Video: Vimeo – YouTube
Photos: Flickr
Audio: zip file (right-click, save as)

The Toad Session I was probably most nervous about recording was Milk Maid, I think.  It was arranged at the last minute, they are a full, four-piece rock band, their profile is riding relatively high at the moment and I’d never really recorded anything so loud in our house before.

As it was, it turned out pretty fucking well, if you ask me, so when PAWS came in I was confident enough that we’d get decent recordings, but I have to confess I was a little nervous about how we’d get away with the racket and the general lawlessness of their performances.

There were some changes to the team this time as well, as a lot of the usual suspects couldn’t make it.  Wee Matthew was helping out on cameras again, and Rory from Broken Records was back for a second batch of filming.  But we also managed to coax former ace Edinburgh gig photographer extraordinaire Nic Rue out of retirement to take the pictures, and Rory ‘brought at friend’ to help out with the filming.  And his friend just happened to be Chris Park.  Who just happens to be a serious professional.  So if you’re wondering why this isn’t as shit as usual, that’s probably why.

As per usual, all the session mp3s are available to download for free, either below or in this zip file, we have videos of the songs and of the interview here, photos here, Nic’s slightly larger portfolio of pics here, and of course the interview podcast below, with the playlist at the bottom of the page.  Enjoy.  And pity our poor neighbours.

Direct download: Toadcast #196 – PAWS Toad Session
Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

PAWS – Jellyfish (Toad Session)

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PAWS – Bloodline (Toad Session)

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PAWS – Bird Inside Birdcage, Ribcage Inside Bird (Toad Session)

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PAWS – Winners Don’t Bleed (Toad Session)

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01. PAWS – Jellyfish (Toad Session) (07.17)
02. Bronto Skylift – Cobblepot (15.50)
03. Mr. Peppermint – Carp Act (20.25)
04. PAWS – Bloodline (Toad Session) (26.47)
05. Ultimate Thrush – Complex Cat (35.31)
06. Crystal Swells – Waco, Wasilia, Waikiki (36.41)
07. PAWS – Bird Inside Birdcage, Ribcage Inside Bird (Toad Session) (42.35)
08. Pavement – Gold Soundz (48.59)
09. Dolfinz – Blowhole (51.44)
10. PAWS – Winners Don’t Bleed (Toad Session) (61.49)

That video up there is probably the most mental song we’ve recorded in our house.  It is the second of a couple of preview videos of the PAWS Toad Session, which will be going up tomorrow.  Yes, Phil does play his guitar with one of our candles.  Yes, and with the cymbals too.

It’s not often I get involved in a gin extravaganza and come off worse than anyone, but yesterday was one of those incapacitating hangovers whereby I could barely even look at the internet, much less write anything on it.  Is something ‘on’ the internet?  It is, isn’t it.  I always think ‘in’ the internet is a bit more fitting, treating the thing more like a jungle than a nice orderly noticeboard.

While we are fannying about wasting our time with the Friday Fives I will be putting together the last video for that PAWS Session.  The main video – the ten minute one which goes at the top of the page – always takes ages, and is always the hardest to get right.  It’s amazing how brutal you have to be with cutting these things, too.  I remember the first time I realised I could get the whole thing down to ten minutes, I was amazed at how much I left out, and yet still ended up with a pretty coherent, entertaining video.

Anyhow, yes, after pretty much losing Thursday altogether, I kind of feel like I have to be productive today, but for the rest of you, honestly, it’s Friday afternoon, even your boss doesn’t really think you’re doing any work.

1. Favourite subject at school.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.

Lotus Eaters – The First Picture of You

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The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink

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Furniture – Brilliant Mind

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The Icicle Works – Love is a Wonderful Colour

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Sugarcubes – Birthday

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Presumably bored with the excessive amounts of time and work required to produce and publicise formal releases, Yusuf Azak has made a four-song EP available for free on his Bandcamp page.

Those of you listening to it as normal, innocent punters will hear lush, lovely acoustic pop tunes, swathed in strings, piano and Yusuf’s gorgeous vocals (although the familiar looping and layering is a little less prominent here than on earlier releases).

