There’s a lot of talk in the media at the moment about the death of rock ‘n’ roll and whether or not this year will see some sort of rebirth of guitar music and so on and so forth.

The whole debate seems to centre on the wrong subjects, for the most part, not least an awful lot of needless hot air about the NME featuring a band called Brother on their cover who are not very good, have achieved little, and are by all accounts an unspeakable shower of cunts.

All this talk about the coming year is kind of beside the point, if you ask me, and this is something of a non-discussion to begin with.  Music moves in cycles, obviously enough, and we’ve been through times when intricate folk dominated the conversation, to the last few years where more unusual blends of electronica have dominated.

Inevitably, no matter how interesting a particular direction the zeitgeist happens to be exploring, people and bands will inevitably get bored and move onto something else.  As with all things fashionable, this tends to start with a persistent series of whispers, before suddenly becoming an avalanche of the obvious.

When you look at some of the stuff the ultra-hip London indie Tough Love Records was releasing last year – Male Bonding and Girls Names, for example – it seemed obvious already that the fashionable love of lo-fi which so dominated the last year was bringing, along with the often rather tedious Chillwave bands, a healthy new bunch of raucous guitar bands to the fore.

Since I moved to Edinburgh I’ve haven’t seen a lot of guitar bands – in the rough-as-nuts garage sense – that I have really thought much of, but there are a couple of quite promising ones I’ve come across recently which suggest that this might be about to change.

Zed Penguin is not rough in the ear-splitting, death-by-moshpit sense, but the guitar sound is unrefined and fantastic.  The amp is homemade apparently, and the sound that comes out of it is bloody gorgeous.  It reminds me of a slightly less explosive relation of Waylon Thornton & the Heavy Hands, which I reviewed recently, and growls along really nicely.

This is a simple little EP, four tracks recorded on a four-track, and available to download from Bandcamp for £1.50.  I was sufficiently impressed with it the first time I heard it that I invited Matthew to play at a Toad Night more or less immediately – he’ll now be sharing a bill with Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six on the fourth March at Henry’s Cellar Bar, and I am really looking forward to seeing this stuff live.

Zed Penguin – This Town

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There is a large part of me which looks at the nature of the Whitehaus Family Project and wonders why the Whitehaus Family Record isn’t complete shit.  It’s not though, it’s bloody brilliant.

The Whitehaus is an actual house in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts in the States which seems to be inhabited by a shifting cast of artists, musicians and almost any other creative type – between about eight and eighteen of them at any one time, apparently. The house itself is used as studio, performance space, recording studio and all sorts, and this is where the Whitehaus Family Record comes from.

Released on double vinyl, and now down to the last fifty or so copies, this is a compilation of tracks from artists associated with the project.  There is blurb here, where you can also buy the record, but whilst evocative it is not particularly informative. The whole thing can be streamed on Bandcamp though, which is generous of them.

The results are a splendid, eclectic mess, however.  The music ranges from lo-fi to folk to experimental to quirky pop and most places in between.  But if you’ll pardon my cynicism and bear with me while I explain myself, I am going to go back to the statement in the first paragraph: I am really impressed that this isn’t total shite.

Generally projects like this rely strongly on enthusiasm to maintain momentum.  A small handful of people need to care passionately about keeping it going, and they need to pick up the slack in the ebbs and flows of the interest of others – it’s the same with any cooperative enterprise.  You can’t afford to be too picky either, because real dedication is hard to come by, and it is not wise to go turning it down, but herein lies the problem.  There are a lot of well-meaning, hard-working, generous-spirited people out there with absolutely no talent whatsoever.

This sounds enormously mean-spirited, but it’s true.  There are always useless people whose infectious enthusiasm means you can’t ignore them, but whose actual ability is limited to say the least, and I have seen a lot of collectives or cooperatives of various kinds struggle with this issue.

Whatever it is that The Whitehaus Family are doing right, though, they are doing very right indeed because this is excellent.  It manages to be both eclectic and extremely consistent which is something I have never really seen in projects of this nature before, and I am massively impressed.  Only fifty or so left, remember.  Buy one!

The Great Valley – Lucky Me

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Rene – Destination: Mars

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Ambitious Tugboat – Age Rings

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Billygoat’s music is written as a soundtrack to their beautiful animations, which makes it a little odd to post mp3s in isolation because it really doesn’t do proper justice to the entirety of their work. Music intended to work in conjunction with visuals often doesn’t work when separated, and there’s no reason it should, so I hope you will take the time to watch the movies rather than just downloading the mp3.

