Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod
Free mp3 downloads: zip file (right click – save as)

I first got into The Scottish Enlightenment back in 2007 when they released the Eyes single on Moojuice Records.  Then they went silent for a couple of years, to the extent that I thought they might have actually called it a day, but last year they came back stronger than ever before.

Two fantastic EPs and an equally excellent album were released on Glasgow’s rather awesome Armellodie Records, and in general I think it’s fair to say that it was a toss-up between them and Kid Canaveral as to who I thought the Scottish band of 2011 was (*cough cough* Song, by Toad Records bands apart of course)

Mrs. Toad operated one of the video cameras this time, and Dylan was on still and video cameras.  I recorded and edited this one – the first full band I’ve recorded since Sparrow and the Workshop back in 2008.  As per usual we have the podcast below, the freely downloadable session mp3s underneath that, followed by the videos we made for all the individual songs.  The tracklisting for the podcast is at the very bottom of the page.  Enjoy!

Direct download: Toadcast #177 – The Scottish Enlightenment Toad Session

The Scottish Enlightenment – Black Dog

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The Scottish Enlightenment – Earth Angel

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The Scottish Enlightenment – Get My Limousine

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The Scottish Enlightenment – The Universe is Drifting Apart

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01. The Scottish Enlightenment – Black Dog (Toad Session) (07.53)
02. Mitchell Museum – Warning Bells (14.53)
03. Lower Dens – I Get Nervous (18.54)
04. The Scottish Enlightenment – Earth Angel (Toad Session) (33.00)
05. At the Drive In – Arcarsenal (43.15)
06. Low – Starfire (46.10)
07. The Scottish Enlightenment – Get My Limousine (Toad Session) (55.55)
08. Eef Barzelay – The Ballad of Bitter Honey (63.25)
09. Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper (67.14)
10. The Scottish Enlightenment – The Universe is Drifting Apart (Toad Session) (79.47)

I am going to have to embed this below the jump because the player slows the whole site down horribly otherwise, but the live stream of the Avital Raz and Alex Cornish house gig will be live in about two or three hours, or whenever people get here, basically.

There’s even a little chat thingy in there too, so you can slag us off online if you like.  Or say nice things – it’s up to you! Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get one thing straight, no matter how fucking busy I am today I will be out in that damned garden by four o’clock this afternoon with a beer in my hand or there will be hell to pay!

I am currently working on the Scottish Enlightenment Toad Session, due to go up tomorrow, and it’s going to be tight, but dammit the weather in Scotland is this nice so fucking rarely that days like this must be seized, with some determination.

Actually, if we can get it to stay this nice for a couple of days we are likely to have a barbecue before the Alex Cornish and Avital Raz House Gig tomorrow.  If it’s sunny come by from about five or six and we will be out the back relaxing!  If not, then just turn up whenever, of course.

I am really looking forward to this one, as well as being a little nervous.  Apparently Alex is bringing a full bloody string quartet with him, which is a slightly terrifying (if rather cool) prospect. As ever, please let me know if you’re coming down so we can be prepared!

Anyhow, better get this posted, or I’ll never meet my four o’clock deadline!

1. Favourite barbecue food.
2. Shorts – yes or no?
3. Can you manage to not look a tool in shades?
4. Do you burn quickly in the sun?
5. Are you passive or active when barbecues are being lit, and then cooked with?

Enfant Bastard – You Are My Fucking Sunshine

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Lambchop – Your Fucking Sunny Day

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The Bees – Sunshine

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Yo La Tengo – Beach Party Tonight

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Belle & Sebastian – A Summer Wasting

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I am not sure if having ‘Crystal’ in your name is a sure-fire indicator of mastery of the hipster zeitgeist these days or, given how quickly fashion flits from one fancy to another these days, a whimsically retro affectation.  A bit like releasing things on wax cylinder and the like.

The music is fucking ace though.  It’s loud, raging, lo-fi rock and roll with such an incredible about of aural mess added to the guitar that it sounds more like someone gunning a pony car half the time.

I am, as you are probably wearily aware by now, absolutely loving this kind of stuff at the moment.  It’s just loud, boisterous and loose and feels like an absolute shitload of fun to play.  It certainly is to listen to anyway.

Music like this, for all I am a considerable sucker for the growl and the noise, depends more than most on simple, quality riffs and stuff you can hum.  When your stuff is so simply assembled, you really need the elements themselves to be very good, or you’re going to become very boring very quickly.

Fortunately, Crystal Swells are not short of riffs.  From the menacing growl of the first song I heard, Patent Trolls, to the cocky swagger of Dead Awake and the furious bluster of the awesomely titled Waco, Wasilia, Waikiki, this is a foot-tapping, head-nodding, table-drumming pleasure.

Then, just as you could be forgiven for thinking that this is no more than simple pop music with a shitload of noise added (which it is, mostly, but there’s nowt wrong with that) comes the throbbing, hypnotic, headache-inducing nine-minute epic that is Goethe Head Soup‘s title track. Bloody hell this is good.  It touches on shoegaze, C86, CBGB’s and all sorts, and just batters away at your head until you either lapse into a blissful noise coma or you start bleeding from your eyes and run screaming from the room.

LOUD PLEASE!

Crystal Swells – Patent Trolls

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Crystal Swells – Waco, Wasilia, Waikiki

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Buy on download and/or cassette tape from their Bandcamp page.

