saturday is The One Ensemble and Yusuf Azak and Sunday Meursault (solo) and Esperi.  As well as Electric Circus, Ed from the Roxy seems to be one of the few committed to supporting local music during the tidal wave of imported bumph which swamps the place in August.

Yusuf Azak – Eastern Sun

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Saturday 7th August 2010: FOUND & Milk (I’m not sure that’s the right MySpace link) at the Electric Circus.

FOUND’s rather fantastic (Machine Age Dancing!  MACHINE AGE DANCING!!!) new album is out soon.  How soon I don’t quite know I have to confess, but I can tell you this about it: it’s more of an abrasive indie-rock album that I ever expected from these lads which, frankly, is just showing off.  Get back in your pigeonhole you alt-folk glitch-hopsters!

FOUND – Freaky Freaky Chancer

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