He seems to divide opinion, Yusuf, which is odd because I don’t really think of him as the most deliberately challenging or obtuse of our artists.  Nevertheless, in conversations with people about his stuff I get a lot of baffled looks on one hand, and a lot of passionate lectures about how he is by far the best band on the label on the other.  Very few indifferent shrugs though.

From my point of view, as someone who has heard and is currently organising the nuts and bolts around releasing Yusuf’s next album, I find this EP interesting for slightly different reasons.  For me the highlight is the utterly gorgeous Swim, which is also kind of significant because it hints a little at the new album, which will be out in the spring sometime.

As well as the more familiar Yusuf stuff, with the intricate guitar and the lush strings, there are a couple of absolutely stunning piano-led songs on the album which are possibly a couple of the best things I’ve ever heard from him.  I am really looking forward to it coming out, and as soon as we finish the album artwork and get a finalised master I can let you all know the release date.  Until then, enjoy this.

Yusuf Azak – Swim

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This is going to be one of those annoying write-ups which irritates the living shit out of the band for not actually being even slightly about their music. I’ll explain later.

Firstly, though, this wouldn’t be on the site at all if I didn’t actually like the song, so I don’t mean to give the wrong impression.  You Can Be a Wesley release their Nightosphere EP digitally on the 1st November 2011, and if it maintains this level of sprightly, eccentric pop then it should be rather good.

However, I promised a faintly ridiculous digression, so here it is:

When I hear a band called You Can Be a Wesley, something somewhere inside me automatically thinks they mean that you, too, can win the European cup with Hartlepool.

What the fuck are you on about? you might reasonably be thinking.  Well, when Championship Manager, the football management game to which I was utterly addicted during my university years, first came out, it was really quite trivially easy to set up a formation* which did the trick so effectively that you could quite honestly win the European Cup with Hartlepool if you could be bothered to wait for the successive promotions.

For non-football fans, this is an act of giantkilling so completely unfeasible that it is somewhat akin to the Latvian armed forces sailing halfway around the world and mounting a successful invasion of China.

In fact, so reliable was this formation that my best friend used to joke that you could win the European Cup with a team of Wesleys if you really wanted to – that is, a team composed entirely of people called Wesley.  I don’t know if he ever tested it, but I think he might have, so you can imagine that far from being a slightly crap band name, ‘You Can Be a Wesley’ seems more like a triumphant rallying cry for the hopelessly outmatched underdog to me.

As well as a sheepish reminder of why I got such a shit degree.

The band are going to be thrilled with this write-up aren’t they.  Sorry guys.

*4-3-1-2, no wingers, passing style set to ‘direct’, since you ask.

 When 6Music was threatened with the axe a couple of years ago I objected on about three grounds, if I remember correctly.

- First was self-interest, because almost no-one else ever plays the stuff I release on the radio.

- Second was about the damage to the arts caused by effectively cutting adrift musicians and bands at lower levels by removing one of the only feasible remaining ladders to the higher levels, meaning the only way to financial viability now would be to leap from a few local blogs to Radio1 all in one go.

- And thirdly, I pointed out that the BBC has a remit to not overlap too much with the commercial sector, and to support the arts in the UK on a basis of artistic merit, the cultural health of the nation and some hazy notion of the public good.  They seem to rather inexplicably take this to imply cutting BBC4 and 6Music, channels not competing with anything out there in the commercial landscape, whereas I personally think it directly implies cutting Radio1 and Strictly Come fucking Dancing.

Now their excitable axe-man has turned his eye on the regional shows which make up the BBC Introducing network.  For those who don’t know, BBC Introducing has a flagship show late at night on Radio1 presented by Huw Stephens, a show on 6Music hosted by Tom Robinson, and then three regional Introducing shows in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it is these three which are being threatened with closure.

Now, first things first. I don’t know Ally McCrae, who presents Introducing in Scotland, all that well, but he and his producer Muslim Alim are nevertheless people I would consider to be pals.  So from the very start, my feeling about this is ‘hey, fuck off, those people are my friends, you fuckers’, so I am not entirely objective on this topic.

