Listen/subscribe to my Sleazy, Sad Songs of 2011 Spotify Playlist

As I’ve been “doing other shit instead” I haven’t exactly had my ear to the ground this year in terms of cutting edge new music, so this is resolutely populist for the most part, and the vast majority will be familiar. But hey, it’s what I listened to this year.

A few also might have been overplayed, but I’m not letting that take away from the fact they’re great tracks. However I don’t know many other people who like both Jonnie Common and Britney Spears, so maybe this is quite an unusual playlist?

And I think it all ties together quite nicely in this order and is actually bloody amazing. But then it is my fave songs of 2011 after all.

Also bear in mind that quite a few songs I liked this year are not on Spotify so could not be included (e.g. Conquering Animal Sound & Rob St John).

I’m discovering loads of stuff I missed through everyone else’s playlists of course – and I may well add a few more over the next wee while, so GO ON, SUBSCRIBE. Give it a chance. You never know you might like Drake’s creepy confessional R’n'B/hip hop (or you might be offended by certain words he uses, you have been warned).

Tracklisting:

1. SBTRKT – Never Never (feat. Sampha)
2. The Shivers – Love is in the Air
3. Metronomy – The Look
4. Found – Johnny I Can’t Walk The Line
5. Wild Beasts – Loop The Loop
6. Jonnie Common – Summer is for Going Places
7. PS I Love You – Subtle & Majestic
8. Little Dragon – Ritual Union
9. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bubble
10. Slow Club – Two Cousins
11. Britney Spears – Inside Out
12. Drake – Marvin’s Room
13. Kurt Vile – Baby’s Arms
14. David Guetta – Little Bad Girl (feat Taio Cruz)
15. Battles – Ice Cream
16. Bill Wells & Aidan John Moffat – The Copper Top
17. St Vincent – Northern Lights
18. Wale – Focused (feat Kid Cudi)
19. Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks

Other lists worth checking out which will no doubt have numerous gems I’ve missed (in no particular order):

Drowned in Sound

The List

The Skinny

Peenko

Dougie Anderson

The Tidal Wave of Indifference (currently counting down)

Song by Toad reader’s top 5 (he will have more lists soon)

Aye Tunes

Glasgow Podcart

Pitchfork

And of course, VICE

(note: my favourite is always Said the Gramophone but their list isn’t up yet)

I forgot to post last week about show no.3 which had Johnny Lynch, aka The Pictish Trail as a guest and Kid Canaveral being hobnobbed. It was a very good laugh on the day and not a bad listen considering how many technical screw ups we managed to squeeze in!

Then last week Posh Oli hobnobbed eagleowl and we had an exclusive jingle from King Creosote. Plus we did an extra 10 minute aftershow recording called ‘the backwash’. So there’s a lot to catch up on before our next show on Saturday morning!

MIXCLOUD OR SOUNDCLOUD OR ITUNES OR..

Now we’ve posted all this up on MixCloud which is a pretty good platform for podcasts as there are no limits on how many you can post up, however it does have limitations, namely that you need to download the iPhone app to listen on iOS and it isn’t quite as nice to access as Soundcloud.

But then Soundcloud isn’t really for music podcasts and is expensive once you start uploading a lot of audio files. We are using it for the most recent episodes if you prefer to listen that way.

Neither link up with iTunes either and at least two people requested a proper podcast feed (you know who you are).

DRUMROLL PLEASE..

Which is why we now have a Tumblr blog which you can follow in a vast variety of ways, listen to all the shows so far on any mobile device (well half-decent smartphones and tablets at any rate), and which also allows for subscribing in iTunes via Feedburner.

The podcast has also been submitted to the iTunes directory so should appear soon.

So if you’re interested please go to www.livefromthelatinquarter.com and follow in whatever way you prefer – you can’t say we haven’t made an effort!

Tomorrow’s show (Saturday 12th November, midday to 1pm) features another great Hobnobbing interview, PLUS an extra special guest live in the studio, and a run down of all the gossip from Hott Loggzz last weekend.

What they said:

“Epic. I want to always know when this is on. Will it feature more Posh Oli? We love Posh Oli!”

