Products of a Gaseous Brain

Found Play Let Fidelity Break to the Kids in Central Park

Milo — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:24:17 +0000

Not content with winning a Bafta for their amazing creation Cybraphon, Found have also won over the U.S. as shown in this great video. Watch out for the twirly Umbrella man near the end..

Video: Edinburgh band 'Found' provoke outbreak of crazy dancing

Playing with the Past

Robot Love in Edinburgh - Cybraphon & ASIMO

Latest on The Bowery, Edinburgh

Milo — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:42:51 +0000

Hey all,

After an amazing year in our Edinburgh basement, the Bowery has decided it is time to emerge, chrysalis like, into the real world. As of December 14th, we will not longer be running in the basement of the Roxy. We've decided that with things changing in the running of the building, it would suit us more to run the Bowery as an outside promotions company and random purveyor of wild parties.

We'd like to thank everyone for your support over the past year. It's been an amazing time and we are gobsmacked at what we've managed to achieve. Although it's been a killer amount of work, it's been incredibly exciting creating a space which has become so cherished in the music community, having the opportunity to put on acts like Diane Cluck as well as the local bands we love. We hope you'll carry on drinking with us wherever we are and raise a teacup of gin with us long into the future.

The building will continue running as an independent arts and music venue after we leave. Our landlords, the EUS, aren't kicking us out to give over the space to a commercial enterprise. They've helped support our existence over the past year because they believe in the values we've built the Bowery on - supporting grass-roots promoters, local suppliers and small intimate gigs as well as more financially viable ones - and they'll continue these principles in the running of the space. So please all keep on supporting the independent local scene, wherever it may be.

Although this is sad in some ways as it's the end of an era for us, we're excited about the future and the new great things we'll be doing over the next year. Keep in touch, and come down soon for a drink with us before we go!

Love and red lipstick,
Jane and Ruth
x

Random Reading List - Tuesday 10th November 2009

Milo — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:13:09 +0000

Hello to you! There's loads of stuff this week, so hopefully there's at least one or two articles that you'll find useful/interesting/entertaining. Oh, and congratulations to Cybraphon (and Found) for winning a Bafta!

What Is Escapism? How Does It Cost Me?

thesimpledollar.com

CLICK, SNAP, BOOSH... Olya Ivanisevic
myportiswaspsays.com

Gig review: Daniel Johnston
17seconds.co.uk

Daniel Johnston – Live at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 4th November 2009
songbytoad.com

Why You’ll Never Be Finished (And How to Figure Out When You’ve Done Enough)
aliventures.com

NUDE IT: Augmented Reality Gets Naked on the iPhone [VIDEO]
mashable.com (pretty funny spoof video)

Fall of the Berlin wall in digital media
guardian.co.uk

True Blood: A tale of glamour, sex and vampires
guardian.co.uk

33 1/3 Part 21
17seconds.co.uk (great piece on Bowie's Low)

in praise of: my gal pals;
lastyearsgirl.pixlet.net (making friends online is cool!)

365 Days of Stormtrooper Photography
weburbanist.com (as pictured)

Cats with fraudulent diplomas
boingboing.net (daft)

On Figuring Out Who You Are (and What Would Plato Do?)
friendlyanarchist.com

Succeedblog: awesome stuff captioned with SUCCEED
feeds.boingboing.net

Shifting the balance of power. (Mainstream media stinks.)
blog.penelopetrunk.com (casually tweeting about having a miscarriage tends to create a shitstorm)

The Geek’s Guide to Being Interesting
jonathanfields.com

Don’t Blog Whilst Under The Influence Of Alcohol
thesteinbergprinciple.wordpress.com

Wow, Google Really Likes Muppets!
mashable.com

Folk covers of punk classics
boingboing.net

The Media Blog: What’s the value of a journalist that Twitters?
rss.feedsportal.com

In pictures: Oxjam Edinburgh
www2.jpscotland.co.uk

Advisor: My husband has a virtual girlfriend
feeds.boingboing.net

And direct from Twitter:

RT @stgramophone: Taken By Trees, a plea to readers, and one of my favourite new discoveries from Montrealhttp://bit.ly/1lCNUz

RT @pitchforkmedia: Kraftwerk Interview - we talk to Ralf Hutter http://bit.ly/4keap1

