Ha! Any excuse to shoe-horn a bit of vintage REM into the equation! Although I’ve probably desecrated five millennia of Chinese mythology by misappropriating it like that. Sorry!

So… Mr. and Mrs. Toad have invaded China to spread the good word of the amphibian god, Toad-Ra, and left Toad Enterprises Inc.™ to its own devices, which leaves me in charge of copying-and-pasting stuff up onto the blog.

If you’d like to see your name up in lights on here over the next couple of weeks, like Martin did yesterday with his excellent gig review, just drop me a line - probably best to use the sunday(at)songbytoad(dot)com email address. Basically I’m trying to avoid writing too much and would prefer it if you lot did it all instead!

That photo of the little Feng Shui toad reminds me of a guy I used to work for in Cardiff. He ran a small but fairly successful chain of bars and restaurants, but then got all mystical on us and got into Feng Shui and all that self-help shit. He decided that what Cardiff really needed was a shop half-filled with distressingly hippy-dippy life-enhancement tat like healing crytals and dozens of little toads like that one in the picture, while the other half of the shop was filled with heaps of American self-help Anthony Robbins bollocks retailing at around £150 for a pack of six audio cassettes. The fella was forced to close the shop within a year. Fucking idiot.

Anyway, it wouldn’t be Friday without a five, would it? So here we go. Remember to delurkify yourself and get stuck into the bizarre, unpredicatable and frankly suggestive banter that usually occurs on a Friday. Hey, beats working.

1. If you were to visit China, what in particular would you make sure you experienced while you were there? (If you’ve already been - you can tell us what you enjoyed most.)

2. What dish do you always order from the Chinese take-away?

3. And the oddest Chinese thing you’ve ever eaten.

4. Do you practise any Feng Shui at home?

5. Happy-clappy shiny-shiny hippy-dippy Anthony Robbins self help plans. A genuine method to improve your life or a pile of hoary old arse?

And, look! Here’s five delicious tunes!

REM – Seven Chinese Brothers

China Drum – Wuthering Heights

China Crisis – Black Man Ray

Ed Harcourt – Shanghai

David Bowie – China Girl

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh,
30 August 2010

[Martin Donnelly of The Savings And Loan reviews one of the flagship events from this year's Edge Festival]

“Listen,” she says, “have you gone to any concerts lately?”
“No,” I say, wishing she hadn’t brought this, of all topics, up. “I don’t like live music.”
“Live music?” she asks, intrigued, sipping San Pellegrino water.
“Yeah. You know. Like a band,” I explain, sensing from her expression that I’m saying totally the wrong things. “Oh, I forgot. I did see U2.”
“How were they?” she asks. “I liked the new CD a lot.”
“They were great, just totally great. Just totally . . . ” I pause, unsure of what to say. Bethany raises her eyebrows quizzically, wanting to know more. “Just totally . . . Irish.”
“I’ve heard they’re quite good live,” she says, and her own voice has a light, musical lilt to it. “Who else do you like?”
“Oh you know,” I say, completely stuck. “The Kingsmen. ‘Louie, Louie.’ That sort of stuff.

- Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho, p. 236

Here’s a confession: I don’t really like live music; never have. When I was younger and the world was new, the gig represented a perfect excuse to go out drinking and meet my friends, but I’ve found that when you get old and get married those appeals start to wane, and all too often you’re left with unsatisfactory renditions of songs you’d prefer to have heard from the comfort of your own couch, glass of Lagavulin in hand and not another soul in sight. Broadly speaking, when I listen to music I want no interruptions; I want, in the spirit of Greta Garbo, to be alone.

So the essential live experience itself (“two-three-FOUR”) has seldom done much for me, especially when I’m intimate with the band in question. Despite this lack of love for the live thing, I’ve seen more or less all my favourites in concert – Waits, Cohen, Dylan, Eitzel, Wilson, The National, Afghan Whigs – resulting in almost uniform disappointment.

Better by far to go in with no expectations. One of the best gigs I can think of was Yo La Tengo at King Tut’s in Glasgow, probably around 1997.  I hadn’t heard anything by them beyond a clutch of tracks on complication albums, and went along, well, to drink with my friends.

I was blown away. Not knowing any of the songs made every moment new, and I was forced to engage with the band on their terms, at face value and without the shadow of preconception. It was a rare encounter; the songs warm and fuzzy, the crowd beatific and beholden.

I had a similar experience with My Bloody Valentine at the Barrowlands in 2008. I know Isn’t Anything and Loveless well, and like them both a lot, but for various reasons I didn’t bother to get a ticket when the shows were announced. Long story short, I got offered one the day beforehand, and for want of anything better to do went along. Again, I was blown away, almost literally this time. My own physical experience existed in stark contrast to the personality vacuum onstage, the sheer sound filling inner and outer space alike. And me, I stood on the sprung dancefloor of the ballroom, eyes closed tight like a goddamn hippy, swaying to the twenty-minute apocalyptic freakout of “You Made Me Realise,” lost for a spell, in music, in the moment.

This, of course, is the exception and not the rule. But on the rare occasions when it occurs, it makes me think about the nature of the beats.

