Christ, it's suddenly Winter! Never mind Autumn, it's gone from being sunny and lovely on Saturday, to shitty and cold by yesterday. Balls. Ah well, as Billy Connolly (sort of) said, 'what the fuck do you expect, you live in fucking Scotland for fuck's sake'. Anyhow, shitey weather aside, this week see the first of Song, by Toad's BAD FUN nights, held downstairs at Henderson's at St. John's at the foot of Lothian Road. There will be bands, there will be DJs and there will be nice beer as well. What more could you possibly ask? [...]
If you're already getting sick of all of this talk about albums of the year, then you might want to stay well away from this site for the next two weeks. Continuing on from last week, here's the second out of four scheduled Artists Albums of the Year. This is the bit where I get folk who've done interviews for me over the past two years to tell me a bit about what's been tickling their fancy in 2012, we even have one of our artists choosing an album by someone else who's writing about their favourite album - I [...]
I'm a sucker for exclusives, I guess all bloggers are (although not all of them will admit it). So as we are now in the run up to Christmas I guess it's okay for me to start posting up some festive tunes. This week we have a genuine first, which comes from The Scottish Enlightenment and their take on 'God Rest You Merry Gentlemen'. Originally pencilled in to be a Christmas single last year, however they couldn't find ' time to do that properly. And when you have a song with a 1 note guitar solo, you need to get [...]
Like any Scottish band that plays anything even vaguely ambient it’s impossible not to think of Mogwai, and the experience is similar: The Scottish Enlightenment make music that you get lost in. At other times they could almost be The Flaming Lips. "St Thomas" isn’t a perfect album, but its highlights are superb. Read more »
![[Re-Introducing] – The Scottish Enlightenment](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3809601_lg.jpg)
Tweet So, it's Sunday, and time for another Re-Introducing post. This week it's the turn of Scottish plod-rockers (I'll explain in a minute) The Scottish Enlightenment . We did actually mention them in passing at the end of last year, as their debut LP "St Thomas" clocked in at number 18 on Peenko 's BAMS 2010 , but that hardly counts. Right? Just as a word of warning: if you were hoping for something as lively as [...]
Video: Vimeo – YouTube Photos: Flickr – Blueback Hotrod Free mp3 downloads: zip file (right click – save as) I first got into The Scottish Enlightenment back in 2007 when they releases the Eyes single on Moojuice Records. Then they went silent for a couple of years, to the extent that I thought they might have actually called it a day, but last year they came back stronger than ever before. Two fantastic [...]
It's easy to say, isn't it, but oh so very hard to do: whatever else you do in the music business, never get into the habit of resenting other people's success. I had an absolutely awful temper as a kid. I don't think anyone I currently know has ever really seen me lose it, because it doesn't really happen these days. But I went through a couple of years of getting into fights, shouting at referees, smashing up things in frustration, and just generally giving too much vent to my feelings. Eventually I got myself sent [...]
I think Tom Waits could be playing in Edinburgh this week and I would strongly consider missing it. I have already spent a day sleeping it off, but I am still not convinced I have entirely dealt with the damage of Homegame just yet. In fact, I'm pretty sure I haven't. What I have done though is just about pull myself together to the point where I feel emotionally capable of dealing with our excellent lineup at the Bristo Hall tonight: Francois , This is the Kit and Babe . With the [...]
The Seventeenth Century return with a their second EP, cunningly entitled 'EP2', on the 2nd May. The release will be available exclusively on Limited Edition 10” vinyl, which includes a free digital download code . The band celebrate the release with a gig at Oran Mor this coming Friday (29th), with support from The Scottish Enlightenment and Sunshine Social . Now that's one cracking line up if I do say so myself. Having caught 17C at the same venue just a few weeks back, I can vouch that they were in top form. The Scottish Enlightenment have [...]
I am going to start this post by apologising to anyone who might be waiting for a reply email from me. Normally I am pretty on top of my inbox, but this weekend I have succumbed to the dreaded man flu, so much of today has been spent lying on the couch feeling sorry for myself. It's pretty safe t say that today hasn't been the best of days. Thanks to me overdosing on Lemsip I have 'manned up' and will stop moaning so I can get this post done. I did say recently that there would be some [...]