Also, the self-interest clause still very much applies: Introducing in Scotland have probably played more songs by artists on Song, by Toad Records than anyone else, with the possible exception of Gideon Coe.  Also, Muslim and the show’s previous presenter, Vic Galloway, were absolutely instrumental in getting Meursault a Maida Vale session a couple of years ago, a daytime playlisting on Radio1 and a prominent slot on the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury.

So one thing you can be certain of, is that someone like me is absolutely never going to support the closure of BBC Introducing in Scotland, to the extent that I suppose I should barely need to even say it.  People in Newcastle and Leeds and places like that, however, must be laughing at us just a little bit.

In Scotland we get a whole Introducing show all to ourselves, for a population of something like five or six million people.  In Wales they get one for three million and in Northern Ireland a whole to show to represent just under two million people.  In England they get one show to represent a country of nearly fifty-five million – I have to say I far prefer our odds of getting played!

The English music media is incredibly London-centric, too.  I don’t mean that as an insult or an accusation either, it’s just the inevitable consequence of the size of the population, the fact that it is a massive cultural hub, and the fact that so many music people down there end up knowing one another, going to the same shows and stuff like that.

But it does mean that if you’re from Plymouth and you’re awesome you’re going to have the same difficulties breaking into the ‘British’ music scene as a band from Scotland would have, only without all the benefits we have courtesy of being a quasi-independent nation and having a mutually supportive and relatively inward-facing (alright, call it parochial if you want to) music media of our own.

So apart from Manchester bands (who might feasibly end up bumping into Marc Riley, Jo Good or Michelle Choudhry at a gig, although they face the same obstacles of cost in their efforts to engage with London) we in the officially recognised regions are in a particularly privileged position when it comes to BBC Introducing.  I wouldn’t think bands would have much sympathy with us if they come from other regions, like the North-East, which is less clearly-defined or pandered to, yet equally out in the sticks as far as the London music media is concerned.

And, in fact, say the regional Introducing shows do go, what then?  Well I was discussing this with a friend yesterday, and he pointed out that even if the regional shows themselves are axed, it would almost certainly be politically salved by a significantly increased emphasis on those regions in the remaining Introducing shows – Huw Stephens and Tom Robinson.

So instead of a very likely play to the population of Scotland, we’d end up less likely to be played, but still at a significant advantage to a lot of people, and the audience would now be able to reach would be a portion of the six-odd million population of the UK, rather than simply the tartan tranche.

There are political questions of course, such as what it says about the regard for the independence and national identities of the member states of the increasingly loose-knit United Kingdom.  There are questions about just how London-centric the BBC actually wishes to be.  There are personal questions about friends of mine losing their jobs, and the loss of a group which has played a significant role in the development and support of a music community of which I am a part.

So I will sign any petition you ask me to to help save BBC Introducing in Scotland, and I most certainly don’t want it to go, because that would be insane, particularly for someone in my position for whom Introducing has done so much.  But for some reason this week I have found myself looking at the other side of the coin, with a sort of morbid fascination.

 So here were are once again on another distinctly mediocre morning in one of the most utterly unremarkable months of the calendar.  I was born in November and at least November is pretty reliably completely shit, whereas October doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be.  It’s not even consistently rubbish enough to hate.

So far so fucking splendid.  I have been driven away from Facebook today by an over-abundance (i.e. one person) of grown fucking adults talking in fucking babyspeak.  “U cud of come 2 [insert name of some shit club or other].”  Dear lord, that makes me want to stamp on something fluffy and cute.

How much fucking time can you possibly be saving yourself by deliberately spelling things like a fucking clueless, infantile fucktard?  Just suppressing the urge to commit suicide for being such a shallow, vapid, hateful cunt must take more energy than just using the English language properly in the fucking first place. The universe will catch up with you twats, you know.  That kind of imbecility won’t go unpunished in a just world. Karma hates adults who think they’re illiterate twelve-year-olds, and you will get yours eventually.

