Except I shan’t be mostly mastering because in all honestly I have no fucking idea what that is.  Apparently it is tweaking the teeny-tiniest of things in the final mix of a song and still somehow making the most significant of differences. I’ve heard a good masterer get the most amazing clarity of instrumentation from a shitty, over-compressed mp3 file, to the extent that it sounded amazing on vinyl.

We tend to use Reuben Taylor for our mastering these days.  As well as being a lovely (if slightly mental) fellow, he does an amazing job for a very reasonable fee in a very short space of time.  He was responsible for the Meursault All Creatures vinyl, as well as the gorgeous Rob St. John record and the King Post Kitsch Honeytone EP.

Anyhow, today Rory Sutherland, who helped me record and engineer the record, and I will be off with the final mixes for the split 12″ we’ve been recording with Waiters, Sex Hands, Dolfinz and PAWS and this will be the first time I have witnessed the process first hand.  So I’ll be sure to tell you what unspeakable wizardry takes place in the mastering suite.  Assuming, of course, that I understand any of it at all.

All these photos were taken by the fantastic Nic Rue.  Except the shit one.  That was Rory.

Anyhow, two bits of news:

Meursault are touring the UK and Europe as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s main support. 

Rob St. John is playing SHHH Festival.

The latter won’t clog up the page with tour dates, so I’ll do that first. The SHHH Festival is a celebration of quiet music and film, with bands playing, a film about David Thomas Broughton and musicians soundtracking silent movies.  It’s on Saturday 4th February at the Gallery Cafe in London and is less than a tenner too, so get your tickets here.

Now, as to the former little announcement, Meursault have been very kindly invited to support Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on their tour of the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe at the end of the month.  I’m not sure what else there is to say about this apart from the fact that it’s fucking incredible news, and to thank Clap Your Hands for inviting them. All the ticket info and the like can be found on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s website, but I’ve included a list of the dates below for ease of browsing. The only gig Meursault will be missing will be the Paris date on the 15th of February (which I haven’t listed below anyway).

25/1/12 – Dublin, Tripod
26/1/12 – Cork, Pavilion
27/1/12 – Galway, Roisin Dubh
28/1/12 – Glasgow, SWG3
30/1/12 – Leeds, The Cockpit
31/1/12 – Norwich, Waterfront
2/2/12 – Manchester, Ritz
3/2/12 – Liverpool, O2 Academy
4/2/12 – Bristol, Thekla
6/2/12 – Birmingham, HMV Library
7/2/12 – Brighton, Coalition
8/2/12 – London, Shepherd’s Bush Empire
10/2/12 – Utrecht, Tivoli
11/2/12 – Brussels, Orangerie
12/2/12 – Copenhagen, Frost Fest, Bremen Theatre
14/2/12 – Berlin, Postbahnhof
16/2/12 – Munich, Theaterfabrik
17/2/12 – Zurich, Plaza Club
18/2/12 – Bologna, Covo Club

Man man man man man this was fun.  And it sounds fucking brilliant!

Yesterday afternoon was spent at Toad Hall recording half of the songs for the Split 12″ we’ll be releasing in roughly April or May this year.  I described this on the Song, by Toad Records 2012 podcast we posted on the weekend, and included songs by all but one of the bands (for the fourth, see this podcast).

The plan, simply enough, is to record four songs by four bands we happen to think are brilliant, and then release them on a 12″.  We’re recording most of the tracks live, a lot like the Toad Sessions, and will be releasing videos of songs which we shoot live as we record, again a lot like the Toad Sessions.  I suppose you could describe this release as being like a release of a Toad Session recording, albeit a little more polished and without the interview bits and stuff like that.

Anyhow, Manchester bands Sex Hands and Waiters came through yesterday to record their bits, Dolfinz are recording on Friday and Saturday, and then Paws, who have business in London, will be doing their songs after they play Vic Galloway’s next Electric Circus night at the end of the month.

I remember when the Cold Seeds album was finished, and when Rob, Neil and Tom Western emerged from the living room after finishing the recording for Weald – everyone was high as a kite and absolutely wired.  I’ve been the same today – absolutely unable to do anything except work on preliminary mixes of yesterday’s recording to send down to the bands for feedback.

I know the industry is full of cynicism and all sorts of shit, but making music is just plain fucking exciting!

Here are a couple of videos to let you know who I’m talking about here:

We’ve got a couple of our more recent releases, like Rob St. John and Lil Daggers, as well as some of our confirmed and ready new albums for next year, by the likes of The Leg, Jesus H. Foxx and Yusuf Azak.

I’ve also got a couple of tracks from bands we’ll be releasing on a split 12″ in the Spring.  We’ll be recording that stuff in our house next week, so the songs we chose to represent those bands are for obvious reasons not the final ones we’ll be releasing, just tracks by the bands so you can get a bit of a flavour of what we’re up to.

