Archive for November, 2011

Music Alliance Pact – November 2011

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

Welcome to the 38th edition of the Music Alliance Pact, the planet’s greatest monthly mixtape.

Seeing as the end of 2011 is fast approaching and thoughts are turning to potential albums of the year, I wanted to shine a light on an album that really ought to feature highly on the list of music critics and fans. Diamond Mine by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins is that album and, thanks to their label Domino, you can download a stunning reworked track from it for free below, along with 34 other songs hand-picked by 34 bloggers around the world.

Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a .zip file of the whole 35-track compilation via MediaFire.

SCOTLAND: The Pop Cop
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bats In The Attic (Unravelled)
Rarely has the word “timeless” been more appropriate for a record. It took seven years for King Creosote and Jon Hopkins to make their first collaborative album, the Mercury Prize-nominated Diamond Mine, and it handsomely captures delicate snapshots of unhurried, everyday life in rural Fife – literally, with the sound of coffee shop chatter, running streams and chirping seagulls. Here’s an exclusive free MAP download of their reworking of album track Bats In The Attic, taken from their Honest Words EP.

January 26, ABC, Glasgow (tickets)

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“Quite rude, a bit funny and honest” – meet Glasgow PodcART’s architect

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Whenever you first realise that you’re in the same room as someone you know, it’s usually because you’ve spotted them.

The first time I was ever aware that I was in the same room as Halina Rifai came about not because I knew what she looked like (I didn’t), but because I instantly recognised her laugh.

This was no ordinary laugh. This was an almighty, shrieking howl which shattered the between-song calm of an Esperi gig at the 13th Note in Glasgow two years ago.

Halina’s presence in the city’s underground music scene is a familiar one as founder of Glasgow PodcART, which she has been running since February 2009, predominantly broadcasting podcasts, but also creating opportunities for musicians, artists and photographers by putting on gig nights and art exhibitions.

The Glasgow PodcART team’s influence cannot be underestimated. Next month they will unleash their 100th podcast, a landmark that has been reached with just as many tears as cheers.

For Halina, it’s fair to say that PodcART is a labour of love, a phrase which will have tripped off the tongue of anyone masochistic enough to run a blog.

Thirty-two years ago, Halina was born in Redhill, Surrey to a Moroccan father and English mother whose own parents were Polish and Irish. When she was eight, she moved to Toward, near Dunoon, where her parents had taken over a residential home for the elderly.

Having been spoon-fed a diet of Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, U2 and Motown, Halina confesses she turned into “a bit of a rebel” when she went to school in Kilmacolm.

That manifested itself in a love of New Kids On The Block, who played at the first gig she ever attended, at the SECC. “I lost my voice from screaming, it was so good,” says Halina. “I was obsessed – even my floor had posters.”

However, everything changed when a friend handed her a cassette of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, with her musical education spilling out in the direction of Bjork, Radiohead, DJ Shadow and Mr Scruff, while the youngest of Halina’s three brothers was responsible for introducing her to The Roots, Public Enemy and 2Pac.

Having had piano and flute lessons since early childhood, Halina started playing in orchestras, but chronic stage fright persuaded her to pursue a career in recording, which saw her move back down south to attend Salford University in Greater Manchester.

When she returned home, she walked right into the middle of her parents’ divorce. Halina’s own life began to unravel with breakdowns and binge drinking. Things got so bad her mum chucked her out.

“I came up to Glasgow in 2004 with nothing – no job, no money,” she says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I stayed with friends and started going for job interviews.”

Halina passed the time by writing for webzines, before discovering a site in Northern Ireland called NI Podcast (now Panic Dots) which she was so taken with that she asked them for permission to set up her own variant in Glasgow. “There didn’t seem to be anything in Scotland on our level in a broadcast sense,” she recalls.

Halina’s version of NI Podcast, which she christened Glasgow PodcART, would provide a network for all facets of the creative spectrum to showcase their skills - from musicians and songwriters to photographers and artists.

“I didn’t want it to just be music,” she says. “I wanted it to cross platforms because it was so important, I saw how rich the talent was here. My thinking was that if a band wanted a photographer then they could find someone through PodcART. It hasn’t gone the way I thought it would, but I really don’t mind. It is more of a music site now but that will be changing – we’re going to try to make it just as art-focused.”

