The above video is something I found whilst browsing Folk Radio UK this morning.  The animation was done by a guy called Yannick Puig, and the music is by a band called Kwoon.  It’s difficult to think of this as a music video when the visual element is so beautiful – it seems a little insulting to the film-makers, honestly.  Folk Radio descibe it as a short film, and I think that’s the best way to put it – completely spellbinding – but then I have always been a total sucker for beautiful animation.

So, now that I’ve managed to get my concentration back and focussed on the matters in hand, what the fucking hairy old arse is happening in Edinburgh this week then?  Well, for starters I am turning 35 on Friday.

I would say that there is nothing sadder than an ageing hipster, but I was never actually a hipster, so I think I’m clear of that one. I remember the hipsters at school, and although I got on well with them and traded mixtapes, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call one of them – too sporty I suppose.  NHS prescription glasses and flying elbows on the basketball court do not go very well together. And basketball takes place indoors – as for football, well, just forget it.  Musicians play football occasionally, but hipsters most certainly do not!

Any old how, what’s happening this week in chilly Edinburgh then?  Well, nothing at all as far as I can tell.  I’ve checked the venues, checked my calendar, checked my Facebook events, checked everything I can think of and… nothing. So what the fuck am I going to do with myself then?

Well on Thursday I am popping through to Glasgow to a Music Business Innovation thingy, at which I will be attempting to convey whatever wisdom I can muster about how to interact with media in the 21st Century.  The only problem I have with the whole event is that all the panels are happening at once, and there are a couple I would quite like to go to actually, but it looks like that will be impossible.

Then afterwards, it’ll probably be the 13th Note for Deathpodal, Le Reno Amps and the Scottish Enlightenment, and hopefully a pint with me old pals Colin and JC.  Oh, and I’ll be recording a podcast with Glasgow Podcart while I’m through there.

So, in the absence of gigs this week, I will be working on the Lach and Savings and Loan Toad Sessions, finalising the details for Yusuf’s criminally unlucky album launches, and spending some time in the house with Mrs. Toad.  She has the day off today so we will probably read books and lounge about on the couch.  I will almost inevitably put some vinyl on too; mostly likely The Books‘ The Way Out, and the new Mount Erie, Song Islands Vol. 2.

My music listening has become quite compartmentalised these days, which is odd.  I don’t actually have access to my digital library downstairs in the living room, although I know that would be easy enough to change.  Consequently the only music we listen to in our leisure time is now vinyl, so even my favourite albums of the year don’t get much time at the moment, unless I have them on record.

Conversely, because I have the two aforementioned albums on vinyl only, I’ve just realised I’ve never actually reviewed them on the site, which is ridiculous.  But because they don’t exist in digital form in my office where I do my writing they’ve never really been on that ‘imminent’ list, despite the Books album in particular being one of my favourites of the year.  This is not exactly a fascinating little tale, I know, just something marginally peculiar which occurred to me this weekend.

Well, it can’t all be essays and reviews and discussions and art now can it.

What an enjoyably confusing EP this is.  Exu_Wow by Deathpodal starts out as a nice, slightly meandering record, in no rush to get itself moving and generally giving the impression of a nice, pleasant twenty minutes of laid back, just slightly experimental indie with guitar which reminds me, if anything, of some of the less resolutely pop efforts of the mid-nineties.

By the time Squirrel and the Fox starts, that impression is pretty much cemented.  The guitars are prominent again, and a nice, rumbling cello underpins it all.  It’s not so much that this is bad – quite the opposite, it’s actually very good – it’s just that by the time the next song is over you realise that it is really nothing like the full picture of this EP.

Every Superstition Shall Be Removed reminds me of the Metalcast we recorded here a few months ago.  Specifically, it reminds me of the kind of early, shouty Pavement and Nirvana which a lot of people who crossed comfortably between the metal and the indie worlds might have listened to.  It’s either metal played by someone with a very large number of indie and slacker rock influences, or… well, rearrange the genres in that sentence as you will, you’ll be there or thereabouts whichever order you put them in.

Sycamore follows, which is a short instrumental number, with shuffling cutlery in the background and slowly clanking piano to the fore, before There is a Diagram for This, the EP’s longest song, brings matters to a close with something of a mixture of all that has gone before.  If Exu_Wow was long enough to justify the term, you’d say this song was the EP in microcosm.  In fact it is sort of like a reprise of that which has gone before, starting with the nice, comforting guitary indie, building to a screaming climax and then finally petering out into a two minute instrumental fade.

I like this.  I don’t exactly like all of the sounds, and in isolation I might not actually like all of the songs.  But this isn’t a collection of songs, it is a whole piece of work, and one which lulls you in nicely before wrong-footing you with one of the most well-executed flourishes I’ve seen in a while.  I like the way Every Superstition… doesn’t just surprise you from a musical point of view, it fundamentally changes the way you view the songs around it, acting as the fulcrum of the entire record.

Very clever.  And very good.

Deathpodal – There is a Diagram for This

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It’s been a very, very long time since we had a nice simple podcast of me just chattering about music without extraneous distractions of various drunken people babbling to one another over the top of it.

Last week was Ruth, Michael and Dylan, the week before that was Vic and Peej, then me and Mrs. Toad and then there was the one from Homegame, which was nuts, so this one is just calm and sensible and plain vanilla and basically just me playing some songs, wondering how to pronounce names like Borcherdt, and talking pish like usual.

Next week will be the Mumford & Sons Toad Session, which is nice.

Toadcast #116 – The Dead Calmcast

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01. The Van Allen Belt – The Way You Look (02:14)
02. Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost (08.50)
03. Over the Wall – Settle Down (16.56)
04. Deathpodal – Squirrel and the Fox (20.55)
05. Brian Borcherdt – While I was Asleep (28.27)
06. Emit Bloch – Dorothy (34.34)
07. David Thomas Broughton – Perfect Louse (40.49)
08. Mat Riviere – FYH (43.09)
09. Member of the Wedding – New Century (51.37)
10. The Sequins – Offside & Beautiful (57.09)