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Review: ‘Don’t Forget Your Memories’ by Primes

Primes are a band that have generated a lot of buzz around the central belt in the past year or so, gigging consistently across various towns and cities, as well as their hometown of Falkirk. For those as yet uninitiated, new single ‘Don’t Forget Your Memories’ is an ideal chance to get to know their musical stylings.

The single starts out slow, with just lead singer Ollie Kitchen’s voice alone with some ethereal synth, driven on with intent by the bassline. Before long we are thrown into the full crescendo of the chorus, a thumping drum beat, rhythmic overdriven guitars. Harmonies and counter-melodies soar atop the instrumentation and around the main vocal hook; all band mates singing at once makes for a fantastic addition to this down right great piece of alt rock. You can imagine this song being sung by a field full of people at TRNSMT for example. A real summer anthem.

The band’s power-pop songwriting and the epic scale of their recordings have drawn comparisons to Biffy Clyro and Twin Atlantic. They have the same Scottish-ness in their voices, and give the same rock and roll attitude in their music.

If you haven’t heard of Primes, give this single a spin, and get acquainted with an exciting emerging act from right on your doorstep. For a little more insight into the band and their writing process, we fired a few questions to lead singer Ollie Kitchen...     

How long have you been making music?

As a band we’ve been writing together for a year. Individually we’ve been writing a lot longer. Both Ollie and Sarah have been writing for 10 years and Reece has been playing since he could hold a stick.

What was the main inspiration for your new single ‘Don’t Forget Your Memories’?

Our new single is really a story about the work/life balance which people struggle to find. It’s about following your dreams but having your feet firmly set in the reality of the everyday mundane. Strive for more but not letting life pass you by either.

Musically, who inspires you most?

I think we’ve all got different musical inspirations but for me (Ollie) it has to be the classics; Elvis, Stones, Beatles, Bowie and from modern music it has to be the Foo Fighters.

If you could collaborate with anyone on a song, who would it be and why?

I think following on from the last question it would have to be Dave Grohl. It would be amazing to meet him, hear his stories and I think we would collaborate quite well. Or Simon Neil cause Biffy are the tits.

You’ve been compared to bands like Biffy Clyro and Twin Atlantic, how does that make you feel?

Think it’s an amazing comparison and one we’re very proud that it’s been made. We’ve idolised those bands for years and just to be mentioned in the same breath is a dream come true.

And finally, if you were stuck on a desert island, what is the one thing you would make sure you had on you?

If I was stuck on a desert island I’d have to bring sun screen cause I’m ginger. 

Check out the new single on Spotify, iTunes and Google Play

Words: Emma Lawrence

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Review: ‘Sometimes When The Wind Blows In My Hometown’ by Quitter

What a treat it is to flick through your morning post and find something you forgot you’d ordered. So it was today when I opened an unassuming brown envelope to find the evocatively titled ‘Sometimes When The Wind Blows In My Hometown’ – a collection of poetry and photography collated in zine form by Scottish musician Quitter, aka Kenny Bates. As I unwrapped it this morning, first snow of the year in the garden, huddled round my coffee, a bear shrugged in his den, the cover image and typography instantly gave me the impression of something rather special, meticulously and thoughtfully put together.

The zine features 8 poems and 16 images, all shot on 35mm toy cameras providing the graininess, saturation and vignetting that those App designers spend so much effort emulating for the digital generation. This is the real deal; light tiptoeing past degraded seals and finding its way onto the film in the most satisfying way; ghostly double exposures layer up the atmosphere. The images he’s chosen to feature evoke sentimental feelings and I find myself caught in that gap between happiness and sadness that might be nostalgia.

Fingering through the poetry which is printed on an assortment of different papers, I catch hints of popular events lovingly excavated from a childhood mind and wraith-like characters from the underbelly of Scotland’s nightlife where, as a musician and promoter, Kenny’s spent so much of his time.

There’s clarity in his use of words – I’ve not had to dig out my dictionary – and much of the power comes from his straightforward delivery. Like the best poetry, you think you find meaning in these on first read; but with each subsequent read, the poems become more expansive and what you thought you understood, less certain. This is the depth of good poetry, especially when there’s an absence of excess baggage like there is here, leaving much room for interpretation.