Sonic Youth’s Confusion is Sex has as its sleevenote an essay written by Kim Gordon for Artforum in 1983, called “I’m Really Scared When I Kill in my Dreams.” In it, Gordon analyses the relationship between the actors in the live rock experience, concluding that “People pay to see others believe in themselves.” I first read that essay about 10 years after it was written, at an impressionable age, and I’ve never forgotten it. People pay to see others believe in themselves, so there’s a weight of obligation on the performer to believe, or to give the illusion of believing…

[P]eople come as voyeurs or come to submit to the moment. As a performer you sacrifice yourself, you go through the motions and emotions of sexuality for all the people who pay to see it, to believe that it exists. The better and more convincing the performance, the more an audience can identify with the exterior involved in such an expenditure of energy. Performers appear to be submitting to the audience, but in the process they gain control of the audience’s emotions. They begin to dominate the situation through the awe inspired by their total submission to it.

- Gordon, ibid.

So that, in a nutshell, is what I always think live music ought to be, an intensity it seldom attains.

Anyway, to the matter at hand. My friend Noel from the Attic Lights phoned me on Monday afternoon, saying he had a spare ticket for the Low Anthem, and did I want it. The Low Anthem are the Yo La Tengo de ces jours, in that I’ve liked whatever I’ve heard, but not enough to get anything close to excited about it, excitement becoming a rarer commodity with age. I’d listened (once) to Oh My God Charlie Darwin a few months ago, and thought it pleasant enough stuff. But I call a lot of records that, and I forgot about them. But then I saw a song on TV at the weekend, all huddled around a single microphone in the old-time style, and found it quite, you know, quaint. Appealing, even.

So I took fate at face value, went along to the gig with Noel and the wife, and found myself enjoying it a fair bit. A fair chunk of the crowd, Noel included, were primarily there to see the support act, Avi Buffalo, who are evidently setting the modems alight just now. They turned in a decent half hour of Dinosaur Jr meets Television, with a few Angus Young-esque rock shapes for good measure. Before that we had some mainly unaccompanied harmonising from all-girl trio Mountain Man, which was pleasant enough in a Fleet Foxes vein but nothing to yodel home about.

And so, the Low Anthem. When it comes to this alt-folk business I worry a bit about preciousness – as Kim Gordon notes, the crowd’s attention isn’t something the performer has a right to, it has to be earned – but I needn’t have worried tonight, as the headliners interposed a few bluesy screamers amidst the general downhome prairie balladeering, making them an attractive halfway house between the two support bands, and pleasing both camps.

I also worried a little about the deerstalker and ‘tache that their singer sported on the TV, which was present and correct here as well. Angela Carter wrote that clothes are our visible insults, and the sartorial set-up matched the atmosphere and instrumentation. Electric guitars were in short supply, with a battery of musical saws, bowed cymbals, harmonium, stand-up bass and all the rest taking precedence for the bulk of the set. It was interesting watching the band wander round the stage to swap instruments between songs, and while there wasn’t a drummer among them on that stage, they all had a game crack at the kit. Their soft harmony singing was a touching, puritanical thrill in the way that, say, Midlake’s is not. Mountain Man joined in for a gang harmony attack towards the end.

While I’d love to be able to tell you what songs they played, I can’t, but they ended the set proper with “Charlie Darwin” and then for an encore did a rollicking version of “There’s a Hole in my Bucket” that left swathes of punters bemused, but others – myself included – headed out onto South Clerk Street with a genuine smile for once. Godspeed you mischievous tinkers.

[The Savings And Loan release their début album on Song, By Toad Records later this year]

[Following on from his previous Sunday Rant, Matthew's brother Ben returns with his musings on this so-called 'classical' music we've been hearing so much about.]

So a while back Toad mentioned in on of his posts that he did not like classical music.  Now it was clearly partial joke, partial exaggeration and partial truth.  Now, there are a few absurdities here.  Firstly, classical is used as a blanket term for all music that involves an orchestra, including but not limited to all music played in Europe before about 1900 not played with sticks on an upturned tree stump.  This is of course totally absurd.  Classical music is in fact a term that describes a style that was typified by the music or the classical era which fell roughly between Baroque and Romantic.  Obviously to assume Matthew  was making a specific criticism of this one period would also be absurd.  Although given that the classical period began with Hayden, sauntered through Mozart and died around the same time Beethoven did, it’s not a huge stretch say that half of all the music we think of as classical music actually is Classical music.  Anyway, that was not what Matthew was talking about so I will defend “all music written for an orchestra, including but not limited to all music written before 1900 not played on cows bladder stretched across a barrel” because Matthews assertion that he doesn’t like it is, of course, absurd.

If you wish to defend classical nowadays you really have to start with film, as an example of the scope .  This is probably where most people hear the most classical music.  It also provides the best look as to why it is so moving.  Films can tackles big stuff.  War, star-crossed lovers, cancer and the romantic life of Sandra Bullock.   And frankly when you are dealing with emotions that powerful it really is hard to imagine the indie song that really cuts it.  If Humphrey Bogart had walked away to the tune of Walk Away Renee people would have felt cathartically cheated.  This is one of the reasons that Classical and film have made such wonderful bedfellows.  Probably (let’s face it, unquestionably) the most famous classical composer around right now is John Williams.  The reason for this is that he can put a score that describes  ‘oh bugger, my Father is an intergalactic genocidal warlord, who just gave up everything, killed his mentor and sacrificed his life to save to free the galaxy of tyranny’ and it is absolutely appropriate.  There is no sound on earth, not a single one, besides the swell of an orchestra that can achieve that.

