If you’re going to everything that’s on this week, you might wish to consider drinking cups of tea at gigs or you’ll have a liver like a fucking cricket ball by the end of all this.  You could literally drink your way through the week, the finest of music dancing in your ears, and a great big beer-hoover emptying your wallet.

My absolute definites are Withered Hand, Sparrow & the Workshop, Trembling Bells, Findo Gask and, erm, Jesus H. Foxx.  Christ.  I am going to have to make sure I have a couple of orange juice gigs in that lot or I’ll be hungover for a week and possibly divorced as well by the time Sunday comes around.

Bad liver, naughty liver, must be punished.

Monday 16th February 2009: Emmy the Great at Cabaret Voltaire.

I am a little conflicted on Emmy the Great.  It’s far too tempting to call her Emmy the Perfectly Reasonable, but that is about where I stand.  She has some very sharp lyrics, and has written some really good tunes, but on listening to her debut album I found myself perhaps less able to enjoy her music in large chunks than I was when I was sampling it in small slices.
Emmy the Great – Where is My Mind

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Tuesday 17th February 2009: Chris Whittle & Simon Kempston at the Bowery.

This will be an evening of guitary singer-songwriters, so perhaps the right time to take it easy and just bask in the music, instead of getting pickled and dancing about the place.
Chris Whittle – Stay

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Wednesday 18th February 2009: Withered Hand, Sparrow & the Workshop & Jo Foster at the Bowery.

I haven’t seen Withered Hand’s twisted folk songs performed for a while now.  Nor, actually, have I seen Sparrow & the Workshop’s clattersome Americana.  There is no way on earth I’ll be missing this gig.
Withered Hand – Cornflake

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Thursday 19th February 2009: Findo Gask, Babygod & Night Noise Team play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

Findo Gask’s new single One Eight Zero is one of the best things I’ve heard in ages – part electronic pop, but far too lovelorn and plaintive for that.  I am really looking forward to seeing them play.  I know a lot less about the other two bands, but Limbo can generally be relied upon to produce the goods, so I’ll not be late!
Findo Gask – One Eight Zero

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Friday 20th February 2009: Trembling Bells at the Bowery.

I am fascinated to see how Trembling Bells’ theatrical folk music translates live.  Carbeth, their forthcoming album, is a fantastic record, albeit one with such a distinctive style I can’t imagine it will appeal to everyone.  But for myself, there’s no chance I’ll be missing this one.
Trembling Bells – I Took to You (Like Christ to Wood)

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Sunday 22nd February 2009: Crystal Stilts & Jesus H. Foxx at Sneaky Pete’s.

Any band who want to get anywhere this year have Crystal in their name.  I never realised when I reviewed their EP last September that they would go on to be quite so buzzy, especially given the low-fi sound, grumbling away with distant vocals and C86 guitars, but here they are.  And Jesus H. Foxx have been working on all sorts of new stuff as well, which I am very excited to hear.
Crystal Stilts – Crippled Croon

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Sunday 22nd February 2009: The Spinto Band at Cabaret Voltaire.

I don’t know the Spinto Band very well, although I’ve heard the name often enough.  Still, a quick listen to their MySpace page confirms that were it not for Sneaky Pete’s I would want to be at this gig as well.  Ah well.  In a week like this, something’s got to give.
The Spinto Band – Summer Grof

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Song, by Toad is the future of music.

So are Fence Records. So is Welcome to Our TV Show.

This is neither as serious nor, actually, as facetious a statement as it seems. Song, by Toad? The future of music? Ah hah hah haaa, what vainglorious hubris! Well actually I’m not being serious, but it’s not completely silly. In the world of music 2.0 what we’re doing here, especially as we move into session podcasts, with added video and pictures and mp3s of session tracks, and again as we start to release collectors’ 7″ vinyl and as we form links with the local music community, may be an insignificant part, but it is a part nonetheless of what is happening to the music industry.

Now, I am obviously not talking about replacing Sony BMG or MTV or anything so silly. I am saying that music is turning from a one-dimensional – i.e. just a tune and a story – into a multi-dimensional enterprise. Old music existed just as a song. Then it added particular recordings by particular artists. And now what appears to be happening is what I am talking about here: it’s adding everything.

