Song, by Toad

After attending a birthday party which involved the scarfing of five pig’s heads yesterday I still don’t feel capable of eating anything. I may have to fast for the next few days before that little lot gets digested, in fact. Fucking hell that was a meal and a half.

There will be no giggenfun for me this week, unfortunately, despite a couple of natty lineups on the horizon. The label is going to require an absolutel shitload of admin work this week and if I go out gallvanting there is no way I am going to be able to get all of it done. We have Meursault single promos to do, Foxx promos, Split 12″ numbering, Maxwell Panther printing and label sampler cutting and folding. Then there’s the Fresh Air show on Wednesday with the Japanese War Effort, which I’m looking forward to.

Did everyone see that FOUND’s musical cupboard of magnificence won the BAFTA for Best Interactive Thingumajig? Well done lads, brilliant, and thoroughly deserved. Must have been a bit depressing for the others shortlisted though – how the fuck do you compete with something like the bloody Cybraphon?

Anyway, on with the task at hand. What should you be doing while I’m in the house folding paper, cutting out inserts and stuffing CDs into slip-cases? Well if you’ll hang on, I’ll tell you:

Wednesday 11th November 2009: The Pineapple Chunks, Ruthelise Snowe & Andy Brown at the Bowery.

I know little about this gig, so if anyone knows anything about who’s supporting please let me know in the comments. I’ve linked to an Andy Brown MySpace page, but I really don’t know if it’s the right one and, er, I can’t find Ruthelise Snow at all. The Chunks themselves however make, erm… mental guitar music basically. It’s off-kilter, surprisingly melodic and brilliant fun.

The Pineapple Chunks – Dark Halo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 12th November 2009: Graham Coxon at the Queen’s Hall.

Most people I know absolutely love Graham Coxon, and cite his departure from Blur as the moment they became shit. That’s bollocks of course, because Think Tank is a great album, but that’s a whole new argument. Anyhow, here I am pootling along in my ignorance, with little real awareness of Coxon’s solo work and no more than a fairly casual liking for what little I have heard. The last album was really quite folky though, and I believe this is an acoustic setup, so that’s about all I can tell you.

Graham Coxon – All Has Gone

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 12th November 2009: The Leg, Your Loyal Subjects and Lipsync For a Lullaby play Versus at the Voodoo Rooms.

Apparently I sounded a little lukewarm on the concept the last time I mentioned the Versus gigs, but I really didn’t mean to be. All three bands will play separately, together and everything inbetween, and there will be inter-set entertainments as well. Basically it is going to be a gigantic musical mish-mash. The last one was apparently brilliant, so if Ted and his minions can pull that off again this should be a brilliant night.

Saturday November 14th: Riley Briggs from Aberfeldy at Carter’s Bar.

This is a free gig (Riley also plays alternate Thursdays down at the Shore in Leith, I believe) and will be a solo acoustic performance, but the band’s breezy indiepop should be perfectly suited to this kind of setup.

Aberfeldy – Love is an Arrow

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Saturday November 14th: Trashcan Sinatras, Brother Louis Collective & the Seventeenth Century at Cabaret Voltaire.

The Trashcan Sinatras are something of a blast from the past for me, I have to confess. I remember absolutely loving A Happy Pocket when I bought it back in my universoty days. I have to confess to having barely a clue what they’re up to these days, but I’d be really curious to see them. I don’t know Brother Louis Collective really, but the Seventeenth Century are excellent.

Trashcan Sinatras – The Therapist

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Saturday 14th November 2009: Panda Su, John B McKenna & the Last Battle play Trampoline at the Wee Red Bar.

The Last Battle are what happened when Thieves in Suits called it a day and I’ve heard very good things about them, without having had the chance to see them myself. Panda Su seem to be drawing all sorts of praise, and John B McKenna also sounds rather interesting. It’s a low-key lineup this one, but Euan has definitely found a really good spread of underground artists I’d personally like to see, and then kindly put them all in the same place on one evening for me.

Well the Trampoline show for this Friday, with Ziggy Campbell and Yusuf Azak has been cancelled, which is a bit of a tragedy for my music fun, but at least spares me some of the Olympic amounts of typing this post is going to require all through bloody August.  Fucking hell, it’s like a mini novel.  Fortunately I don’t think much was actually on yesterday, when the sort of hangover generated only by consuming an entire bottle of gin prevented me from doing anything productive at all.

So this post is being written now and dated two days ago so, erm, well fuck it, shoot me, there’s always the list of course.  But my listings are way better – everyone knows that.  Aren’t they.

Yes is the answer to that, in case anyone was taking too much time to think about it.