“it’s not sodding working we can see you but can hear NOTHING!”

“Loving The Shivers! Can’t wait to see them today! We’re all crowded around the wireless here in Anster listening to ur silver tones!!!!”

“when are the proper DJs coming on?”

“It’s like my own personal radio show. Bit incestuous though”

“Yay, Made in Chelsea!”

“Can’t they fix it so these guys are on every day?”

Live From The Latin Quarter Listen Again week 2 by LiveFromTheLatinQuarter

Tracklisting:

1. Captain Beefheart – Gimme Dat Harp Boy
2. Breeders – Cannonball
3. The Shivers – Love Is In The Air
4. Malcolm Middleton – Red Travelling Socks
5. Jonnie Common – Summer Is For Going Places
6. R Dean Taylor – There’s A Ghost In My House
7. The Fall – Edinburgh Man
8. Eric “Monty” Morris – Sammy Dead
9. Meursault – Nothing Broke
10. The Strokes – Someday

To listen on iTunes go to Radio – College/University – Fresh Air, The Alternative

To listen via the Fresh Air website go to the Fresh Air website

Like the Facebook page

Follow LFTLQ on Twitter

Soundcloud

Posh Oli & Martin from The Savings & Loan - photo by Dylan Matthews

It was a bit of a shambles as expected, but hopefully the custom made jingles from Found and Posh Oli’s interview with Martin from The Savings & Loan more than made up for the questionable production skills…

Tracklisting:

1. The Only Ones – Another Girl Another Planet
2. FOUND – Anti Climb Paint
3. Connan Mockasin – It’s Choade My Dear
4. Eddie Floyd – Bring It On Home To Me
5. Midlake – Roscoe
6. King Creosote – No Cigarettes (Withered Hand cover)
7. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow
8. Beck – Gamma Ray
9. The Savings & Loan – Catholic Boys In The Rain
10. Black Grape – The Reverend Black Grape

Some responses to the first show:

“Bangin’ show”

“I love Posh Oli”

“Enjoying listening to the show and watching squirrels”

“I hope this doesn’t clash with Saturday kitchen”

“That Creosote cover was sooo good it made my eyes hear and my ears see!”

LATLC Listen Again 20111029 by milomclaughlin

We’re back on tomorrow (Saturday) at midday with *even more* awesome jingles from the Found lads, Posh Oli interviews another big name on the local scene (clue: his name is Neil and he is in an Edinburgh band) and we have another Sexy Lady Song. Plus if we have time and can work the equipment we might even play the Savings & Loan’s cover of Steps, inspired by their chat with Posh Oli last week!

Visit the Latin Quarter on Facebook

Once upon a time I presented a radio show on Edinburgh’s student radio station. Then it became a podcast and monthly column for the Skinny. Then I got busy with other stuff and had to stop.

But now, I’m joining my pals Dylan and Colin for ‘Live from the Latin Quarter’ which will basically just be us playing some favourite tunes and engaging in “witty banter” (the latter will probably be courtesy of the other two).

Matthew “weird old” Toad has already described the line up fairly accurately as “three fuckwits and a microphone”.  Should be fun… You can listen on iTunes (under radio – college/university – Fresh Air – The Alternative) or at the Fresh Air website.

See the brand spanking new Facebook page for more info!

So, Homegame was bloody good. As is my wont, I took a bunch of amateurish footage (this time on the iPhone) and have compiled it into this video which hopefully gives a small taste of how good the performances and atmosphere were. Apologies for the general shiteness of the cameraman.

Here are some random (personal) photos taken from the weekend too. Below is also a video of some footage from last year that I’ve not posted on the blog yet (the nice footage was filmed by Aileen Robertson of Avian Learning Experiment).

Of course there are much greater talents than me documenting the whole thing – here’s a video of Slow Club doing an excellent (but rather unseasonal) acoustic number filmed by Blair from The Forest of Black, who’s proper Homegame film from last year I am still eagerly awaiting. You can see the trailer and stunning short films from last year’s Away Game and Fence’s 2009 Halloween Party on their website under “music promos and documentaries”.

There are some wonderful photos on the Fence Facebook page from Dylan of Blueback Hotrod and Nickie Divine, and there is more coverage over at the Beefboard.

