Archive for February, 2011
Music Alliance Pact – February 2011
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
The 15th of the month = Music Alliance Pact day.
It’s the day that The Pop Cop takes full advantage of its tartan-tinted view of life to foist a musically-gifted so-and-so from Scotland upon the readers of music websites all across the world, and each of our MAP counterparts do likewise.
Today’s choice is REVERIE, you should get to know her…
To download all 33 songs in one file click here
SCOTLAND: The Pop Cop
Reverie – Get To Know Me
Reverie is the stage name of Louise Connell, a striking 21-year-old singer with a tempting voice and pop songs with hints of Martha Wainwright. Get To Know Me is such a flawless acoustic strum, it surely can’t be long before daytime radio is all over this. The track is taken from her surprisingly diverse debut album Melodies which you can download for less than the price of a glass of wine at Bandcamp.
February 15, The Liquid Ship, Glasgow (free)
May 31, Bloc, Glasgow (free)
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Award ceremonies: who cares wins?
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
There’s nothing more trivial that people waste their time attempting to seriously debate, rationalise, opine and psychoanalyse than award ceremonies.
Until the day arrives that every person wakes up with identically aligned tastes, you’re inevitably going to end up unsatisfied.
Since this is Brit Awards week, the annual celebration of the best that Britain’s music scene has to offer (ahem), we can look forward to finding out who triumphs among the 49 nominations featuring British artists… of which 48 are English, none are Northern Irish, none are Welsh and one is Scottish – Biffy Clyro, who are up for Best Group (and let’s not forget Simon Neil wrote Best British Single contender When We Collide for Matt Cardle, what a champ).
The cutting-edge talent that can be found in the rest of the world is also catered for at the Brits with categories such as Best International Breakthrough Act, which is contested this year by Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, The National, The Temper Trap and the cast of Glee. I genuinely thought I’d accidentally clicked on The Onion website when I first read that.
The whole event is so predictably desperate, from the laboriously unfunny presenters to the gyrations and exploitation of female pop stars whom young girls regard as role models. But that’s what happens when you put the control of such shows in the hands of a steering group made up of industry figures who want to maximise their own vested interests, namely: David Joseph, chairman (Universal Music), Jason Iley (Universal Music), Miles Leonard (EMI), Christian Tattersfield (Warners), Mike Smith (Sony Music), Ben Beardsworth (XL Recordings).
The Scottish broadcasting industry had the right idea, setting up the Scottish BAFTAs in 1997 after growing tired of seeing their film and television creations north of the border continually ignored by the so-called British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
So how can those involved in making music in Scotland get its rightful share of self-congratulation?
Now in its second year, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards aims to “award and recognise the best artists around the country”, with six different acts nominated in each of the five categories, although the Best Newcomer category seems rather redundant in a competition made up entirely of newcomers (in the grand scheme of things).
To be honest, I don’t think the SAMAs in its current structure is the magic answer to the wilful ignorance of Scottish music talent. Since few of the 30 nominees that the public are being asked to vote for could pull more than a couple of hundred punters to a gig, the whole event is unlikely to be appreciated outwith the local scene it exists to promote – if you’re trying to give relevance and purpose to an award ceremony then surely that objective is more important than any other.
But at least it’s a step in the right direction and if it helps more people discover the wonders of underappreciated bands such as Little Eskimos then it’s certainly not doing any harm.
You also have to take your hat off to SAMA founder Richy Muirhead for having the will, guts and determination to do something about the issue rather than writing 536 words discussing how trivial award ceremonies are in a blog post. I never learn.
Tickets are on sale here for the Scottish Alternative Music Awards show at Glasgow’s Classic Grand on February 25.
Little Eskimos – Legs
Little Eskimos – The Broken Heart Brigade
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2,453 days and counting… will the wait for Mylo’s second album ever end?
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
When George Bush declared that the justification for invading Iraq was the existence of weapons of mass destruction, The Mirror began publishing a daily tally of how long the search for them had gone on via its WMD-ometer.