RT @under_the_radar: Ambulances are our featured band today. Interview and music: http://bit.ly/6omJZ(@Ambulances)

RT @Headphaze: "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Why the mainstream media is dying" ( http://bit.ly/1qBTz7 )

RT @lastyearsgirl_: NYT asks nine poets to write new works inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall http://bit.ly/JURBU

RT @jonathanfields: A voyeuristic look into writers' "cribs"; great photography... http://is.gd/4Q75b (via @Lynn_H)

RT: New @FridayMixtape is up! Have a listen here:http://FridayMixtape.com

RT @chrisguillebeau: New "Fear of Flying" app for iphonehttp://tinyurl.com/yl4m4p7

If that isn't enough for you, see reading lists from previous weeks

Get free updates by RSS or email

Must we say goodbye to The Bowery?

Milo — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:25:20 +0000

Image by posteverything.co.uk

This week brought the apparent news that the people behind the Bowery, a key focal point of Edinburgh’s revitalised scene, are being told they can no longer use the venue. The above poster represents just one of the many great gigs I've been to there, and there's been very many others that I wasn't able to go to but would have loved to. The standard of gigs there has been incredible in the year they've been going. In fact, now I think of it, I even played a couple of songs there at the Song By Toad Christmas Party last year (ok apart from that).

Anyway, Toad seems to have managed to engage the people behind the decision in some kind of dialogue over at his blog, so head over there to keep abreast of developments (ok, I admit it, that was just an excuse to use the word "abreast"). It doesn't actually seem to be THE END as much as there are some changes afoot, as one of the gals behind the venue Jane Flett has said on Facebook:

"The landlords aren't taking over in some cynical money grabbing coup, don't worry! There are changes afoot in the building because this is what is needed to keep it alive and sustainable as an independent arts space, but hopefully The Bowery will remain involved and doing the boozy musicy things we do."

So that's good news then. I think... what they need is support though, and there's a 1st birthday bash happening this weekend with a great line up so why not head along if you've not been before.

Twenty Tracks

Meantime, rather ironically, The Bowery have a new Ten Tracks compilation with a lot of great music for a single squid. They are totally into the same antifolk/New York vibe (if you hadn't guessed by the name) as I have been for quite some time, and which people like Withered Hand also strongly resonate with. In fact, his label SL Records have also got a Ten Tracks bundle.

So here's the link - but remember though to save a pound coin in your piggy bank for the I Hear a New World compilation coming soon, which also happens to include a lovely Withered Hand track, and many more besides.

Vote for Song, By Toad & Under The Radar

Both Song, By Toad and The Scotsman's Under The Radar, two blogs which I have mentioned many times around here, have been nominated for some kind of industry awards thingamajig arranged by an industry thingamajig known only as 'Record of The Day'.

So go and log in to the site to vote presumably you have to log in to stop Matthew Toad and the UtR crew sitting hitting refresh and voting themselves 100 million times ;) Anyway, their success is great for everyone who's involved in Scottish music so make sure you support them.

Aside: There are a bunch of other categories too, including best music magazine etc – and I noted that The Skinny Magazine are strangely absent, even from the free magazine category, which seems a bit strange given the amount of music the mag covers, including some pretty high profile bands/artists. The Skinny are also totally ignored by The Scottish Magazine Awards, which again strikes me as strange. Any conspiracy theories?

Daniel Johnston - Is and Always Was

Milo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:59:32 +0000

If you expected Daniel Johnston to be eternally lo-fi and perpetually at risk of unravelling musically, with records that are little more than snippets of a damaged soul captured on tape cassette in his mum's basement, then this album may come as a shock to you.

It's full band and full throttle, with Beck and Air producer Jason Falkner bringing Johnston's ideas closer to the way he always heard his songs in his own head (and any musician can tell you how wide the disparity can be between what you actually create and what you intended to create). DJ himself is in brilliant voice and sounds like he's revelling in playing with the band. It took me quite a while to get used to the sheer professionalism of the album myself in fact, but I'm really loving it now because the more I listen to it, the more the whole feel of the album is utterly and completely uplifting.

Stand out tracks on the first few listens are the old school jam of Fake Records of Rock n Roll and canine tribute Queenie the Doggie (a song title and subject only someone as perma-innocent as Johnston seems to be could sing with a straight face), as well as the Sesame Street on crack cocaine keyboard riff of 'Without You' which is a bit musically trite but has grown on me.