Fuck it, that’s all I’ve got this week.  Here are some gigs.  Go to them.

Tuesday 11th October 2011: Lach performs at the Storytelling Night at The Stand.

Having hosted an open mic night in New York for the last thirty-odd years Lach not only has a lot to tell, but also has developed a knack for telling it.  He the kind of guy who can be funny without actually having to tell jokes – just a natural storyteller, really.

Lach – Blue Overcoat

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Thursday 13th October 2011: Men Diamler at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Men Diamler, for those of you who live in St. Andrews, will be playing on an amazing bill on the 11th, with Jeffrey Lewis and Withered Hand, but for those of us Edinburgh-bound you can catch him here on Thursday at Henry’s Cellar Bar. Rich plays solo acoustic music, but that doesn’t really even begin to describe it – he can be singing tragic ballads one minute, and bellowing in your face the next.

Men Diamler – Naughty Songwriter Blues

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Thursday 13th October 2011: Vic Galloway presents Bwani Junction, Miniature Dinosaurs & Blank Canvas at the Electric Circus.

This is the first in a series of monthly gigs hosted by Vic at the Electric Circus. He’ll be introducing and interviewing the bands from the stage as well, so you’ll get to hear the voice of Scottish music radio coming from an actual person for a change, instead of a set of speakers.

Friday 14th October 2011: Michelle Shocked at the Caves.

I genuinely have no idea what Michelle Shocked is up to these days, and I haven’t listened to her music in ages, I have to confess.  But on hearing she was playing here I happened serendipitously upon a copy of Short Sharp Shocked in a secondhand record shop, and it reminds me how much I enjoyed her early records, which I discovered back when I first moved the UK in the early nineties.

Michelle Shocked – Black Widow

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Sunday 16th October 2011: Alasdair Roberts, Aileen Campbell & Wounded Knee at the Scottish Storytelling Center.

This is the Edinburgh leg of the Archive Trails tour, which I believe is a project organised by the artists and the ever-impressive Tracer Trails, creating new work inspired by the contents of the archives at the School of Scottish Studies.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago when I told you about Ian Humberstone’s half of this gorgeous split 7″ single.  Well the vinyl itself comes out today, although those who pre-ordered theirs should already have them, so I thought I might take the opportunity to share Rob St. John‘s side with you as well.

Both the songs were recorded by Ian on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the artwork for the single itself uses photography by the two artists.  Ian and Rob have been friends and collaborators for years, so there’s something really nice about being able put out a release by the two of them.

For Rob, of course, this also serves as the first single from his forthcoming debut album Weald, which we are releasing on gatefold vinyl at the tail end of November.  For those who want a copy earlier than that, however, you can order a copy online or buy one at his album launch shows, which are as follows:

14th Oct London – King’s Place with Viking Moses and Birdengine
15th Oct Oxford – Modern Art Oxford with Viking Moses and Petrels
22nd Oct Edinburgh – Pilrig St. Paul’s with Meursault, eagleowl & Viking Moses.

Tickets for the Edinburgh show can be bought at Avalanche Records in Edinburgh, or online at Brown Paper Tickets here.

And, after reading all that faff I suppose it’s only fair that I give some music, really.  So without further messing here are the two songs in question, along with videos composed of archive footage, all sourced from the Creative Commons licensed stuff at archive.org.

Rob St. John – Your Phantom Limb by Song, by Toad

Ian Humberstone – House On The Hill by Song, by Toad

 The Dreichcast is so called because yesterday was fucking dreich. Dreich is another one of those wonderful Scots words which I, with my vague sort of RP/BBC/public school accent can’t really pronounce properly, but I wish I could.

Nevertheless it worked out pretty nicely actually, and despite the drizzle and general unpleasantness, Mrs. Toad and I went out for a wander, had some lunch, bought some immensely smelly cheese, and then went and got utterly scooshed at the Emily Scott album launch, and then on to Papi Falso at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I really like Papi Falso actually.  The music is weird, but still upbeat, and far, far better than the doosh-doosh garbage or excruciating cheese you would hear at most other clubs.  And also, being Henry’s, there is space to sit and shoot the breeze, rather than having to scream in one another’s ears from half an inch away.