You can experience this blog in numerous ways: you can stream the mp3s via The Hype Machine; you can listen to the podcasts; you can read and interact on the posts; you can be part of it by being involved in the Edinburgh music scene; you can be part of the interactive cluster of people who participate in each other’s stuff, like the Contrast Podcast, the series of soundtrack posts, or the ‘cultural’ exchange that’s about to happen between myself and The Waiting Room (DC, to regular commenters). Soon there will be live sessions with interviews, exclusive session mp3s, Dylan – one of my regular readers – is pencilled in to do some really good photos of the sessions and I may even start filming them, once I’m up and running. It’s called vertical integration, if you can stomach such terms, and it means I will be providing everything – editorial and review on one hand, social forum on another, local community node on another, record production and release on another, and then multimedia content on another. This may be a small and insignificant embodiment of this phenomenon but it is squarely ‘Music 2.0′.

They may not thank me for saying it, but Fence Records are a sterling example. They’re a record label, a community and, to an extent, gig promoters. People feel part of what they do, and they can get everything from Fence: they can play, attend gigs, make artwork, buy and listen to music, take part in the demo process through the Picket Fence series or just exchange obscure smart-arsery on the message boards.

Now to the point of this post: Jeremy Warmsley. I must apologise to him actually, because he emailed me ages ago wondering if I’d be interested in writing about Welcome to Our TV Show and I ended up unintentionally ignoring it because I didn’t have an easy box to fit it into, which was lazy of me. Welcome.. is a project whereby Jeremy and his mates invite a bunch of musicians round to the house and put together a kind of live recording session where they play songs, try out new stuff, collaborate, and generally just enjoy themselves with music. They film the whole enterprise, they release the session mp3s, they photograph it to bits and what you have at the end is ramshackle and slightly amateurish, but such a massively important antidote to XFM-friendly stadium indie that it fills me with joy to see it happening.

So, for their second episode they had Lightspeed Champion, Emmy the Great and Laura Groves – a really superb mix – and the videos are up on their MySpace page. They also have a presence on YouTube, Facebook and are currently working on their own website. The major labels won’t innovate, so the musicians have had to. Ultimately I assume that The Future of Music is going to end up being owned by a small handful of massive corporations because, well that’s just life isn’t it. But the turmoil at the moment is giving real opportunity for grass-roots innovation, and it is the approaches being pioneered by the likes of these guys that shows us where this industry is ultimately going, if you ask me.

Emmy the Great – 24
Laura Groves – I Wish I
Lightspeed Champion – Hooker Song
Jeremy Warmsley & Emmy the Great – The Boat Song

And here’s a sample segment from the show itself:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a quite splendid podcast. Not the chat – there’s actually blessed little of that for a change – but the actual music. There may not be the one or two big names I tend to try and slip in to make sure that casual listener more likely to have a listen and thus bring an audience to the smaller bands, but it just didn’t quite happen. I like to do it for myself too, really, but for some reason they just didn’t quite get a look in this week, although I did throw in a rather obscure Pogues track, but it just seemed fine without them.

I really like this one though, and there are some excellent new things to hear, so get stuck in. It’s all quite an acoustic folk-pop sort of atmosphere, so I hope that sort of thing is your bag, but I’ve thrown in a couple of slightly different things, like David Cronenberg’s Wife, Mother & the Addicts and A Hawk & a Hacksaw to make sure it’s not too one-paced. So get stuck in, my little Toadlings, music a-plenty and jolly fine stuff too!

Toadcast #8 – New Things & Englishness[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo8.mp3]

1. Donny Hue & the Colours – Humming With the Flowerbirds (01.01)
2. Monkey Swallows the Universe – Jimmy Down the Well (06.19)
3. Emmy the Great – Canopies & Grapes (10.26)
4. Mother & the Addicts – Are Others (14.30)
5. Champion Kickboxer – Perforations (20.42)
6. Jake Flowers & the Carol-Anne Showband – Annabel (26.06)
7. Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Tickle Me Pink (28.07)
8. Mirah & Spectratone International – Supper (34.09)
9. Patti Page – Old Cape Cod (38.01)
10. A Hawk & a Hacksaw – The Way the Wind Blows (41.52)
11. David Cronenberg’s Wife – My Ukrainian Girlfriend (47.20)
12. The Pogues – First Day of Forever (54.08)
13. Iron & Wine – Kingdom of the Animals (57.22)
14. The Ralfe Band – Albatross Waltz (63.23)
15. A Hawk & a Hacksaw – Portlandtown (68.19)