Triptych, Scotland’s multi-city alternative music festival, have just announced the line-up for this year’s event and, boy, do they know how to throw a launch party. diskant was there in full ligging capacity to take advantage of the free bars and enjoy the impressive interior of the Fruitmarket while having the line-up lasered into our brains via the David Shrigley designed artwork on the video screens.

Even better, The 1990s were on hand to provide some musical entertainment. Their set got off to a false start with eventually seven people all standing round one malfunctioning guitar amp but they soon got things back on track. I have been meaning to check out The 1990s for a while now, not least because singer John McKeown was the man behind the Yummy Fur, one of my favourite bands ever. The 1990s are in no way the Yummy Fur part 2 although John’s ultra Glaswegian vocals and the catchy postpunk pop tunes have carried over. But things are a little more serious now, a little more grown up I guess, with less of the knowing references and spangly keyboards and more of a straight up accessible sound. I hope they do well but I need to spend a bit more time with these songs before I’m fully convinced. As the free bar started to run dry, I left and bumped into John who remembered me from all those years ago in Aberdeen (related in preposterous detail here – oh to be young again). So, diskant vs The 1990s – coming soon!

I do heartily recommend you make it along to some of the Triptych shows if you can (they take place over 28-30 April throughout Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen). It may lack some of the innovation and experimentation of Instal and Subcurrent but where else will you get to see Aphex Twin and Wolf Eyes on the same bill rubbing up against the best in indie, classical, hiphop, dance and everything in between?

I’m not going to ATP, I’m going to Japan, but if you are, and you’re going to the second weekend (the one with Lightning Bolt, Boredoms and Magik Markers) and you live somewhere near Glasgow then GOOD NEWS! Instead of spending over £100 getting 4 trains and a bus to Camber Sands you could go on a coach with some other people who like great music. If this sounds like a good idea then give Gary Thoms a mail at gary dot thoms at gmail dot com to find out more. And send us a postcard.

Hi. After hearing Marceline’s grief over the Data Panik support I thought I would share a Myspace exchange I have recently been part of. I admit to being a little surly with the ‘promoter’ concerned but it gets my goat. I’m not interested in naming and shaming so I have removed the promotion ‘company’s name but I’ll spill the beans if you want though I doubt anyone will have contact with them…

Enjoy.

PROMOTION COMPANY: “Hi. ****** *** Events are organising a massive all day gig on the 22nd of january at the The **** ****, ******** 2006 and wondered if you would be interested in playing this gig. There will be about 10 bands playing in all therefore a lot of potential exposure to new fans to broaden your fan base. As well as this there are other gigs available in January throughout the UK. 08th of january *** ******** , ******** 15th of january The **********, ******* 21st of january *** *********,************ 22nd of january *** **** **** ******** 29th of january *** ***** ****, ********* All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50 I hope you are interested in this offer and look forward to hearing from you soon. ****** *** Events”

ME: “Many thanks for the offer but promoting gigs is your job, not mine. I just play.”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “What? We are event organisers, also how do you promote a show that sees bands playing with no fan base? We are helping bands out here. ”

ME: “”All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50″
Like I said, I play music, you sell tickets. Its a promoter/performer role kind of thing. I am also a promoter in Nottingham. If I suggested to a band that they should be paid for their efforts based on them effectively doing my job for me I would expect nothing less than for them to tell me to get screwed.
Perpetuating that kind of deal where bands are somehow responsible for the turnout at gigs helps no one, it creates a world of opportunist, lazy promoters and bands destined to play to 20 of their mates week in week out.
Maybe it’s what some folks want but there’s quicker ways to the top in the music world.
It just involves developing a strong tolerance for the taste of cock.
Best, Chris ”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “I am afraid that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
If you could tell me how to promote a band with no fanbase but their friends then please do, no matter how many fliers you send out no one will come to see a band they have never heard of. The way we do it is 10 bands each bring 20 people which unless I am wrong is 200 people which is 10 times the amount of people they usually play to.
Do you understand that we have costs to cover?
This way we can guarantee a large turnout and money upfront. What could be better?
Who on earth would go to see YOU play if you did not find people. We dont know your fan base, you do. If you can safely say that if we “promote” the gig, using fliers posters etc that 200 people would buy tickets before the event began then ok, I am wrong.
But if not you have to do the hard work not us. We get the venue sorted, organise the gig and find the bands. We get it all sorted the bands sell the tickets as they are the ones playing the show. Bands mess you around too much saying that they can bring people but never do this way we are saving our backs.
I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”