Now Mr. Toad once implied that classical music is, in these circumstances, little more than decoration or a side dish.  This of course is not true, however, because most people are only exposed to classical music through film I can certainly see why he would think that.  Let us cast our mind back however to the Deathcast.  Mozart’s Requiem expresses a grandeur that I have never found matched in any form of music other than classical.  Without the ability to add and subtract sounds and build layers there just doesn’t to me seem to be a  way to really establish the depth and range of feelings that a man goes through as he approaches his own end.  The fear, the desire to leave a legacy, the anger and the confusion.  Nick Cave, in the Mercy Seat can express one small facet, in one specific circumstance.  If you go back and search the Deathcast Toad put together you will see that each of these song has a a very narrow scope.  Not so Mozart’s Requiem.  This is a piece of music that Mozart wrote specifically because he felt no one could express how he felt as he approached death, and because he is Mozart he is able to write a piece that without ever getting bogged down in telling a story is able to directly address the emotion of a man in the last days of life.

Even music which falls broadly into the already broadly accepted definition of classical does this.  If you YouTube the ballet ‘In The Upper Room’, you will find a ballet scored by Phillip Glass that is about the joy of dancing.  When asked what the ballet is about the choreographer, Twyla Tharp refuses to be more specific that.  And the music complements that beautifully.  It is just joyful  Nothing more, nothing less.  Movement 9 of this ballet is the culmination of a 45 minute build to a massive crescendo that in the twenty odd times I’ve done this ballet has never failed to draw a standing ovation.  It really is a lot of fun.  I’m fairly sure Phillip Glass would flip his lid if he found it on YouTube but I do strongly recommend finding this music somewhere and listening to it.

So, the question then remains why do people not listen to more classical music.  I can only speculate, but here are some thoughts.

First, classical has a huge dynamic range.  The loud bits are really loud and the quite bits really subtle.  This is wonderful for tugging the heart strings but less good for the office, or other background music venues.

Secondly a pop song lasts three minutes; the average symphony is about ten times that. So we are left listening to our classical while watching Jeff Goldblum gets chased by a tyrannosaurus rex, which at least ties into the the whole Mozart fear of death thing.  However, I really defy anyone to sit and listen to any of the great symphonies in a room for 45 minutes and not be bowled over.  I know most people reading this blog make time to sit and listen.  Listen to film stuff, be it Star Wars, or the Star Trek music (surprisingly good.  The Theme for the Common Man which starts Deep Space 9 is amazing when you sit a listen to the whole thing), or a something everyone knows like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Mozart’s Requiem or Beethoven’s anything.  But listen to a whole work rather than those best of CDs from Woolworths.

Edge Festival at Electric Circus

Saturday 7^th August 2010

There’s a palpable air of expectancy around Milk, nurtured by the band’s mysteriously low profile (try googling them), and the word on the grapevine that components of the much celebrated Findo Gask and equally esteemed My Kappa Roots have combined in this new collective.

My first encounter with Findo Gask was at Homegame earlier this year, and I stood sidestage at Legends gobsmacked by just how tight they were, and it looks like drummer Michael Marshall has transplanted that tightness to this new outfit. The first things that grab me are the whipcrack snare shots and rattling hi-hats of the insistent, spiky sixteen-beat rhythms that carry the band’s sound.

Meanwhile, Pablo Clark, of My Kappa Roots renown, throws himself bodily into his new berth at the helm of Milk. Dressed in skinny jeans and baggy vest-top – both garments as pristine white as your daily pinta – he cavorts bodily about the stage, twisting and pogoing; and at one point manically thumping a tom hanging in his direction off the top of drum kit.

According to Chris Buckle’s recent Skinny article – just about the only decent reference point I can find to provide research for this review – guitar and keyboards are provided by Callum and Sam respectively. Little more is currently known of these two gents. Callum lurches forward from the lip of the stage, bequiffed and menacing, looking after the “bottom-end” of the band’s sound by favouring the bass strings of his big semi-acoustic six-string and occasionally tapping at a bass synth of some sort hidden amongst Sam’s stack of gadgets; while Sam himself busies himself with making his synths sound just like synths should – fat, squelchy and fuzzy – and looking achingly cool and aloof in a fitted houndstooth jacket with – inevitably – the collar turned up.

As the band sign off at the end of their set, Pablo Clark apologises for what he perceives as a messy set. I’m not sure I agree, and I don’t think the punters who have been bouncing enthusiastically around the front of the stage – and even grinding suggestively up against the venue’s structural pillars – would agree either. To me, Milk look likely to re-energise the local scene with a polished and accomplished brand of punk-pop. Okay, it might be a bit of a stretch to wheel out the “breath of fresh air” cliché at this point, as this ground has been well trodden since 1980s New Wave, but Milk certainly sound like they have a spiky, aggravated point to make and don’t care who hears it. And that’s usually not a bad thing.

