Fast because I need to squeeze eleven songs into an hour because I just didn’t want to trim the playlist, fast because I want to get out into the back garden asap to enjoy the sun, and fast because um… well, just because.  I dunno.  Fuck you, anyway, this is the one-hundred-and-eighty-first stupid name for one of these damn things I’ve had to come up with.  The names were bound to get worse over time really, weren’t they.

Anyhow, once this is done, I expect to get a couple of hours out in the garden before buggering off to Henry’s for the Edinburgh School for the Deaf, Zed Penguin and Spook School gig.  These things have to happen on bloody glorious days, don’t they. Ah well, at least it wasn’t a Toad Session this time, like it usually is the moment we get a sunny day.

Direct download: Toadcast #181 – The Fastcast

01. Yo La Tengo – Outsmartener (00.25)
02. Enfant Bastard – Demo Scene (06.40)
03. Lambchop – Came Home Late (12.34)
04. Smog – Teenage Spaceship (16.35)
05. Castor – Watcher Buckles (21.56)
06. Boring Girls – Tin Foliage (27.57)
07. Mitchell Museum – What They Built (32.15)
08. Plastic Animals – It Fell Apart (35.27)
09. Seafieldroad – Cramond Island Causeway (40.56)
10. Sun Glitters – Things Are… (47.11)
11. Little Deadman – Post Helado Madness (52.31)

Right, welcome to the revamped, retooled and rewritten version of yesterday’s very brief exercise in commercial opportunism:

Yesterday: Milk Maid, PAWS & Plastic Animals at Henry’s Cellar Bar – Fiver in, and it was fucking awesome!

I have to confess, I was mildly terrified about putting on a gig in Edinburgh on a Monday night, particularly at pretty short notice, but it was really busy and I had an absolute blast.

It turns out Mrs. Toad loves PAWS.  I told her she would!

Anyhow, we now have the whole rest of the week to deal with, and as you have possibly deduced from the graphic I will be engaging in a bare minimum of fun – until Friday, that is.

Wednesday 15th June 2011: Wu Lyf at Cabaret Voltaire.

This has got to be the trendiest gig in Edinburgh for fucking ages.  Wu Lyf are one of these bands who were snapped up by a posh label before they were out of their proverbial musical nappies, or at least that’s kind of the impression I get (with, admittedly, precisely zero basis in actual research). On that basis alone this could make for an interesting night.

Friday 17th June 2011: Meursault, Inspector Tapehead & Beerjacket at The Caves.

Meursault’s already bulging tour bus will swell to nine occupants for this gig, I believe, making them even more unwieldy than a stampede of startled cows. A venue as striking as The Caves, however, is probably the best possible place for that kind of grandiosity and I am really looking forward to seeing them at full tilt.  Due to a series of increasingly annoying coincidences I haven’t seen Inspector Tapehead for a good while now, so I am really looking forward to that, as well as my first chance to see Beerjacket.  Tickets can still be bought in advance, either from here or from Avalanche Records.

Meursault – Flittin’

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Friday 17th June 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf album launch at Sneaky Pete’s.

If only some arse hadn’t put Meursault, Tapeheads and Beerjacket on just round the corner I would most certainly be here on Friday.  As it is I will try and dodge along the street and catch as much of their set as I can while Inspector Tapehead and Meursault change over.  I don’t, admittedly, know ESftD’s music all that deeply but what I have seen, particularly live, has been intense, loud, epic, rough as tits and absolutely excellent.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness

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Saturday 18th June 2011: ‘Armelloday’ – Armellodie Records all-dayer at Avalanche Records.

A series of in-stores arranged by Glasgow’s really rather brilliant Armellodie Records, with the running order as follows: Cuddly Shark, 2pm; Le Reno Amps, 2.30pm; Something Beginning With L, 3pm; The Scottish Enlightenment @ 3.30pm.

The Scottish Enlightenment – The Universe is Drifting Apart (Toad Session)

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Saturday 18th June 2011: The Douglas Firs, Something Beginning With L & Plastic Animals at Sneaky Pete’s.

Plastic Animals were excellent last night, and the new Douglas Firs album really is splendid, so this one is shaping up to be an excellent late-night bevvying follow-up to the Armelloday event at Avalanche during the afternoon.

The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home

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For anyone wishing to sneak back and forth between the Edinburgh School for the Deaf gig and the Toad one at the Caves, I am roughly expecting stage times to be along these lines: Beerjacket 8pm-8:30pm, Inspector Tapehead 8:45-9:15 and Meursault 9:30-10pm, and apparently Edinburgh School for the Deaf are onstage at about 9pm, although that is just something I heard down the pub so don’t hold me to it.