Tuesday 11th August 2009: Jesus H. Foxx & Art Fag at Electric Circus.

I was about to say that two Toad bands on the same bill means I am guaranteed to enjoy this, but strictly speaking electro-experimental loonies Art Fag are Scotland’s hottest new unsigned act and I will have to fight every label in the land with sticks for their signature.  Or, um, something like that.  And Jesus H. Foxx were superb at the Forest Cafe last week, so this should be a cracking show.
Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy For the Good Times

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Wednesday 12th August 2009: White Heath EP Launch at the Forest Cafe with Meursault, Foxgang and Debutant.

I am really looking forward to hearing this, and genuinely curious.  For all I’ve seen White Heath a few times recently I haven’t heard any of their recordings recently, and I am very much looking forward to hearing what Alex from Fentek has made of their sound, which can be chaotic to say the least when I’ve seen them live.  Quite how he mixes the trombone and fiddle in with the electric guitar and drums is something I’d like to hear.

Thursday 13th August 2009: Battle of the Bands – Cybraphon vs FOUND at the InSpace Gallery.

This is sold out, but apparently any returns will be available on Thursday.  You can’t have them though, because I need them.  Let’s be honest, I’m not going to miss a chance to watch one of my favourite Edinburgh bands face off against a moody musical wardrobe am I.

Friday 14th August 2009: This is Music at Sneaky Pete’s with The Foundling Wheel & Dead Boy Robotics.

Dead Boy Robotics had a very successful set at T in the Park this year (see video at the bottom of this post) and apparently their new stuff is something of a shift from earlier material, which makes me really rather curious to hear what they’re up to these days.
The Foundling Wheel – Out to See

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Saturday 15th August 2009: Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Lovers Turn to Monsters & Shenandoah DavisTrampoline at the Wee Red Bar.

Woodenbox are a cracking live band, I don’t really know Lovers Turn to Monsters, and Shenandoah Davis is bloody lovely.  We’re recording a Toad Session with her this weekend as well.  Splendid.
Shennandoah Davis – We, Camera

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 16th August 2009: Retreat Festival from 11.30am in the Bristo Hall, upstairs from the Forest Cafe.

The collection of bands playing here is in some senses irrelevant.  Even if you’ve never heard of a single one of the groups playing, you can be absolutely guaranteed that this is going to be an amazing day.  Those of you who like your rock music with a little bit more in the way of coke and whores may not be quite as thrilled as others by the Bristo Hall’s family and cuppa-friendly atmosphere, but I am hugely looking forward to it.  And the lineup is fucking amazing, as it happens:  Withered Hand, Jo Foster, Wounded Knee, Hexicon, Rob St John, Viking Moses, Tisso Lake, Moustache of Insanity, Allo, Darlin’, My Tiny Robots, Come In Tokyo, Enfant Bastard, The Pineapple Chunks, Meursault, The Leg.

I should start by apologising to Matthew and to you, dear reader, for how late this Sunday Supplement has been delivered. It’s been a mental busy day, so busy in fact that I’ve had to abandon my plan to be at Toad Hall this evening for the inaugural home gig. Unfortunately Animal Magic Tricks had to cancel, but some eleventh-hour negotiations last night, combined with heroic dedication from The Japanese War Effort and Jonnie Common of Inspector Tapehead, both volunteering to step into the breach, has meant the show can go on. I’m gutted I can’t be there, but I’m sure Matthew will have a lot to say about the evening in due course. Watch this space, as they say.

Like Clockwork

Part of the reason the day has got away from me is, inevitably enough, the fact I was up until daft o’clock last night and then slept in this morning. Saturday had been a long day which led into an even longer night.

Moody, unpredictable and obsessed with its online popularity, and the other one's an antique cupboard! (Ba-dam! Tssh..)

I’d planned to pop up into town to take some photos of Cybraphon during the day, and Matthew, Neil (Meursault) and Fee (Mrs. Neil (Meursault)) all joined me. Matthew offered to drive and, as the Toad Van tortuously inched its way through the devil’s own Scalextric set that used to be Leith Walk before the tramworks arrived, people were actually singing the A-Team theme at us from the pavements.

There’s little that can I can write about Cybraphon that hasn’t already been said in the national papers or on CNN, but it was wonderful to finally meet the ingenious machine and to watch the hypnotic movements of its components as it came to life.

Keeping The Faith

Later, I went to photograph Mumford & Sons at Cabaret Voltaire while the others headed for the second night of Trampoline’s brilliant festival line-up.

