Music of 2012 so far...

Sadly, at the moment I haven't got any imminent gigs to look forward to in Glasgow. I suppose I might drag myself along the M8 to that wee festival thing they do in Edinburgh if I get the chance, but the next concert that I've got tickets for is Damon Albarn's Africa Express on at The Arches in September, then Animal Collective in November. I've decided to pass on "Jesus Christ Superstar" featuring Chris Moyles at the SECC. So I've been looking back through some music that I've bought this year to pick out some of my favourite things. This is probably going to be a bit random and basically whatever has not yet been put onto the shelf as I've kept it playing since bought.

Tattie Toes - Turnip Famine (Pickled Egg Records)

I'll start by cheating and picking an album which was released in 2011, but I didn't come across them until I saw them supporting RM Hubbert in Stereo at the launch of his own very fine album, Thirteen Lost & Found. Tattie Toes are a four piece Glasgow based band lead by Basque singer Nerea Bello, with a Welsh violinist, a part-time puppeteer as drummer and a Yorkshire-man playing bass, at times with anything he can lay his hands on. They are fantastically boisterous, clever and energetic live and that comes over in the album too.

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (Columbia)

Okay, bang up to date now with a 77 year old Canadian. This album only exists because Leonard Cohen's former assistant stole enough money from his account to force him back on the road and the grumbling, stripped back tunes are poetic, humourous stories that reward repeated listening to. My favourite "late night with a glass of malt whisky in my hand" album at the moment.

Django Django - Django Django (Because Music)

Django Django are building a reputation for excellent live performances and when I enjoyed them when I saw them at Stag and Dagger earlier this year. They are a four piece who met at Edinburgh Art School and the echoes of The Beta Band are all over this album, not surprising really as the drummer is the wee brother of The Beta Band's John MacLean. However where the Beta Band produced meandering psychadelic pieces, The Djangos have it stripped down to 3 minutes of dancey, rhythmic pop. They're touring again in October and well worth seeing.

Grimes, Visions (4AD)

The second person on this list from the musical hotbed that is Montreal. Claire Boucher is a solo performer under the monicker Grimes who twiddles knobs, plays synths and sings woozily to make cheery, dancey pop. Love the album and have played it endlessly despite finding her a little trying when seen live earlier this year.

Sun Ra, The Complete Disco 3000 Concert (Art Yard)

Read full review of Disco 3000 (2012 Edition) - SUN RA on Boomkat.com ©

It's a new issue of the concert from which the 1978 Disco 300 album came, played in Milan with 4 other musicians, not his full Arkestra. It is jazz/ electronica/improvisation/ disco, etc. Sun Ra either died in 1993 or returned to Saturn, as he would have it, but this is seminal, orignal, unique and a fantastic and bonkers piece of music.

Lata, Starlings (Exotic Pylon Records) - excerpt

This isn't actually out in a physical format until the end of the month but I downloaded it a while ago. Lata is Jacob Burns, one of those people making electronic music in their bedrooms. This is a 44 minute track which is described as "channelling the sentimentality of old Bollywood singers into the resonances of South London by train". I get the rhythmic, echoey thrum of a train that comes and goes through it, though I missed the Bollywood. Builds to a nice bit of drone in the middle before fading away. I find it soothing, everyone else at home moans when it's on. Pah!

Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball (Columbia Records)

The Boss returns to form with one of his best albums in a while, in no small part due to seemingly being in a happy place stomping around the world with the E-Street Band behind him again. Whether bemoaning bankers' actions, the immigrants' struggles or ironically noting how the common man is dealt with on "We Take Care Of Our Own" it is an album of pleasing, tub-thumping, anthemic yells and growls. Great to see him live in Sunderland earlier this year, hamming it up like a good-un.

Two Wings - Love Springs (Tin Angel)

The vocals here of Finnish multi-instrumentalist, Hanna Tuulikki, can be an acquired taste, but I saw her singing a track on RM Hubbert's 13 Lost & Found and went seeking out her other stuff afterwards. She wrote this album with Ben Reynolds of Trembling Bells and Alasdair Roberts collaborator, and they have now formed this five-piece Glasgow-based band. The range of Hanna's voice is matched by the range of musical influences - soulful, folksy, gospel, psychadelic, jazzy. An album that benefits from repeated listenings, would like to see them live.

