Elba Sessions

We make no secret of the fact that Le Reno Amps are one of our favourite bands here at Elba and we’re all pretty much in agreement that the intro of triumphant sounding horns and 80′s kraut-rock-esque duelling guitars make ‘Cottonmouth Rock’ one of our more memorable songs from 2011.

It’s taken from their latest long player ‘Appetite’

Oh, and you can also download this one too!

Cottonmouth Rock by Le Reno Amps by Armellodie

We’re a bit down in the dumps here at Elba, and it’s all because of the poster above. Yeah, sure were pretty excited at the line up, all of the bands have played at our Elba Sessions gigs and if that isn’t a ringing endorsement, then I really don’t know what is! No, we’re a bit glum because it will be the last appearance for the foreseeable future of Le Reno Amps. They’re all off to explore pastures new. Al’s off to China to teach kids doric, Jase is in Elgin, Mandy’s going to France (on Holiday) and Scott will be conquering Castlemilk Chateau Lait (well so their facebook brags anyway).

We’ve had some good times with the amps so we’ll sorely miss them (like a hole in the head hurts) but the gig should be the perfect send off.

Joining Le Reno Amps on the night will be label-mates Chris Devotion & The Expectations and Cuddly Shark along with bad ass cowboys Bad Bad Men.

All the fun kicks of around 7pm on Friday 5th August and it’s a mere £5 to get in. The facebook event page can be found here

I’m sure we’ve all seen the awful pictures and devastation that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami has caused over the last few weeks in Japan. We just wanted to highlight a couple of the many worthwhile fundraising efforts that are being made to help send a bit more aid to the region.

The good people over at Audio Antihero have released a compilation with a staggering 34 (THIRTY FOUR) tracks featuring the likes of Meursault, Nosferatu D2, Darren Hayman and Le Reno Amps. The donation for this album is as follows, straight from the horses mouth;

“It’s priced at £3.99 to those of you who can’t afford much and the ‘pay what you want’ option invites those of you with a little extra to dig a little deeper. Thank you”

The proceeds will be split between the following, Japan Society, Shelterbox, Red Cross, Save The Children and The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. You can buy the album, titled ‘Bob Hope Would…’ here

Meanwhile, on the live front here in Glasgow, there will be a fundraising gig for the Red Cross taking place at Stereo next Wednesday 30th March. The line up includes a Sparrow and The Workshop/Strike The Colours mash up with a Jill O’Sullivan and Jenny Reeve collaborative effort, Haight Ashbury and Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit. Tickets are a fiver in and are likely to shift fast. You can buy in advance here.

Well, March is here already and it seems a bit like the year has flown by. It was maybe just me but I felt that the year started fairly quietly and that there was a distinct lack of good albums coming out but that seems to have perked up recently with releases from PJ Harvey, Smith Westerns and Ringo Deathstarr, the latter is an album that i am hugely enjoying at the moment. We are also looking forward here at Elba to upcoming releases from Aidan Moffat, Josh T. Pearson, FOUND and Le Reno Amps, once again, the latter is an absolute belter, which can be pre-ordered here. It’s shaping up to be a decent year!

The Glasgow Film Festival has finished for another year. Kim enjoyed a wall of noise at 65 Days of Static, Chris met legendary Spinal Tap bassist and voice of Mr Burns from The Simpsons, Harry Shearer whilst I now count Duglas T Stewart of the BMX Bandits in the highest regard after he nonchalantly tucked in to an apple onstage, midway through the opening song of the Mondo Morricone gig. There will be a bit more about those shenanigans on these pages in the coming days and weeks. We are already looking forward to 2012!

Next year is a long way away though so in the more immediate future here’s a few things you might want to check out. This weekend Trapped Mice launch their new EP which was recorded in our big cousin Elba Studio’s recording space in January this year. Having heard some of the results, it’s a lovely wee EP and worth checking out. Anyhoo, the launch is in Edinburgh tomorrow (5th March) at the Wee Red Bar and support comes from Elba faves Loch Awe. Oh, and the EP is called Waving and Pointing!