Also, bear in mind that Meursault and Inspector Tapehead don’t have the simplest of all setups, so fifteen minutes changeover time might be really quite optimistic.

Well there’s no real way of stitching this little lot together coherently, so I suppose a big old pile of stuff in no sensible order is the only real way to do it.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf have a new single out. It’s digital download only, so I can’t very well put it up here for you, but you can expect a song in this week’s podcast, so keep an eye out there.  For those disinclined to wait, you can simply pop over here and buy a copy from Bubblegum Records.

It’s a two-song business, with Orpheus Ascending being more acoustic and pretty, and their trademark (alright, alright, they’re a bit new to have a ‘trademark’ yet, sorry) fuzzy guitars very much in evidence on its sister track Orpheus Descending.

Horsecollar have a Kickstarter project to make a 7″ from the two songs on their Bandcamp page.  I am really only encouraging you to contribute to this because I personally want one.  The jauntiness of Christopher in particular deserves to be immortalised in this manner, so get on with it – you can contribute here.

There is a Lau vs Adem EP approaching, and it looks extremely interesting.  Around the time Silver Columns first emerged I had the chance to interview Adem (and Johnny of course) and he came across as a really nice, really thoughtful guy, so I am really looking forward to hearing more from this.

As it is I have a brief promotional video and a completely fucking different remix (see this week’s podcast) to share with you.  I’ll confess to knowing very little about Lau, unfortunately, but then again, this is why this kind of collaboration is so interesting, because it takes you from one artist you know to exploring another you might not.

Finally, I have a couple more gigs to announce. Fatcat Records’ recent signing Milk Maid have agreed to play a show on Monday 13th June, supported by two of Scotland’s most promising new bands: Glasgow’s PAWS and Plastic Animals from Edinburgh (tickets here). In July these two bands will be joined by the awesome Scottish Enlightenment in a sort of Toad Rapture lineup to celebrate the release of Plastic Animals’ debut EP.  I am really looking forward to both of these gigs.

Milk Maid – Such Fun

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PAWS – Ariel

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Plastic Animals – Test

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I haven’t been all that excited by new Scottish bands for a while, so it’s quite nice to see some more interesting ones emerging again.

Plastic Animals are Edinburgh based and have apparently been going for ages, but have only recently acquired a manager, who has basically been whipping them into shape to get their tunes out there, get releasing stuff and get bloody playing.

They have an EP launch at Sneaky Pete’s in July with the rather excellent Paws, and this is a gig I will be attending with considerable interest.  There’s not much to know about them so far, but they keep allowing interesting things to trickle out via their Tumblr site.

The latest is the really rather excellent Test, which I happened across today.  I friend of mine asked if I was listening to the new King Creosote and Jon Hopkins album, and that’s kind of what it sounds like – a really slow, dreamy atmosphere, plenty of hiss and drone, and lovely vocals.  Some of their other stuff is a bit more guitary – more in the standard pop song vein, I suppose you could say – and sometimes a pleasant afternoon daydream away from shoegaze.

I don’t really know enough about this band to get too giddy just yet, but they seem really promising, and if they can build on the excellence of Test then they could well be ones to keep an eye on.

Plastic Animals – It Fell Apart (Demo)

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No, no, don’t worry this isn’t some sort of chillout special (although we did actually do one of those once upon a time).  The only reason this is called the Chillcast is because on what was a beautifully sunny day for the rest of Scotland, Edinburgh performed its age old trick of drawing a freezing sea mist off the North Sea – the haar, as it’s called – and turning a lovely Spring day into a damp, chilly sulk.  Bastard.

I realised a while back that I don’t actually cover all that much Scottish music, despite the location of this blog being quite a prominent feature of the thing. This week, though, we have something like five Scottish (or Scottish-based) bands on this, and all of them relatively under the radar ones as well.

Anyhow, I am off to play nicely with Mrs. Toad’s colleagues for the rest of the day, in some sort of horrific bonding exercise.  Ah well, it pays the bills I suppose, and it’s not like she doesn’t have to spend an awful lot of time hanging out with my ‘colleagues’.