Hildur Gudnadottir - Leyou Ljosinu (Allow the Light), (Touch Records)

Read full review of Leyfdu ljosinu - HILDUR Gudnadottir on Boomkat.com ©

Iceland produces its own wee musical bubble. I was blown away the first time I that saw someone playing alone with a laptop looping his sounds. Icelandic musician Mugison was that chap. Last week I was a bit bored with tUnE-yArDs efforts at it. It can help a solo musician make rounded music, but I think when there is a whole band behind you it becomes a shackle at times. Remember Remember I saw in Stereo many moons ago as a one man and a laptop act and he has moved forward with that and become a band with my favourite album of last year...Hildur plays this 40 minute piece live with some looping with only her voice and cello, It slowly,flows and builds then fades just when you want it to keep rising and is a lovely way to pass the time. Less is more sometimes.



Well that's my random musings on some stuff I've bought this year. Please let me know if you think I've missed anything.

Burns and Grimes

I'm on holiday from work this week, and in a single-handed effort to relaunch the Scottish economy I'm doing what Visit Scotland has suggested and having a "staycation". The fact that the kids are still at school this week, so I can't go away anywhere is purely coincidental.

To start my week off I'd been looking forward to seeing Canadian "coffee table goth" Claire Boucher, who performs as Grimes, at the Berkeley Suite on Monday night. She was sat in Black Sparrow next door to the venue having a drink before the gig, a nice wee bar if you're in that neck of the woods. That turned out to be about the last time I managed to see her that night. Her album for 4AD, Visions, is fantastic. If you haven't yet had a listen to it, go check it out. Electronica with girly, falsetto vocals channelling Prince and Kraftwerk - its better than I'm making it sound.

Grimes as spotted in the Berkeley Suite

Partick train station

I haven't been to a gig here before, I'm sure it works well as a nightclub, but it was the wrong venue for this type of show. The low roof, and a fan base of men and woman who could play in basketball teams meant that only the from 4 or 5 people would have had a view of her. (What I could see is captured above on the photo). One person noodling over their keyboards and laptops can struggle to make a visual impact, but she decided not to struggle, moaned about her equipment all being new, and grumbled between every song to her sound engineer. At one point she said (I think to him as she was kind of ignoring us) "I was thinking I should try some new stuff because I need to make my set longer", giving me the feeling that I'd paid to watch a rehearsal. She was on stage for 45 minutes, no encore and after a quick pint in the Baby Grand I was still back at Partick train station in time to catch Newsnight, if I felt so inclined. Anyway as @AidanJohnMoffat put it

08/05/2012 01:04 I saw a gig tonight and it was pretty rubbish. Wrong venue + amateur approach = massive disappointment. Oh well, the album's still amazing.

Spooky skies over Fenwick Moor

Tuesday was to be a day spent holidaying in Ayrshire. As the kids were off school for an in-service day, we took them down to Heads of Ayr Farm Park, which has a curious collection of typical Ayrshire farm animals such as meerkats, lemurs, wallabies and Ralph the camel. Although it looked like a typical Scottish spring day as we passed the windfarm at Whitelee, it was actually a glorious sunny day in Ayrshire.

On the way to Heads of Ayr Farm Park, with beautiful views to Ailsa Craig we drove up (or down) the Electric Brae. I am not greatly convinced by this great Scottish optical illusion. Is it just me, or are we all afraid to say that it's a bit crap?

Anyway I can heartily recommend Heads of Ayr Farm Park if you wish to entertain children, with animals, indoor play areas, huge sandpits, climbing frames, a wee tubing slope, trampolines and those big bouncy cushion pillow things they never had when I was wee.

One of those big bouncy things. Look! Sunshine!

Brig O' Doon

We then headed about 3 miles up the road to see the new Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, which I'd never managed to visit since it opened a couple of years ago. It's nice and has some interesting artefacts and interactive displays that were (unusually in my experience) all working, but I'm not convinced it brings an awful lot to what was there already. My kids summarised it as "a bit dark", but the gardens round about are nice if you like that kind of thing, and I guess there is somewhere for coach trips to be fed now.

Inside the Burns Monument

I like climbing up inside the old Burns Monument, walking across the Brig O' Doon trying to remember bits of Tam O' Shanter whilst re-enacting the horse bounding over the bridge as the witches grab her tail and "left poor Maggie scarce a stump". Then on via the Auld Alloway Kirk where the witches and auld Nick were dancing, to Burns Cottage, his childhood home.

The temporary exhibition in the museum of new paintings by Adrian Wiszniewski was good, but some of the other sculptures in the park are a bit more uneven in their quality. I quite liked the mouse, but he didn't seem very sleekit or timorous. Anyway, it was a nice day out down in Ayrshire. Last time I was there was to watch a midweek 0-0 draw for Partick Thistle at Somerset Park on a dreich November night. Today was a much more pleasant affair.

