This week’s Scottish music news and new releases, as well as our pick of the gigs on offer across the country.
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• It’s very late notice, but Three Blind Wolves and Over the Wall’s Gav Prentice are both playing an in-store show at Love Music in Glasgow today from 5pm. 3BW, as we like to call them, are celebrating the release of new single ‘Parade’ (watch the video), while Prentice will be playing tracks from his album The Invisible Hand, also out today.
• We missed this one last week, but Verden Studios in Edinburgh have announced the young bands and musicians who are taking part in the Verden Demo Project 2012, a programme supported by the Scottish Government’s Cashback for Communities initiative. Each of the artists will be supported in recording a demo and presenting themselves to the music industry. Congratulations to Mothertone, Kama Sutra, Holly Wilson, The Southpaws, Nic Tate and the Sharks and Megan D.
• Broadcast, the new music venue from promoters PCL (who previously put on regular gigs at the Captain’s Rest), opens on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street on October 25. Playing the launch night will be the aforementioned Three Blind Wolves, and other bands booked for the first week include Broken Records, United Fruit and Hector Bizerk.
• Fifers take note: Some of Scotland’s best live bands are coming to Cupar next month. A Brighter Beat is a charity show (in aid of Kingdom Kids) at Watt’s of Cupar on November 11. Confirmed to play are Kid Canaveral, Cancel The Astronauts, Martin John Henry, TV21, Sam Barber & The Outcasts and The Bad Books. Tickets £10/£5 (under 16s) are available online.
• Edinburgh blogger/label Song by Toad has organised countless gigs, but he has two events in the pipeline which look a little bit extra-special. Extending beyond the usual 10pm gig curfew, the ‘Bad Fun’ nights will be five-hour affairs, with bands followed by DJs all the way until 1am, in the distinctive setting of the vaults under St John’s Church at the west end of Princes Street.
The next night is Friday 26 October, where mysterious supergroup the Ghost Wolf Crystal Toads (“including members of James Yorkston & the Athletes, Broken Records, Sparrow and the Workshop, Meursault and Rob St. John”) will play along with Viking Moses and Woodpecker Wooliams (tickets). And on Saturday 17 November, at the same venue, Broken Records, Easter and Le Thug share the billing (tickets).
• Last week’s cancelled We Were Promised Jetpacks gig at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh has been rescheduled. It will now be at the Liquid Room on November 24. Original tickets are still valid, and full refunds are available from the point of purchase if you can’t make the new date.
NEW MUSIC
• Edinburgh band The Spook School have a new single out on Cloudberry Records, an American label that specializes in indie-pop. You can listen to ‘Here We Go / Cameraman’ and watch the video on the band’s website, purchase the 7” vinyl from the label site or download it from Bandcamp. So many options.
• A short tweet last week directed us to a very enjoyable listen in the form of ‘Meds to Get Over’, a new single from Super National. Kevin Lynch and Jamie Wishart of long-standing Fife band cruiser have joined forces with Minnesotan Mark Lange of Tiger, Tiger on this release, with the promise of more singles and an album to follow. Watch the video over at KFM Records.
• Happy Particles have posted a free download. ‘Broken Aerials’ is a new version of ‘Aerials’, which opened last year’s debut album Under Sleeping Waves.
• Vukovi have posted a video for the track ‘We Are Robots’, which is taken from their third EP ‘Sweet Swears’ and will be available from October 22.
• We mentioned this new Miaoux Miaoux release a while back, but it’s worth reminding you that the Autopilot EP is out today on Chemikal Underground. Check out this video preview of the four-track EP.
• Another Twilight Sad remix, and this week it’s the brilliant Com Truise, with their take on ‘Sick’. Listen out for a hint of Boards of Canada in this one...
THIS WEEK’S GIG PICKS
Monday: For those who like their indie rock to be a little more experimental, Dirty Projectors are a good bet. The Brooklyn band stop by The Arches in Glasgow this week.
Thursday - Sunday: Bat For Lashes, or Brighton singer-songwriter Natasha Khan to her friends, is touring her third album, The Haunted Man, with dates at the Ironworks, Inverness on Thursday, Edinburgh’s HMV Picture House on Friday and Glasgow’s O2 ABC on Sunday.
Thursday: Music blog Fishinasub.com is celebrating its first year with its first ever gig night at Bar Bloc in Glasgow, with Halfrican, Mickey 9s and Queen Jane. More info.
Friday: The RBS Museum Lates event at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh returns this week with a ‘Masquerade’ theme. Providing the music on the night will be Miaoux Miaoux and ANAKANAK, the the solo project of Conquering Animal Sound’s Anneke Kampman.
Friday: Multi-instrumentalist Esperi plays a show at Dundee’s Doghouse with support from Juffrage and Cara Mitchell.
Friday: With a new EP to play, Cuddly Shark go to The Moorings in Aberdeen, with support from The Afghan Hounds.
Saturday: Baroque pop perfectionists Grizzly Bear bring their first album in four years, Shields, to Glasgow’s Barrowland.
Sunday: Legendary synth-pop pioneers Sparks play their first Edinburgh show since 1995 at the HMV Picture House. Instead of the usual extravagant production, this time it’s just Ron and Russell Mael, reconfiguring songs from their lengthy back catalogue.
Sunday: Ayrshire rockers Culann launch their debut album at King Tuts, Glasgow.
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