Direct download: Toadcast #171 – The Chillcast

01. The Sandwitches – Summer of Love (00.11)
02. The Japanese War Effort – Pool Attendant (7.41)
03. King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone (10.42)
04. PAWS – Summer Wipeout (16.22)
05. Marcy Playground – Wave Motion Gun (25.05)
06. The Low Anthem – Boeing 737 (33.40)
07. Horsecollar – Christopher (39.12)
08. Morris Major – In Amongst My Ideas (47.11)
09. Plastic Animals – It Fell Apart (Demo) (50.34)
10. Earth Girl Helen Brown – Girls of My Dreams (59.06)

So, I spent the morning tidying up my desk and the office, and I now think I know why tidy people are tidy: it makes you feel enormously efficient, without ever actually having to accomplish anything!  Sly, skiving bastards!  It’s like people making a great outward show of their piety, whilst generally acting like judgmental, ungenerous bigots.  Never trust tidy people, they are just trying to mask their ineffectiveness – there’s a new axiom to live by!

Also, in today’s bone-headed news update of the week, apparently Edinburgh legend Withered Hand is being denied his visa to play SXSW due to US immigration deciding that he is not a musician of extraordinary ability.

I rather think people would be more inclined to take national border control more seriously if governments didn’t consistently assign their stupidest citizens to police them.  I will take this shit seriously when you demonstrate through your recruitment policies that you are also taking it seriously, you arse-clowns.  People are welcome to like and dislike whatever music they wish, but this seems to be seriously implying that those people who organise SXSW and those in Creative Scotland who sponsored Dan’s application are of lesser ability to judge the artistic merit of a band than some random, knuckle-dragging, frustrated karate kid yahoo in US immigration.  Are you fucking kidding me?

Come to think of it, maybe if we petition UK immigration we might be able to do something about that over-promoted pole-dancer Beyonce Knowles being invited to play Glastonbury.

Anyhow, for those who may need some good music to diffuse the simmering rage this nonsense has provoked, here is what is going on in Edinburgh this week:

Death Vessel & Rozi Plain tomorrow (Tuesday 8th) at the Electric Circus has been cancelled, sadly.

Wednesday 9th March 2011: Meursault, Washington Irving & Graeme Clark at The Caves.

Would it be fair to suggest that most of the people reading this have probably heard of Meursault?  I suppose it would, but with a new drummer, (kinda) new bass player, new violist and a departed electronics/guitars/pretty much anything else player then I reckon no-one (not even me) has actually seen all that much which might resemble the current band.  And yon Graeme Clark – surely not the former bass player from Wet Wet Wet? Surely!

Meursault – Sleet

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Wednesday 9th March 2011: Napoleon III at the Electric Circus.

Signed to Brainlove, one of the UK’s best small independent labels, Napoleon III got all sorts of giddy reviews for their debut album Christiana at the tail end of last year, and I think this will be your first chance to see them up here.

Napoleon IIIrd – The Unknown Unknown

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Friday 11th March 2011: Y’All is Fantasy Island‘s last ever show, with Loch Awe & Two Wings at Sneaky Pete’s.

No more YIFI.  These lads were one of the most prominent bands on the Edinburgh DIY scene when I first came here, so give them a last hurrah at Sneaky’s and then go out and get horrible pished afterwards.  And I know nothing at all about Two Wings, but there’s a track of theirs embedded below: really fucking weird, eh, but in a good way!

And for those who fancy a bit more of a racket, I don’t know enough about any of these bands to properly recommend the gigs in particular, but Plastic Animals are playing Cabaret Voltaire on Saturday 12th and Forkeye, Fatalists and Parallax Scrolls are at Henry’s the same night.  Both look worth investigating, but I have to admit general ignorance here, sorry.

Well, I am now eight working days away from shiftless unemployment becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur, and as mental a move as this might be I am very, very excited to get going.  I am an obssessive type, as you probably know by now, and I need projects to get just a little bit too focussed on, so this should be perfect.

Anyhow, the inital lineup for the Edge Festival has been announced.  So far so moderately interesting, with bands like Eels, The Low Anthem, Broken Records and Beirut on the bill.  These things tend to get better as they get closer, so I reckon that’s a pretty bloody solid start – now we just need to talk Eels into a Toad Session!

Eels – Not Ready Yet

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In other news, The Pop Cop (see image, but with added sexy) is back online.  After Google decided that simply being accused of something was at least as good as actually doing it and deleted the Pop Cop’s entire original site there was an extensive campaign on Jason’s behalf, but Google did precisely nothing.  I know the appalling DMCA obliges them to remove material accused of copyright violation (not actually in violation of copyright, you understand, merely accused of being so) but it does not dictate their customer service policy, and I have to say their ‘fuck off customers’ approach is an interesting one.  Not entirely novel of course, the music industry have been at it for years, but interesting nevertheless.