ME: “”I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”
I give in. Because you’re a promoter?

Its all gone a bit quiet since. Awww fuck it. They’re called Silver Fox events. They’re on the world of the Myspace.

Leaving aside the related gig disaster as previous post, I was excited about this, the idea of wandering around the back streets of Glasgow and discovering light installations and disused buildings that have temporarily been given a purpose again.

With Alasdair on map reading and Glasgow knowledge duty we began by meandering our way round the Merchant City. The first couple of installations were so non-eventful as to almost pass notice and the church with, um, some lights on it was similarly unremarkable. We were invited to make our way round a set path through the Ramshorn Gardens which was initially exciting as our giant shadows projected themselves on to the building opposite and slowly shrunk as we walked. Things then turned muddy and dark with some tiny fixed lights illuminating random gravestones, branches and corners. Woo.

Down the back end of King Street things improved with warped, melty shop sign lights making me feel like I had taken a wrong turning into surrealist France, and an enormous video projection on a wall was momentarily awesome in its size.

‘Trapped’ at the bottom of King Street was possibly the biggest installation where a disused building has had its windows lit in colours with video projections filling the central area of windows. We arrived while they were displaying adverts (for the festival. Which we were at) so had to make do with the entertainment provided by Man Pissing in Doorway and Children Crying (possibly related). Then giant ants started marching over the windows in patterns, getting bigger each time they appeared with the colours changing in rotation, eventually culminating in enormo-insects filling the whole central area. Giant insects crawling over buildings is to be encouraged, I think.

Up at the Trongate a building was sporting projections designed by children which meant we had the scarily fun sight of a building covered in brightly coloured balloons. Further projections were based on the actual building itself making it appear as if it had been coloured in with neon crayons, a slightly disorientating look that made me feel like the buliding itself was a projection.

Our last stop was the view of the, again, unremarkably lit church and mosque by the Clyde but much more captivating was the long term lighting developments on the various bridges which reflect shimmering colour on to the river. The blood red pedestrian bridge dominated the view and we walked back over it where it loomed, bright red, clear and strong overhead and easily beat the festival installations.

The main problem with most of the installations is that they were just kind of there. Pretty and kinda cool but not really living up to the status of a festival of light. Radiance was trying too hard. Glasgow doesn’t need this trumpeting and garish cosmetic lighting. Light up the dark random areas, highlight the unused and un-noticed and let people discover them for themselves.

Following on from my previous post:

Worth looking forward to: SNOW

We got snow sooner than expected, on Thursday. The light that morning was eerie, amazingly clear and so beautiful. I even noticed entire buildings I never noticed in six months of walking up Queen Margaret Drive daily. As I stared around in wonder, clouds of doom crept in, the sky went dark and the snow started falling. When I got off the bus ten minutes later the snow was thick and swirling all around me and I was so happy I thought my heart would burst. I’ve never been so wide-eyed and over-excitably talkative at 9am on a work morning. I love Glasgow so much.

Not worth looking forward to: playing with Data Panik

Excuse me if I go off on a rant here but I am so disappointed, angry and upset about this. As a huge bis fan, and having seen DP play about 5 times now, I was so excited to get asked to support them. But we ended up pulling out of the gig in the afternoon because of what we consider to be unbelievable and ridiculous promotion. The gig was promoted by a well-known, experienced local promotion company and was part of a local council sponsored and heavily advertised festival. But by the time we pulled out these were the conditions we had apparently agreed to by accepting the invitation to play (maybe we should have asked more beforehand but maybe they should have told us sooner than the day before the gig and without us having to ask):

Running order of support bands, number of guest list places and all payment for the night to be entirely decided by amount of advance tickets sold personally by each band by 4pm on the day of the gig.