I am and have always been fascinated by animation.  I even gave it a crack myself back at high school, making a short stop-motion film on Super8 which, for all it was interesting to do, wasn’t really all that successful. Mind you, whose first time is ever any good, really?

The video above is a Q&A with the gents themselves, and below is an exerpt from their film Dioscuri.

Billygoat – Dioscuri II

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This is a bit of a case of the blind leading the blind, I freely confess, but from more or less the minute I started releasing albums on Song, by Toad Records people have been asking me for advice on how to do so themselves, so I have written a rough guide.

We actually did very well, both with planning and press, with our first release (although the finished CDs only arrived an hour before the launch party doors opened, so we did have our hairy moments).

This was down to two things.  Firstly, and most obviously, our first release was Meursault’s debut album, which is about as good a record as any label has released in the last ten years, so having incredible material makes a big difference.  Secondly, I spent about three hours sitting in the sun drinking beer with Johnny Lynch from Fence Records at that year’s End of the Road Festival, during which time he patiently explained more or less all aspects of being a record label, which was an incredible help.

So after all the help I received when I was starting out (and believe me, I am entirely aware of the fact that I am still just starting out) I figured I should at least try and pass some of that help on.  So I have written what is more or less a rough checklist along with some practical advice for those looking to self-release their own albums, and for labels who are just getting started.

Click here to download Song, by Toad’s Rough Guide to Self-Releasing an Album.

As I say at the start of the document itself, please don’t take this as either definitive or authoritative.  I have only been running a record label since the Autumn of 2008, and we are hardly a very big deal, so I really am just passing on what little I have learned so far. That said, if you’ve never released anything before there is a surprising dearth of really practical information out there, so maybe this’ll be useful.

And if I have made any really egregious errors or there is something which very notably lacking please do let me know, and I will keep updating it to make sure it is as close to being useful as I can manage.

In August this year – towards the end of Haarfest actually – Jonnie Common from Inspector Tapehead part invited me (and part manipulated me in order to cadge a lift back to Glasgow) along to an event called A Sonic Soak.

This event, organised by a group called 85A, was held at Govanhill Baths, and was intended to raise awareness of the ongoing struggle to keep the baths from destruction and redevelopment.  There is a trust dedicated to doing just that, and they have been fighting this particular fight for what looks like years.

These old bath houses are genuinely stunning places and there are very, very few of them left in the UK.  When we went along we took the video cameras, which I happened to have handy at Haarfest of course, so we were able to take a lot of footage to try and show just what a loss it would be if Govanhill Baths were to be abandoned.

And for those unconvinced by my shaky camera work and roughshod editing, here is a photoset I found on Flickr, which is really rather gorgeous.

I spent this week’s podcast – well the post anyway, not the podcast itself – apologising for taking a bit too long this year to crank my brain into action in 2011, but it looks like the Edinburgh gig machine is having much the same problem.

There’s a battle of the bands type thing at Maggie’s Chambers on Saturday 15th, but that’s really all I could find.  Bands playing at this include Supermarionation, Steel Rose, Fireproof Match, Deco Arcade and Augustalia.  If you’re in Glasgow there seems to be a little bit more going on, so if you’re that way inclined why not pop over to Ayetunes and check out Jim’s listings for the coming week.

So, in the absence of other distractions I thought I might take the opportunity to plug my new monthly gig night, which will be kicking off a week on Saturday.  I’ve said before that with the relocation of Tracer Trails to Glasgow, the disappearance of Trampoline, the closure of the Roxy and the apparent hiatus of the Gentle Invasion, that I think we are facing a bit of a problem in Edinburgh in terms of just keeping the excellent music scene in the city bubbling along.

Live music is pretty much the lifeblood of any music scene.  It maintains the relationships and sense of community which are so vital, however fragmented and incoherent the rag-tag group of people lumped under that rather unpleasant term might be (I am growing to hate talk of ‘scenes’, but can’t think of a better word).  Blogs and online fora can do this to an extent, but I really don’t think it’s any kind of replacement, so the distinct petering out of live music here in the last year or so has been something of a concern to me.