There are big themes but also treatment of the mundane. And, like with his weeds “cultivated as flowers”, there’s a sense of a thinning out, a reappraisal of what’s important, what has been and what is still to come.

There’s much to love here in what is a great introduction to another side of Quitter’s art. Grab it while you can.  

The zine is available now in a very limited run from Quitter’s Bandcamp page: https://quittermusic.bandcamp.com/merch/sometimes-when-the-wind-blows-in-my-hometown-zine 

Words by Constant Follower

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Review: ‘It Hurts So Much When You Smile At Me’ - Youth Group

Previously a somewhat collaborative effort, Luc Grindle is going it alone on his latest offering as Youth Group. As well as playing every instrument, Luc engineered and produced the EP himself. The result is a grand step-up in production quality which allows these cracking songs to shine.  

Things kick off with ‘Couldn’t Look You In The Eyes’. Of all the tracks it feels closest to his earlier works, moving along head-to-the-pedals with an energy which nods to Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. There’s an urgency in the lyrics which allude to tangled emotions, the change mid-way through slows things down and brings a hint of hope, harmonics and all, taking us out instrumentally to the beautiful close and into follow up track ‘D0 U L0V3 ME’. Here, lead guitar lines meander over a wall of undulating rhythm guitar with processed vocals sitting deep in the mix evoking the spirit of Kevin Shields’ My Bloody Valentine.

It’s the second half of the EP though that really gets exciting. The found-sounds and tape clicks adding tension to the hypnotic drums as ‘Shift (I Wanted Kids But I’m Too Selfish)’ drives forward like a multi-layered Kosmische patchwork. The effect is wonderful simplicity; hushed vocals reverberating over processed guitar that suggests distant steel drums, the track slowly building to echos of “It’s just a way that I feel…” and eventually dropping out to ghostly field recordings suggesting an uneasy world. This is excellent.  

After a brief palate cleanser of unsettling noise in ‘Porcupine’, the EP is brought to a close with the glorious ‘It Hurts So Much When You Smile At Me’. It’s Youth Group in full brooding widescreen. The track is loaded with ear-swivelling beauty but feels full of space rather than cluttered. Moments of transcendence abound as the track strolls towards crescendo, falling out to silence at the all-too-soon close.

This is a collection of songs that develop with each listen. In striding out alone, Luc has taken a creative leap forward and produced his best work yet.

Buy the EP on Bandcamp

Words: McAll  goldenhum.co.uk

[stirlingdiypress]

Review: Stock Manager (self-titled) - Stock Manager

Appearing by surprise on Halloween, this is the latest release from Stock Manager, aka Jack Boyle, following on from the excellent ‘Blasé’ EP’ released earlier this year. The opening few bars of this EP had me,  if not hooked, certainly intrigued. ‘How Good It Feels When You Go’ has a catchy opening acoustic riff, quickly joined by a lo-fi drum beat that got me nodding my head and reminded me of eighties Glasgow indie pop like The Pastels. Overall though, there is a definite feel of late eighties / early nineties American alt rock to all the songs - think The Lemonheads and Pixies - but that's not a criticism. As someone who grew up in that era there is something immediately recognisable and familiar but it doesn't feel forced.  

There is a natural, easy feel to the song writing. The songs flow well. Although the influences are clear it doesn't feel like an attempt to recreate the past or copy.  It feels genuine and from the heart.  Both the opening track and the last, ‘Like A Woman Giving Birth’, have an upbeat catchy drum beat that helps lift the songs and adds a slight pop element to them.  The vocals are melodic and have touches of Smashing Pumpkins on occasion.  

I like the production on this EP. The songs have space to breath and it’s a welcome break from the usual ‘volume war’ type of over production you tend to get these days.  The slightly rough edges of the recording in places adds to a sense of intimacy and charm that’s very appealing. 

Acoustic guitars,  fuzzy guitars,  nice melodies,  catchy beats - there might not be anything earth-shatteringly original or genre defining here but I found myself going back to listen again and have done a few times over the last couple of days. 

Well written, unpretentious indie music you want to listen to again. 

Listen to Stock Manager on bandcamp.

Words: Grant Taylor

[stirlingdiypress]

Review: Golden Hum presents Chuck Johnson / Adam Stafford

@ Stirling Tolbooth, Saturday 27th October.