Having stowed out Bar Bloc last month for the first ever Barmellodie gig, the awesome Al from Armellodie Records returns to the scene of the crime tonight to do it all again. This time round he's roped in two of my favourite bands on his label, The Scottish Enlightenment and 30lbs of bone, plus a wee band called Randolph's Leap who you might have heard of. It all kicks off about 10-ish, with Al and my partner in crime, Halina from Glasgow Podcart spinning tunes right through until the wee hours of the morning. Not only do you [...]
With the next Ides of Toad coming up on Saturday (Rob St. John, Ziggy Campbell, Thirty Pounds of Bone Loch Lomond NOT Loch Lomond under any circumstances (*cough cough*, except perhaps maybe), tickets here , flog flog flog etc etc...) I thought now might be a good time to put up some videos from the last one, where we kicked things off in style with Morris Major, Johnny Reb and the awesome Scottish Enlightenment. Ben Clarke and Alan McLoughlin, a couple of gents from the Edinburgh School of Art, very kindly offered to film some [...]
These things never really seem to last so I guess I better say something nice about it while I can: it's really quite a pleasant morning here in Edinburgh today. Presumably by the time I hit 'Publish' all that will have changed and we'll be back to the shitty old January we're all so very familiar with around these parts. Still, at least the old live music machine is coughing and spluttering its way back to life. Just wait until the second week in February though, because judging from my calendar that's when it really does kick off [...]
I spent this week's podcast - well the post anyway, not the podcast itself - apologising for taking a bit too long this year to crank my brain into action in 2011, but it looks like the Edinburgh gig machine is having much the same problem. There's a battle of the bands type thing at Maggie's Chambers on Saturday 15th, but that's really all I could find. Bands playing at this include Supermarionation , Steel Rose , Fireproof Match , Deco Arcade and Augustalia . If you're in Glasgow there [...]
Welcome to the second installment of the Song, by Toad Festive Fifty for 2010. Yesterday I explained why I am going to have to exclude Song, by Toad Records music from my end of year lists from now on, and today I am going to explain (i.e. make feeble excuses for) some of the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies you might perceive in this particular list. There are certain albums, for example, which just don't yield edited highlights all that easily. There are no songs by Mount Erie or The Books, for example, because I found it next to impossible [...]
Track Listing 1. Pascal 2. Little Sleep 3. The First Will Be Last 4. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Download
Welcome to the start of this year's Song, by Toad Festive Fifty, where I list, in order, my favourite fifty songs of the year. As with the albums of the year, I have had to exclude Song, by Toad Records bands from this list. Partly this is to stop me inevitably wounding the pride of whichever bands fared less well than their label mates, and partly to stop the label collectively dominating this list too much. I don't think the concept of objectivity is possible, or even all that relevant, when it comes to discussing what music you [...]
11. The Scottish Enlightenment - St. Thomas I waited ages for this album to materialise, and then once I'd loved the preceding EPs so much I started to get paranoid about over-anticipating it and ruining it for myself. Once the ludicrous over-thinking was over, however, it turned out to be slow-burning gem: an album that simply fixes you in its gaze and keeps on reeling you in, sometimes so slowly that you wonder how it is so impossible to escape. The Scottish Enlightenment - Pascal [...]
Track Listing 1. There’s Something Not Right About Christmas This Year 2. The Soft Place 3. My Bible Is 4. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Download
St. Thomas, the debut album from The Scottish Enlightenment, is a project that seems born out of the frozen wastelands of Caledonia’s East Coast. That’s not to say that this is a cold record: quite the opposite, in fact (well, mostly). But it’s an album which has the rare quality of capturing the cold purity [...]
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MP3: Daft Punk – “Horizons” (RAM Japanese Bonus Track)
Listen to Daft Punk’s “Horizon”, the Japanese bonus track for Random Access Memories