Also, looking quite good this weekend in Glasgow is Croc v Croc at The Art School. There’s a huge list of people playing including Remember Remember, Ultimate Thrush, Divorce, Pro Life, North American War, BONG MONSTER, Holy Mountain, The Cosmic Dead, The John Knox Sex Club, Gropetown and Tangles. Check out their Facebook info page for a little more info!

Next weekend sees the return of Brain Burner to The Liquid Ship a mere two weeks after their last show. In short if you like things noisy and a little bit out there, Brain Burner do exactly what they say on the tin. The line up on Sunday 13th at The Liquid Ship includes Helhesten & Fritz Welch, Blue Sabbath, Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo and Hivver.

On the subject of DIY gigs, we came across this tumblr called Tartanalia Underground this week which is pretty cool. It’s a nice wee collection of DIY posters, some really cool ones in there so far and I noticed theres an upload button so get adding!

Anyway, enough rambling for now! Have a great weekend, see y’all soon!

So, the weekend is once again upon us and we’ve decided here at Elba that it’s a weekend worthy frittering away the few remaining pennies that we carry in our pockets, before an eagerly anticipated payday!

This year’s Glasgow Film Festival launched last night and there is loads to get your teeth into over the next few weeks (see Kim’s preview here). A quick glance around Elba’s schedules shows that the Film & Music festival will be keeping us entertained over the next few weeks but you should check out the full programme as there are a few gems in there. This weekends showings of Faust/Alex Smoke, Howl and the aural assault of 65days of static appear to be highlights you might want to check out.

Tonight sees the return for a second month of the Barmellodie night at Bloc in Glasgow. We had a hoot last month spinning some tunes after great sets by Battery Face, The Douglas Firs and Le Reno Amps. Highlights included Kim getting a high five for playing Sonic Youth and Pavement ‘filling’ the dancefloor! Tonight’s music comes from The Scottish Enlightenment, Randolph’s Leap and Thirty Pounds of Bone who we won’t stop urging you to check out. He really is that blody good! Post band entertainment is provided by the Podcart DJ’s.

Enjoy your weekend whatever you may do and feel free to add any other things people should check out in the comments below!!

…I’d go to all of these gigs. As it is, I’ve got a mortgage and a 3 week old baby so I’ll just have to be content with telling you that you should go to these gigs instead.

It’s by no means a definitive list, just some things we really would like to go to over the next while! If you do make it along to any of these, make us jealous and let us know how they were!

Sunday 16th January

Hazy Recollections, dubbed Celtic Connections’ Un-Official Hangover Cure, takes place tomorrow afternoon for the first in it’s series of weekly Celtic Connections residencies at the ABC. It all kicks of at 2:00pm and on this weeks bill there is Kitty The Lion, Rick Redbeard, Humbert Humbert, Rachel Sermanni and Elba’s latest podcastee AJ Roach.

If you like your Sunday nights noisy then get yourself along to the Liquid Ship for the first Brain Burner night. It’s free to get in and they are going to attempt 6 bands in the one evening! On the bill are Noma, Guanoman, Messiah Complex, Imperium and Public Spaces and late additions to the bill Roseanne Barrr. The Liquid Ship is tiny so get along early to make sure you get a space!

Wednesday 19th January

There seems to be a load of gigs on at the Oran Mor these days and the one that caught the eye this week is The Walkmen. Last year’s ‘Lisbon’ album was excellent so this should be a really good gig!

Friday 21st January

Friday, it’s the official start of the weekend and what a night you could have if you follow these two, easy to follow, steps.

1) Get yourself a ticket for Stereo. The Aye Tunes Blog are embarking on their first solo promotion and have Kochka, BoyGirlAnimalColour and Trapped Mice (fresh from recording at Elba) on the bill. Tickets are £3 in advance and £5 on the door. You can buy advance tickets here and as a wee special present, a sampler of the three bands can be downloaded here.

2) When booted out of 1) at around 10:30pm, hot foot it up Hope Street, along Bath Street and swing by Bloc where you will be just in time for BARmellodie, the new monthly residency from the peeps over at Armellodie. The bands kick off around 11ish and features The Douglas Firs, Battery Face and Le Reno Amps, a band that I have possibly seen more times than healthy. If all that wasn’t enough to put you off, us hipsters from Elba will be spinning some tunes throughout the evening along with the Armellodj’s. FREE until midnight, a bargainous £2 thereafter. We’ll see you at the bar!

