Song, by Toad

This year’s Toad Christmas Party will be a bit sad really, despite still being a big old celebration, as it is the last night at the Bowery, my favourite underground music venue in the city.  They will be closing their doors after giving Toad Records and a great many of my friends a venue to call home for the last year, and this is a very great shame.

Nevertheless, this is not the season for sulking.  The Bowery will go on, just more as an itinerant hobo than a furtive squatter, and this is our chance to give them a hell of a send-off.  We have music in the bandstand from Toad Records band Jesus H. Foxx, hopefully soon-to-be Toad Records band Inspector Tapehead, and some chancer named Rory Sutherland, more commonly known as the scruffy one in Broken Records, who has put together a unique set of violin looping and erm, well I’m not sure what, to be honest.

On top of that there will be acoustic stuff through in the bar, where The Douglas Firs, Tisso Lake, Thomas Western and the returning prodigal son Rob St. John will be performing, as well as some celebrity DJs (more likely to be some of Ruth, Jane or my pals who we manage to blackmail into helping out).

Because it’s the last night, because it’s Christmas and because we have a lot of bands, everything will be starting earlier than usual, with mince pies and mulled wine from about five or so, and the first acoustic stuff should be starting at about six or seven, to make sure we have time to get everyone on stage.

It’s going to be fucking brilliant, and remember, as it’s the last night:

the bar must be drunk absolutely dry!

Inspector Tapehead – Humdinger

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Jesus H. Foxx – Matter

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Today I’m going to introduce you to a couple of under the radar projects which are both related to Song, by Toad Records bands.  In both cases I don’t really know what the future of the respective projects might be, because I don’t know how far either is going to be pushed, but they are both very good and I thought they needed sharing.

Firstly we have The Douglas Firs.  This is a side project of Jesus H, Foxx drummer Neil Insh, and has been bubbling under for years.  He’s been working on this album for ages, but his work hasn’t really seen the light of day outside a small circle of his friends, in part because he really isn’t all that up for performing live.

It sounds, on the face of it, like quite experimental music.  You might call it math-folk if you wanted a bodged mental shortcut for getting a picture of it.  You can hear a lot of the bursting harmonies and repetitive percussion of Jesus H. Foxx’s music, but the sounds are not really all that similar.

This has more of an atmosphere of experimental, almost ambient electronica a lot of the time, but there are surprisingly traditional Scottish folk influences in the fiddle and some of the rhythms which I wouldn’t expect from a leather-jacket-sporting drummer who batters the shite out of his drums in quite the way Neil does.

The nice thing about both the use of vocal harmonies and the more traditonal folk influences is that they are really beautifully used to bring the songs into focus.  The more experimental aspects drift and rumble along, and can become quite meandering until these details emerge, sometimes quite suddenly, to bring everything into relief.

These mp3s are just rough-cut demos, so not yet the finished article, but they give you a flavour of what’s going on here.  It’s no pop album though, and but if you have patience for your music and like to sit down and absorb it then this all looks like it could be very good indeed.  If he ever finishes the bloody thing!

The Douglas Firs – The Quickening

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The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home

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Oh, and it appears that there are a couple of other Douglas Firses on MySpace, which might complicate matters, should this ever come to fruition.