Month: September 2009

17 Seconds Special

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If you wanted to be mean to me (and why would you want to do that? I’m quite nice really) you could point out that Aye Tunes always has a bit of a Glasgowcentric, West Coast bias. It’s true, but it’s not really my fault. I live hear, so I know more about what is going on at this side of Scotland than I do in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh or wherever. Anyway, just for you hypothetical mean people, let’s swing the spotlight outside of Glasgow.

17 Seconds Records is, as the name might suggest, a record company. Run by Ed, who is also the brains behind the long running 17 Seconds blog, they are based over in Edinburgh. Already there’s a fine roster of artists signed up to the 17 Seconds Records roster, a couple of whom I’ll be talking about a bit today.

Aberfeldy were one of the first acts signed to 17 Seconds, and now one fifth of them, Chris Bradley, is signed up solo too. Chris already has one solo album to his name, Voices, which 17 Seconds will be re releasing next year. Before that though comes a single ‘Bored Little Rosie’/’The Man I Love’ out on October 5th and a second album, tentatively titled Go On, My Son to follow in November.

Here’s a little taster from the new album.
Chris Bradley - Golden Girl
Chris Bradley MySpace

Another early signing to the label is Tony T, better known as X Lion Tamer. Described by himself as “Sounds like the ending credits of low budget 80s teen movies – played on your mate’s Amiga”, X Lion Tamer is a world away from the other music on 17 Seconds Records, and from most artists generally featured by Aye Tunes for that matter. There’s two download singles available by X Lion Tamer, both of which have now been combined and made available on CD as Neon Hearts EP.
The following song Life Support Machine is available on the Neon Hearts CD and as the second track on the download single.

X Lion Tamer - Life Support Machine
X Lion Tamer MySpace

You can keep up with 17 Seconds, the blog and the label at these places - Blog - MySpace - Website

17 Second Records are available to download at the usual places, including iTunes and eMusic

Upcoming live dates include:
2 Oct 2009 X-Lion Tamer at Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
8 Oct 2009 Chris Bradley supporting Dr. Robert at Water Rats, King’s Cross, London
9 Oct 2009 X-Lion Tamer at Devil Disco at The Bongo Club, Edinburgh
17 Oct 2009 Escape Act at Eamonn Dorans, Dublin
23 Oct 2009 Aberfeldy at Cupar Corn Exchange, Cupar
30 Oct 2009 17 Seconds night at the 13th Note,with the Dirty Cuts, Chris Bradley and X-Lion Tamer, Glasgow
27 Nov 2009 The Dirty Cuts @ Pin Up Club at The Flying Duck, Glasgow

The Morgue Party Candidate

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Still working on all the catching up and reviewing I’m meant to be doing, but I’ve been meaning to do something on The Morgue Party Candidate, so let’s get to that today shall we?

The Morgue Party Candidate are a three piece, two thirds from Cumbernauld, one third from Glasgow, who take their name from a Grand Theft Auto mission.
They’ve just stuck out their first EP, which contains three cracking songs. My favourite of the three, and the one that brought the band to my attention in the first place by it’s inclusion on Glasgow Podcart a wee bit back - yeah Glasgow Podcart again - is the gorgeous Animal Dance Party. You can download it below. The very title puts all sorts of weird and freaky images in my head, which is always a good thing. Following the band on Twitter also puts some freaky pictures in your mind, which is maybe not such a good thing…

I can’t say an awful lot about the band, I’ve not caught them live yet, something I aim to do soon and only have 4 songs to go on, but I’ve played the shit out of those songs now and find they’ve worked their way into my head, which seems as good a reason as any to swing the low powered, dim, barely noticable Aye Tunes spotlight on them. Plus now I can boast that I was in there early when everyone else starts loving The Morgue Party Candidate.

Download Animal Dance Party

If you swing over to the band’s MySpace you can listen to all of their new EP, Good Morning, Good Night. If you make friends with them they might even send you a link to download the whole thing for free too, if you ask nice.

Find the band online at: MySpace - Twitter - ReverbNation - Facebook

The Morgue Party Candidate play at Stereo in Glasgow on October 8th, tickets are a lowly four quid, get down there if you can.

Catching Up

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Alright then, got a bit of time back on my own computer for a week or so (oh hard drive full of music how I missed you, let’s never be parted again!), so I’ll attempt to get caught up on the backlog of stuff I’ve got to get through over the next few days.

Won’t get much done tomorrow (Thursday) though, I’m away to see The Darian Venture & Atlas Skye at The Mill. Give me a wave if you are going along.

Speaking of gigs, it was interesting to discover that copying Frightened Rabbit tour dates out of the Sunday Mail magazine pushed me to around 4 times my normal visitor numbers. I almost think no one cares about what I write

If you’ve sent me a press release or anything in the last few days, sorry I’ve not gotten to it yet, I’ll see what I can do, ideally before it’s too late.

