I really am now, tomorrow! I’m sure the rest of the diskant team will keep you entertained in my absence but for the next couple of weeks expect no major updates to the site, mail to go unanswered and many many review CDs to pile up on the kitchen table. I will be staying at this hotel in Tokyo! I see it has an internet room so I will endeavour to post some frenzied babblings mid-holiday. Woo!

econoline vow never to tour with Uter again as they ponder the further half hour trudge home at 3am in The Great Glasgow Blizzard of 2006.

I kept coming back to these songs while I was away on tour as they made me homesick for Glasgow in an oddly comforting way. The times I broke out of the unreality of the touring bubble to take my iPod and wander the streets were some of my favourite times of the tour. These songs fit so well with the clear light of Glasgow and wherever I was I always found myself looking at the sky: the strongest bluest sky against the red sandstone in Glasgow, sunset on Brighton beach, trees silhouetted against the fading light in the back streets of West London.

Errors have an ear for detail that keeps things constantly interesting across this 5 track EP; crackles and flutters that pinprick the heart and accentuate a sound which manages to be both lush and sparse, fluid and technical and full of heart-in-mouth dynamics. There’s a moment in the middle of opener Mr Milk where things build back with such delicious anticipation that every time I hear it my hand goes up involuntarily to smother the stupid grin on my face when the beat kicks back in.

If you want more prosaic comparisons, Errors take cues from label mentors Mogwai’s electronic dabblings on Rock Action (the album) and match it with the attic bedroom inventiveness and seasonal disorder of Hood. You can’t pin them down quite that easily though as they mix and match genres and instrumentation with little concern finding room for loping basslines, echoing scraped guitars and a myriad of synth sounds. Terror Tricks has intricately clever laptop beats that skitter alongside mournful vocoder but there’s also warmth, playfulness and a sense of humour (and a love for throbbing synths that go URRRRR) that steers things well away from IDM clinical anxiety. Looks like I may have been too hasty in rescinding Errors’ title as my new favourite band.

Top marks too for the parquet and chintz decorated sleeve. Oh, if only Rock Action could have stretched to the real things.

Errors
Rock Action

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 wasn’t going to do this either but what the hell. I’M GOING ON TOUR tomorrow morning and you should come see us because I’m not doing this again any time soon, not least because I have hardly any holiday allowance left. I leave in 12 hours and still have 4 million things to do. I am coming down with a cold and have just discovered an worryingly enormous bruise on my leg that I have no recollection of inflicting on myself. I also see we are bringing Scotland’s lovely weather with us.

So, yes, ÜTER in Oxford, Brighton and London. One of these gigs is with the mighty econoline, one we are supporting someone who used to be in Spiritualized and thus can’t play our Spacemen 3 cover and the other is FREE. Find out more here and come say hello. I even bought a dress, what more do you want?

(Actual content when I return – I am in the process of interviewing my 4 favourite up and coming bands in Glasgow. If anyone can guess them I will give you a prize*).

* it is not a video camera

Free iPod Tour Guides – I am really starting to see the possibilities of podcasting. I laughed initially when given a huge phone on a necklace when I went to the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate but it was actually pretty cool being able to hear the artist talking about the work while you looked at it. Walking tours seem like even more fun, especially if they are like ‘turn left here, after the post office. Look at that!’. I always like wandering in cities I visit but it’s rare you get to find out anything about the buildings you see.

Anyway, my main reason for posting this is The Glasgow Indie Music Tour!

You’ll discover:

– the hang-outs, rehearsal spaces and even workplaces you’re likely to run into band members such as Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian and more.
– What Glasgow’s got that makes it musically hot!

Imagine!

Of course what this will amount to is having a pint in King Tuts (where Oasis were discovered!!!!) and going to the Safeway on Byres Road (where Belle met Sebastian!!). I wonder if it includes popping into Monorail to gawp at Indie Legend Stephen Pastel!

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.

Yes yes, none of us getting upset about Smash Hits folding have read it for years but that shouldn’t stop us mourning the greatest magazine that ever existed. My sister and I read Smash Hits obsessively from the mid-eighties to the late nineties and loved it for their enthusiasm and ridiculing and the secret language of hilarious catchphrases. Thankfully all this continues in the safe hands of Popjustice, Simon Amstell (I had a momentary regression into teen pop sulkiness the other week when my dad made me stop watching Popworld to go visit my granny) and the Pet Shop Boys. You’ll also find a large number of questions on diskant that are nicked directly from my Smash Hits yearbooks. I will now go dig out my ‘Smash Hits: more tune for your “bob”‘ badge and remember the good old days.

Smash Hits Forever
Down The Dumper! – Alexis Petridis at the Guardian

Also good on the Guardian today – the London Underground map of music.

A blast from the past if ever there was one. Deadloss ‘Motherfuckin’ Superstar were one of Aberdeen’s top local bands back in the days when I lived there and responsible for all manner of rawk-related shenanigans. And these days they’ve even been joined by James and Neal from Aberdeen’s much-missed nu-metal Busted, TAR. All it really needs is a song entitled Fit like? and pictures of them hanging out in Drakes and I’d sink into some kind of nostalgic stupor. Anyway, unsurprisingly, this is RAWK with a capital GRR and I don’t read Kerrang! enough to make any meaningful references, but this kicks the ass of a lot of stuff that passes for popular rock music these days. There’s some howling impassioned vocals, lots of riffing and the sort of tunes that make The Kids throw themselves around in crazed abandon. All it needs now is a ridiculous video of them playing in a desert and they’ll really be on to something.

Deadloss Superstar