Regular alternative music showcase Golden Hum returned to the Stirling Tolbooth on Saturday 27th October, with another typically brilliant night of magically skewed music from the fringes of experimental folk, Americana, indie and ambient music. For the uninitiated, a Golden Hum night promises something cool, leftfield, unusual, unexpected and deep that will feed your head and your heart. Never mind if you’ve heard of the bands or not – if they’re playing Golden Hum, you know it’s gonna be memorable and special.

True to form, this edition paired Falkirk-based experimental musician Adam Stafford with American artist Chuck Johnson, and what a pairing they made.

Adam Stafford has been winning acclaim around the Scottish music scene for some years now, with this year’s Fire Behind the Curtain LP prompting rave reviews on release. Stafford draws from that record and earlier work tonight, building layers of electric guitar loops to create meditative, melodic explorations, at various points evoking Sonic Youth at their prettiest and most serene, or the fluid trilling of Nels Cline.

Fans of non-standard guitar sounds have plenty to feast their ears on as Stafford mixes strange oboe/flute sounds, ominous burrowing noises, percussive plinks and judiciously bent notes to glorious effect, building layers of loops to almost overload, before dropping back to the first pattern and building again. The fourth song, I’m You Last Week, sees a pretty arpeggio pattern overdubbed with a frankly staggering slide guitar part, as Stafford titivates the strings to produce a wave of heavenly orchestral sounds that swoop and glide and force your heart up into your mouth. The last track of the set pushes the envelope further still, as Stafford recreates the complex studio arrangement of The Witch Hunt by overlaying beatboxing, guitar harmonies, incantations and yelps, before layering his voice into a loop pedal choir. A glance around the room at this point reveals the crowd really digging this – eyes are closed, and heads are nodding.

If the support act’s job is to get people into the right frame of mind for the main act, then Stafford achieves this perfectly. Experimental American musician Chuck Johnson appears on stage a short time later, and treats us to a full set based around his recent conversion from conventional guitar to pedal steel, which resulted in the sublime 2017 LP Balsams.

Normally very much a backing instrument associated with country music, Johnson plugs his pedal steel into an arsenal of ambient effects pedals in order to elevate it not just to lead instrument status, but to a generator of a whole world of haunting and beautiful sound. He’s not in any particular rush to take us to that world mind you, with a gloriously languid opening spanning around ten minutes where unhurried tones, pulses and swells painstakingly slowly emerge and build into a wash of sound that provides the bedrock for the rest of the set. The glacial pace makes for a supremely chilled listening experience.

The music gradually emerges - slow, unhurried, totally serene, like a slow sunrise. It feels like watching a flower open in real time, in a good way. Like music to soundtrack the elements of the universe coalescing into matter. It transports you to imagined places – the bottom of the sea, the surface of the moon. If you can imagine Neil Young’s lapsteel player Ben Keith jamming with Brian Eno you’re somewhere close.

It’s not so much music but a formless force of sound – there are no breaks, just 45 minutes of uninterrupted drone. As such the spell it casts is never broken, and the audience, already highly suggestive after 30 minutes of Adam Stafford, are sent deep inside themselves. At at least one point, every single person in the room has their eyes shut. They are no longer here. I don’t know where they are, but they look pleased to be there. They look as if they are being healed in some small way the balm of this soothing noise.

Across the set melodies build and subside, until suddenly it comes to a close, and Chuck leaves the stage. Normally everyone would get up and go home, but nobody does. They sit around and only slowly and gradually drift out, as though their metabolisms have slowed to a Chuck Johnson tempo, and they need a few minutes to readjust. It certainly leaves a mark on everyone here.

And so closes another Golden Hum. There’s really nothing else quite like it anywhere near Stirling, and it seems to be building a crowd very much tuned into its unique aesthetic. If a taste of the cerebral and unexpected floats your boat, be sure not to miss the next one.

 Sign up the Golden Hum mailing list to be kept up to date on details for upcoming shows here.

Words: Andrew Pankhurst

Photos: Mark Ritchie / Duncan Rennie

[stirlingdiypress]

Weird Time #7 announced

Our secret pop-up show series returns with the 7th weirdtime announced this week. 

Taking place on Wednesday 31st October (yes Halloween), it features some secret artists in a suitably unusual and unique secret location.

We’re limited in terms of capacity for this one, so be quick and email [email protected] to reserve your place!

