Well the Sounds From the Other City headache has just about worn off, and I am back in my chair at Toad Hall staring at the internet and wondering what pearls of wisdom I can possibly add to its infinite pages of bounteous goodness this fine morning. Let’s face it, if the internet doesn’t already contain all the writing in the world, then it can’t be bloody far off, can it. But hooray, here’s more.

For obvious reasons my focus will be on the two Sparrow and the Workshop album launches this week – on Wednesday at Mono in Glasgow with Strike the Colours, and on Thursday at The Caves in Edinburgh with the brilliant Magic Arm. The tickets will be available for £6 from Brown Paper Tickets up until about twelve hours in advance of the event itself, and if you miss that then they’ll be £8 on the door. Not a massive difference, I grant you, but I thought we should at least try. Anyhow, Sparrow are pretty fearsome live these days, and if you doubt me this is what Clash Magazine had to say about their London show recently.

So, self-serving headline-hogging aside, what else is going on this week? Well it turns out there’s plenty, actually. The other Very Exciting One from my perspective is the eagleowl album launch on Friday, at the Pleasance Theatre. After two Sparrow and the Workshop gigs I think I will be entirely ready to kick back and relax and watch a show which it is entirely someone else’s job to be stressed about.  Eagleowl’s slowcore has developed a distinctly epic krautyness recently, and I would imagine there will be a bit of a whirlwind finale to this gig. Also, about fucking time too, guys, but congratulations. It’s a fine record.

The Electric Circus have a couple of good gigs this week as well, with Treetop Flyers‘ choral Americana on Wednesday, and Adrian Crowley’s hushed minimalism on Friday. Personally, for obvious reasons, I can attend neither of these gigs, but they both look good to me, and I would recommend them.

[Edit: I am a fucking idiot, I forgot that Hookers For Jesus and Edinburgh School For the Deaf are at Sneaky Pete's on Saturday as well!]

And that, my fine pixelly friends, would appear to be about it for this week.  Tune in next week when you’ll hear Nurse Piggy say…

The release of Sparrow and the Workshop’s third album is still a good month or two away, but as anticipation builds to a near hysterical fever pitch* there are a few ways in which you can ease your anticipation, at least for the immediate future.

For Southern types, the band will be playing two London shows around the album release. The first is a late-notice show at the Shacklewell Arms on Wednesday 10th. It’s only a fiver in and there aren’t that many tickets available, so if you intend going I recommend you get them now.

There’s also going to be a show at the Lexington, on the 24th June I think, but given it ain’t listed on their site yet maybe there are some details still to be worked out there. Besides, that’s ages away, you really should go on Wednesday anyway.

I assume most people reading this site will have heard the Shock Shock single by now, but for those itching for just a little more music from Murderopolis, the video below was made from a Marc Riley 6Music session version of Odessa, which is the third song on the album. The rest of the session is embedded below the video, if you want to hear the whole thing.

In addition to the London shows, there are of course two launch nights planned up in Scotland: in Glasgow on the 8th May at Mono, and in Edinburgh on the 9th at The Caves. Tickets will be £8 on the door, but you can get them for £6 in advance from here.  Go on, it helps me plan, and makes the evening cheaper for yourself as well, what’s not to like! And in the meantime, you can pre-order Murderopolis on CD or vinyl from here. Enjoy!

*Well alright then, but what’s a better way of saying ‘people seem quite keen’ but with a bit more oomph?

The Semitoadcast is not an erection joke, it is so named because there are four tracks on this one by Song, by Toad Records bands. Two – the Yusuf Azak and Lil Daggers tunes – are not actually on the label, and two – Sparrow and the Workshop and Plastic Animals – are.

One of the others was just an experiment which Yusuf fired up on Facebook the other week, but happens to be ace, and the other is a freebie on this compilation by Miami magazine Pure Honey. So not quite Toad Records releases as such, but sort of related.

I also discuss our plans for Record Store Day, which includes the Beer vs. Records launch, the release of our new Split 12″ and an all-day event in The Last Word on St. Stephen’s Street in Stockbridge, in partnership with VoxBox Records.