With Ian on board and based on the good press we managed last year I am hoping we can really kick on with the label this year and make a decent impression.  Obviously the third Meursault album will  help, what with them being our most established band, but we have a good spread of stuff, from bands like Dolfinz with only a few demos to their name, to the likes of Yusuf Azak and The Leg who people know already and then the Foxx album, which has been ‘much anticipated’ for a while now.

So all in all it should be an exciting year, I reckon.  Enjoy!

Direct download: Toadcast #208 – Song, by Toad Records 2012

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Mongrels – I’m Gonna Murder Justin Bieber (00.21)
02. King Post Kitsch – The Make the Same Faces Whether Fuck or Fight (02.46)
03. Meursault – Flittin’ (locationmusic.tv Piano Version) (08.49)
04. Rob St. John – The Acid Test (17.59)
05. Lil Daggers – Dead Golden Girls (22.05)
06. Paws – Bloodline (Toad Session) (31.52)
07. Jesus H. Foxx – This is Not a Rental Car (40.31)
08. The Leg – Twitching Stick (43.00)
09. Sex Hands – Jinglebitch (51.56)
10. Dolfinz – Blowhole (55.36)
11. Yusuf Azak – Lay Me Down (63.12)

(Full Toad Session can be found here.)

So, I may have been a little tardy to make this an actual Christmas present, but The Savings and Loan would like to make you all a present of their self-titled EP, which you can download for free from their Bandcamp page.

This EP formed the basis for their debut album Today I Need Light, which we released on Song, by Toad Records at the end of 2010. They then added a couple of songs, re-recorded a couple and embellished a couple more with a little extra instrumentation to flesh out the full album, and the band wanted to make this available as a free download so you can see where it all came from.

I actually received a copy of the EP anonymously before I ever started Song, by Toad Records and that’s how we ended up working with the band.  Enjoy.

Anyhow, as you may have noticed in August, the engine room behind the New York Antifolk scene has now moved to Edinburgh and as such is the subject of a documentary on BBC Radio Scotland, which broadcasts in about forty-five minutes, and again on Sunday the 1st January, and will be available on the iPlayer after that.

I am not entirely certain, I have to confess, about how overseas people can hear the thing, but I am sure that the more determined of you can figure something out. Kids can crack this shit in minutes these days, can’t they?

The guys from La Blogotheque have been incredibly supportive of both Song, by Toad and, in particular, Meursault over the last few years, but due to their living in Paris and I in Scotland I’ve never actually met them in person.

Nevertheless, on their last European tour Meursault managed to finally take advantage of their long-standing invitation to record a session, although it was something of a stretch to actually manage it.  Having played their last show in Berlin the night before, and with a ferry booking later in the afternoon, Sam drove for eleven hours to get the band to Paris, dozed in the van while they recorded the session, and then carried on to the ferry and then Oxford without stopping.

Just in case you thought we didn’t work the little fuckers hard enough…

La Blogotheque have just published the session, and it looks fantastic. They’ve been doing this for a long time now so the sessions are bloody great, and their archive is truly amazing.  I’d like to thank them for their patience in waiting for this to finally happen, and also for the amazing support they’ve given us over the last few years.  Enjoy!

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s festivities, as well as some practical details.

Firstly, I never got my shit together to get tickets to Avalanche, for which I apologise, but it’s a really big venue, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting in, assuming you turn up relatively early (i.e. not 9pm).

Secondly, it is both child-friendly and BYOB.

Thirdly, bands will play roughly from doors at 2pm to 6pm, when there will be a break for some scran and a stretching of legs, and then more music from 7pm until we have to bugger off at eleven.  No hints as to who and when though, sorry.

The venue is here.  And the event is in the community hall downstairs, which is to be found through the door shown in Streetview below.

Umm… that’s about it.  Hope to see you there.  Happy Christmas!

Cheers,
Matthew

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Well folks, here we go, our last release of the year! Happy Christmas and all that, and feel free to forget about presents for the kids and buy one last lovely piece of vinyl instead.  Honestly, they’re just kids, they probably won’t remember and they’ll end up resenting you anyway, whatever you do, because kids are ungrateful little shits like that.

Anyhow, Song, by Toad Records’ final act of 2011 (apart from our awesome all-day label Christmas Party on Saturday) is to release the self-titled debut album by Miami’s Lil Daggers.  It’s a nasty record, and my favourite review so far (well, apart from the 5* one we’re apparently getting in Artrocker, which is awesome) was published in Subba Cultcha, where Emma Rochford produced the following little gems:

“this is music which is unashamedly ugly and hostile and it works all the better for it.”

“There are points when, for me, Lil Daggers push it too far and border on the unlistenable which makes this record a bit too much of an uncomfortable listen but I guess that’s pretty much the point. You’d be hard pushed to find a band that can give you the creeps quite like Lil Daggers.”