Once you’re confirmed, we’ll email you to let you know and will also email out the night before the event to tell you where to turn up to.

For more, see the Event Page. Otherwise, get in touch!

[stirlingdiypress]

Review: Strange Behaviours presents... Adam Stafford / PAWS acoustic / Death Bed

Strange Behaviours at the Tolbooth is a monthly platform for bands, acts and songwriters around Scotland situated loosely on the ‘indie’ side of things – both in style and in DIY spirit.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I book the shows, so strap yourselves in for a review so stacked with superlatives that you’ll roll your eyes so hard you’ll lose your irises forever.

August’s SB night was a personal treat – 3 of the finest songwriters going, renowned in very different fields but somehow connected in ethos.

Death Bed is the gradually cemented moniker of local stalwart musician Innes Nolan. With a distinctive spidery guitar style and cavernous thirst for discord and jangle, his sound is his own. His voice is an easily distinguished blend of howl and murk, his song structures are obliquely compelling, and he seems to grasp great handfuls of 80s post-punk influences tonally – less touched touchstones including Television, Gang of Four, Polvo. Full band, Death Bed is a whole other thrillingly opened wide, full-grinning affair; solo like tonight it becomes muted, gnarled and soulful, with a whole new understanding of the ornate guitar and complex lyrics.

Chosen as a special guest by his ol’ pal (tonight’s headliner), Phillip Taylor of garage/grunge/punk outfit PAWS is about as fine a main support as you’re likely to land. He’s played Strange Behaviours shows a few times, and there was an occasion in 2015 I think, where I’d managed to coax him through to Stirling a few weeks prior to playing to appear on the local Uni radio show. Playing a few favourites acoustic and chattering away, he finished on a version of a new song entitled ‘No Grace’, to appear later on the 2016 album of the same name, and it felt like a real landmark moment. One of those moments people like to hark on about where they got to see something new and special just as it became apparent that it was new and special. Tonight’s set felt similar for me, playing almost all new songs from the forthcoming new PAWS album, barebones acoustic and vocal. Stylistically, the songs seemed so much more singer-songwriter-y than previous work, and not just because of the acoustic delivery, checked shirt and tidy hair. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong when they appear in full electric form next year, but songs like ‘Joanna’, ‘Like Some Injured Dawn’ and ‘The Watering Hole’ had that classic mournful heart sorta thing, at their core an exposed-wires and dried-cheeks sort of songwriter’s tale. It was cool to hear.

Adam is what people would call the ‘consummate’ performer. I’ve never looked up the word ‘consummate’ because I hate how it sounds and feels, so I’m not 100% on it, but I’d say he’s definitely the whole deal – what he accomplishes live with minimal fuss (and maximum sweat) is astonishing. Sometimes he’s an orchestra. Sometimes he’s a soul singer. Sometimes he’s a minimalist composter and sometimes he’s scoring silent films in his mind. Actually one time I saw him score a silent film in real life, and you can bet your stupid face it was an excellent experience.

Tonight’s set was largely comprised of material from new album ‘Fire Behind The Curtain’. You can look up stuff all about what the record is based on and things, but whenever I hear those songs they have this whole different feeling and atmosphere around them. It’s kinda eerie, sorrowful and malevolent, violent but not in that appealing/exciting way, in the sorta way that causes the human inside you to look the other way, sorta wince. What he’s done with the whole thing is what he so often seems to do – present a body of work that reminds you of why making music can be supernatural, other-worldly, almost alchemic in what it can achieve. So much more than the sum of its parts and in fact containing parts you don’t know where on earth to find.

He didn’t disappoint either, making sure he treated us to some of his trademark boogying on the floor, spinning a “golden oldie” (‘Cold Seas’) and kicking fuck out of his pedals a bit. It was great.

 Death Bed on Facebook.

PAWS website

Adam Stafford website

 Words: Kenny Bates

Photographs: Jamie Fitzpatrick

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Review: ‘A Chorus of Lawnmowers’ - Paul Henry Smith

An excellent return to form for Weird Decibels singer guitarist Paul Henry Smith on his new solo album ‘A Chorus of Lawnmowers’. No hint of any major style change here but for those who lapped up his last release, 2015’s ‘Morningday’, then that will come as welcome news. The stripped back vocal style still stands strong amongst contemporary indie releases with a bigger sound, his soul laid bare in the intimacy of the recording reminiscent of the pain in great voices of the past like Cohen and Curtis. 

