Is there anything that needs to be added to this?  I think not. I just wish I had a Scottish enough accent to actually use phrases like bawjaws without sounding like a tit. Honestly, I’ve lived here long enough by now, surely?

I was futzing about on the internet recently, as you do, and I happened across a YouTube channel run by a band from Manchester called Former Bullies. According to Suffering Jukebox – a label, now on hiatus I think, run by one of the guys from Mazes – the band have been around for nearly seven years and, for whatever reasons, have yet to really crack any kind of serious audience.

The people I have spoken to in Manchester tend to treat the recent outbreak of lo-fi garage rock in that city as something of a cathartic experience.  Venues were beset by pay-to-play promoters, who have now all but been expunged from the city’s musical landscape, and the style of the city was very much dominated by excessive reverence of the past, be it the Hacienda and Factory Records scene, or the brainless lad-rock of Oasis.

When The Courteeners threatened briefly to break into the mainstream a couple of years ago, that was by all accounts something of a catalyst amongst those in the city who didn’t want to just re-hash old glories they weren’t that keen on in the first place.  ‘Oh fuck, not this shit, again‘ was more or less how it seems to have gone.

If the conversations I have had with a few different bands recently are to be believed, the reaction against this has, as much as anything, brought about the recent explosion in really good Manchester bands and promoters.  There is presumably a bit more to it than that, but there you go.

Anyway, as with most sudden explosions of a particular scene, there are a few people who suddenly get a lot of attention very quickly, some merited, some less so.  But there are also people who work away in the background for a long time and who, when the rest of the world finally catches on, seem to get a bit less credit than those who shout louder than they do.

Depending on what you make of their music, Former Bullies appear to quite possibly be one of these bands.  On the aforementioned YouTube channel, the page which brought me to all of this in the first place, they have videos made for all sorts of bands (all written in capital letters too, so you know they must be pretty cool) and, from the looks of it, for no better reason than that the guy likes making videos.

However, that breadth of interest means that the channel itself is a pretty good place to have a browse and find new bands, because there are quite a few represented there, including the likes of Sic Alps, who I’ve been hearing a fair bit about recently, but have been around for a few years apparently, and the awesomely messy, lo-fi, shoegazey Waiters.

I’ve included a couple of videos below, one by Waiters and one by Sex Hands, but there are plenty more on YouTube.

“Aaaggh my eyes, my eyes!” Yes, that is indeed *cough cough* Edinburgh rock ‘n’ roll pinup Mr. Neil Pennycook of Meursault in that video there.  These are from a session for Location Music TV, which Neil recorded with Scott from Frightened Rabbit.  You can see all the videos on their YouTube channel, including Scott and Neil doing a Bruce Springsteen cover, as well as Scott’s solo version of Fun Stuff.

Red Candle Bulb, the song at the top of the page, was originally written by Dan Willson from Withered Hand, and it appears on Meursault’s Nothing Broke EP, as well as Withered Hand’s You’re Not Alone under the name of Oldsmobile Car.

It’s an absolutely gorgeous song, which Dan apparently wrote in collaboration with Neil as well as Cammy from Enfant Bastard, and I have heard rumours of an absolutely brilliant live Enfant Bastard version of this, although never been lucky enough to witness it myself.  Meursault actually recorded an amazing version whilst pissed in the back of our van a couple of years ago, and despite the sound coming from nothing but the built-in mic on the camera it actually sounds amazing.

I’ve embedded the Toad Van version below, as well as the Location Music version of Flittin’ which I kind of assume will be making an appearance on the third Meursault album, and for all the rest of the session, including the Frightened Rabbit stuff, go to locationmusic.tv.

I know I’ve posted about these guys before, and I know that they are playing the Electric Circus tomorrow with Brown Brogues and Rollor, so I have a vested interest in pushing them to the top of the blog page at the moment, but I promise I am not just shilling for my own gigs.

More accurately, the fact that we are putting them on so soon has pushed the band to the forefront of my mind, and as such I’ve been listening to their stuff, and going over the project they have on the go at the moment, and it really is excellent.

They’ve been pairing videos with their songs, and releasing them one at a time via a combination of Bandcamp, Vimeo and their blog, and a really cracking EP has been slowly revealing itself over time.  This is the kind of project the internet was made for, and I really wish more bands tried to tackle this kind of stuff.

The music, as I said before, goes from lo-fi pop to experimental drone to barely-listenable barrages of noise, and the DIY videos they’ve put together match the music really well.  I am not a massive fan of digital music in some senses, and I think that is largely related to what people are doing with it, which is not much.

The challenge from digital (both legal and illegal) has reinvigorated the quality of physical music objects in some ways, as people realise that in the face of such low-cost competition they had to make physical objects compelling again if they wanted people to buy them, and that just slapping the music on some sort of plastic disc isn’t going to cut the mustard anymore.

Digital music, on the other hand, despite all the possibilities, seems to have rather stood still in the last five years.  It’s an interesting format, ripe with possibilities, but it seems like very few people are taking the time and effort to do inventive things with all the multimedia, interactive possibilities which exist nowadays.