Our final annual comes from Elba Sessions’ constant and reasoned voice; Phil. You will be well acquainted with him by now I’m sure.  For those of you who are not: he is a man of great taste, intelligence, wit and charm.  As a great driving force behind everything Elba I’ve found him to be exceptionally motivated and particularly good at knowing what buttons to push to get the most out of everyone he works with.  It is holding all these elements together and only ever snapping when things have reached well passed boiling point which leads us to his alter ego.  With a quiet and calm demeanor, a patience like no other, an ability to maintain organization even whilst working under potentially incendiary conditions and the occasional (and very understandable) melt down, who else could we select?

All that sucking up needed balancing out with something ridiculous. Ironically he will, of course, love this comparison. Here is Phil’s account of 2010:

Album of The Year - This is a tough one. There have been quite a lot of albums I’ve really liked over the course of the year and the title of ‘favourite’ constantly seems to change. I think ‘Method’ by Thirty Pounds of Bone gets the win though. It is an honest album and really nicely put together and produced. For the first couple of months, Los Campesinos! and Field Music would also be in with a shout as well as notable mentions for Chris T-T, Meursault, Super Adventure Club and The National.

Best Gig - There have been several people I have really enjoyed seeing this year, RM Hubbert, King James, Super Adventure Club (possibly the most fun that can be had watching a band, as well as the most jealous at how ridiculously good individually they are). Best gigs are usually defined for me by notable things or songs that were played. In that sense, there have been two or three great gigs for me in 2010. The National, which seems to be on everyone’s lips really stands out just for the whole occasion. Mr November, including a tour of the crowd by singer Matt Berninger, was a biiig standout as well as the completely unplugged sing-along to Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.

Also, on two occasions I’ve seen a band play a song this year that has just made the hairs on my neck stand up. When The Scottish Enlightenment bellowed into Little Sleep at the end of the set at their album launch in the 13th Note and when they played it at The Liquid Ship on one of our Elba gigs, i knew that there was something pretty special happening.

Favourite New Band(s) - Probably could make a lengthy list here but I’ll try to keep it short. Bella Ruse play the kind of sweet indie folk pop that I’m just a sucker for. I’ve also been digging Caitlin Rose, The Mariner’s Children and more locally Johnny Reb, She’s Hit, Yusuf Azak and The Douglas Firs.

Musical Memories of 2010 - Putting on some great bands at The Liquid Ship as part of our Elba Sessions gigs…Chris’ boundless enthusiasm for Springsteen…Kim’s boundless enthusiasm for music and her awesome writing…Kim and Chris’ support and patience when I get ‘the rage’… The National at the Academy…Willy Vlautin at the Captains Rest (if indeed that was this year)…The return of Le Reno Amps…Making some new musical acquaintances…oh, and being thanked in the sleeve notes for the Thirty Pounds of Bone album was pretty sweet.

Hopes/Plans (music) for 2011 - To kick on with Elba a lot more. I really want to get a good focus going on the blog, going for a bit of a wider viewpoint on the music we all love here at Elba rather than the same old. We’ll also get the Elba Sessions gigs going again in a few months, peepers on the lookout for bands to play already. I’m also looking forward to Dj’ing at the first BARmellodie night at Bloc on January 21st. Also, I want to start getting along to a lot more gigs and seeing some bands to get excited over.

So that’s us for 2010. Have a grand old time this evening!  We wish you a bonne année and we will return before you have fully recovered fully from the celebrations.

Whilst I await the new arrival to my family sometime in the following few weeks, this week we welcome the arrival of St.Thomas to not only your ears but also to Glasgow. St.Thomas is the brand new long player from subterranean-ecclesiastical-rockers The Scottish Enlightenment. We’re pretty excited here at Elba about it’s pending release, it’s been a long-time coming and they have teased us plenty, what with giving away some free tracks in 2009 and this year the release of 3 EP’s to whet our appetite. We are almost ready to burst.

We don’t have to tell you how good it is really, but we will anyway. It’s REALLY good. There we said it, we’re sold on it, in our general understated kind of way.

