After shaking the music industry to its very foundations by announcing the release of his debut album on Song, by Toad Records (cough cough), Charlie from King Post Kitsch has decided that waiting around and giving himself a pat on the back is not for him: he has decided to release a free EP called Some Call it Hell, but it’s Home (download here).

These are all acoustic demos he recorded to help himself get a feel for the songs and figure out how to record them properly. As can happen, however, the improved versions apparently never really felt all that improved, and so he decided to quit foostering about with them and just leave them be, with the result being this EP.

The tracks are lovely, with the title track reminding me of some of the woozier stuff on the first EPs he released, and the closer Rebecca more of a kind with the upbeat, catchy pop tunes we’ve heard from Charlie in the past.  As he’s on the label I won’t say too much more, as you know I am biased in this instance, but please take the chance to pop over to his Bandcamp page and help yourself.

King Post Kitsch – Rebecca

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The highlights of the final Sunday of SXSW were Chicken Shit Bingo (no really, I’m serious), a night of bowling and margaritas at The Highball, and the somewhat surreal experience of recording the annual Song, by Toad SXSW review podcast with Vic Galloway, Peej from Dear Scotland and Stuart from Creative Scotland whilst surrounded by a BBC camera crew.

I’ll be honest, the cameras were a little unnerving to begin with, but it’s funny how quickly you learn to ignore them. There’s even an outside chance the recording of our podcast will make the final cut for the documentary itself, which is initially being made for BBC2 Scotland and BBC3, with the hopes of expanding to BBC2 nationwide, the SXSW film festival next year, and I am not sure what else.

I am going to try and get all the rest of the SXSW stuff out of the way before Friday, so that those of you with absolutely zero interest in the festival don’t get too bored.  Also, to be entirely honest, I have an awful lot of other shit to be getting on with this week, so there is only so long I can afford to devote to this myself.

On Saturday, despite Campfires & Battlefields favourite The Luyas playing, as well as the awesome Cambodian Space Project, we ended up spending our evening in the fantastic Donn’s Depot, listening to the swinging sounds of the Nash Hernandez Orchestra instead.  This was after a day spent doing a lot of walking – mainly out along South Congress and on to End of an Ear Records – so we were tired and opted for the awesome instead of the hip.

Apologies for the lateness of this week’s podcast, but inevitably the chaos of SXSW nudges schedules into the background a little.

Last year, several margaritas the worse for wear, we sat down with Ben from Instinctive Racoon, Stuart from Creative Scotland, Vic Galloway from BBC Radio Scotland and Peej from Dear Scotland, and recorded a ramshackle, lurching podcast about the fun of the week.

This year, perhaps goaded into something bordering on professionalism by the presence of the BBC camera crew who have been following Vic around all week, things were a little smoother.  Although this may also have been related to the fact that the margarita-hoovering didn’t actually start until afterwards this time. Ben wasn’t here this time, but we did have myself, Peej, Vic and Stuart sharing a beverage on Peej’s back porch and talking something approaching the usual gubbins.

Oh, and the Detour Scotland Big Walk video we mention in the podcast can be found here.

Direct download: Toadcast #166 – The Tequilacast

01. Admiral Fallow – Squealing Pigs (00.37)
02. Withered Hand – Religious Songs (10.40)
03. Menomena – Taos (23.02)
04. Clock Opera – A Piece of String (28.13)
05. Ringo Deathstarr – Imagine Hearts (35.32)
06. The Twilight Sad – Cold Days From the Birdhouse (48.50)
07. Josh T. Pearson – Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ (62.27)
08. Erland & the Carnival – My Name is Carnival (74.19)
09. King Creosote – Grace (Jeff Buckley cover) (82.49)

Before we get back to the serious business of in-depth journalism (and, of course, gin and swearing) I thought you might like to see the difference between the sort of bollocks I’ve been filming this week, and the kind of high quality scoop produced by the real professionals.

A BBC crew have been following Vic Galloway around this week, shooting a documentary about the Scottish bands at SXSW, and one of them had time to prove that, even without the fancy equipment, a professional cameraman still gets the best footage even when using a lowly iPhone.

And then he was kind enough to share it with me. Forgetting, perhaps, that as an amateur, things like professional scruples or discretion mean nothing to me at all, and now it’s on the internet. Mwah-hah-ha-haaaaaaaaa….!

