Made in Leith – Dock

Hello and a very good morning to you all. Incase you didn’t know, today is record store day -...

Adidas Does Musical Tap Shoes

Awesome bit of physical technology merged with music and a bit of branding. Adidas invited Didier Brun to code up the Megalizer, a crafty bit of software that lets dancers make music with their moves.

Gonna get ourselves a few pairs to funk up the office a bit.

The Letters / Pipe Dreams

Leith has always been known for spawning damn fine musical talent, and The Letters are no exception to this.

Pitching themselves as “5 piece Dark Cello pop noiseniks”, apparently “their sound emerges from lack of vitamin D, poorly heated flats and glittering pubs spread eagle-like across these northern streets”. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

They’re serving up their unique blend of cellostropic sounds at the forthcoming Wide Days event on 7th April, and you can even get a free ticket to their Sneaky Pete’s gig by emailing them at letters@widedays.com.

Barry.

To celebrate the inevitably awesome Wide Days event coming up on 7th April (tickets here), where...

Aerials Up To Kick Off Leith Festival

Good news just in. Glasgow’s folk-rockers have just booked with Gary Tait to play on the opening night of the Leith Music Festival on Friday 10th June. Tickets aren’t even on sale yet, but once they’re out you should like totally get some.

The ‘Up have been pretty busy recently, supporting Paolo Nutini at the Royal Albert Hall and in a recent ‘BBC 2 In Concert’ performance, recording with Jo Whiley in Paisley. Other high points include a headline slot at the Dublin Castle in London, and support slots with The Futureheads and more recently supporting Ash on their Scottish tour. Live radio sessions include Vic Galloway’s BBC Radio 1 Session in the Nations Scotland show as well as a more recent live session on Vic Galloway on BBC Radio Scotland.

And they’re just about to launch an E.P - Superglue - with producers Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Super Furry Animals, Belle & Sebastian) and Chris Gordon (Union of Knives, Baby Chaos). Had a wee (secret) listen to a couple of the tracks and it promises good things.

So until then, why not treat yourself to some of their current tracks on Soundcloud.

See you in Leith.

Treacherous Treasures Ahoy!

Around the Isles in 80 Days: A Treacherous Adventure

Well, like a less-nauseating Famous Five there is NOTHING we love more then an adventure. And how kind of the wonderful Over the Wall to give us one.

They’re embarking on a voyage. A music-infused voyage. A voyage like no other.

While we whole-heartedly want to be with them every step of the way (from Stornoway to Chester, just two of the locations lucky enough to be on their musical route), we may receive a restraining order for stalking.

Instead, we shall make do with raving it up with them a week today at Limbo. Yes, they’re meandering towards Edinburgh on 25th March alongside For Abel and Dupec. Tickets are a steal at £6 for early birds. They’re traversing all over Scotland, Ireland and even a dose of England, so keep your ears to the ground people.

For those in Edinburgh, though, let’s all get together a week from today and wish them well on their treacherous travels.

God’s speed, good men.

An Elbow in the Ear

My health ed teacher once told me that the only thing you should put in your ear is your elbow. I’m not sure if this is a common phrase, or just one of Mrs Hunter’s many idiosyncrasies, but yesterday I was lucky enough to have Elbow fully invading my ears at the SECC.

After fending off many flailing, aggressive, and quite pointy body parts to get to the front row, it was an absolutely awesome night. By the end of the evening, the majority of the SECC were in love with Guy Garvey who was as avuncular as ever with his charisma, wit and wisdom invading the crowd. What a legend.

And the wonderful Villagers, with their carefully constructed lyrics and beautiful sounds, proved to be a phenomenal support act. If you loved their debut album as much as we did, then we have some thrilling news for you. Their talents will be (slightly awkwardly) strolling onto the stage of Liquid Rooms in May (May 23rd to be precise) - tickets are only £11, so it would be foolish not to go really.

In spite of getting locked into a cinema wearing only skin-tight white jumpsuits (imagine the humiliation), Epic26 managed to escape with just enough time bring out another single.

To The Stars is all a bit dancier than their previous stuff, but there’s no crime in dancing (unless you dance like this) and this will no doubt get people pogoing like nutters on smokey dancefloors. 

Meanwhile, they’ve only just gone and launched The Epic26 Show, with their beta Episode Zero now available for your viewing pleasure (or pain).  New episodes of the shwo will be released on the 26th of each month, and there are rumours that HBO are already considering buying the series. Expect the box-set out next year.

And if you want to catch them live, they’ll be playing this Friday at Glasgow’s Club 520 where, and “popping their Falkirk cherry” by playing 20 Rocks the very next night. They also have dates coming up in Inverness, Stirling, Ayr and Edinburgh - more at Epic26.com/live

Epic WIN.

Freedom Fighter / Brave Little Note

Get this for a dreamy little electronic number, with some super layered vocals and a rogue violin thrown in for good measure. Feast yer ears.

For aficionados, Brave Little Note is Jacqueline Irvine, who’s based in Leith and can be soundstalked on Soundcloud, Facebook and on her very own minimalist website.

We like.

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This track was dropped into our Soundcloud Dropbox. Got a decent tune? Share it with us.

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UPDATE: The “rogue violin” is in fact a rogue viola. Well done to all who spotted that. Just testing.

With a band name sounding more like a GoogleEarth plug-in, People Places Maps are in fact a folky-pop outfit from Dunfermline, singing about heavy hands and crashing waves as all good folk-pop bands should.

This track and another is available for download on Bandcamp, which is well worth doing as it’s free and easy and will likely improve your life by between at least 4-6%.

As PPM writes on their MySpank page, please share this on to a mate / lover / skunk.

The only thing we’d add to this is that if said mate / lover / skunk is in fact one and the same animal then we salute you. Though might be a bit awkward when it’s time to meet the parents.

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Oh yeah. This was submitted via our Soundcloud Dropbox. We’re always on the hunt for good new choons, so feel free to drop shit in our box. (Not real shit obviously. That would just soil your own screen)