Toadcast #264 – The Semitoadcast by Song, By Toad on Mixcloud

Direct download: Toadcast #264 – The Semitoadcast

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Program – Waiting (00.17)
02. Plastic Animals – Pizarnik (07.06)
03. Yusuf Azak – Deceive (13.24)
04. Whilk and Misky – Wing Clipper (14.34)
05. Peace Arrow – Broken Bridge (21.29)
06. Sparrow and the Workshop – Faster You Spin (32.00)
07. Bogan Via – Red Sun (36.12)
08. Echo Park – Teleportation (39.33)
09. Lil Daggers – Spider Lily (46.37)
10. Lid Emba – One Less Philistine (50.26)
11. Lower Plenty – Strange Beast (1.02.39)

Yawwwwwwn, streeetch… ahhh, the residual jetlag still hasn’t quite evaporated yet, but Mrs. Toad and I are basically back in the swing of things by now. I still got that 7pm MUST SLEEP crash last night just before football training, which was unfortunate, and woke up rather too early this morning, but this is just the tail end.

Anyhow, there will be a little more self-promotion than usual on this week’s Fives, simply because we have quite a few things on the immediate horizon and, frankly, shit is getting exciting!

So have a browse through this little lot, and if you’ve happened across anything interesting on the internet recently then pop down into the comments section and share it with the rest of the class.

1. Sparrow and the Workshop – Shock Shock video

The video at the top of the page is of course the new video for their latest single Shock Shock by Sparrow and the Workshop. As per usual, they make all these daft videos themselves, which is one of many reasons we love them here at Song, by Toad Records. The vinyl of their new album arrived yesterday as well, and it looks bloody lovely (pic below). You can pre-order the album here and get tickets for their Edinburgh and Glasgow launch nights here – £2 cheaper in advance than they will be on the door.

2. Song of the Day: Spider Lilly by Lil Daggers

From this free compilation by Pure Honey, a free magazine from Miami, where the band are also from. Lil Daggers are developing a really nice, dirty sound and I am really looking forward to their new recordings if this is anything to go by.

3. Adam Stafford – Imaginary Walls Collapse artwork

As you probably know, we are releasing Adam Stafford’s second album Imaginary Walls Collapse in July, and we have just finished laying out the artwork. The album is now mastered, and we are just awaiting test pressings and the finalising of a launch show in Glasgow in late June.

And in case you want a taster, here is a song which was actually cut from the vinyl version of the album, but will be available as part of the download. If you’re wondering, that gorgeous female vocal is Siobhan Wilson, who I am pretty sure will also be playing at the launch night.

4. I wrote an article for the Scotsman about SXSW.

I know a lot of you know about this already, but yesterday I wrote a big ol’ article for The Scotsman about SXSW, what I was doing there, and what Scottish bands hope to achieve. It’s not too bad, I think, although it could have easily been twice as long.

5. Pizarnik, by Plastic Animals & Beer vs. Records.

As you know, we are releasing a new Split 12″ on Record Store Day this year, but what you may not know is that this Split 12″ is facing off against a limited run of 250 special 4-packs of craft beer from Barney’s in Edinburgh, complete with a download card for eight more songs from the same recording sessions, of which Pizarnik by Plastic Animals is the first single. What will sell out first, the beer or the records? WE’LL FIND OUT!

In May Song, by Toad Records will be releasing the third album by the fantastic Sparrow and the Workshop. The album is called Murderopolis, will available on vinyl and CD, and can be pre-ordered from here as of now (although we won’t be posting them out until April).

As those of you who have heard the new single Shock Shock will probably know, the sound is a lot more feral these days, and Jill positively snarls at you in a lot of these songs.  Darkness is almost unhinged, but tunes like Odessa and Autumn to Winter show they can still be as lovely as ever when they choose.

The album artwork comes from Fiona Buckle’s photographs of collages made by Jill, and I think the slightly creepy nature of the images really suits the darker nature of this record.

In early May we’ll be having a couple of shows to mark the release of the album, one at Mono in Glasgow on Wednesday 8th and one at The Caves in Edinburgh on Thursday 9th with Magic Arm.  Hope to see you there – I am really excited about this one!

Side A:
1. Valley of Death
2. Darkness
3. Odessa
4. Shock Shock
5. Water Won’t Fall

Side B:
1. Murderopolis
2. The Faster You Spin
3. Avalanche of Lust
4. Flower Bombs
5. The Glue That Binds Us
6. Autumn to Winter

Seeing as Mildred has been preventing me posting this any earlier by doing pretty much exactly what she is doing in that picture – i.e. sitting in my lap and DEMANDING attention – I figured I might as well start off with a cute cat picture.  This is the internet after all.