The new King Post Kitsch album The Party’s Over comes out on the 13th of June, and as a little pre-release present we are giving away a couple of free mp3s, the first of which is the impossibly catchy Walking on Eggshells.

We’ve already seen some cracking reviews for the album already, in The Skinny, The List and Musos Guide, as well as some really good writeups of the Don’t You Touch my Fucking Honeytone single on too many blogs to individually mention, but to whom I am hugely grateful.

Marc Riley turns out to rather like it as well, which is nice.  He’s played songs from the album on his last two 6Music shows, which can be listened to on the iPlayer here and here.

Enjoy!

Direct download: King Post Kitsch – Walking on Eggshells

King Post Kitsch – Walking on Eggshells by Song, by Toad

Recent podcast listeners will have spotted Ink on the Page on the latest Song, by Toad podcast this weekend just gone, and here is the 7″ single from which it is taken.

When I first started listening to Phil & the Osophers there was a really rough, garagey edge to them, and a looseness to both the playing and the singing that made you wonder if they were either drunk or just not taking things very seriously at all.

Well the guitars don’t quite have that rough edge anymore, but although the recording is a little smoother, the general feel of the music is still just as loose and skittery.

I sometimes think that if any one of the dozens of bands with a touch of calypso to their guitars had retained any kind of edge or wit or invention they might have been as good as Phil & the Osophers, instead of the hatefully tedious sludge they mostly turned into.  But even whispering that is a bit of an insult to this band, so I promise you it is very much a tangential aside.

I actually think Ink on the Page is the better of the two songs on this – lively, catchy and bright.  Phil & the Osophers have done stuff I haven’t liked here and there, but in general I think they are a fucking excellent band who write excellent pop songs, and here is simply more evidence to confirm the fact.

They’ve allowed me to share the songs from the single, and like them I don’t think that free mp3s dissuade the kind of people who buy vinyl from actually buying it (which you can do from their splendidly ramshackle website, incidentally), but given you’ve already heard the b-side I think I should probably leave it at that, because I don’t want to ruin all the excitement for those thinking of purchasing it.

Money very well spent though, I promise you.

Phil & the Osophers – Ink on the Page

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This is a mini-album I heard about on Basement Fever, a blog I’ve been reading quite a lot recently.  I played their cover of Daniel Johnston’s True Love Will Find You in the End on the podcast a couple of weeks back, and generally assumed, as with many bands who make that kind of fuzzy noise, that more of the same was what to expect when the full record was finally released this week.

I was wrong though.  Really bloody wrong.  What remains constant is the pretty consistent level of distortion on the guitar and vocal*, but the actual style of the music itself leaps from garage rock to prog to experimental stuff bordering on a weird combination of industrial noise experimentation and free jazz – Lab Coat being the song best described by the latter verbal hodge-podge.

Given my relatively slender tolerance for the genres at the more unusual end of the spectrum explored by Yajé, I am a little surprised to find myself enjoying this such a lot, but I am.  It reminds me, just a little, of the Deathpodal EP from a few years back called Exu_Wow, which also drifted between genres, slapped you about the face for a small handful of songs, and stopped before you ever really came to terms with it.

These guys are from Cardiff, apparently, and formed from a group of people who have already seen action in a few bands before initiating this particular project.  I confess I have little idea where they’ll go from here, or even if I’ll like it at all – I can imagine loving or loathing it equally easily – but for now this is a good start, albeit not exactly an easy listen.

Yaj̩ РHerbal Drug Clinic

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*CAVEAT: I don’t know my technical terms, so it may not be actual distortion, it may be some other fuckedupness setting.

I don’t know if I should be blaming Google, Bandcamp or my own internet foolishness for the fact that Googling ‘silverbacks’ and ‘bandcamp’, or even ‘silverbacks’, ‘bandcamp’ and ‘atta boyz’ failed to throw up a page whose URL is silverbacks.bandcamp.com but umm… well, honestly, what the fuck?

Anyhow, Silverbacks are pretty mysterious in general actually, and there’s not much detail about them anywhere on the internet, but the lead song in particular from this debut EP – Atta Boyz from the video above – sounds like I’ve been listening to it for ages.

As those of you who listened to this week’s podcast will know, I am not exaggerating.  For a song I heard for the first time a couple of weeks ago, by a band who are so small they have precisely nothing about them on the internet anywhere, I really did have to check that they weren’t secretly famous.  Terms like ‘instant classic’ spring to mind.

That’s not because it’s so mind-blowingly awesome my mental faculties all simultaneously melted, I have to add.  It’s just immediate, enormously catchy, familiar, and the kind of song which has the kind of easy rhythm holding together such simple elements that it just sounds like a classic from the first time you hear it.

The rest of the EP, available to download for free from here, is comprised of less obviously clear-cut pop jewels, but is still very interesting indeed.  The second song, In the Sun, is perhaps a little more slow-burning and slow-paced, but builds a lovely atmosphere as the guitars gradually build over the course of the track.  There’s a hint, albeit not a large one, of shoegaze to it actually, which is a style I am rather enjoying at the moment.

Continuing the theme of an EP which starts at a sprint and gradually drifts to a halt, Chinatown is slower still, bringing things to a close at a relatively sedate amble.  It is also, in my opinion, perhaps the least gripping of the songs on here, but that doesn’t really matter.  This looks like no more than a start by this band, and if it is, then it’s a very promising start indeed.