I accept that this probably happens a lot more in other genres of music, and that this particular project is still really quite a small step in the direction of real multi-media releases, but it’s something I’d like to see more of, frankly, and something I don’t think we do enough of, either in the wider DIY music community or specifically us as a label.

That little beauty up there is the vinyl version of All Creatures Will Make Merry.  It is on lovely touchy-feely reverse uncoated board (in layman’s terms, that nice matt-feel stuff), and the record itself is clear red vinyl – fucking gorgeous.

I’ll be getting them up for sale on the label site in the next few days, but if you are based in Edinburgh and feeling a little impatient, then you can pick one up tonight at the Electric Circus, where Neil from Meursault will be playing solo, and sharing a bill with Benjamin Shaw and John Egdell.

I don’t, I have to confess, have much idea what Neil will be playing, but I do know the lads are a good chunk of the way into recording their third album so I would imagine material from that will feature quite heavily.  He might be helped out by Rob St. John on harmonium here and there tonight too, whereas tomorrow at the Queen’s Hall will be a different set altogether, and Sunday’s Retreat performance a full band extravaganza.

The record had to be remastered before we could put it on vinyl – there was simply no way around that – but to make sure people don’t feel ripped off, if you can send me a picture of you holding a previously purchased copy of the album then I will send you a download of the new versions for free.  They really aren’t that different, except one or two songs, but again, I don’t want anyone feeling cheated.

The actual vinyl itself has turned out beautifully.  Chris from Brothers Grimm reworked the whole cover design, and inasmuch as it is clearly related to the previous artwork, I think this works much better with the larger format.  And the vinyl is red!  It’s fucking awesome!

And as a quick preview, here is Neil playing solo for They Shoot Music Don’t They, a new video from Benjamin Shaw, from his new single, and finally some John Egdell as well:

This is fucking great. To say that I am chuffed to be working with Animal Magic Tricks is an understatement. ‘Nuff said. New album coming in Spring, and the one that this might be on… well, hopefully soon after, I reckon.

The Party’s Over, the debut album by King Post Kitsch, was released this week and can now be bought from our website, Avalanche Records on the Grassmarket and (as of the weekend) LoveMusic and Mono in Glasgow.

As is our habit with this sort of thing we are giving away another free song to mark the occasion: in this case the splendid Fante’s Last Stand, which has been played on Gideon Coe’s show on 6Music a couple of times this week.  Marc Riley also seems to be a fan, and the blogosphere in general has been incredibly generous, with the latest splendid reviews coming from Incendiary Mag in Holland, as well as Tidal Wave of Indifference and Peenko somewhat closer to home.

I hope you enjoy.  I promise we’ll get him out and about playing live just as soon as we can.

Direct download: King Post Kitsch – Fante’s Last Stand

King Post Kitsch – Fante’s Last Stand by Song, by Toad

This is rather nice.  It’s really simple too, and looks (the rigours of stop-motion animation notwithstanding) like it wasn’t too tricky to make, either.

I have been wondering this about music videos recently: what exactly makes a proper ‘music video’ these days?  A while back that was easy: it was something awesome for MTV.  Since the rise of the internet, though, videos have started to serve a very different purpose.

Now, instead of being for television, 99% of the ones I watch are made for the internet.  They’re an awesome tool to have at your disposal – people email them to each other, embed them in Facebook, link to them on Twitter, and idly browse them on YouTube, making a music video a really good way to get your music out to people.  These days they can get away with being so basic that in many cases YouTube users simply post the song with no more exciting visuals than a picture of the album artwork.

So if you can get away with that little, surely we can make our own videos  for Song, by Toad Records bands easily enough – I mean, we have the equipment, because we use it for the Toad Sessions already.  That makes it sound easy, but it really is harder than that.

As every lo-fi band out there at the moment demonstrates, the production values really aren’t all that important, as long as the tune is good and the melody is strong.  Somehow, however rough or polished, a song has to stick in your head.

For a music video it’s presumably much the same: if the concept is sound, people seem pretty easily able to see past any shortfall in production values, provided those shortcomings are honestly embraced rather than pretended away.

And I suppose, despite being the reason it’s easier than it seems, this is also the reason it’s harder than it seems: no amount of affordable technology is going to give me a good idea for a music video.  Sure, I could probably execute one well enough to just about get away with, but the more I think about it the more I am certain that I could no more conceive of a compelling music video than I could write a good pop song, no matter how much cheap technology I get my hands on.

For those of you who missed it, here is a clip from Alex Cornish’s performance at our house gig this weekend just gone.  He’s on tour with his band very soon – details on his website here.

Also, Pete and Kate (who were in Alex’s string section) are plotting to bring the Rose Street Quartet to the house as well.  I think that might be a little sophisticated to call a ‘house gig’, but the general premise will be the same: come round our place, get pished, listen to tunes.  It’s just they’ll be grown-up tunes.  Possibly.

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 »