Now, I might suggest that it’s a little bit more of a pop album than that, but then I have a fairly well developed taste for this kind of growl these days.  Actually I reckon it’s a pretty hummable record, with the possible exception of the ungodly snarl of Ghost Herd, and to prove this we hereby present our usual enticement of a free download, this time of Dead Golden Girls, which can be snagged from the Soundcloud widget below.  And the album, should this tickle your fancy, can be bought here or in Avalanche Records down on the Grassmarket, either on black vinyl or very limited edition grey marbled vinyl.

Dead Golden Girls by Song, by Toad

Well the BBC have their list, the BAMS sort of have theirs and now we have ours: hot tips for bands to make it big in 2012, in this case as chosen by a selection of music bloggers designed to give a decent cross-section of opinions and some sort of reasonable alternative to the pap peddled on the Beeb.

Now, to be entirely fair, although it is easy to make fun of the BBC’s Sound of 2012 list (here it is, so you can compare, contrast and make snide remarks on Twitter), it’s not something I really tend to do because… well who cares, really.  That list is for the commercial, pop side of the industry and for fans who give a fuck about that kind of thing.  I don’t particularly think I or anyone reading this website is likely to fall into those categories, so why on Earth would any of us care that it’s full of bands we’ve either never heard or think are shite.  Of course that’s what we think, it’s not a list written for people like us.

The scary part about that list, and something which does bother me about it, is the effect making it or, more importantly, not making it can have on the levels of attention and effort given to artists by their record labels.  This is hardly the fault of the listmakers of course, and it is very much the nature of the nettle you grasp when you choose to play around at that end of the music industry, but it is nevertheless pretty fucking sickening.   Mind you these labels are very clearly not artistic enterprises, so a commercial entity acting in a commercially ruthless way shouldn’t stir even the tiniest eddy of surprise in anyone.

So I feel I should point out that this list is not intended in any way to be a dig at the BBC list, nor a vehicle for criticising it, Andy from Von Pip simply thought it would be an interesting thing to try, just to see what we came up with, and if our list perhaps brought some interesting, slightly different bands to the fore.  And with the shortlist to be announced in a little while, without any further ado, here is the long list:

The Long List  (in no particular order)

Houdini Dax.

French Wives.

The Good Natured.

Lianne La Havas.

Theme Park.

Alt J.

The Jezabels.

Lucy Rose.

Bastille.

Beth Jeans Houghton.

Friends.

Washington.

Meursault.

Daughter.

Outfit.

Just to add some thoughts about the very concept of tipping bands for success, I have to mention that it’s not really something I particularly believe in, honestly.  I mean, it’s fine for the BBC list, in fact that’s pretty much all that list is, in essence, a list of people they think are going to make it big, irrespective of artistic merit.

From my own perspective, on the other hand, I can only do the opposite.  I pretty much never spend time thinking about whether or not a band can crack it commercially, so it’s not a  judgement call I have any practise or skill in making.  As you know, on this blog I write from pretty much one perspective alone: whether or not I personally enjoy something.

Consequently my ‘tips’ are never really tips as such, they are simply bands I think are mostly likely to record and release something I think is awesome next year, irrespective of whether or not it makes any commercial impact.  So this list, for all I was delighted to be a part of it, contains precisely none of the bands I nominated, largely because they were all so obscure (almost) no-one else mentioned them at all. I didn’t even vote for Meursault, because I thought they were too old and, on the verge of completing their third album, too developed as a band to really qualify.

I suppose this looks like a bit of side-stepping, but it really isn’t.  I have no problem at all with none of the bands I chose making the list.  One was close, by all accounts, and that’s just how democracy works.  If I want a list where I entirely approve of all the bands then I should just bloody well write my own, shouldn’t I.  And in the meantime I hope this provides a selection rather more suitable to this audience than the BBC list.  Happy browsing, and feel free to mention any stand-outs in the comments – I’ll be doing the same myself.

The Blog “Panel” consisted of

Breaking More Waves, My Band Is Better Than Your Band,God Is In the TV,  Sweeping The Nation, The Von Pip Musical Express, The Recommender, Faded Glamour, Drunken Werewolf, Flying With Anna, Not Many Experts, Under-classed Idle Ideas, Sonic Masala, Mudkiss, The Ring Master, Both Bars On, Music From A Green Window, Dots And Dashes, Daily Growl, And Everyone’s A DJ,  Kowalskiy! Just Music I Like, Cruel Rhythms,  The Blue Walrus, Music Fans Mic, Seventeen Seconds, Eaten By Monsters, Seven Sevens, Unpeeled, New Rave Brain Wave, Peenko, Music Liberation, Song, By Toad.

Top Five coming in the New Year.