FOUND take the stage for the headline slot shortly afterwards and embark on a showcase for the highly anticipated new album that’s due out before the end of the year.

The new songs have been leeching one-by-one into FOUND’s set for a good eighteen months or so now, and the last couple of times I’ve seen the band I’ve noted they seriously seem to be getting the hang of them. Something has definitely clicked, and I don’t think it’s just my own sense of familiarity. The arrangements of the new songs now sound nailed-on, while the performances, perhaps hesitant and lacking confidence a few months back, have achieved that unmistakeable FOUND swagger and poise.

Regrettably, the notorious Electric Circus sound gremlins rear their ugly heads during FOUND’s set. At one point frontman Ziggy Campbell unplugs both his bandmates’ backing-vocal mics mid-song in an attempt to eliminate a howling bout of feedback that’s defeated the soundman’s efforts to control. No soundman would take such drastic action as a compliment, but this venue does have difficulties with unorthodox instrumentation. Stick a four-to-the-floor rock band on stage and everything seems fine, as soon as a band get a bit tasty with the electronics – Meursault struggle here too – then the stage teeters on the brink of tumbling into a maelstrom of feedback.

Happily, this brief spot of bother doesn’t detract from the overall quality of the evening’s entertainment, bassist Tommy Perman even takes advantage of the moment for a spot of impromptu comedy, mugging with the unplugged mic and shouting his backing vocal lines at the top of voice, which wins the audience back in favour of the band.

Although that favour was never really in doubt. I don’t want to queer the pitch and get ahead of myself, but I have a sneaking suspicion FOUND’s new album might be a bit of a scorcher.

[This weeks the Sunday Supplement finds Matthew's brother, regular Toad commentator, professional sound engineer and all-around thoroughly decent chap, Ben on his chosen specialised subject]

Let me get something out of the way quickly:  Digital audio is better than analogue, by some considerable distance.  When discussing how good a recording is, I think it is important to define two terms.  The first term I need define is ‘good’, and it’s cousin ‘quality’.  The second is ‘pleasing’, which only makes sense once I have defined ‘good’ and ‘quality’.  A ‘good’ recording happens when you put a high quality microphone in front of a musician, run that mic through a quality pre-amp and then send that to a capture device at a level that is clearly audible,  but does not degrade the signal.  What this provides is clear and honest recreation of someones art that you, and they can work with, and manipulate in the best possible way.  Now, unfortunately, a pure ‘good’ recording of high quality is rather uninteresting.  While a poor recording in a gym, into a banged up eight track recorder (which the Beatles used) is far more musical and hence ‘pleasing’.

Now let us come to a huge problem that music has in the modern world.  As all music is now distributed in a digital format that grime is gone.   And frankly, given that most people own a laptop, or home computer, the extra investment to being able to come up with a basic recording set-up is still fairly minimal.  You can pick up a second hand 8 channel interface which records from at 192khz/24bit for about 300 quid, and good mics retail at about $100.  For those of you who don’t know anything about sample rates and bit rates wikipedia describes them  better than I can but, briefly it is a the number of times a computer divides up a waveform.  The more times it chops it up, the more accurately it can recreate it in your computer.  Now a CD is more accurate than tape, and can store more information.  A CD samples at 44.1KHz/16bit, so for three hundred quid you have a device that can take a wave and recreate it four times more accurately than a CD.   So what is the down side to this, and if there is no downside why does so much music sound dreadful and, why do old records sound so much more pleasing?

Well, there are a number of reasons.  Firstly digital recording is brutally unforgiving.  If you overload an analogue signal it goes warm and fuzzy, if you overload a digital signal is becomes grainy and brittle sounding.  This means that the over exuberance of musicians and the desire to make everything more powerful manifested itself in a warm pleasing noise and lets everyone know that the musician was really putting his back into it.  It draws you in.  The same behaviour with digital will cause the computer to fragmet the signal which will grate on the ears and instantly make the listener detach themselves from the music.  Which means the rock and roll attitude to recording has been replaced by a much more scientific approach.  However, should you need ‘tape’ sound the digital realm offers you far more choices.  You can run your signal through a tape machine on the way to your computer.  You can run it through a tape machine afterwards and use both signals, deciding how much ‘tape’ distortion to use.  You can use a digital ‘tape’ emulator.  You can in fact do any number of things with any number of effects.  Which gives you infinite ability to find your sound and infinite ability to destroy your record if you don’t know when to stop distorting things.

Now with effects like reverb we see a different problem.  For all we can all afford a laptop, how many of us can afford to rent a barn, cathedral or brick walled attic.  A nice live space with character that adds depth and character to our music.  Let me give you an example of this.  Bruce Sprringsteen, who was famously involved in the recording process,  hated the sound of the drums in one session.  He told his engineer that he had seen two ‘room mics’ capturing the sound of the echo and reverb around the drums.  The engineer pointed to two faders on the board which Springsteen proceeded to push them up really high, and thus the sound of Max Weinberg was born.  What Bruce Springsteen was doing was giving the listener the experience of listening to the drums as he heard them, from a distance.  But this muddying of the sound was a choice, but a choice made using the one and only tool available to him, rather than the infinite number of effects, reverb units, reverb plug-ins and room mics available to the modern engineer.