There’s no ceremony or launch point. The starting track ‘Watching Years Fly’ opens with such a downbeat tone as if suffering from hangover blues, the sort of tone you might expect any other album to drop down to in the middle of things, not kick off with. But there’s resoluteness and confidence here that reflects a poet in full acceptance of his middle aged self. The beats and references arrive in retro style with track two, ‘Van Basten’ and it pulses with past heartache, digital drum rolls reminiscent of last tune at teen discos, as the repeat and fade out of the lyric ‘Learn from mistakes you make’ pushes us to think of loves lost.

You expect it all to kick on from there but he reads that pensive feel and backs off for a bit to a part broken, off beat picking on ‘Tree At The Top Of The Hill’, a track with disturbing psychedelic layering that builds like a rush of chemically assisted hormones. Reaching what is arguably the album’s euphoric peak with ‘University (I’ve Never Been Here)’ – all pulsing kickbeat and harmonica, it feels like Smith’s festival main stage moment. He then holds on to that moment on this imagined stage with a pure Joy Division homage in the title track ‘A Chorus of Lawnmowers’, another reflection on mid life existence thoughtfully backed by a brilliant Hookesque bassline that any indie music lover of a certain age will find difficult not to get the feels from.

The Falkirk based singer songwriter producer can be best compared to fellow Falkirk wordsmith and former Arab Strap frontman Aidan Moffat and the second half of the album sticks truer to these roots. ‘Automatic Help Screens’ ticks away against a simple drum machine and heavily placed synth chords reminiscent of much of Moffat’s great catalogue of work. Shaking off the melancholy once more on ‘Here To Stay’, a tale of love defeating time that comes at you with the pace of an adolescent heartbeat but in a more mature head and reveals a lovely positive side to our otherwise sombre songsmith. Another of his great influences shines out in the next track ‘My Computer Died’, an obliquely haunting basement ballad that could have been picked straight off an early Leonard Cohen album.  Early Arab Strap again on ‘Running in the Cairngorms’, another seemingly dysphoric finger picker that turns out to be a little charmer about a private smiling moment of discovery on a 40th birthday. 

But if you thought, like me, that the small glimmers of light throughout this ostensibly bleak collection might culminate in an all affirming last song called ‘Hopes and Dreams’ that would cast away the preconceived societal tropes on the slope of life after middle age and voice a picture of new possibility, then you would be wrong, in part anyway. A Forth Valley poet is far better grounded than that. Smith sees the potential in his young son’s future and accepts his own changes more gradually. So with this, we look forward to his next collection of tales.

‘A Chorus Of Lawnmowers’ on Bandcamp. Paul Henry Smith on Facebook.

Words: Tracksuite

[stirlingdiypress]

weirdtime #6 video now up!

Check out the video of Megan Airlie peforming live at the 6th edition of our pop-up/secret-show weirdtime, earlier this month.

Taking place in the Stirling Observatory above the Stirling Highland Hotel, attendees got to experience a super close-up, unplugged live set, before learning about how the Observatory works and looking at the Wallace Monument and the moon through the telescope!

Keep an eye here for announcements of weirdtime shows, and please do get in touch if you have a cool space we could use for a gig!

[stirlingdiypress]

weirdtime #6 announced!

Our secret pop-up show series returns with the 6th weirdtime announced this week. 

Taking place on Monday 16th July, it features a secret artist in a pretty incredible and special location, complete with a mystery activity for everyone to take part in, as well as watching the music. 

weirdtime shows sometimes take place in familiar spaces that you know and love, but that you’ve never seen music in - and other times they take place in places you’ve never set foot in!

To experience it, you’ve got to take the plunge.

Email [email protected] and ask to sign up to attend.

We’re extremely limited in terms of capacity for this one, so be quick!

Once you’re confirmed, we’ll email you to let you know and will email out the night before the event to tell you where to turn up to.

For more, see the event page. Otherwise, get in touch!

[stirlingdiypress]

Review: ‘Eden Disorder EP’ - The Narcissist Cookbook

Of all the things we look for in new music - be that authenticity, great energy, interesting lyrics - one thing most of us have given up on expecting by now is originality. We're almost 70 years into this whole pop music lark, and nothing much has sounded truly new since the explosion of dance music in the 1990s.