Where he excels of course is as a unique songwriter, and at this stage he's pretty much a genre to himself. You either hate him, love him, or find the fetishisation of his mental health issues by some fans difficult to stomach. But it's difficult to deny the unblemished honesty of his lyrics and genuineness of his vocal delivery.

Daniel Johnston - High Horse

Buy it at Amazon

Daniel Johnston is playing Edinburgh tomorrow (Wednesday 4th November). Here's what I wrote about his Glasgow gig last year (warning: it all gets a bit emotional) and here are the photos:

Random Reading List - Tuesday 3rd November 2009

Milo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:11:17 +0000

It's November. Howdahelldiddathappen?

I've been unwell and off work for several days which means I'm missing the Gothenburg Address play at the Electric Circus tonight. Whatdahelliswrongwidme?

I've managed to weakly click on the share button for a couple of things though, go see over at my google reader shared items or below if you are visiting the site. They include Shakira being amazing in the bedroom via Portiswasp, the above robot being grumpy and mildly annoying like me, fruit bat fellatio (I kid you not) and Just Another iPhone Blog, who I write for from time to time being featured on Lifehacker.

Shameless self-promotion: Here's my latest post for them: Newsy.com brings bite-size nuggets of news to the iPhone

Surprise: David Lynch's Sandworms Were "Too Phallic" [Dune]
io9.com

Fuller: content is king in digital age
guardian.co.uk

Twitter for TV lovers: who to follow
guardian.co.uk

ROPID the adorable humanoid can jump 3-inches into the air, sweep you off your feet
engadget.com

NSFW Science: Fruit Bat Fellatio
feeds.boingboing.net

Cool Video: Apple’s Design Guru on Design Principles, iPhones, Macs, More
justanotheriphoneblog.com

Now There Really Is an iPhone App for Everything
justanotheriphoneblog.com

NSFW: Halloween in San Francisco and the gathering clouds of a location-based privacy storm
techcrunch.com

Is World Journalism in Crisis? The podcasts
rss.feedsportal.com

DOOM now available in the App Store!
thenextweb.com

POLL: Illegal Downloaders Buy the Most Music
mashable.com

Brush Your iPhone's Bezel to Hide Scuffs and Scratches [IPhone]
feeds.gawker.com
Nice to see the Just Another iPhone Blog get featured on Lifehacker!

SHAKIRA - DID IT AGAIN
myportiswaspsays.com
Shakira being amazing in the bedroom. And just amazing in general, as usual.

Guilty Pleasures
thesteinbergprinciple.wordpress.com

Happy Hallowe'en!

Milo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:05:40 +0000

Tumblr image viewer

I Hear a New Gramophone - an interview with Sean Michaels

Milo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:12:39 +0000

This is an interview from November's issue of The Skinny Magazine which can also be found on their website here. It was loosely timed to coincide with the release of a wee bundle I've put together for www.tentracks.co.uk which will be available in late November - more info on that will be coming soon. The artwork was specially commissioned from Eleanor Meredith :)

To mark the 50th issue of The Skinny, music columnists Milo McLaughlin and Sean Michaels got on the blower (well, Skype) for a transatlantic chinwag about the Scottish music scene and how it's all changed since the magazine began in 2005.

The Easy Gramophone was a monthly column written by Sean Michaels which ran in The Skinny from 2006 to early 2008. As the title suggests it was intended as a companion to his hugely popular mp3 blog Said The Gramophone - deemed one of Time Magazine's 25 best blogs this year.

For each column Sean handpicked a selection of tracks he loved which were available free to download somewhere on the net. In line with The Skinny's eclectic, cutting-edge music coverage, these were songs from a dizzying array of styles, based on their quality rather than any fixed genre - and he was one of the first people in the UK to write about bands such as Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Beirut and Final Fantasy. When Michaels returned to his home city of Montreal, he passed on the baton to me, and the column morphed into I Hear a New World, with an accompanying podcast of 'original and innovative songs from Scotland and beyond'. This included such cult heroes as Bonnie Prince Billy, Jeffrey Lewis, James Yorkston and Herman Dune as well as established and underground local acts such as Errors, eagleowl, King Creosote, The Pictish Trail, The Phantom Band, and The Japanese War Effort.