330 Million Years of Entertainment

That's what I sought out this weekend - 330 million years worth of culture, sport and entertainment and, do you know what? I found it.

Scotland getting beaten by Wales at Rugby 7s

It started on Saturday in Scotstoun Stadium with the Rugby 7s. Scotstoun Stadium has changed a fair bit since I lived in Knightswood when it was a grassy bit of ground with a changing room, overlooked by a railway track. When my son's school class had been dispatched to Glasgow Airport by the city council to welcome the teams to the city he had a great time there and managed to get 21 illegible autographs of Fijian and Kenyan sports stars. So he was keen to see them playing and I was keen to have a nosey around the future home of Firhill's departing tennants, the Glasgow Warriors rugby team. Funnily enough the rugger playing schools of Glasgow hadn't sent children to Glasgow Airport to welcome the teams, but they appeared to have pitched up in numbers with their families at Scotstoun. It was all very jolly and nice. Lots of jolly nice people in fancy dress, but I've never liked rugby and a few hours of this event did nothing to change my opinion. The 7s game is meant to be faster and higher scoring, but so is basketball, and when I've been to see Glasgow Rocks, the score ticks by, but I don't have enough invested in it to care that much. I can watch any old football game and withing 5 minutes I'll have plumped for a team and got into it. Rugby never does that for me. Anyway, my impression was that AUstralia, Fiji and New Zealand seemed too far ahead of anyone else to make it that competitive and Scotland were vaguely disinteresed or rubbish (I don't know enough about rugby to tell).

The 17th hole at the crazy golf

One good thing about being down at that part of Glasgow is that Victoria Park is nearby, which I've always loved visiting. It is a shame that the crazy golf is now a shabby pile of rotting concrete that seem to function as an al fresco drinking venue going by the amount of bottles and cans left lying about. Thankfully the Fossil Grove is still there, and although it hasn't really been updated since I used to come here as a 5 year old. I guess there is only so much updating you can do with the 330 million year old fossilised remains of a forest that was in Glasgow even before a Labour-controlled council, if it's possible to imagine that far back.

The building housing the Fossil Grove

It is open between 10 am and 4pm every day until September, so go along if you've not been for a while. It's a lovely place, if a wee bit shabby and neglected at the moment. 

Fossilised tree stumps

The domestic football season also drew to a close today in the SFL with Partick Thistle playing against Hamilton.  I decided that my season finished 7 days earlier so didn't go, but it sounded like a great game, another decent performance, but another 2 points dropped. Roll on next season.

Went to see Marley at the Grosvenor Cinema on Saturday night. My mum was briefly an usherette here in the sixties, before Mr King brought in his leather seats and bar. (Is it just me, or is it not a bit weird to decide to sit at the back of a cinema on an old cusion and blanket, on a wee leather sofa some other couple were on half an hour ago?) The film is a documentary of his life, and as it has been made with the assistance of his family can't help but being a wee bit of a hagiography, but some of the cinematography in Jamaica was glorious and the music is fantastic. Afterwards I realised that I don't have any Bob Marley on my phone (just some Damian Marley) so I put that right when I came home. It was funny that I'd just read Gil Scott-Heron's memoir of his tour with Stevie Wonder, and in that he comes across Marley a couple of times, and as Marley takes unwell with cancer this is the whole reason Gil Scott-Heron carries on touring with Stevie Wonder.

 In the gods at the Theatre Royal

If you like an opera with a few big numbers, a melodramatic story, beautiful stage sets, a fantastic orchestra, murder, assassination and suicide then you should make an effort to go see Scottish Opera doing Tosca, which is on at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow just now. I've seen this production before, relocated to 1940s Rome under Fascist rule, but I can't remember it being this good. I thought that the orchestra played beautifully, it was well acted and sung and Robert Poulton as the scheming baddie, Scarpia, stole the show. We had great seats up in the gods despite the frizzy-haired, rather self-centred woman in front of me being perched forwards all the way through the last 2 acts when she moved to the the empty seat I was enjoying in front of me.

I am looking forward to hearing Dexys new album, and tried and failed to get tickets for their gig in Cottiers last night, a Big Issue seller and me hanging about at the door asking for any spare tickets (nae chance, apparently). I was able to hear them doing some old song called "Come On Eileen", muffled and from outside, but still sounded good to me.

Right. Off to bring myself back up to date tonight at Grimes at the Berkely Suite, not a venue I've been to before in its current incarnation. I bet there is some frizzy-haired 6 foot tall woman stuck right in front of me waving her hands in the air all night.