Anyhow, welcome to the Friday Fives, where I fire in links to five things which have caught my eye this week, and you either slag me off for being shallow, infantile and easily impressed or chip in with your own interesting stuff in the comments section.

1. BAD FUN at Henry’s tomorrow: 7pm, £5.

It’s a really exceptional lineup at Henry’s tomorrow.  The Black Tambourines were so good when they played here just before Christmas 2011 that we tried to sign them.  Their music is basically a very surfy, lo-fi guitar pop but it’s played with such reckless abandon that you can’t help but get carried away with it.  Their Toad Session is great too – that’s the main video above, and the whole thing can be found here.

North American War are another one of my favourite ‘Scottish bands no-one seems to have heard of’. It’s a shame really, because they are more accomplished and fiercer live than most bands we’ve seen at the Toad gigs.  These two will be joined by the excellent Honeyblood, who I’ve been trying to put on for ages, and who have exciting plans in the pipeline apparently, I’ve just not yet managed to weasel out of them what they are!

The gig is at 7pm, and you’ll pay a fiver on the door, which includes free entry to the club night afterwards, because Henry’s are that nice!

2. Scary Airports

I am a bad flyer at the best of times, and this Guardian gallery of the world’s scariest airports is quite literally the stuff of my nightmares.  There are at least two or three of those airports I have had horrendous dreams about, without knowing that they genuinely existed somewhere in the world, including the one above, where there basically is no fucking airport!

3. Song of the Day: Shock Shock by Sparrow and the Workshop

Well it kinda had to be this one, didn’t it! As you’ve probably gathered by now, we are releasing a couple of singles by our good friends Sparrow and the Workshop in the run up to their third album, which will be out later this year.  I’ve wanted to work with these guys from the day they recorded one of the first ever Toad Sessions back in 2008, and after constant, undignified pleading and hanging around outside their flat all hours of the day and night, it seems they have come to their senses at last!

4. Awesome Coloured Vinyl

Purists hate coloured vinyl because apparently it doesn’t sound as good.  Personally, I don’t have a particularly cultured ear, and so I fucking love it.  It looks amazing! Come on, you joyless fuds and gaze upon the multicoloured swirls and sparkles!  The gallery linked above is from Official FM Vinyl, who make short runs of 50-100 records, which is something we might well look into doing next year if we can, so the fanatics can have vinyl while the rest of the world wants CDs.  And, as a bonus link, here is a bit of a rant against the vinyl revival, just as a couterbalance.

5. Hartley and Poole score for Hartlepool

Seriously, this is the ‘lighthearted chuckle at the end of the news’ section, but honestly it did happen.  Last week Peter Hartley and James Poole scored for Hartlepool as they beat Notts County 2-1.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, the time when we shower you with bounteous goodness from the vaults of Toad, in the form of our annual label sampler. It is free to download from Bandcamp, with the slight proviso that you sign up to our mailing list, from which you can unsubscribe instantly at any time you choose, if I happen to bore you to tears with my constant entreaties to buy our records. Which I won’t, of course, our newsletters are fucking awesome.

On this edition of the sampler we are taking the opportunity to introduce a couple of new bands to the roster: Adam Stafford and Sparrow and the Workshop, as well as a couple of tunes by old favourites like Meursault, Rob St. John, Yusuf Azak and Lil Daggers.

Adam is known by many guises, as frontman of the late Y’All is Fantasy Island, as a filmmaker, and as the head of the Wiseblood Industries label.  In short, he’s just an interesting guy, and we’ll be releasing his album Imaginary Walls Collapse in conjunction with Vancouver’s Kingfisher Bluez label in June.

Sparrow and the Workshop will be doing two singles with us while they decide what to do with their third album, Murderopolis.  The folky aspect of their early work has all but vanished in favour of a more ferocious, Breeders-style snarl – it’s fucking great, honestly!

There are also four songs on here from our new Split 12″ and our Beer vs. Records project for Record Store Day 2013. We’ll be releasing eight songs on 12″ vinyl, like our last split, and going head to head on RSD 2013 with eight songs released on a four-pack of Barney’s Beer, seeing who can sell 250 units first.

Do people want a lasting symbol of their love of music, or is digital just fine and would they prefer some supremely tasty beers from one of the country’s finest micro-breweries instead? We’ll find out on Record Store Day 2013.