Now that he has the perspective of time and distance, I ask Sean how he feels about the Scottish music scene and how he sees his development since those formative issues of The Skinny. From where he's standing, the east coast has seen the biggest change. "The thing that I sorrowfully tell people when they ask about music in Scotland is that between the time I arrived to when I left, I didn't discover a single great Edinburgh band that I hadn't heard before I arrived. It gives me great pleasure and envy that after I left things have really come out of the woodwork, and it feels like it's reached some kind of velocity."

Despite his physical distance, Michaels continues to scour the web in search of great Scottish acts, having featured some of the new breed of Edinburgh artists such as Withered Hand and Meursault on his blog, even before many local commentators had caught on to their undoubted charms. However, whilst he believes that it's important to be supportive of Scottish artists, it can also be counterproductive to lavish blanket praise based on geography alone.

Some have suggested that this is at risk of happening with the recent explosion of predominantly positive coverage in the local blogosphere, but Sean is optimistic about the internal barometer of the genuine Scottish music fan. "Scots are great musicians, it's a great place for music, and they also don't put up with crap. In the case of bands like Uncle John & Whitelock people were responding to something that was very good, and that's the crucial element.”

The ethos Michaels has brought to both the Said the Gramophone blog and the Easy Gramophone column is perfectly simple - to celebrate the magical synchronicity that leads an artist or band to come up with that one, amazing, addictive, essential tune. "Your column led on from mine, where you're highlighting great songs. And that's what I've done with Said The Gramophone all this time - I think you can be enthusiastic much more honestly when you don't need to say 'this band is clearly the greatest band ever' or 'this album is a masterpiece'. Our small aspiration is to everyday give you three minutes that are wonderful."

With the prodigious Sufjan Stevens recently questioning what the point of a song actually is, I ask Michaels if he too ever gets tired of the hunt for the next hidden gem. "Sometimes you have to sit down at your computer, take off your ears, and knock them against the desk and ask 'how are you feeling today?'" Nothing hones that internal barometer better than a bit of perspective. "Sometimes you feel like hearing that hot new CD that came in the post or that new mp3 you downloaded from that cutting edge blog, and sometimes you're like, 'okay, time to throw on the Neil Young; time to throw on the Bach.' Reminding yourself and other people about great old songs is a really nice thing to do - I mean it's what we do with friends, right?”

Sean Michaels writes for The Guardian, blogs at www.saidthegramophone.com and is currently starting work on his second novel.

The I Hear a New World channel - featuring tracks from Withered Hand, Gummi Bako, Meursault and Ambulances - is launched on Ten Tracks in November - in the meantime check out the podcasts.

Some other stuff I've written for The Skinny recently:

Blog Profile: 17 Seconds

Milo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:57:05 +0000

It's been a bit quiet on the music reviewing front round here recently, I admit it. For a blogger who reliably sticks to music and does it very well, I thoroughly recommend Ed Jupp's 17 Seconds. He's doing a series of reviews of classic albums at the moment entitled 33 and 1/3 and I particularly enjoyed a post he wrote about the Queen Is Dead, which still stands as one of my favourite ever albums. And The Fall also get a mention later on in the series, which can never be a bad thing.

Like Matthew Toad who introduced me to 17 Seconds in the first place, Jupp also has a record label to whom he's signed Aberfeldy who you might know - at times they are a bit too twee for me (because I'm a miserable, grumpy bastard) but I enjoyed their song Vegetarian Restaurant about one of the main veggie eateries in Edinburgh. He's recently signed one of their members up in their other guise as a solo artist: www.myspace.com/chrisbradleymusic

Aberfeldy - Vegetarian Restuarant

Also recently signed is an act that appears to be inspired by the likes of Erasure and other 80s synth pop bands - always a good thing surely? I especially like the cover of Galaxie 500's Tugboat which you can hear at: www.myspace.com/xliontamer

And as you can see from the poster on the right, there's a 17 Seconds night on at the 13th Note in Glasgow tomorrow night (Friday), also featuring The Dirty Cuts and Escape Act.