This pile of records I want to listen to and attempt to review take priority though.

Frightened Rabbit Scottish Tour Dates Announced

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Tickets go onsale Monday 21st September at 10am.

27th Nov. BA Club, Fort William
With The Phantom Band and The Moth And The Mirror

28th Nov. Tolbooth, Stirling
With The Phantom Band and Errors

29th Nov. Ironworks, Inverness
With The Phantom Band

1st Dec. Moshulu, Aberdeen

2nd Dec. Fat Sams, Dundee
With The Phantom Band

22nd Dec. ABC, Glasgow
With The Moth And The Mirror

Pin Up Nights Circus

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Press release first, quick comments from me at the end.

THE PIN UP NIGHTS CIRCUS FRIDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER, 9PM - 3AM A SAWDUSTED AND SPOTLIT FLYING DUCK, 142 RENFIELD STREET, GLASGOW
GUEST DJ: MIKE FIELDING, AKA NABOO OF THE MIGHTY BOOSH RINGMASTER: PAUL PUPPET (OF LEGENDARY GLASGOW BAND SCUNNER, AND THE MAN BEHIND THE RIO CAFE’S “SPANGLED CABARET”)
A SMORGASBORD OF CIRCUS PERFORMERS INCLUDING MAGICIANS, FIRE EATERS, JUGGLERS, STRONG-MEN AND MUCH MUCH MORE - BUT NO CLOWNS - BECAUSE THEY’RE TERRIFYING!!
THE PIN UPS DJS PLAYING THEIR INIMITABLE MIX OF NEW AND CLASSIC INDIE, PUNK, SOUL
ELECTROPOP
PERFORMING LIVE: POOCH, SONNY MARVELLO, MITCHELL MUSEUM AND “QUICK,
RUN”
STALLS RUN BY MEMBERS OF THE GLASGOW CRAFT MAFIA
AND FUNFAIR GAMES (DUCKS! COCONUTS!) A REAL LIVE GORILLA…
A SPLENDID TIME IS GUARANTEED FOR ALL!
TICKETS ARE £6 ON THE DOOR OR £5 IN ADVANCE FROM THE STORE AT WWW.PINUP-NIGHTS.CO.UK

Ladieeeeees and Gentlemen. Roll Up! Roll Up! The Circus is in town!
Yes you lucky scallywags, its time to roll yourself up indeed and make haste to The Big Top!
For one night only, Pin Up Nights is transforming into a good old fashioned circus!
Marvel! - At the line up of terrific live bands – Pooch, Sonny Marvello, Mitchell Museum and “Quick, Run”!
Delight! - In seeing The Flying Duck transformed into an actual circus Big Top!
Wonder! - At the antics of Ringmaster Paul Puppet, and the feats performed before your very eyes by the Pin Ups Circus performers!
Dance! - Till 3am to the usual fantastic mix of tunes you’d expect from Glasgow’s best and longest running indie night!
Gape! - At celebrity guest DJ Naboo from The Mighty Boosh!
Goggle! – At the stalls run by members of the Glasgow Craft Mafia (including Pistol Whip Vintage, We Are The Robots and more) and our Funfair games!
And Gaze! – Longingly! - At dishy Pin Ups DJ James “Butcher” Cassidy!
Mindboggling stuff I’m sure you’ll agree!
That’s not all too as we are planning a few more surprises if we can pull it
off, including even a dramatic GORILLA!! If you fancy dressing up and entering
the circus spirit then knock yourself out (not literally I mean, just feel free
to dress up!)
Those of you who are regulars will know we try our best to create terrific events at Pin Up Nights and always give value for money. This year amongst others we’ve had Florence and The Machine and Friendly Fires DJing in January, a star-studded Ladies Night 2 (Camera Obscura! Victoria Bergsman! Queens of Noize!) and even turned The Flying Duck into a Festival Site in June (complete with Wham Tent!) all at the cost of £5 entry. Despite the jam-packed bill above and obvious costs involved we’ve kept the price stupidly low. How stupidly low we’ll probably only realise on Saturday afternoon when it becomes clear we’ve dropped a zero somewhere in our cost calculations (none of us were brilliant at maths…).
Still, that’s for us to worry about and despite the barrel-load of action we’ve arranged, we’re only charging £5 for advance tickets and £6 on the door.
If you’ve been to any club night other than Pin Ups recently and paid for entry, hopefully you’ll agree this is incredible value!
You can get your advance tickets from the store section of http://www.pinup-nights.co.uk or in-store/online from Tickets Scotland. (Advance sales would be appreciated as we have 101 things to pay for..)
All the pics from August are on the website as well so have a peek and spot yourself
having a boogie. We had originally planned for the Circus to be in August but
the bill was going to be better if we did September so we changed it close to
last minute. This meant that August’s Pin Ups was a tad under-advertised but you
lovely people still turned up in droves so thanks a million.
That’s all for now folks, don’t forget to Roll Up Roll Up on 25th!
The Pin Ups chaps.xx
ps we were originally going to write this invite in the style of a mocking run-down of the other events that are happening on Friday 25th September (there’s quite a lot of tacky Freshers Week things), but we decided that there was so much Circus chat
to get though that we didn’t have room and it would get too confusing. A shame
as I already had ideas noted down such as“Experiment with your sexuality at Karbon as you party hard with Duncan from Blue”, “Fear for 87 year old DJ Phil’s life as he attempts his Mick Jagger dance at Strathclyde Union’s TFI Friday”, etc etc