In my profession clean clear and pristine is the goal.  Most orchestral recording should not be distorted, and certainly not compressed as it robs the composer and conductor of the depth of sound needed to use the layering of sound in most classical music.  In this environment reverb is much more vital as it suggests the grandeur of the space which one associates with listening to classical music.  You want as much detail captured and accurately relayed to the listener as you can because the wonder of classical music is the vast amount of detail and so recreating this detail, in an environment that suits the music is more important than what you do once you have captured It.  So here the detail, and the clarity available only in the digital realm is a massive advantage.  In fact it makes me quite sad that no one but me ever hears the full effect of the 92khz recording master that I get to hear before I compress it down to CD.

All this clarifies that the character of a recording has become an applied aesthetic.  There is no reason that even low cost home records should need to sound anything but clean and clear.  Thus, the effects can be applied like another instrument, but in this case to give character, context and depth to the music.  And because of the power of digital technology, you have the ability to do this with more accuracy, and versatility than ever before.  This new control and power is going to have be wielded by a new breed of artist.  It will require musicians versed in technology, and engineers aesthetically sensitive enough to wield their arsenal with artistry to aid and accentuation the music.  We will also need producers with enough power tell them both to stop playing around put down their toys and let the music speak for itself sometimes. This site discusses how we appreciate and even distribute music at great length but, if music is going to progress we need to understand how to create it better as well, and to do this we should all be constantly educating ourselves as to the tools at our disposal.

[This week's Sunday Supplement is a personal message from Phil Quirie]

Hello boys and girls!

I’m not exactly sure just how to start this transmission off, so forgive me if it seems poorly structured, but I owe a lot of people some serious gratitude, appreciation, and thanks.

Why? Well, as a fair amount of you may know, there was an appeal launched recently called Let’s Buy Phil’s Guitar, which was an effort to raise enough funds to save my guitar from a very lucky ebay bidder. I guess I should write a brief background and overview as to how this situation arose.

I have been friends with Neil Pennycook and Meursault for a number of years – probably since around 2005. I was introduced to Neil via a mutual friend who Neil had met at art college (the living legend that is “Party Marty”). I was aware of Neil’s music, but had never listened. Then, a few months later, our mutual friend instigated a gathering of souls for his birthday celebrations, with the venue to be Edinburgh. That night, a two-piece Meursault consisting of Neil and Fraser played a show in Bannermans. I was utterly gob-smacked with what I saw and heard, and from then on became a proper fanboy, snapping up the debut EP, and frequently putting on shows in Aberdeen and inviting them up to play. My friendship with the band grew until I was invited to join the band, about two years ago. Initially, although hugely flattered (and confused – why me!?), I resisted because I was in a steady job in Aberdeen, along with great friends and family. Due to liquidation, I lost said job, and Neil then asked me to join the band again. This time, I couldn’t resist and I upped sticks to Edinburgh and officially joined Meursault. That was almost one year ago.

Given that Meursault were my favourite ever band, I was willing to take a lot of risks and work really hard touring with them and recording the second album. With this, came the realisation that I wouldn’t be able to hold down a full-time job and commit to touring. But I was still willing to put my heart, soul and money into Meursault. So I tried to strike a balance between temporary agency jobs and the band. This balance is very difficult to calibrate, as any musician will testify, and it eventually came to a head: in order to survive, I had to sell off any assets I may own. It just so happens that the only material possession of any value was my music gear, so the decision was made to sell my Fender Jaguar guitar. This decision did not come lightly, but heck, I have rent and tax to pay, as well as a stomach that seems to want food from time to time. So I put the guitar on ebay, and I received a call that night from Neil, claiming that “he and friends would raise the money”, so long as I agreed to take the guitar off ebay. As an overly proud individual, I tried to resist, but he was adamant that, as a friend, he could do this for me and that others are willing to help out and that “you’d do the same for me, Phil.” And he was correct. Thus, Let’s Buy Phil’s Guitar was created.

Now, I don’t know just who all were involved in the creation of this, but I owe Neil, Dylan and Matthew some serious handshakes and manly embraces for their part in this astounding example of community spirit and friendship. But most of all, I owe every single donor (regardless of amount donated) a large amount of thanks and gratitude. The fact that the guitar has been saved is, frankly, nothing short of completely overwhelming. Friends, Meursault fans, Debutant fans, and anyone else who contributed: I thank you with all my heart. You’ve not only saved me, but a part of Meursault, too.

As a thank you, I will record a digital EP consisting of a couple of acoustic Debutant tracks, a Meursault cover (would it be considered a ‘cover’?), and a cover of Red House Painters’ Song for a Blue Guitar, and every donor will receive the EP. This will only be available to those who donated. Expect it within a month or so.

Whilst I’m here, I would also like to thank all the guys in Meursault, who have welcomed me into the band like a brother and supported me. And, despite the heartache and struggle, it’s been 110% worth it to be in the privileged position of being able to play music with them.

Again, thank you.

The Luyas are good, but a little hard to describe.

They don’t really remind me of anything else, but if I had to pick a point of reference I guess it would be Animal Magic Tricks, not so much in terms of the sound but in terms of the overall “feel” of the music. It can be challenging at times, but all the more rewarding for that. Owen Pallett is also in the same ballpark, and apparently the Luyas are associated with him in some vague way.