Oh, and I’ve also put some Toad t-shirts and tote bags up for sale on the label site. There aren’t too many available, particularly of the t-shirts, so move sharpish if you want one.

 Welcome to 2013, Toadcast listeners.  As is tradition around these parts, we start the year with a podcast of songs we will be releasing this year on Song, by Toad Records, combined with a few we have released quite recently.

There are a few things I didn’t put on here, because it seemed a shame to spill the beans too early – we have a new Rob St. John single coming soon, as well as a new album by The Leg and that collaborative album between Jill from Sparrow and the Workshop, Neil and Pete from Meursault, Rory from Broken Records and Reuben Taylor and Rob St. John – but it didn’t feel right to play anything from those just yet.

What we do have is new stuff from Trips and Falls, stuff from our next split 12″ with Magic Eye, Zed Penguin, Le Thug and Plastic Animals, as well as brand new and hugely exciting label signings Adam Stafford and Sparrow & the Workshop, who we’ll be doing a couple of EPs with as they prepare their new album.

All in all, this is going to be a fucking amazing year for the label, I think, and I am really, really looking forward to it.  Hopefully by the end of this podcast, so will you.

Toadcast #255 – Song, by Toad Records 2013 by Song, By Toad on Mixcloud

Direct download: Toadcast #255 – Song, by Toad Records 2013

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Sparrow & the Workshop – Shock Shock (00.26)
02. Meursault – Lament For a Teenage Millionaire (05.37)
03. LeThug – New Balance (11.21)
04. Plastic Animals – Best Friend (16.37)
05. Adam Stafford – Vanishing Tanks (25.21)
06. Yusuf Azak – Go Native (31.53)
07. Lil Daggers – Faces and Names (33.59)
08. Trips and Falls – Freedom of Homogeneity (45.44)
09. Magic Eye – Golden Circle (52.17)
10. Zed Penguin – Letters (56.17)
11. Rob St. John – Doomino (1.07.43)

 As you may have noticed, there is a somewhat mysterious band on the bill for this Friday’s BAD FUN gig at Henderson’s at St. John’s called the Ghost Crystal Wolf Toads, or something like that.  Who the fuck are this lot, you might be asking.  Well I shall tell you.

Firstly, they are very much not the Crystal Bear Ghost Toads, for starters.  In fact, we don’t know what they’re called yet, that’s just a smart-arsed placeholder name which I figured would do for putting on the posters for BAD FUN.

What they also aren’t, but what would be closer to the truth, would be Cold Seeds 2. For those unfamiliar with the record, Cold Seeds is an improvised collaborative record we made a couple of years ago with Neil and Pete from Meursault, Frances from Animal Magic Tricks and Kenny from King Creosote.

They all sang songs the others had written and improvised the instrumentation.  Neil and Frances spent ages fiddling with dictaphones and strange noises, and the result is one of the oddest and most beautiful records we’ve ever released – and you can get one here on vinyl or CD, if you fancy.

Anyhow, it was such an interesting way to make music that we thought we’d give it another go, just with a slightly different mix of people this time.  So this week in Toad Hall we are sort of recording Cold Seeds 2, although given that title came from one of Frances’ lyrics on the original record we can’t really call it that.  And given the different folk involved, it may well sound totally, totally different from the first one.

So basically, we have Jill O’ Sullivan from Sparrow and the Workshop, Neil Pennycook and Pete Harvey from Meursault, Rory Sutherland from Broken Records, Reuben Taylor from James Yorkston and the Athletes and Rob St. John from, er, Rob St. John* involved.  They’re all bringing along some songs to work on, and at the end of the week we’ll just see what we have.

The whole point of Cold Seeds, for me at least, was to experiment, to improvise, to share music around and get people out of their comfort zones, rather than to expect this, that or the other to happen.  So there are no real prescriptions for what this album will sound like – it will just be the result of a bunch of creative people spending a few days in our house, drinking gin and making music. And hopefully it will be awesome.

And on Friday they will be playing a (possibly quite ramshackle) set of some of the things they’ve been working on at Song, by Toad’s second BAD FUN gig at Henderson’s at St. John’s, with Viking Moses and Woodpecker Wooliams.  There will be excellent beer, and DJs until 1am, in one of the finest spaces in Edinburgh.  Hope to see you there.