Oh, and in terms of festivals, the Leith Festival is now underway, with eagleowl and Blueflint at the Village tonight.  That’s a really nice venue actually, and I really do recommend getting along if you can.  The rest of the musical events can be found here, so have a dig through them – Leith is by some distance my favourite place for a pint in and around Edinburgh, and the Leith Festival will hopefully be less overrun by Southern students and their zany antics than the Edinburgh Festival.  Zany fucking antics.  Yeuch.

Oh, and at the Roxy on Wednesday 16th we have Pekko Kappi and Alasdair Roberts in another Braw Trails gig -  a collaboration between Tracer Trails and Braw Gigs, as well as Lissie, Alan Pownall and The Boy Who Trapped the Sun at the Electric Circus.

Alan Pownall – The Others

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And then on Thursday we have El Mató A Un Policía Motorizado, Debutant and Plastic Animals at the Voodoo Rooms, which also looks rather interesting. And that, Toaderinos, is that.

Obviously, from my perspective there is one big and important gig this week:

Sunday 9th August 2009: Animal Magic Tricks (with Pete from The Leg & Neil from Meursault) at the first Toad House Gig.

Use the link below to buy tickets and please do buy them in advance because we can’t have too many people in the house, and at the same time I would be gutted if it was empty, so it would help us plan ahead a little:

In the rest of the city, however, the Edinburgh Festicle well and truly kicks off this week.  This means that despite a rather quiet build-up, the weekend is just fucking mental, frankly.  My personal choice is going to be Trampoline on Saturday, I think.  I’m really interested to hear what Jonnie Common’s doing on his own, although Rob St. John was excellent at Electric Circus on Saturday and his show at the Portrait Gallery with Emily Scott should be fantastic.  I’ve probably missed out loads, but you really are going to have to expect that during August I think because there’s just going to be so much stuff going on, and not listed in the obvious and usual places either, so I’ll probably miss a fair bit.

I sulk about the Festival, honestly, because it tends to utterly steamroll anything which would actually happen in the city otherwise, but this year there does seem to be a lot of actual Edinburgh stuff taking place, particularly in terms of music.  For anyone wanting a full run down, Bart wrote an excellent summary of what to expect for the next few weeks last weekend, and you really should read it if you want a musically rewarding August.

Tuesday 4th August 2009: Debutant, Plastic Animals & Yahweh at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This will be quite post-rocky and quite atmospheric and quite noisy.  Yup, noisy. Excellent!

Friday 7th August 2009: Woodpigeon & Woodenbox With a Fistful of Fivers at Sneaky Pete’s.

I have never been any more than a casual fan of Woodpigeon, but I am sort of liking their recent album Treasury Library Canada.  For me though, the real reason to attend this gig is the excellent Woodenbox who can be phenomenal live.
Woodpigeon – Cities of Weather

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Friday 7th August 2009: The Stranglers at the Picturehouse.

No, I am not a Stranglers afficionado, yes I would just be going for the famous ones, no I don’t care.  Sometimes ‘just the hits’ can be great, especially when they’re as great as Golden Brown.
The Stranglers – Golden Brown

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Friday 7th August 2009: The Radiation Line, The Kays Lavelle & Adam Stafford at the Wee Red Bar.

This is the official launch night for the Trampoline August shows, and will be a good chance to hear live versions of things on the approaching Kays Lavelle album.

Friday 7th & Saturday 8th August 2009: Mumford & Sons at Cabaret Voltaire.

Even though I am not really as keen on the band as I was when I first heard them, when they honestly blew me away, they are still phenomenal live.  It’s sort of gospelly banjo raucousness, I suppose, and bloody brilliant.
Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page

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Saturday 8th August 2009: Rob St. John & Emily Scott at the National Portrait Gallery.

I pretty much described why I thought this would be good in the main post didn’t I.  I shall just add that Emily is launching a new album, in case you need even more incentive to turn up.

Saturday 8th August 2009: David Byrne at the Playhouse.

What do I have to say about this?  The man was Talking Heads!  To cap that he’s been incredibly positive about what the internet can mean to young bands and had some very well-considered things to say about how to make the most of the new environment in the music industry.
Talking Heads – Hey Now (Yes, I know this isn’t ‘David Byrne’ per se, but bugger off, I love this album.)

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Saturday 8th August 2009: Jonnie Common, Animal Magic Tricks & Conquering Animal Sound play Trampoline at the Wee Red Bar.

This should be very low-fi and somewhat scratchy but with lovely underlying melodies, if my knowledge of both Jonnie Common and Animal Magic Tricks is anything to go by.  I don’t know Conquering Animal Sound, but then that’s why we go to gigs, isn’t it.