Leaving aside my “I’m 30, I’m too old for clubs” thinking, the bands on offer alone make this worth a look for me. You’ll know by know how I feel about Mitchell Museum of course (but in case you don’t, I love them). I’m not very familiar with the others, but have heard nothing but good things about Pooch for one.
All in all, if you are at a loose end in Glasgow next Friday, you could do much worse.

Updates Askew

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Just a wee heads up, there might not be an awful lot of updates around ere for the next week or so. My computer access is limited at the moment (and I can’t get near my hard drive full of music *sob*) so I won’t have a chance to do a lot.

No great shock that there’s ages between posts I know, but this time I have a good excuse.

Go check out all my friends in the link section in the meantime and get yourself to the next available Bronto Skylift gig. Saw Bronto again the other night in the 13th Note (thanks Podcart!) and the were headfuckingly awesome.

As always, if there’s anything I should be covering here when I get a chance send over an email, I can still get into that via my mobile.

Back soon!

EP Review: Bronto Skylift - The Bearded Fish and the Jackalope

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I’ve been hearing about Bronto Skylift for a wee while now, but prior to Friday’s instore gig at Avalnce in Glasgow had never managed to catch them play live. I was more than a little surprised to learn there’s only two of them. Had I actually paid attention I’d have known this already of course, but I didn’t. The make a hell of a lot of noise for a band comprising a singing guitar player and a drummer. A hell of a lot of noise. An instore gig isn’t an ideal place to judge a band, but on Friday’s evidence I’m totally sold on Bronto Skylift.

It isn’t that gig that I’m reviewing here though, I’m talking about the reason for it, the release of The Bearded Fish and the Jackalope EP. Short version of the review - 4 tracks, five quid, worth every penny. Also has really pretty art.

Still here for the longer version of the review? Fantastic! Thanks for sticking around.

After starting off gently for all of around 22 seconds everything kicks off on Lioness, the first track. As soon as the guitar rips in at the 0.22 mark it’s best just to hold on and go with it, because that guitar part has no intentions of letting go. There’s some fantastic drumming going on there too.
If Lioness was rough, second track Tiger is like being dragged up an alley and beaten, but secretly loving every second of it. Loud, raucous and brilliant.
Hekla, the third track on offer, keeps up the noise levels at first, but changes things up a bit. As the longest song on the EP it takes the chance to offer some breathing space from unrelenting Bront Force Trauma by pulling out the old loud bit, quieter bit, LOUD BIT trick. When done well, I always love that. It’s done well here.
Cobblepot is the only song on the EP I had any familiarity with previously, and it is my favourite of the four tracks. Everything just clicks. That boot up the arse riff, the almost Jazz drumming and the pure bloody energy. It very nearly made me dance in my chair when listening to it again for this review.

The first 3 tracks are good, Cobblepot is really good.

What does it is score on the arbitrary and meaningless star system, I hear you fail to ask? Well, it’s would only be a four out of five stars release, the reason being that it doesn’t quite live up to the full fury of the band firing on all cylinders in a live setting. It comes really bloody close though. However, Cobblepot is good enough to nudge the EP over that extra hypothetical and meaningless star. Five Stars it is then.

No songs from the EP, go buy it. You can have Cobblepot, which appears on the EP, recorded live at The Mill though.
Bronto Skylift - Cobblepot (live)

You can get hold of the EP here, at gigs and in the likes of Avalanche. It comes with a free sticker and everything. Try to pick up Bronto’s first single too, it’s also fantastic.
Do yourself a favour though, see this band live.

Head over to MySpace to sample songs, get gig dates and all the usual MySpacey type stuff.

Oh, and yet again, massive thanks go to Glasgow Podcart for introducing me to the band in the first place. If you aren’t checking out the Podcart yet you are really missing out. One day I’ll get round to a full post kissing Ally Sean and Halina’s collective arses, but for now I’ll stick with thanking them, again, and encouraging everyone with ears to listen to them.