I also failed to video Found’s set in Legends on Sunday night as I was in full on party mode by then. Well worth checking out instead is their new video filmed in the legendary Fisher & Donaldson’s bakery/confectioners and the chance to get hold of some edible chocolate vinyl of the single.. (warning: this page plays the single automatically)

Fence have announced there won’t be a Homegame next year, but they have an excellent gig coming up next Sunday in Glasgow, and you can see King Creosote play with The Last Battle at their new EP launch, 30th June in Edinburgh.

Yes, Adam and Joe have returned to BBC 6 Music. The best radio station in the world, that you and I saved. And although I appeared briefly in person on the station last year, I was possibly even more chuffed when a few weeks ago my chuffing leg got a mention on the bugger, by no less than.. Michael Legg. In fact, he said my leg was his favourite leg. So there!

Famous Leg by gaseousbrain

Famous Drunk

I’ve officially disbanded the short-lived Famous Drunk project. But I’m pleased to say that the song ‘threatening footsteps’ was in fact the winner of MuleIdol 2015! Ok, it wasn’t the winner but then there wasn’t a winner at all, and it was very nice of The Mule to include it (and you’ve got to love the MuleIdol jingle that Tallah Brash created):

What else? Oh yes. I’ve been unfaithful to my regular Gaseous Brain readers and spent a lot of time over at the Clear-Minded Creative. The reaction to the new blog has been pretty great so far, especially for the Four for Feb challenge (which has morphed into ‘Share Your Wares Sundays’). It was also mentioned on The Guardian’s Edinburgh blog, Creative Boom and The Friendly Anarchist.

I also wrote a mildly controversial piece for the Guardian Edinburgh suggesting we should celebrate the City’s creativity. It brought up quite a few comments about the difficulty in getting support for grassroots creativity and the lack of venues etc. The Scotsman’s Radar blog are currently running an interesting series which addresses why the music scene is not as strong as it could be: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Of course I started the Creative Types series of interviews over here with Bart, Dylan, Euan and Lloyd being the unwitting guinea-pigs for what has now become the Clear-Minded Creative Types series on the new blog. Stevie Kearney, aka The Mule whose podcast features above, is the 11th interview to feature so far this year. Not bad for me, given my previous record of keeping up blog series. And there’s more to come..

See all of the Clear-Minded Creative Types interviews so far

Stevie is also making his dissertation available to download for free, which will be of interest to anyone who likes music journalism or blogging.

Oh, and finally here’s a compilation video I did for a recent talk at the Apple Store with Last Year’s Girl and Peenko. Regular readers will find most of it familiar…

This enchanting and atmospheric film by Matty Ross aka Sleepysoul is the perfect introduction to Debutant, the solo project of Edinburgh musician Philip Quirie, also a member of Meursault.

Zinester

The year got off to a strong start off the back of my pledge in December to ‘get my shit together’ in 100 days with the release of my first ever fanzine, something I’ve been meaning to do for years.

The initial idea was to do a quarterly zine but that was a bit ambitious, and in the interests of transparency I have to admit I didn’t sell many copies, which is fair enough as it was pretty much a vanity publication (with a few guest articles by friends), and I kind of knew it lacked a coherent theme that would attract new people to buy it.

But I enjoyed making it and even the few that I sold gave me a buzz as it was nice seeing a couple of quid appearing in my paypal account from time to time. As it’s nearly a year old and it’s the festive season and everything, I thought I’d make the digital version available here to read/download for free.

Catalogue of a Gaseous Brain

Writing Elsewhere

This was the first full year I haven’t written for The Skinny Magazine, Apart from a Kraftwerk review published in Jan but written the Dec before.

However I was still keen to keep writing and it was a pleasure to feature on my favourite local music websites like Song, By Toad and Off The Beaten Tracks (also contributing handclaps to one of the videos they made with Meursault!)

I also wrote about the future of journalism in the digital era for journalism.co.uk and took part in a debate on whether ‘Print is Dead’ or not at St Andrew’s University (with some real experts on the subject!)