Subscribe on iTunes.
Direct download: Toadcast #195 – The Dreichcast

01. Only the Sea Slugs – She Said (00.09)
02. Wilco – Art of Almost (06.23)
03. Pet – Love Buzz (16.40)
04. Nirvana – In Bloom (21.37)
05. Benjamin Shaw – The Birds Chirp and the Sun Shines (29.15)
06. We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves – Your Darkest Thoughts Will Shine (34.40)
07. The Jesus & Mary Chain – Taste the Floor (39.47)
08. Toto & the Bad Eggs – Little Naked (45.17)
09. Whirling Pig Dervish – A Question of Sport (48.17)
10. Tom Waits – Burma Shave (57.49)

Personally I blame…  er, someone else.  Anyone else, in fact.

Well, anyhow, I’m awake now and ready to umm… I don’t know exactly.  Whatever it is you do when seizing the day is absolutely no longer and option. When the day needs to be politely but firmly fended off with a stick and told to return tomorrow and hope for slightly better results.

Anyway, with a bit of luck I will be in fine (alright, maybe not fine, maybe I should shoot for something more achievable like ‘acceptable’) fettle just in time for the weekend!  A fine way to write off a week-long bender is, of course, to cap it off with an apocalyptic weekend. Which this won’t be, hopefully, but I don’t think it will be dull, either.

I reckon I might venture out this afternoon to watch England labour to an unconvincing draw against Montenegro, and tomorrow there will of course be a spot of podcasting before I head out to see Emily Scott and Yusuf Azak at whatever Medina has turned into, and then my first go at Papi Falso fun at Henry’s.

Until then, I am going to bollocks about on YouTube watching garbage and wasting my time on the Friday Fives. You should consider doing the same.

1. Post a stupid YouTube link which has entertained you this week.
2. As a percentage of your tolerable limit, how messy are you going to get tonight?
3. When have you pencilled in some sofa time for this weekend?
4. What will be the pinnacle of your achievements this weekend?
5. Which nation/culture/whatever is your food hero?

No songs this week, because I’d have to get out of my bed to upload them, and I am not moving, sorry.

This one’s been out for a couple of months now, but despite how smitten I was with the rather gorgeous Hearts, which found its way onto Toadcast #174 way back in May, I’ve only recently started to really listen to it.

Put in the briefest (and, I accept, probably also the shallowest) possible terms, this is electronically driven shoegaze, with restrained use of guitars and drums, if they are actually real drums, which I have to confess I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you if they might be, sounding more processed than flesh and blood.

Shoegaze is generally a rather difficult territory, because building these washes of hazy noise, which can threaten or uplift so powerfully when executed with aplomb, seems to be considerably easier than judging, or even creating, the right amount of melody with which to pierce them.  In short, there are a lot of really rather boring shoegaze bands.

I Break Horses for the most part defy that sinkhole confidently.  I’ll confess, I don’t think they’ve bettered Hearts on this record, but then that is a fucking amazing song.  On the rest it is often the small details which make them special.  The guitar riff which introduces Wired, and subsequent descent into mess of the same track; the foggy instrumental of I Kill Your Love, Baby; and just a couple of neatly turned vocal inflections on Pulse.

The execution of this kind of detail pretty much defines this genre for me.  And while this lacks the intensity of some of its more aggressive, guitar-fuelled brethren, it doesn’t necessarily drift into a swamp of wispy twinkles as it might do, but is definitely the flirtations with the latter which make this album good, rather than very good.

I certainly would like to see it decide if it wants to be muscular or ethereal, because it never quite snags either emotion completely.  There is some great stuff here, but I am tempted to suggest that as a whole the project needs a little tabasco to sustain an entire album, despite moments of real inspiration.

I Break Horses – Hearts

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I Break Horses – I Kill Your Love, Baby!

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