The album will be released tomorrow and you can get your mitts on copies through the Armellodie Records store and very possibly some other decent outlets. Alternatively, if you have the willpower of a saint, you could try waiting until Thursday to pick up a copy at the Glasgow leg of their album launch at the 13th Note. This show comes highly recommended this week at Elba. Not only have we been waiting since April to see The Scottish Enlightenment, when they played for us at The Liquid Ship, but they are also joined on the night by Deathpodal, whose EP ‘Exu__Wow ‘ has been enjoyed immensely by us, and Le Reno Amps who it is no secret that we have a massive crush on, what’s not to love! So, if it’s an evening of post-rock, epic sounds and overindulgent guitar solos (Nero, I’m looking at you!) that you are after then we’ll see you at the note!

Time is not any of our friends at the moment but here’s a quick catch up of some stuff…

First up, the last gig of the Elba season is happening tomorrow night at The Liquid Ship and we’ve assembled a fine wee line up. First on the floor will be the debut gig of Now Wakes The Sea, a project “anchored by overdriven vocals and a sense of claustrophobic miserablism”. This will be followed by Iglue and the line up is completed by the brilliant I Build Collapsible Mountains who is playing his long-awaited first gig in Glasgow Town. As usual, doors are at 9pm, and it’s free.

Should you not be in the locale of Great Western Road, you could pop in to the 13th Note for yet another debut gig, this time from CD/EX (Chris Devotion & The Expectations). Support comes from Farewell Singapore and our favourite young scamps Le Reno Amps, who are sporting a new bass player at the moment in the form of Mandy Super Adventure Club.

If that wasn’t enough, Aye Tunes goes head to head Vs Peenko when they combine to bring another evening of entertainment to the masses, this time at The Classic Grand and said entertainment is brought to you by The Seventeenth Century, Come On Gang! and oh look, I Build Collapsible Mountains, fresh no doubt from an absolute topper of a gig at Elba Sessions!

And just to finish off, some decent music to point in your direction. The aforementioned Le Reno Amps are giving away a new track for nowt, just head to their home page. Whilst we’re on free downloads, point your mouse here to get a free download by easily one of my favourite band’s of the year, Bella Ruse.

And finally, if you’re feeling a bit flush, you could do a lot worse than getting your mitts on ‘New Moore Island’ the new EP by Brighton based collective, The Mariner’s Children, have a wee listen to ‘It Carved Your Name Into The Ground’ here.

I always begin putting together our recommended gigs and try to keep the list to a minimum. However, the live music on offer in Glasgow currently makes this a difficult venture. Below I present my extended short list for the remains of the week:

18.03.2010 Findo Gask, Paper Planes and French Wives @ Captains Rest
Super-duper-fantastic line up at Captains Rest. All indie and poppy. A happy maker.

Times New Viking, The Elvis Suicide @ Sleazies
Ohio based, Indie Matador signed Times New Viking play Sleazies with support from local punk rock cowboys The Elvis Suicide.

Kitty The Lion @ The Goat
Beautiful female fronted folkers play a show at The Goat. Highly recommended.

Marlena Shaw @ The Ferry
For anyone who feels the need for a little bit of classic jazz the excellent, and extensively sampled, Marlena Shaw will be appearing on The Ferry

Withered Hand @ Mono
Don’t let the name put you off. Withered Hand aka Dan Wilson plays Mono following his sold out London and Homegame dates. The set up might be simple or he may arrive with a troupe. His song-stories are wonderful whatever the method of presentation.

19.03.2010 Oliver Stays, Otherpeople, Young Aviators @ Stereo
Oliver Stays according to their myspace soundlike ‘Bears with saws.’ This more than intrigues me. Support comes from Otherpeople, who will hook you with their shifty, catchy, extremely listen-able track Wooplash.

21.03.2010 Chris T T, Le Reno Amps, Dave Hughes @ 13th Note
You know that Elba are excited about this one. You even saw a photo of a ticket to this show last week on this here blog. A singer-songwriter in a class of his own supported by some fine acts, including indie/country maniac-stompers/serenaders (depending on what sort of mood they’re in) Le Reno Amps.