*Alright, alright, Rob St. John from eagleowl, Meursault and The Rob St. John Experience, how about that instead?

Morning, good people, how are things out there in the wilds of the internet? It can be a crazy and dangerous place out there I know – I think even David Cameron has some fans out there, but they might just be exaggerated fairy stories made to scare the children, I couldn’t say.

Anyhow, there’s an awful lot of stuff going on this week. First and foremost, we are recording with a band I have temporarily named the Wolf Crystal Ghost Toads for now, until we find them a proper name.  More about the exact project later, but they are basically a loose combination of musicians from Meursault, Sparrow and the Workshop and Broken Records, amongst others, and will be playing a set of the songs they work on this week at this Friday’s second BAD FUN! at Henderson’s at St. John’s.

So, while I am locked away in Toad Hall with *ahem* the very cream of Scottish musicianship and songwriting talent, here are lots of fine things with which you can entertain yourselves until Friday, when shit gets real.

Tuesday 23rd Oct.: Morris Major‘s final gig, at Whistle Binkies.

It’s a shame, this, because I rather liked this band, but Matthew is heading back to Manchester so for now Morris Major are no more.  Their last gig is a free entry affair at Whistle Binkies, and they’re on stage around 10pm I think. Anyhow, their extremely enjoyable brand of infectious guitar pop will be missed.

Wednesday 24th Oct.: All sorts of stuff, all over the place.

Sorry, but I couldn’t be fucked listing all these gigs formally, but they all merit a mention for different reasons.  Firstly, and by far the most surreal of the lot, we have Charlotte Church playing the Electric Circus.  Yes, that Charlotte Church.  Yes, seriously.

Secondly, we have the return of the excellent (if often splendidly obscure) Braw Gigs, who have a night at the Banshee Labyrinth with Islaja, Tomutonttu, Raven Shuns and Anakanak.  I can’t tell you too much about the bands I’m afraid, apart from that Anakanak is the solo work of Annekke from Conquering Animal Sound.

And finally, at the Voodoo Rooms we have a fundraising gig for Action on Depression, featuring I Build Collapsible Mountains, Letters, and the inaugural gig by The Meanest Creature Ever Known, who I believe are the band who rose from the ashes of Loch Awe.

Thursday 25th Oct.: Music Like a Vitamin at the Picture House, with Withered Hand (solo), Sparrow and the Workshop, Fatherson and Rod Jones & the Birthday Suit.

The new stuff by the Birthday Suit sounds really promising, and you already know I think Sparrow and the Workshop and Withered Hand are two of the best live bands in Scotland so umm… well, what are you waiting for. There will be some special guests too, as far as I am aware, just in case you needed further incentive.

Friday 26th Oct.: Song, by Toad’s BAD FUN with Viking Moses, the Wolf Crystal Ghost Toads and Woodpecker Wooliams at Henderson’s at St. John’s.

Yes, the second BAD FUN! has arrived, and the lineup is brimming with amazingness. Tickets are a couple of quid cheaper in advance, remember (buy them here), but £7 on the door is still pretty cheap if you ask me. We have the ethereally gorgeous Woodpecker Wooliams, old Edinburgh favourite Viking Moses and the slightly mysterious (honestly, even they’re not that sure what they’re going to sound like yet) Wolf Crystal Ghost Toads, with DJs until 1am.

Saturday 27th Oct.: The last Tidal Wave of Indifference gig (for now) with The Last Battle, Plastic Animals, Fuzzystar & Early Morning Satellites at the Wee Red Bar.

Apparently Stu from the Tidal Wave of Indifference is giving up gig promotion FOR EVER (which usually means until the itch resurfaces in a year or so), and he is bowing out with a fine bill, including the continually improving Plastic Animals, and what I think might be one of the first Edinburgh appearances of Early Morning Satellites, the recently renamed, and highly promising, purveyors of moody, shimmery guitar music formerly known as Honey.

And remember, it’s Papi Falso’s Halloween Special afterwards, at Henry’s.

Sunday 28th Oct.: Haddowfest, Everywhere!

I am not listing all these shows individually, because there’s fucking hunners of ‘em.  Haddowfest is a all-day multi-venue festival in Edinburgh, and there are some awesome bands on, including Meursault, Broken Records and Mazes.  Tickets are available here, and the full lineup can be found here.