And, given I keep telling everyone else that I don’t give a fuck about their plans until they actually get out and do something, I reckoned I had better take my own advice, stop moaning and try and do something about it.  And thus was born The Ides of Toad.  It’s not, I must confess, a name to which I gave much thought.  I’m looking to hold the night on a Saturday roughly in the middle of the month, hence the name Ides, but that’s about all the rationale I have for it.

We start next weekend, on Saturday the 22nd January (tickets here), with The Scottish Enlightenment (whose album St. Thomas was one of my favourite of the year), along with Johnny Reb, who have spent the last while recording an album with Morrissey’s old guitarist Boz Boorer out in Portugal, and Cloud Sounds recommendation and recently acquired Edinburgh resident Morris Major.

In February we then have an obviously brilliant lineup, with Rob St. John, Ziggy Campbell and The Scottish Enlightenment’s labelmates, the awesome Thirty Pounds of Bone (tickets).  If that’s kind of an obvious sort of Toad night, brilliant as it is, then March is something a bit different for you: Louis Barabbas & the Bedlam Six.  This lot aren’t that well know up here I don’t think, but they are really something rather awesome live.  The Wee Red is booked for the night so we have booked Henry’s Cellar Bar, and I am really looking forward to this gig.

In general the Ides of Toad tickets will be available from Avalanche Records in the Grassmarket, as well as from my page on Brown Paper Tickets online.

The Stallcast you ask?  Yes indeed the Stallcast, because my brain is still stuck in neutral after the Christmas break and seems annoyingly resistant to being asked to function properly at the moment.  I’ve had half a week back ‘at work’, if I can really call it that, and I still feel like the the old grey custard is still spluttering a bit, rather than firing on all cylinders.

The playlist reflects this in many way too, because it’s a bit all over the place.  Good tunes though, although I suspect those amongst you with Haircuts might not be as impressed as others.

Anyhow, the mission for this week is to get fucking moving, clean out the foostiness in the brain and properly embark upon 2011.  A jump start may be needed, however.

Direct download: Toadcast #156 – The Stallcast

01. R.E.M. – It Happened Today (00.23)
02. Sin Fang – The Only Living Boy in New York (09.24)
03. Jamie Cameron – When You’re Almost Done, Run (15.14)
04. Johnny Hawaii – The Lonely Smurfer (20.10)
05. Speak & the Spells – She’s Dead (26.51)
06. Beth Gibbons & Rustin’ Man – Tom the Model (35.34)
07. Future Bible Heroes – A Thousand Lovers in a Day (39.09)
08. Kurt Vile – Jesus Fever (43.15)
09. Charles Latham – Hard On (48.25)
10. FOUND – Machine Age Dancing (55.39)

God, prodding yourself back into action after Christmas takes some fucking doing, doesn’t it?  Bloody hell, I didn’t even drink that much, but my brain degenerated into mush nonetheless, aided by a constant diet of piss-poor television consumed in bed, surrounded by a sea of dreadful snack foods.  The awesome chocolate milk, strawberry laces and pork scratchings combination has done terrible things to my head.

Nevertheless, get moving we must, because there is soon to be an ungodly pile of shit to get through to crank things back into gear for 2011.  Resolutions will not be found at Song, by Toad, but new enterprises there will be aplenty.  I will write about them on Sunday for you, but for now it is time to empty the brain and shoot the breeze for the rest of the day.  Fuck it, it’s only a job.

So, to kill time between lunchtime and pubtime, here are five dumb questions for you to answer with five stupid remarks, at which point the talking of pish on Friday afternoon will officially recommence for 2011.  Happy fives!

1. Give us a New Year’s anti-resolution.
2. What was your worst vice over the Christmas period?
3. What time did your New Year’s Eve actually end?
4. What percentage is your brain functioning at so far in 2011?
5. How long to get back to its regular capacity?

And here are five songs from the Big Bad Love soundtrack, to keep you going for the next five hours:

R.L. Burnside – Come On In (Live)

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T-Model Ford – She Asked Me So I Told Her

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Robert Belfour – My Baby’s Gone

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Junior Kimbrough – Junior’s Place

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Long Way Home

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About this time last year Findo Gask were, in my opinion, just about the most promising band in Scotland.  Their unusual take on electro disco pop seemed to appeal to the indie kids as much as to the dancefloor, and with Vic Galloway and Muslim Alim putting them forward as one of two recommended Scottish bands for the BBC Introducing slots at Glastonbury they seemed to be gaining real momentum.