Like Pallett, the Luyas are stunning instrumentalists and expert knob-twiddlers from Montréal. Their music is inventive, dreamy and atmospheric, but also angular and brittle, like icicles. I imagine them rehearsing and performing by candlelight.

The Luyas are fronted by Jessie Stein, who sings (or perhaps “vocalises” is a better word) and plays a peculiar instrument called a Moodswinger, which its Dutch inventor describes as “an electric 12-string 3rd bridge overtone zither,” whatever the hell that means. She’s playing it in the video embedded above, so if you’re interested in cool gear you should check it out. It looks vaguely guitar-ish but sounds more like a piano or a harp.

To be honest, Jessie Stein has a pretty limited vocal range. She’s no Benatar. But her hushed singing has a crackly fragility that suits this music very well once you get used to it. The other Luyas are Pietro Amato on French Horn, Stefan Schneider on percussion, Mathieu Charbonneau on Wurlitzer organ and otherkeys, and sometimes Sarah Neufeld (from the Arcade Fire) on violin.

Unfortunately I don’t really have a proper Luyas record to review here. They released a full-length album back in 2007 called Faker Death, but in my opinion it doesn’t hold a candle to the music they make today, which is much more ambitious. They have an excellent 7” single out,and according to their MySpace a new album is scheduled for release in the autumn, which is good news indeed.

The video is from last March, and it shows them performing my favorite of their songs, called Canary. I really like what I’m hearing. Keep your ears open for this lot.

So those fuckers have all buggered off to Glastonbury and left the rest of us sitting here staring at the blazingly gorgeous weather outside from the confines of our battery-hen office cubicles, have they?

Nice.

And to put the tin hat on it, Matthew has had the gall to ask me to do the Friday Fives, just in case he doesn’t get the chance to pop over to the journo tent to sponge off their Wi-Fi and drink free beer!

Anyway, no songs again this week because me and Matthew keep forgetting to sort me out with access to the official Toad file server, but you can still have your five questions, and instead maybe listen to BBC 6music through your headphones at your desk.

Don’t forget to de-lurk, answer your five and then spend the rest of the afternoon talking arse. Hey, beats working!

1. What are you doing right now instead of having fun in the sunshine outside? (Unless of course you are having fun in the sunshine outside, in which case, fuck off.)

2. Where are you going for a pint after? (Can I come?)

3. What was your best festival experience?

4. And the worst?

5. Who would you recommend off this year’s Glasto line-up? There’s some interesting stuff on the smaller stages.

PS
Good luck to the  Meursault lads who are going to be rocking the BBC stage later this evening, giving Glasto a bit of the old “Hah! Hah! Woo! *ckc*-*ckc*!” etc.

[The wonderful Jenny Soep returns this week with more of her spellbinding illustrations, and one or two interesting matters to raise. This post was originally pencilled in for last week, hence some of the dates needing correcting, and Jenny apologises and explains further below. Even though Jenny did in fact get the article to me on the Sunday as promised; in the end, unfortunately, it arrived a little too late to be published: my inbox records the email's arrival at 11:58pm!]

Hello there. A Sunday Supplement, written on the Sunday. I’m not best known for my regard for deadlines and always live on a last minute shoestring. I was once described as having ‘a somewhat elastic sense of time’. It’s true. I live on my own little planet which runs on Jenny Time. But it is never boring and a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences. Which apparently is great for artists. Which I might be. But it’s also how I draw live music.

I feel very privileged to be writing something for this blog. It’s a fantastic blog and I’m crap because I don’t read it enough, much as I don’t religiously follow anything in particular. But I’ve seen enough of it, and know enough of the taste of its writer to know that he gives an intelligent and considered fuck about music and it’s creators. It’s also refreshingly honest.

Now being this ‘music illustrator’ – existing in this little niche I’ve been creating for myself – I’ve been asked to submit the Sunday Supplement with completely free reign on what I could write about. Last time I commented on the fact that I wasn’t going to write anything and was purely going to have a visual journal of Matt Groening’s fabulously put together ATP festival, which was wonderful to the point of my being a little hysterically radiant after witnessing so many quality bands I liked. I did however write a shite load more than was initially intended.

This time I am going to offer drawings of lesser known local bands from Scotland who I feel should get a mention. So I’ll supply images of the following musicians/bands I particularly think are destined for greatness, if not pretty much there already. They are all worth checking out.

Washington Irving, a folk pop group, young fresh and getting richer in sounds and words and self each time I see them. They’ve recently released an EP, with a great cover designed by Ryan Hays, called Little Wanderer, Head Thee Home.

The John Knox Sex Club who incidentally share the drummer with Washington Irving. They are so good live, front man Sean Cummings whipping himself into a frenzy with rantings and gnashings of teeth. I haven’t heard their recorded stuff yet, but they’ve got a very nice looking CD box which I quite fancy aquiring super soon.

Adam Stafford, Y’All is Fantasy Island and Size of Kansas band leader, film maker and creative collaborator. The film The Shutdown, directed by Adam and written by Alan Bissett, recently won the San Francisco International Film Festival award for Best Short Documentary. The soundtrack is of Alan’s unmistakeable Falkirkian voice augmented beautifully by Adam’s soundscapes. It’s great, I just saw it today at the marvellous Words Per Minute at Creative Studios in Glasgow which saw a top little solo headline performance from Adam.