There have been some hesitant notes of concern raised about The Mumfords on these very pages since His Royal Toadiness and I were first treated to their gobsmacking live show in Glasgow last year. While the general concensus is that the recorded output to date has been great, greying clouds of doubt have appeared on the horizon regarding whether they could keep up that sort of momentum, or indeed generate the variation in sound and texture needed to produce a really good album.

Were they a one-trick-pony or some sort of flash-in-the-pan novelty act?

Well fortunately, after their performance last night, I’m pleased to report that I’m reassured and that I’m a believer again. A fully-fledged, card carrying, fundamentalist Mumfordian. There’s new material to match anything we’ve heard so far in terms of quality, but importantly there’s variation to the sound. They haven’t stopped sounding like Mumford & Sons. They never could with those vocals. However, they’ve introduced new senses of tone, direction and nuance which bode well for the forthcoming album.

So you can happily ditch that “one-trick-pony” tag if you were tempted to start using it. I learned a lot about the band last night. I didn’t know, for example that double-bassist Ted could play the drums, or that banjo-toting ‘Country’ Winston could play bass. Or, indeed, that Marcus Mumford owned an electric guitar.

That’s right. Electric.

The Mumfords preach to the converted

Hang on. Bass, drums, electric guitar? That sounds like a regular rock-band line up, not a nice dependable waistcoat-wearing, barefoot, beardy alt. folk troupe. However, there were no cries of ‘Judas’ from the Cab Vol crowd, just rapt attention, an eagerness to embrace the new ideas, and that unmistakeable sense of communion that a band with a genuine following tends to create in a small, dark, sweaty venue.

Things are looking promising for Mumford & Sons. I’m sure they have something special in store for us when that album comes out.

My own personal credit crunch

I’ve tried to give myself a strict budget for August, in order to make sure I make it through to the end of the month without spending more than my pocket money will allow. However, unless I can get through the rest of the week on just eight quid, I’ve blown it already. This month is clearly going to be one big, daft, expensive horror story.

I can’t wait.

Cybraphon – The Balkan Bazaar

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bedouin Soundclash – Money Worries

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’d hate to turn into the sort of parent who thinks their brain-dead, irritating, charmless little fuckwits of children are cleverer, lovelier and more delightful than the very Baby Jeebus himself, despite their evident lack of any sort of talent or even bare sliver of tolerability to the entire rest of the human race.  In the words of Bill Hicks: “Your children aren’t special.  Oh, I know you think that they’re special… I’m just telling you that you’re wrong.”

Well, without wishing to imply that everything by bands from Edinburgh is better than anything by bands from anywhere else (that’s where that nonsense in the first paragraph was coming from, y’see) I have to confess that I am somewhat amazed by this piece of work: the Cybraphon.  It’s fucking amazing, basically.

Cybraphon Demo Song from Cybraphon on Vimeo.

Found have already demonstrated their incredible attraction to bizarre and wonderful projects, including a set of musical robots installed in the Botanic Gardens last year and their stunning* work for the Playing With the Past project, but this might just top the lot.

Basically, it’s a band in a box – imagine taking the concept of the Player Piano, taking it to its insanely illogical conclusion, hooking the whole shebang up to the fathomless rivers of sludge which are teh internetz, and setting it loose.  It responds to who is saying what about it on the internet and plays tunes according to its mood – sort of like a cross between the aforementioned Player Piano and Marvin the Paranoid Android, I suppose.  For those wanting to find out more, the contraption itself can be viewed at the InSpace Gallery on Crichton St. in Edinburgh from the 5th August onwards.  There is also a website with some amazing videos of the making of the Cybraphon, such as the one below, and a Flickr page with some gorgeous pictures.

Solenoids and Motors from Cybraphon on Vimeo.

Honestly, without wishing to sound like a small-time, partisan curtain-twitcher with a horizon no broader than the walls of my own back garden, I really do get the impression that if this sort of mental genius was being produced in London or by a band who make more effort to dress like hipsters and proclaim their genius to the world, then it would be all over the damn news.  It’s genius, pure and simple.

In fact it reminds me that, instead of wondering why some bands end up disappearing down the avenue of experimentalism and bizarre crossover projects with architects and painters and various other mentalists, I find myself increasingly wondering why so few bands do it.  I mean, if you’re creatively inclined and curious and interested in the world and exploring ideas and so on, surely bizarre experiments and weird projects should be something you’d be inescapably drawn to, rather than remaining cossetted in a narrow little world of three and a half minute verse-bridge-chorus pop songs.

Found, I salute you.  This lunatic contraption is a joy to behold and one of the best things I’ve ever seen.  Ever.

*Apparently, I have yet to see it for myself, but it’s on again on the 22nd August so be sure to get your tickets.