Personally I love their first two singles, Va Va Va and One Eight Zero, and they are a band I would actually have loved to have on the label, but they seemed to be doing so well by the Spring of 2010 that I was unlikely to have ever asked them because despite being unsigned I thought they had probably progressed beyond us already.

Then, around April, they suddenly announced that they were to split.  This wasn’t entirely out of the blue – I had heard fairly wispy rumours to that effect before – but it seemed so incongruous: they seemed just on the verge of genuinely achieving something.

Nevertheless, there it was.  They said that their intention was to finish their debut album, release it, and then walk away, in a similar move to the recent announcement by Edinburgh’s Come On Gang!

I suppose it’s no surprise that the album shows absolutely no signs of materialising, all motivation presumably dissipating as the band’s members involve themselves in other projects. I still consider it a massive shame though, as I was a big fan of the band, to the extent that we interviewed them at Homegame last year, up in Fife.

I’ve been embarrassingly tardy editing the video together.  As I suppose must have been the case with the album, once the split was announced it just never seemed pressing, with so many other things to do.  But as some sort of obituary I thought I should post a short film of the interview (above) and then a couple of song videos (below), two from their full set on the Friday night and then two from their acoustic performance the next morning in the Hew Scott Hall.

So cheers lads, and good luck for the future.  I still wish I could have heard that record.

There were a couple of strong warning signs for me when I first read the email sent to me about the Cambodian Space Project.

Firstly, almost anything adequately described by terms like psychedelic rock is not really for me. Secondly, any strongly local (by which, of course, I mean non-Anglophone local) influences in music tend to drive me away by raising the spectre of that incomparable weasel of the eighties and nineties: Mr. Sensitive Ponytail, who would accumulate random bits of ‘World Music’ in order to score highly with the ladies by lying about his broad and exotic interests in foreign culture.

In short, I fear being a clueless cultural tourist to such an extent that I can become quite closed-minded as a reaction, which I guess is even worse.  But I really, really don’t want to turn into the sort of person about whom The Dead Kennedys’ classic Holiday in Cambodia was written.

So, given my natural Run Away! instincts, it is testament to the music of the Cambodian Space Project that they managed to make such a good impression in such unfavourable circumstances, but make a good impression they most certainly did.  Or, to put it another way, this is fucking awesome!

The band are multi-national, but nevertheless dominated by the fusion of old-school rock ‘n’ roll with traditional Khmer music.  They actually played the Green Man Festival in 2010 apparently, and the single itself came out a good few months ago.  So this may hardly be the most timely post in the world, but if I think it’s tough being in the relative musical backwater of Edinburgh and trying to get through to the mainstream UK press, I can only imagine what Hong Kong-based Metal Postcard have to go through to get through to people over here.

Musically, this is a really brilliant single – more of an EP really, truth be told.  It goes from the bouncy vibrancy of the title track to the brilliant I’m Still Waiting for You – original lyrics sung over the melody to House of the Rising Sun, with brilliant, malevolently lascivious electric guitar – and ending with the rather more moody If You Go, I Go Too.  It’s a perfect showcase for a band with a new album due in 2011.

To emphasise their range still further, they also recorded three songs with Kung Nai for International Human Rights Day 2010, which took place in early December last year.  These songs seem a lot less Western-influenced, and just the lilt and unusual rhythm and timbre of the language itself is something I find fascinating.  But musically it was still immediate enough that Mrs. Toad emerged from our bedroom to demand to know what she was listening to and to insist that I burn a CD for her brother.

If this band sound like a little bit of throwback I suppose it’s because in a sense they are: a little like similar movements in sub-Saharan Africa, Cambodia had a really strong musical movement in the sixties and seventies which blended the influx of of Western music with the existing local traditions, and this is the heritage from which this band seem to draw great inspiration.  Metal Postcard, in fact, are currently working on a compilation of Cambodian sixties and seventies psych rock but this, apparently, may take some time.

No matter, because in the meantime we have this, and it is bloody great.

Cambodian Space Project – I’m Still Waiting For You

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Kung Nai vs Cambodian Space Project – Women

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MySpace | Buy from Metal Postcard | Buy I’m Unsatisfied from Norman Records

This is an excerpt from a documentary on Srey Thy, Cambodian Space Project’s lead singer.