John B McKenna is another great chap of experimental sounds and wordsmithery. I’ve drawn him playing by himself, and in collaborations. This picture was drawn live and projected on a big screen as interior decor for the Verden Whistle Test event in Edinburgh a teeny while ago. Great little project by the Ten Tracks initiative.

A girl, I need a girl. Well I’m going to include my little digital sketch of Lucy Cathcart Frödén from The Social Services which I drew on my new iPod Touch. It’s not the best drawing in the world, quite obviously. But I’m learning. And I really liked their music. Will draw them on paper and aim to get all of them next time. But this is when they were playing at Mono last Wednesday (2nd June).

Panda Su. She’s great. This is a digital drawing I did on my Nokia mobile phone. I’m sure you’ll have heard great reviews of her. I’m not known for my wordage of music. I’ll leave that up to the most excellent wordsmiths that exist already. The pictures I post online aim to be a stamp of great music and if it’s not really my sort of music, there’s definitely an intriguing story attached that’s worth looking up. The pictures serve as pointers for you to look them up, or as memory triggers for a gig you have attended.

So there you go, an element of a few technologies and styles of drawing, and a tiny smattering of those local bands in my immediate musical consciousness.

However, the real issue burning in my mind at the moment is one unrelated to any great bands I’ve drawn recently, and is also a reason for the tardiness in this posting.

Yesterday (Saturday 5th June) I attended the demonstration in Edinburgh to free Palestine, decry the killings aboard the aid flotilla, and request an international boycott of Israel.

My week started with an awareness of limited knowledge on the situation, and has since concluded with hopefully a much more educated understanding.

When the time came at the end of the march and demonstration – a massive turnout of 5,000 people – for significant speakers to say a few words, I had to agree with most of what was said. Certain valuable points were met with roars of approval from the crowd of demonstrators, however their lack of voice to support one impassioned speaker with his hope to retaliate to Israel’s recent act by returning in increased numbers of ships but with lethal intent. ‘We will kill you!’ was met with silence from the listeners which though still spoke measures, should have been peppered with disagreements.

I do not believe in ‘getting even’ which is what another speaker suggested, but the overall message rang true. Israel needs to accept talks with the democratically elected Hamas to heal the fractured state of Palestine and work on a solution of communal living in peace. South Africa managed it, Northern Ireland managed it, and as much as Britain and the USA have played their part in the mess in the first place, and though the atrocities committed by both sides must not be forgotten, they now need to assist in persuading Israel that it is a necessary action for the peace and well-being of these two states.

The aim behind the aid flotilla was to gain international attention and focus on the totally unjust situation Palestine is in, and work towards ending the blockade.

As Henning Mankell put it (the Swedish writer of Wallander and one of the peace protesters aboard the aid flotilla):

“So as not to lose sight of the goal, which is to lift the brutal blockade of Gaza. That will happen.
Beyond that goal, others are waiting. Demolishing a system of apartheid takes time. But not an eternity.”

[The Sunday Supplement springs forth from the sparkling keyboard of Dianna Robinson this week. You'll remember Dianna from her review of the Men Diamler and Animal Magic Tricks House Gig. This time she's comparing and contrasting life in two key Toad locations...]

Dylan asked me if I’d write a Sunday Supplement for Song, By Toad about a million years ago. At the time, I wasn’t very keen. I had several papers due, a few of which had the ability to cause me to fail out of school. Now I only have a dissertation due. No big deal. Plenty of time to write complete shit about nothing much.

He wanted me to write about the experience of working at the “official” Song, By Toad pub (the King’s Wark. Obviously). I feel there are two large problems with this topic, however. The first, and I feel the most important, is that this is a bit overly-pretentious and the basic concept makes me feel too groupie-ish for comfort. The second, and the most important in actuality, is that I don’t work at the King’s Wark anymore.

I now work in Anstruther, hometown of Homegame, at the Dreel Tavern, which is owned by Chris, an ex-chef from the King’s Wark and his girlfriend Ewa, an extended family member of the King’s Wark. However, I still live in Leith with Shonagh. And I’m still friends with everyone at the Wark and eat a couple of meals a week there. And still refer to it as “the pub.” Just a caveat.

Basically what I’m saying is that I’m not only kind of going to write about that. I’m also going to write about bonding over music in Fife, and the strangeness that is the music nerd-dom.

Beginning at the beginning, though, we can discuss the wonder that was serving the Song, By Toad crew. I’d like to say that it was continually enlightening and that I learned about cutting-edge bands and met fascinating people. What actually happened was that we always ran out of Anapai Pinot Noir and gin, Mr. and Mrs. Toad ended up swearing far too much and usually too loudly, Dylan talked absolute drunken shite and got into arguments about the Sugar Babes, Shonagh hid her head in her hands, and various members of Meursault came along for the ride. The music choice gets alternately slagged and lauded (the latter due to my legacy of cd mixes (I like to think)), and the staff table (which they usually occupied) becomes a loud, no-mans land where the staff fear to tread in case they’re mocked for saying ‘erbs instead of Herbs (in my own bitter experience). Because you know what never gets old when you’re an American living in Scotland? Being teased about how you say things. Just a barrel of fun. A laugh-riot you could say. I wouldn’t.