It may come as a surprise then, to find the Stirling scene harbouring an artist that, whilst combining elements that are definitely familiar, manages to have a sound that is pretty much unique.

The Narcissist Cookbook, aka Matt Johnson, makes music that is hard to categorise. There’s a heavy dose of supremely catchy acoustic pop, but it never hangs around very long before being interrupted by a melting pot of spoken word, social comment, ambient passages, liberally sprinkled profanity and inventive musical flourishes.

Last year’s full-length record ‘Moth’ is fantastic introduction to the sound, but anyone who’s seen The Narcissist Cookbook live in the past year or so would have got to the end wondering where the amazing cornerstones of his live set were - a pair of instantly compelling, so-catchy-you’re-singing-along-by-the-second-chorus tracks called ‘Sugar In My Coffee’ and ‘Courtney’.

These both appear on a brand new EP called ‘Eden Disorder’ and the recorded versions manage the difficult trick of improving on something that really should be at it best delivered live. 

‘Sugar In My Coffee’ shows Johnson at his most playful. The song is a gonzo story about the singer’s struggle as a non-coffee drinker in a world that increasingly seems to revolve around the stuff. It’s daft and funny, and a great example of The Narcissist Cookbook style and musical personality but applied to a trifling topic, rather than some of bigger issues he often grapples with. It will have you singing the “na na na nana, na na na nanana” hook for the rest of the week.

‘Courtney’ tackles a much bigger topic altogether. It’s kind of a comment on the way society treats women, all the more relevant post #metoo, viewed through the prism of the conspiracy theory that Courtney Love murdered Kurt Cobain. The track so confidently pulls off the high wire act of tackling highly sensitive subject matter with both seriousness and wit that it makes your head spin. The indelible chorus certainly helps, as does the fantastic lyric video (see below), illustrated in part by Stirling artist and general Death Collective legend and elder statesman Peter Russell.

The final two tracks go full Narcissist Cookbook – a pair of fully spoken word, soul bearing trips to very bottom of Johnson’s psyche. In the hands of anyone else it would be so indulgent it would simply never work – yet these tracks are completely engrossing. They somehow reward repeat listens, despite a total absence of vocal melody. I’m not sure how that even works.

Whichever way you cut it, this is music borne of a fierce intelligence, and from an artist with so much to say that if there were a lyric sheet included you’d have to fold it so many times it wouldn’t fit in the CD case. It is music that literally bursts at the seams with ideas – songs split and fracture with asides and subsections, broadsides from a mind that can’t settle as it grapples with the meaning of love and life in an age of information overload.

Who makes music like this?

Who sabotages their own stadium sized pop hooks with a torrent of their own neurotic internal monologue disguised as a set-the-world-to-rights clarion call and manages to make it a better, more interesting piece of art for it?

Sure, you can be trite and come up with stuff like “he’s like Ed Sheeran crossed with Will Self singing mid-period Bright Eyes - on barbiturates” or something equally dumb. But the real answer to that question is that nobody makes music quite like this.

And that’s why you should listen to it.

 Eden Disorder is available to buy on Bandcamp (yay, actual money for the artist), or on major streaming services (boo – few pennies to artist if you’re lucky).

Words: Kurd

Photo: Alan Campbell (live at our first ever ‘weirdtime’ secret show)

[stirlingdiypress]

Strange Behaviours: Irma Vep w/ December ‘91 + Moonsoup

Photographs of June’s Strange Behaviours show featuring psych/experimental songwriter Irma Vep, with support from Stirling’s anti-folk songsmith December ‘91 and Falkirk’s garage pop duo Moonsoup.

See the full album here.

Photography by Alan Campbell

[stirlingdiypress]

Microzine #3 out now!

We’ve printed up a limited run of 100 copies of our little microzine.

Full of info on the Collective and how to contribute to our next full sized A5 zine, it also contains some poetry, photography, gig listings and things to give a flavour of what we’re about.

Pick one up, pass it on to a pal, spread the good word.

x

[stirlingdiypress]

Review: ‘Do What U Want’ by Moonsoup

Moonsoup are a new band fronted and formed by Falkirk based singer songwriter Niamh Baker, with the help of Melissa Brisbane who mastered the record, as well as a list of local DIY musicians who played/performed/recorded and just in general helped make this little 4 track EP the gem it is!