(Oh, and this is a bit of a Scottish music in-joke, so apologies to anyone who doesn’t find this funny in that particular way. It’s still an amusing video of a man dancing around like a muppet though, so hopefully you can still enjoy it in some sense.)

The highlight of today was undoubtedly the Muzzle of Bees Backyard BBQ, which took something of a walk to find, but was nevertheless a very, very pleasant and absolutely wonderfully relaxing way to spend the day.  Then we had a shitload of seafood, got completely smashed and watched a lot of loud music!  WIN!

Well I can only apologise for how long this has taken to post. It’s been edited and ready to go for a couple of days now, but our hotel’s internet is fucking useless and I have had three failed attempts to upload it. The problem is that the upload takes so long that you can’t sit and babysit it, so I have to set it to run overnight, or while we’re out during the day, only to return and find that the intermittent signal has caused it to fail after three hours of upload.

This has finally worked though, so enjoy.

This pretty much speaks for itself, I think. The hundredth best venue in Austin would probably be by far the best venue in Edinburgh, so it is partly awesome fun and partly making me green with envy!

Well I’ve been here for a day or so now, and the music is about to properly kick off.  Yesterday was a bit of a hiatus between the interactive conference (which Mrs. Toad oh so professionally attended) and the music, which starts properly today.

Not to say there was no fun to be had yesterday, of course.  So far I have met half of the My Old Kentucky Blog team, stood for an hour waiting for The Joy Formidable before deciding that it probably wasn’t worth standing around anymore, and acquired my first and probably far from my last piece of vinyl for the next few days.  I only hope X-Ray Eyeballs and their guitar-torturing ways prove to be as awesome when I am stone-cold sober (next Tuesday is probably the first time that will be the case) as they were when I was hammered last night at the Scoot Inn, I think (YES, says Google).

Today is also the first of the official Scottish Showcases.  I have promised myself that, unlike last year when I saw Broken Records play three different times, I will try and give the Scottish bands as wide a berth as possible.  I’ll go and see my pals Kid Canaveral and Withered Hand, but I am not flying five thousand miles just to spend all my time seeing bands from two miles up the road.

There is so much on here, though, that you do have to resign yourself to missing all sorts of interesting stuff.  Having accepted that I now find myself with a highly laissez-faire attitude which means I don’t really care what I see.  This is fine though.  I have some friends to catch up with, and I think the best way to enjoy things like SXSW is not to worry about working too hard or seeing too much stuff.  Just get pished and have a good time – you can’t really avoid the music anyway, so let it come to you rather than chasing around all over the city worrying about missing this or missing that.

I may not be here to enjoy them, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t some excellent gigs in Edinburgh this week.  There’s even the slightly surreal appearance of Raekwon from the Wu Tang Clan at the Liquid Room on Tuesday 15th.

I say surreal, because I don’t know much of a hip hop community in Edinburgh, and it doesn’t really strike me as a very hip hop kind of city, so if we indie folk think it’s hard work living here, I can’t imagine how much harder it must be for the city’s hip hop community (the Wu Tang Clan are hip hop, aren’t they?).

Monday 14th March 2011: Gogol Bordello at the HMV Picturehouse.

Alright, maybe I’m not recommending this on high-brow musical grounds, but I guarantee you that if you go along to this you will have brilliant fun.  Mrs. Toad and I saw these guys at Bestival a few years ago and leapt about like loons.

Gogol Bordello – Not a Crime

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Thursday 17th March 2011: The Phantom Band at Cabaret Voltaire.

I may not be all that sold on the Phantom Band’s recorded material, but the one time I saw them live – at Homegame a couple of years ago – they were genuinely brilliant.  There’s something hypnotic about the way they use rhythm and layering, and in a live setting it’s really rather splendid.

The Phantom Band – The Howling

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Saturday 19th March 2011: Braw Gigs presents Pyramidion, CK Dexter Haven & Homunculus at Sneaky Pete’s.

I’ll be honest with you, I know more or less nothing about any of these bands, but Braw Gigs are bloody excellent promoters who put on really good things, so I think it would be entirely fair to say that pretty much anything they do is likely to be interesting.