Jean-Xavier Boucherat talks with long-standing Glasgow institution RM Hubbert about Flamenco and Open Source. Glasgow’s ‘DIY Ethos’ has existed in various shapes and forms for at least twenty years now. RM Hubbert has seen an awful lot of this since his days in the endlessly creative math-rock outift El Hombre Trajeado, who in their time [...]
Jean-Xavier Boucherat talks with Wolves in the Throne Room about Soil, Shamans, and Huxley. Listen – this is just a student newspaper. We don’t have the time or resources to even begin to understand how scenes originally created with the intention of alienating just about everyone can gain worldwide appeal. So let’s start making some [...]
Jean-Xavier Boucherat goes to see Grouper, and talks with Room 40′s Curator, Lawrence English. It could be that I’m growing up but lately, I find the image of a room packed full of people listening to a performer in attentive silence more arresting than that of the youth dislocating each other’s arms and egos. I [...]
Here’s what Arika say – Music is always about more then just music. Don’t get them wrong there’s no sort of pretentious sentiment here, just an honest to god admission that any tune you hear has more behind it then the commercial interests imbedded in it. This isn’t too hard to understand, all the influences [...]
Ironic veneration of the past; don’t it just make you sick? Especially when you consider the possibility that current levels of retro-worship in all its tiresome, shallow forms might actually be distorting the efforts of the numerous outfits out there that have tastefully incorporated elements of the past into their sound, with the greatest sincerity. [...]
Seeing as it’s our first issue of the year lets forget the usual wild-speculation-on-the-nature-of-the-generations-musical-identity malarky and keep it light. You’ve probably been hearing some unfortunate people throwing words like beach house, chill-wave or post-hypnogogic pop about. I’m sick of these people having all the fun making up genre names, so here are five as of [...]
When Swans disbanded in 1997, they left the world with the two-disc epic ‘Soundtracks for the Blind’, a collection of dark soundscapes, found sound and field recordings, and ambitious post-rock explorations. The parting gift was a testament to just how much the bands sound has developed since emerging from that short lived hipster wet-dream otherwise [...]
Live music in Glasgow. It’s tricky! You’ve no idea who these bands playing the small venues are and you’re finding it hard to relate to their own brand of groan-wave-death-skiffle, unlike the one friend you’ve come along with who appears to be having an impossibly good time. Having said this however, you should almost certainly [...]
Joanna Newsom Glasgow Royal Concert Hall 20/09/10 So, we’re living in an age of deafening headphones and noise worship; and feedback (as in cyclical noise) is an element that shocks few music lovers these days. Indeed, it positively delights many. So it’s a sobering and uneasy experience to witness a somewhat distressed Joanna Newsom squirming [...]
Jean-Xavier Boucherat Perhaps it has been a decade now since you last handled an audio cassette, unless of course you’re a fan of the numerous genres still thriving on the format. The grainy texture unique to analogue recordings is the perfect vessel for several DIY styles, from noise and power-electronics, to ambience and kosmische. Merch [...]