The general vibe of the EP, is hazy and folk-based, while the guitar style and moody drums mean that these songs would not sound altogether out of place on commercial radio.

First track ‘Fucked Friday’ is clearly about regrets, and letting your friends down after a rough night on the tiles. Yet somehow the way the guitar plays under the lyrics, and the prominence of drum beat, means you can’t help but tap your feet. It makes you forget the actual subject of the song, until the song closes with distortion and talking which add to the idea of confusion around a rough night (lets face it, we’ve all been there, right?).

‘Joanne and Leo’ is up next, and along with the end track ‘Thanks for the Advice, Rick’, makes for a lovely pairing. They feel like natural progressions of one another - ‘Joanne and Leo’ is about falling in love, and ‘Thanks for the Advice, Rick’ is about heartbreak, and falling for someone you shouldn’t have. They are perfectly matched, and both boast lovely hazy, folk melodies.

Middle track ‘Contrary’ feels like something Haim would happily put out on their next record. It has summer vibes. The guitar comes in mid-bridge, and alongside the bass, thumps its way throughout. A perfect summer evening tune!

The one thing I like most about this whole EP is the wavering chorus effect on the guitars, giving them that slightly ‘out of key’ sound, giving the songs an edge and depth. This is a stellar release, and hopefully is a sign of great things to come from Moonsoup. I for one cant wait to hear what else Niamh has hidden up her sleeves!

To get a bit of insight into the EP and what’s on the horizon for the band, we caught up with Niamh to ask a few questions...

How long have you been making music?

I guess that has a few different answers. I’ve been writing silly songs since I was a young gal. Sang all the time since I can remember and I started guitar when I was 13. I kinda mucked about for a while but I'd say I was 15 when I tried to seriously write stuff. I wouldn't say i was writing anything very good until I was around 18 though. 

What was the main inspiration for your new EP, ‘Do What u Want’?

As a whole I think a lot of it was inspired by moving out and growing up and "finding yourself" as cringey as that sounds. Most of it was recorded in my flat. I like how much I feel we've captured my first crappy little flat in the songs. I moved out of my family home last summer and I definitely did a lot of growing up. I've always been pretty mature for my age in a sense but it's been a whole new way of living to adjust to. I gained a lot more self assurance I think and that's pretty much where the name came from really - I've been trying to accept that I can't please everyone all the time. I wrote a couple of the songs amongst this time so a lot of it is kind of just about having fun with the newfound freedom. There's a bit of a darker side to it too though I guess.

Musically, who inspires you most?

I always find that a difficult question because I listen to a lot of different music and just want to make whatever it is I'm listening to really. I'm currently listening to a lot of King Krule, super into what he does. Combining a lot of different stuff to make a unique and distinctive sound is quite inspiring to me. I think I'm influenced by a lot of different stuff to be honest. Local stuff inspires me a lot too, I'm always baffled by talented friends like Sulka, Quitter, Constant Follower; and December ‘91.

Do you think it’s harder to be a woman in the music industry?

I mean I don't know what it's like to be a man in the music industry so I don't think I'll ever fully know or understand. I try not to think about it to be honest which may be part of the problem but I don't like focusing on it too much because then I think it's more enhanced in my head. I'm sure everyone experiences things they aren't happy with because that's just life. There's definitely stuff I dislike but I think it's constantly getting better and if we all do our best to make that the case then what more can you ask for really. I'm also not too experienced in the industry yet so maybe I'll have more to say about it in the future.

If you could collaborate with anyone on a song, who would it be and why?

I think I'd choose either Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief) or Kristine Leschper (Mothers). Purely because they write the most beautiful lyrics and I'd just love to see that in action or at least talk to them about it. Also I feel like we would write real cool songs together that would be cool, someone make that happen please.

Where did you come up with the name Moonsoup?

I wanted to have some sort of moon or space word because it's just something I've been into since I was young and I guess has some sort of meaning. I was kind of just in bed one night thinking up things based around that and I thought of Moonsoup and it just sort of sounded good to me. I wanted something goofy but maybe a little meaning too. Something to remind myself to just have fun and not think into everything too much.

And finally, if you were stuck on a desert island, what is the one thing you would make sure you had on you?

Probably my notebook and pen. I mean I guess all the other essentials too but if we're excluding them my journal feels pretty important. Gotta document those fun times on the island ya know.