And even though I have absolutely no interest or aptitude for sport of any kind, I ended up writing a guide to world cup stadiums for The Scotsman. Go figure..

In a move that perhaps is of little interest to my regular readers here, I also branched out into writing about personal development and productivity, featuring on The Connection Revolution (as part of a writing competition) and Pick The Brain.

Technology

I’ve typecast myself as a geek in recent years, and 2010 saw an intermittent series of ‘Gaseous Brainstorms’ asking questions like ‘What’s the Future of Publishing’, ‘Who Will Win the Tech Wars’, ‘Is Blogging Just for Old Buggers’ and something along the lines of ‘Can I Afford to Buy an iPad’. Alas the answer to the latter was no, but nearer the end of the year I did succumb and buy a Kindle so that I could at least get an idea of what using an ebook reader was all about. You can see my daft little video review here, though I have to admit I’m still undecided as to the value of the Kindle now that I’ve had it a while my usage of it has reduced quite a bit.

My iPhone 3G died, and I recorded a moving eulogy for it which appeared on iSource.com with a demand for me to stop singing in public forever. Fair enough (more on that topic below). So I shelled out for the iPhone 4, and I have to admit it’s an amazing bit of kit and far superior to the 3G. Having a pocket, decent quality video recorder alone has made it a worthwhile purchase.

Finally also as part of the Brainstorms series, I added my penny’s worth to the vast swell of support for BBC6Music, which thankfully was successful for the time being, and even found myself appearing on Shaun Keaveny’s breakfast show (mainly because he found my first name and the fact that I share it with a number of pet dogs amusing).

SERVICE INTERRUPTION

Frustrated by some of the platform’s limitiations in terms of plug-ins and design, and wanting to provide as professional an image as possible, I transferred the whole blog over from squarespace to a self-hosted wordpress account.

I under-estimated the work involved though as it turned out as a lot of photos and other content disappeared from the archives in the process and I’ve never got round to going back through and add them back in.

It was a learning experience and I’m glad I now know how to do it, but it took a big chunk of my precious free time away from actually being able to concentrate on producing new content for the blog.

Life is what happens when you’re meant to be blogging

Life has a habit of getting in the way. What with putting my flat on the market, arranging my wedding for May 2011, and trying to get a new job, blogging suddenly found itself at the bottom of my list of priorities.

I also managed to run a 10k though I’ve done very little exercise since, and I was off the booze for 3 months. Not quite the full year I’d hoped for, but a nice break from hangovers anyway.

I started a new job and also did some moonlighting at a national newspaper which meant I was busier than ever. For a few months I barely blogged at all, apart from a few ‘holding’ posts to apologise for not blogging (always a bad sign!).

Creative Pursuits: Famous Drunk & The Devil’s Buttermilk

Together with my friend Iain I played live twice this year under the name Famous Drunk, once at the Terrifying Ordeal event (when we were also joined by another pal, Chris) and once at Lach’s Antihoot during the festival.

However given the above fairly justified criticism of my singing ability I’ve come to realise that unless I actually sat down and practiced/learnt the guitar, these traumatic experiences were never going to improve for either me or the audience, so making music is on an indefinite hiatus at the moment. In the meantime here’s an inexpertly played, recorded and mixed demo I did this year just in case you cared:

All The Things I Thought I’d Never Be by gaseousbrain

More enjoyable was the short horror spoof that Iain and I and a group of friends filmed for the Aberdour Festival’s ASBO awards called ‘The Devil’s Buttermilk’. We came second in the public vote to a schoolgirl, but walked away with the Best Directed Short award. And had a great laugh in the process. You can also hear the theme tune used in the video (by Iain Radcliffe) over at myspace (link below)

p.s. apologies to Kate Bush who I didn’t get any decent footage of but she was fantastic.

p.p.s. The night before was the Song, By Toad Christmas Party which was also a superb night, with excellent performances by The Savings & Loan, Jesus H. Foxx, Yusuf Azak, Inspector Tapehead, Rob St. John & an incredible headline set by Meursault topping off an amazing year for them and the label. Unfortunately the Burgh Bootlegs cameraman was a little worse for wear so didn’t have much usable footage! Read The Scotsman’s 5 star review