A Brief History of My Creative Efforts Part 4 - Fear and Loathing on the Job-hunting Trail

Milo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:34:23 +0000

Read part 1, part 2, part 3

A Novel Idea

In my final year of college I also started writing lyrics and other random stuff in a bit of a creative outpouring, due perhaps to the fact that I'd kept my creativity bottled up for so long (or drowned it in a sea of booze might be more accurate) and increasing desperation about what was going to happen when the student safety net was pulled away from beneath my feet. I also made some attempt to record some music to go along with these lyrics, though without any of the skill required for such an enterprise. Also my personal life was in a complete and utter mess at the time due to my own stupidity, but that's another story.

After full-time education ended, unemployment was inevitable. I had the same attitude as Morrissey towards work "I was looking for a job then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now.." However I suddenly found myself in a serious relationship so had a reason to make a bit of an effort.

In the meantime I decided it would be a good time to write a novel. I spent my days wandering round second-hand bookshops and going to the library, and fixated on Hunter S Thompson. I would see his partner in crime Ralph Steadman's illustrations everywhere I went - perhaps taunting me about my own childlike drawing skills, though I took it as encouragement to continue on my quest to be a writer.

The novel was to be called the Three Drink Rule, about a borderline alcoholic ex-student who is talked into making a pledge to never have more than three alcoholic drinks - but when he inevitably gives in to temptation, bizarre things happen.. it never quite materialised, though I was to revisit it from time to time, and still think about trying to rewrite it now and again.

STRUGGLING TO PAY THE BILLS AND STAY CREATIVE

After about three months on the breadline I applied for a couple of retail jobs - one in a health food store and one in HMV's "flagship" music store on Princes St, which had been closed for refurbishment. I got turned down for the health food job and ended up wowing the manager of HMV with my enthusiasm for the Oasis album Definitely Maybe (yeah, I know.. I was young and naïve) though the way he ignored me once i was in the job suggested he later regretted the decision.

After I'd accepted the HMV job, the health food store manager came back and said the job was mine after all, if I wanted it - it was too late though. I wonder how different my life would have turned out if I'd been given that job first, given the people who I met at HMV were to lead to me joining my first band and continuing my heavy drinking habits..

* Note: For more info on this and the various soul-sucking jobs that followed, my recording of the song Columbo & Coffee and my adventures as part of an unpopular comedy band, you'll have to read my in-depth tale about it called 'I Was a Swivel Chair' which I'll be republishing on this blog soon.

During the Edinburgh Festival that year I managed to get some 'work' writing for the Evening News. I covered a variety of comedy, theatre and music but I was also working full-time.

Just to give you an idea how old I am, this was in the days before everyone had a laptop and email and free broadband in cafes etc so I had to run up to the fringe office on the Royal Mile on my lunch to arrange tickets for the events, and then after the event I had to go home, write the review and then call it in so that it could be published the next day.

My friend Dougie's mum was one of the people at the Evening News who took these phone calls and transcribed the copy - I was quite embarrassed when I had to read her my review of 'Sexual Perversity in Chicago..'

This ridiculous ritual soon led to burn-out, and worse, I wasn't getting paid for the pleasure, mainly due to my own deeply embedded reluctance to ask for money. Then I saw an opportunity to take part in a music video course with Roman "don't mention my dad" Coppola as part of the International Film Festival, and applied.

Coppola was a really nice and surprisingly humble bloke and had made quite a few music vids including helping Spike Jonze out on Fatboy Slim's Praise You and Mansun's Tax Loss video (see his Reel). He guided us through the process of making a music promo from idea to final product.

We had to pitch an idea to someone at Skint Records - he didn't think much of mine, and we ended up going with another guy on the course's idea which was to have a guy in a pink panther suit walk backwards around Edinburgh. After it was filmed we reversed and sped up the footage so it looked like everyone else was going backwards and the panther was strolling about leisurely. It turned out not bad and was apparently shown on MTV and BBC2 - but I couldn't find it on the web when I looked.

So it was a great course, but had meant I gave up prematurely on being a full-time professional arts journalist. I did go back and write for the Evening News again a year later, and managed to get paid, but that fizzled out as I spent more and more time doing Swivel Chair stuff - including a string of "groundbreaking" music videos...

I don't think I realised what an opportunity I had at the time to get paid writing work, something which on the whole still eludes me now. Clearly there are limiting beliefs at work in this old gaseous brain of mine...

Next: The Final Part. Probably.