The Final Day – Vladimir E.P. review

Vladimir are a young band from Dundee, possibly the noisiest band in Dundee. Which means that they don’t sound anything like another band starting with the same letter from the city. In truth Vladimir are a little bit out on a limb at the moment. Sure there are echoes of the early Noughties post punk…

Minimalist – A Wee Slice of Retreat!

So finally made it to a Retreat! Festival on Saturday afternoon but sadly saw very little of a terrific bill since the main aim was to interview FOUND. Burger No Burger was on when we arrived and it turned out to be none other than Johnny ‘Pictish Trail’ Lynch. He was finishing a solo tune…

Literally Thousands Haven’t – Alan Bissett and Doug Johnstone at the EIBF

Just back from the Book Festival and one of our most hotly anticipated shows of the EIBF – a joint performance by two of my favourite Scottish authors, Doug Johnstone and Alan Bissett. Doug, of course, published his third novel ‘Smokeheads’ earlier this year whilst Alan’s fourth novel ‘Pack Men’ is due for an imminent…

Is Wales Better Than A Fairy? – The Burns Unit live

The Burns Unit – Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh – 24th August 2011 Last night was our second Burns Unit gig of the year. After the January show at the Fruitmarket, which suffered a bit from a number of technical difficulties, last night’s show was thankfully glitch free. Indeed the Queen’s Hall lived up to its reputation…

I Got You All Wrong – Cancel The Astronauts single review

I usually try to review stuff around the actual release date. But, despite the fact that Cancel The Astronauts’ new single ‘Seven Vices’ isn’t officially released until 12th September, you can actually pre-order the single and download all three tracks now. So that’s good enough for me. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure about…

Freaky Friday

Friday was a WEIRD day. Most notably it was The Day That I Met Kristin Hersh which was as exceptionally cool as you’d imagine it would be. More of that later. It was also The Day Where Almost Everything Else Went Wrong. Which wasn’t nearly as cool. To be fair nobody got hurt, nothing got…