Day after day the number kept rising until it became blatantly obvious (even to Bush) that the hunt for chemical and biological weapons was a fruitless one, and the newspaper eventually decided to stop running its counter after 400 days or so.
At almost precisely the same time, on May 24, 2004, Mylo released his much-loved debut album Destroy Rock & Roll, lauded by critics from Pitchfork to the BBC to Q to Rolling Stones, with its smart electro-party-funk sounds guaranteed to be heard at all the cool hangouts.
Since then, music fans have been waiting patiently for a follow-up from the man from Skye. If there was a Mylo-meter, it would be showing 2,453 days.
So why has that elusive second Mylo album turned into the Chinese Democracy of dance? The answer probably lies in the story of its predecessor. Few people saw Destroy Rock & Roll’s success coming. In fact, it was so unexpected that Mylo’s own independent label Breastfed hadn’t even bothered to obtain legal permission for any of the six songs he had sampled on the album before it was released. They were only cleared after the record had outgrown its underground roots.
The word-of-mouth nature of Destroy Rock & Roll’s rise to prominence meant that its release date was staggered as new territories discovered it, from May 2004 in the UK to February 2006 in the United States. That, in turn, elongated Mylo’s promotional obligations to the record and by the time he had eventually stopped touring, he described himself as a “wreck” and expressed genuine concerns that his hearing had deteriorated.
Somewhat ironically, the most commercially successful single he is associated with is Doctor Pressure – a mash-up of Mylo’s Drop The Pressure and Miami Sound Machine’s Dr Beat that the Scot had no involvement in. Yet that didn’t stop his label (now under the umbrella of Sony) putting this new version as a bonus track on a re-released version of Destroy Rock & Roll.
His forays into the world of mainstream pop have been jinxed. Despite being recruited to record several tracks for Kylie Minogue’s 2007 album X, none of them ended up on the finished product, which prompted a pissed-off Mylo (he called the album “a complete mess”) to leak the tracks on the internet a year later. His mood wouldn’t have been helped by the fact Kylie did use two tracks produced by Calvin Harris, the man seen by some as the prime beneficiary of Mylo’s legacy. Mylo also worked on a song with Little Boots but didn’t get it finished in time for it to make the cut of her 2009 album Hands.
However, there are signs, albeit isolated ones, that a new album might be on the horizon. In January 2009, Annie Mac played a teasingly upbeat track he sent to her at BBC Radio 1 which she referred to as I’m Back. Another new song, Wings Of Fire, appeared on a DJ mix album he put together for a Mixmag covermount CD in January 2010 and sounds like it was inspired by 80s sci-fi scores.
More recently, his output has consisted of remixing the likes of The Human League, Bryan Ferry, Robyn and, last month, Cut Copy’s Take Me Over. And on January 20, 2011, he made public a five-minute mash-up thrill-ride culled from an astonishing 141 songs:
Mylo R1 Minimix Jan 2011 by mylo
His live appearances have been confined to about a dozen DJ sets in the past couple of years, including RockNess in June 2008, Glasgow’s Winchester Club in February 2009 for a Southern Comfort-sponsored night, Edinburgh’s 2009 Hogmanay celebrations and the Isle of Wedge charity event in his native Skye in August 2010.
Mylo, who now lives in London, has given hints about how his second album might sound in sporadic interviews. In 2006, he said: “It’s going to be faster and more seamless. I’m going to try and start it in a high tempo and then just keep going. It’s probably going to be a bit less radio-friendly. Don’t get me wrong, I love funk music, but I think my tastes have changed.” Three years later, he revealed: “I don’t want to use any samples this time, apart from one Rachmaninoff piano riff.”
For now, though, there’s nothing else to do but wait…
Mylo – I’m Back (Radio 1 rip)
Mylo – Wings Of Fire
Mylo – Drop The Pressure
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