The ever-expanding and occasionally dysfunctional PodcART family also includes Ally Burton, who takes care of live spin-off event Mix_Up_Mayhem, arts co-ordinator Sophie Stubbs, who is organising the second Sketchbook exhibition, and more than 20 other contributors.

Nevertheless, PodcART’s forte remains its podcasts, which are almost as renowned for their championing of emerging talent as they are for the devastatingly sharp-witted contributions of sidekick Kirstin Lynn.

“The content is so important,” says Halina. “I think we’ve always been known for being quite rude, a bit funny and honest. We can sometimes be exceptionally controversial in terms of our language and what we talk about, but because PodcART essentially is mine, I know exactly how far I can go. I would never be completely ferocious or venomous towards someone, but at the same time if I think something is shit I will say so.”

December 18: Glasgow Podcart’s Nightmare Before Christmas featuring PAWS, Lady North, Citizens, As In Bear @ Captain’s Rest, Glasgow

Here are a couple of great tracks that PodcART have championed recently:

Grass Stain (feat. Rachel Tesfaye) by Craig_FS

One Fine Day by Versechorusverse

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Make Sparks: the promo video kings

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

If the most basic function of a promo video is to enhance the song it represents then most of the ones I have come across would be deemed expensive failures.

It’s incredibly difficult to come up with and execute a visual concept so captivating that it persuades fans to play the video instead of the mp3 when they want to hear the song, but that’s precisely the challenge the most talented video directors rise to.

Two Scottish band promos have really caught my eye this year:

Paint Them Silver by Pareto

and Your Heart’s On Fire by Make Sparks

As it turns out, both were made by Stuart Breadner’s Shootback Productions company, so I asked him if I could get behind-the-scenes access to his latest project, the video for Make Sparks’ new single Floored. Here’s how it panned out…

My instructions are to meet at 11.30am at Motherwell College car park. It’s a grey, rainless, bitingly cold morning. A white transit van turns up, in which I find Make Sparks trio Craig Parker (vocals, guitar), Bobby Garland (bass) and Adam Parker (drums) changing into torn, blood-spattered white shirts and ‘Die Hard’ vest. Their sound engineer Dave Neill is already in character as a wild-eyed crazed assassin, waving around an imitation pistol with just a little too much relish.

The Dundee band have spent the last two days being tortured in a warehouse for the video and they enthusiastically regale anecdotes of kidnapping, tooth extraction, waterboarding and a simulated punch which wasn’t supposed to strike Craig’s jaw but did with some force.

Stuart is orchestrating proceedings on day three, scouring the barren, marshy wastelands of Ravenscraig for the sort of earthy texture conducive to digging one’s own grave. As you do. His energy is contagious. The scenes being filmed here predominantly involve the terrified band members being chased along a dirt track, with Stuart cycling alongside them with a handheld Canon camera. “Why am I running behind them with a gun? Would I not just shoot them?” asks Dave, not unreasonably.

Craig explains the idea behind the third video Make Sparks have done in six months. “I imagined us walking through a prison, lit by torch,” he begins. “We’re shackled together and I wanted us to break into a dance routine, but it’s evolved a lot since then. It’s similar – there are lots of torch-lit stuff and we are incarcerated, but there’s very little dancing unfortunately. I think making videos is as much fun as making the music.”

Adam would go further. “I much prefer it to recording,” he says. “It makes the song more appealing to people if you’ve got a visual to go with it.”

“It’s better for sharing,” adds Bobby. “If someone says ‘check out this video’, it’s easier than having to look for a song and then downloading it. You can always see a video, even on your phone.”

Check out the finished article:

And here’s another entertaining video for one of their older songs, Apollo! Apollo! (directed by Ben Cowie)

Make Sparks on SoundCloud

November 10, The Attic, Bathgate (supporting Sucioperro)
December 13, Harry’s Bar, Stoke (free)
December 14, The Bull & Gate (tickets)
December 15, Bungalows & Bears, Sheffield (free)
December 20, Stereo, Glasgow (tickets)
December 21, Tunnels, Aberdeen (tickets)
December 22, Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh (tickets)
December 23, Dexters, Dundee (tickets)