I won’t lie, it was nice having music people who were also my friends hanging out at my place of work, which also happened to be a really cool pub with awesome food. But I have no grand illuminations into the inner workings of the Edinburgh indie/alt folk scene. Other than they tend to get drunk. A lot. Which everyone probably already figured out by this point. As I’m not usually impressed with ideas of coolness or (relative) fame, I probably wouldn’t have realized that what these gin-soaked people were saying was anything other than nonsensical ramblings. But I digress. Very cool for some, though.

Which leads me to my next topic. Music nerds. They are intrinsically different than other sorts of nerds in that there is a patina of coolness to them. Sometimes, a rather thin patina, but a patina none the less.

Now, this concept of the music nerd should not be confused with the cool kids with the hair cuts and the slouchy jeans. I speak of what Americans call “hipsters.” Who also wear slouchy jeans. And have hair cuts, but it’s different. Anyway. Hipsters rely almost entirely upon knowledge of obscure indie bands from the mid-80′s onwards. But not prior to. Because old music is bad. Especially jazz. Yikes! Anything but that. Not that it’s the basis for quite a lot of modern music or paved the way for “controversial” themes in music which constitute several things that the hipster holds sacred. Never mind, that’s an old chestnut.

The music nerd, in my opinion, is the UK’s answer to hipsters. Mostly because I don’t really have a label for them and hipster isn’t quite right.

I should probably mention that I am one. Not to the degree that some people reach where they know every member of every band and what their favorite color is. I really cannot be fucked with any of that. I usually don’t even know the names of the lead singers of most bands that I like. I don’t really see the point – my brain can’t hold all of that information and still remember what day it is, and it doesn’t really affect how I feel about the music the band produces. I like music because, for whatever reason, I connect with something in it, not because the bassist of X band, which was highly influential in the Seattle scene in 1998 is now in Y band with the singer of Z band, which never really made it into the mainstream, but that only makes them more obscure and therefore cooler.

Obviously, other people don’t feel the same way. Those people probably can do all sorts of things like walk and chew gum AT THE SAME TIME, which is more than I can handle. More power to them.

BUT. They are still nerds. Encyclopaedic knowledge of anything is nerdish behaviour. It’s just…music is cool. Therefore, the music nerd is the coolest of all of the nerds in nerd-dom. And when they wear Chuckie T’s and Journey t-shirts it’s ironic. In fact, nearly everything the hipster/music nerd does is ironic, and therefore cool. Irony is the coolest of the literary devices, after all.

The music nerd is a socially awkward being by nature, and they tend to flock together like near-sighted seagulls around a Joy Division record. When two music nerds meet, they must judge each other to see if their particular nerdish beliefs conflict or correspond. It’s almost like a mating ritual, you could say, except that these are nerds, and if mating were involved, it would be a maladroit occasion and no-one really wants to think about it. But, as the relationship between music nerds contains a bit of the “us against the stupid world” mentality, mating ritual is a pretty good approximation of the event. Although, if it all goes bad, I would probably say that it’s a territorial dispute. Or something. I’ve sure Levi-Strauss has an opinion on the subject.

Anyway.

I shall use an example from my life to illustrate this phenomenon.

The setting: the fun side of the bar at the Dreel Tavern (you know, the drinkin’ side)

The players: me and my new Dreel comrades

Graeme was going to Argos, and Mike decided to take the plunge and purchase his first iPod. However, he didn’t have much music on his computer, so he asked me if he could take some from mine to fill the tiny music machine.

What ensued was a solid hour of subtle jabs, recriminations, defensive positions and guarded approval until mutual respect was achieved. Because, you see, two music nerds had just stumbled onto the border of their mutual stomping grounds. And it was on, just like Donkey Kong. “You like them? They’re shit.” “Yeah, but have you heard this…” “You should really just plunge an ice pick into your skull if you think that’s good.” “I can’t believe you know this band! No one knows this band.” etc., etc.

Mike’s friend Matt, and outsider to the process, attempted to become involved with the conversation. And, in a typical guy manner, tried to protect me from the insults my music collection was receiving, with such helpful things as “Don’t listen to him, he’s an ass. You can like whatever you want.” All very well-meaning and noble, I’m sure, but completely lost in the game. This was the testing grounds of music nerd bonding, and there is no place for hurt feelings, only strong defences and pointed observations.

You can all visualize it, because you all – to a man – have experienced a similar thing. Maybe it wasn’t your iTunes library, probably it was your wall of cd’s. Or, if you’re the coolest of the cool, your vinyl collection. Or just a scroll through someone’s iPod when they’ve left it around unattended. Music nerds know this ritual in their very souls, because it’s a part of us. We love to geek out over music, and we like it when someone actually gives enough of a shit to play along. And when they do, we’ve found a comrade in arms, someone to shake our fists with at the corporate shit machines that produce pop music. A temporary soul mate, for a few moments in time.

And they all get together and drink far too much gin.

Photos: King’s Wark © Shonagh Massie 2010, Dreel Tavern © Dylan Matthews 2010