So if we sold zero tickets we wouldn’t even get our expenses covered even if 50 of our friends turned up on the night and paid on the door. Am I being mental here or is this just wrong?

We’ve played a lot of gigs in the last 18 months, including some high profile ones, and never been treated like this. Every gig we’ve done has been promoted by enthusiastic, friendly, helpful people who have given us all the information we needed and either paid us very generously or at least given us our petrol money and some beer.

I’d heard about these ticket deal gigs before and always vowed never to play any of them. Maybe my principles are too strong here but after 15 years of doing things DIY I won’t be a part of something that plays bands against each other and doesn’t treat them as people (and people with jobs. Our presence at soundcheck was also demanded for 4pm) with basic requirements. It just seems so corporate.

I’d be interested in what the rest of you who are in bands/promote gigs think about this.

(The Girls Aloud album better be great now)

UPDATE: Our official band response to the promoter is now on our website which explains things in more detail.

Well, I am back from my holidays and will post some thoughts on them soon. However, I see that the only two things of major interest that I did have already been written about elsewhere. Stu Fowkes has an in-depth review of Audioscope 05 over at OxfordBands while Alistair Fitchett once again has stolen my thoughts in his almost perfect post on Tangents about the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate. Nice of them to do the hard work and leave me free to write some kind of flippant top ten list instead.

UPDATE: You can now look at some photos I took.

This was Quiet Day and we needed it after Hijokaidan, especially with the sun shining outside. I had to tear myself away from my usual Sunday walk and head into the bowels of the Arches once more but I was suitably rewarded.

INGAR ZACH & RHODRI DAVIES
A collaboration between percussionist Zach and harpist Davies, this was perfect Sunday afternoon fare. Ingar Zach had the air of an inquisitive garden shed inventor picking up various objects and trying them out on his drum kit. Electric fans, metal chains and ping pong balls (hopefully purloined from Sun City Girls) were a few of the things used to create fluttering, pattering, juddering rhythms. In perfect accord Rhodri Davies pulled out extended drones and short plucks of sound from his harp using various bits and pieces of his own.

LOREN MAZZACANE CONNORS & ALAN LICHT
This was a delight from start to finish – beautiful, intricate guitar interplay between the two with an array of pedals to tweak the sound and noisier bursts of feedback to stop you from quite drifting off. There was an attentive hush in the room and only the discomfort of the floor made me want them to stop. Quite lovely.

JANDEK AGAIN
Looks like Jandek had been reading my post about Friday and this time we did get a stripped down set with just Loren Mazzacone Connors on guitar and Jandek’s mournful poetics. It was really quite affecting especially when the words were interspersed with interludes of sighing harmonica with the lights slowly changing between the two. The second half of the set saw Jandek take to the drums along with Alan Licht on guitar and (so Alex says, I wouldn’t know) Heather from Taurpis Tula on pedal steel. Jandek’s booming simple drumming was wonderful and this was surrounded by swathes of noise and Heather’s primal wail which grew to be one of the most impressively soul-destroying things I’ve heard in my life, gnawing away at my soul and filling my heart with nightmares. After about 20 minutes the intensity of this was almost too much to bear. Afterwards we emerged blinking and stupified and I sat in a befuddled daze with StewBeard for half an hour while we talked disjointedly and tried to shake off the sound and effect of that voice. By that point I had pretty much lost it.

But that’s the great thing about Instal, hearing things you might never dream of listening to in your own home and can never play loudly enough for full appreciation. Sure, I found myself scrabbling for pop music as soon as I left the building to restore some kind of equilibrium but it’s an honour to be able to challenge my ears in this way and see the many ways people can create new and inspiring sounds.