Stream/Download the EP here.

Words: Emma Lawrence

Photos: Holly Graham

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Live review: Strange Behaviours presents... Broken Records + The Little Kicks + The Cobalts

April’s Strange Behaviours was all melodic indie rock n roll, welcoming back to Stirling a couple of old favourites, alongside something new from the youth music scene. Gregor Flynn fills us in on more...

The Cobalts

First song was a really great, absolutely cracking, 60’s vibes melodic number. Second song however sounded a bit like the sort of song you’d hear in a bank advert, scaring you into believing that you need their services. The lyrics and melodies of all their songs however were well put together and had the whole crowd nodding along.

The Cobalts had a good thing going with interchanging lead vocals, although some unfortunate technical issues with the vocal mics compromised this for a couple of numbers. A pain in the arse. Throughout however the band kept it together, and toward the end of the set the smooth pop songs started to become a bit more loud and aggressive with a notably more rock sound coming forth. The band really appeared to be having a lot of fun, laughing and generally having a great time in the mist of shambolic entanglements of cables and broken strings.

The Little (yet epic) Kicks

I had seen The Little Kicks about three years ago at the Tolbooth and really enjoyed their synth pop sound. I recall them really going to great lengths to use real synthesizers rather than computer presets and backing tracks.

With the first song underway, the lead vocal was instantly recognisable, though as great as the lead singer was there was a stunning use of 3 vocals throughout the set. The band’s first song felt held back, like coiled spring ready to burst but not quite yet, maybe later if we were lucky. The second tune ‘Girl’ was a previous single, and the live performance of it was truly of a high quality, very comparable with the recorded version. At this point I noticed lighting was very good throughout the show too, for The Cobalts too but with The Little kicks it felt a little more in sync with the performance. 

Despite my previous note of their commitment to analogue equipment, I did notice the odd bit of backing track, however it was kept super minimalist and I could only hear occasional percussion in the intro/verse of songs. Looking into the crowd to see their take of events, everyone in the room had the same ‘good music nod’ head-nod going on, there were a handful of real fans giving it laldie and singing along, clearly on their way to an enjoyable night.

With the last song came the the uncoiling of the coiled spring that they first looked like they were holding for us. A great explosion of energy and some real synthesizers going on that had myself and a handful of, I assume vintage music equipment fans, running to the back of the stage to see what all the knobs and dials were doing on their king synth. Turns out they were pure lead melody knobs.

Broken Records

At the start of the set I was trying to place who they sounded like - my mind went to a mix of The Killers and Mumford and Sons and the now extinct Stirling locals Miniature Dinosaurs.

One thing these guys had that the others were perhaps lacking was a bit of live percussion - shakers and tambourine really complimented the mix of the band. They also had a bit of a country/Americana vibe going on, with one of the members picking up a violin which added another texture to the performance. The crowd were digging it, again a notable handful were keen fans of the band and were enjoying it. I also noticed that Kenny the promoter of the show was for once not the tallest man in the building, wee shame. All said and done a great night, with lots of chatter between folks and a generally nice atmosphere.  

 Words: Gregor Flynn

Photo: Leo McArdle

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Call out for contributors for the next issue of the zine

Issue #5 of our printed zine is on the horizon and we're widening the call out for contributors! Open to all - please get in touch if you'd like to submit a piece of work for consideration when we put the zine together. We print up 500 of em and distribute across Stirling. Open to everything - poetry, art, music, photography / interviews, reviews, features / what ever else. Email your submissions to: [email protected] Previous issues can be found at: https://issuu.com/stirlingdiypresscollective

[stirlingdiypress]

weirdtime #5 - The Lord Provost’s Private Lounge

A little photo retrospective of our adventures in Codebase Stirling, as we brought our sporadic pop-up secret show ‘weirdtime’ to what was the former Lord Provost’s private office and lounge.

Not yer typical gig space! It worked absolutely perfect for the noise/riff-rock/electro project IDEAL and Constant Follower though.

Huge thanks to Barry and Janine at Codebase for welcoming us in and making it all possible.

Big thanks to the Unofficial Gossip team too for bringing the sweet unusual decor installations.

Here’s to more gigs in Lord Provosts’ offices up and down the country!

Photography by the awesome Alan Campbell