From the strangest and simplest means. Long may Instal continue.

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL
There’s something a bit sick about enjoying this kind of stuff so much. I’m sat uncomfortably on the floor with my hand going numb and enveloped in densely layered treated noise at ear damaging volumes. It’s clearly not sensible and yet I’m stupidly happy. Just one guy and a table full of electronic doohickeys to warp and subvert the distorted drones but he’s creating enough noise to fill The Arches and probably push out some of the oxygen as well. I came to from my reverie at one point to realise some awesome thudding drums had appeared which quickly brought everything together to a fevered climax. My favourite set so far and short enough to feel like there wasn’t a second wasted.

SUN CITY GIRLS
Arriving onstage disguised by masks and costume brandishing chairs Sun City Girls were somewhere between performance art and theatre. Spoken word pieces, odd percussion and general gibberish were slightly overshadowed by lion taming, book reading and a round of golf with ping pong balls. While generally entertaining it was often incomprehensible nonsense. As the crowd thinned later I discovered they had ditched their costumes and when they broke into some straight-up folk songs it was as if the first part of the set had been merely a figment of my deranged imagination.

HIJOKAIDAN
Think of the most intensely exciting, idiotically loud 30 second pinnacle of live music you’ve ever experienced. Hijokaidan just start at that point and continue it for 40 minutes. They just ignore all the build-up, the winning over the audience and just get straight in there like a kick in the face, throw themselves and their instruments about in euphoric abandon and demand your fervour like they’ve been thrilling you for an hour instead of 2 minutes. And, hell, did they get it. Half the audience were on their feet punching the air and going nuts. The other half were getting the hell out of there before they damaged their hearing permanently. This was squalling, screaming madness and I loved it.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

I’ve missed Instal. My first time back since 2002 and really nothing’s changed. More seats thankfully although it really doesn’t seem like Instal if I don’t spend half the day sitting on the concrete floor contemplating my shoes and gazing happily at the brickwork and metal while trains rumble overhead and noise rumbles through me. I don’t have the stamina to see or write about everything on this weekend but I will collect my thoughts as I go and post some of them here. (Also, massive thanks to Barry for getting me in).

JANDEK
I spent most of Jandek’s set hovering up and down the fun scale, unsure of whether I was enjoying this and, maybe less importantly, whether it was good. Though, whenever I decided it was tedious tosh (about 5 separate occasions in over an hour) he always managed to do something to bring it back and make me re-assess. I liked things in isolation – Jandek’s mournful lamenting, his intuitive guitar playing, the gorgeous echoing bass – but rarely thought they worked all together, wavering between unstructured and cluttered. I think I’d like it better stripped down to bass and vocals.

JOJO
Simply one guy and a guitar making a racket. At times fighting with his guitar, at other times cradling it, this ordinary looking guy whipped up some awesome sounds – waves of feedback punctuated by bursts of noise, whispers and screams. I’m looking forward to seeing him with Hijokaiden today.

BLACK BONED ANGEL
This was sheer spectacle, the stage beautifully lit with clear colours lighting up the fog of dry ice through which you could glimpse the silhouettes of 2 men with guitars. They built up their piece from quiet doom to full on apocalyptic terror and it was mesmerising. The guitar onslaught was interspersed by minimal, powerful percussion leading to me trying to make the case for them as the anti-Low. By the climax, god knows how many minutes or hours later, it was like sitting in a wind tunnel of noise with my clothes flapping and the slow creep of deafness threatening my ears. At the end they did devil horns to the crowd and then had a big hug. Aw.

Day 2
Day 3

Blimey. Just spotted the announcement for two more All Tomorrow’s Parties weekends for next May curated by Mudhoney, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Special Guests one weekend and The Shins, Sleater Kinney and Ween the next. I’m still noticing a lack of electronic stuff here which disappoints me. I think I am officially bored of indie rock.