The Martial Arts - The Legion

Its a loud indie rock night from the mighty Tasty Fanzine.

My attractive young ladyfriend thinks the venue is nice, like a department of an All Saints shop, the clientel all wearing black white and shades of brown.

Its rock, not too hardcore, but rock, amongst other fashion vibes, in attendance.

A hushed silence falls over the audience as they take to the stage, The Martial Arts have traveled a long way to be here tonight.

Few people believe the story about how the got to number three in the Swedish album charts but I swear its true. How their MySpace page demos were picked up by a record label and they were flown by helicopter to Stockholm to record the album and then returned to semi-obscurity in Glasgow.

Green Day urgency in the vocals and drums, but fronted by Paul Kelly (who's looking more and more like David Tennent every time I see him).

They started off with their heavier tracks which some found it jarring compared to the rest of the set.

I was trying to explain how I thought The Martial Arts sound like Elvis Costello, but tonight they're not so much, with just Paul's scratchy vocals and 'woah woah wah's.

Nic Denholm joins them on keyboards for a couple of songs, introduced by a convoluted story about The Owsley Sunshine and Joe Kane. Only a couple of people in the crowd know or care. I do, I like the Venn diagram of the Glasgow bands overlap. Pete Frame could do a cracking rock familytree.

Stand out tracks of the set have to be 'Duality' and 'Exploding Crushing Inevitable'. The whole album is available to download for free from here. It was a cracking night, I'm wondering if it was the first time they've played London and will The Martial Arts be back soon?

Inspirition - Dusk Till Dawn

Inspirition appear to be a woman with a splash of pink hair and a turquoise shawl over a Katie-Jane Garside dress, and a grey bearded gentleman on guitar.

Could have been a jazz singer in a previous life, but tonight Matthew she's going to be Kate Bush. The chap is going to be the tuition cover CD from Total Guitar magazine.


They've come from the west country to be with us tonight and left the rest of the band at home. They could have done with bringing a backing tape with them, rather than this. Its not mixed right, the vocals make you wince occasionally and the guitar needs reverb and the treble turned down a smidgen.

I've heard Kate Bush-alikes with lone axe accompaniment before, and its rarely done well. Here its abrasive when it ought to be more gentle.

There's something of the Tortoise Shout about her and the introductions to the songs, she's got a good voice, its just tonight its packed wrong, I bet they sound great on record


Hang on a moment, shouldn't this place be called "Dusk 'Til Dawn" rather than "Dusk Till Dawn"? For typographic reasons I'll let them off the missing apostrophe but misspelling the abbreviated 'until' seems a bit more wrong. Hmm, oh my mistake. As you were.

Witness To The Beard - Dusk Till Dawn

Officially the finest band name of 2009, Witness To The Beard are a London-based three-piece, I know the drummer off of the internetz.

Dusk Till Dawn is an odd wee venue, in the middle the Archway roundabout. Its a warm night so there's a crowd drinking outside, but inside its starting to fill up for Witness To The Beard's second ever gig. Some day these people will be proud members of 'the Beard Army.

They start off a little grungey I thought, but then it carries you away on a wave of roughed up Kingmaker riffs and Longpigs howling. They've got a rare appreciation for guitar hooks, and the tall bass chap does some neat noodling.

The grunge gives way to some nice warm fuzzy bluesy numbers, like a duvet soaked in hot totty. But the White Stripes cover felt a wee bit flat, aiming to be like the original version when they could have made it more their own.

Then a weird thing happens that catches me off-guard, the guitar and bass players swap round, the drummer swaps round her drum sticks and they start to sound like The Fall.

All shouts and jagged chord changes. Hammering into yer heid like rusty railroad spikes. Its wondeful.

The Beard Army's chanting 'Witness! Witness! Witness!' between songs is strangely infectious.

Some songs come over like The Hector Collectors have grown a set of balls. A final cutdown medley of rock hooks, kind of like the Witness equivalent of !!!!111!!roflcopter!!

Truly they are the future sound of London rock, and one day we shall all bear Witness To The Beard.

Indietracks in 7 minutes

I'm still hammering away at trying to shorten this video to make it more manageable and digestible. This is a seven minute version.

Indietracks long video - Part 2

Part 2 of the Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy full length video of Indietracks 2009



This video feature the following bands recorded on Sunday

• Cola Jet Set
• Zipper
• The School
• Nick Garrie
• The Smittens
• Lucky Soul
• Pocketbooks
• BMX Bandits
• Stereo Total
• Help Stamp Out Loneliness
• Pete Green
• Cooper
• Art Brut
• Teenage Fanclub
  

My plan has been to do a full length video in two 10-minute long parts, these have now been completed. I also plan to make a 7-minute cut, a 3-minute cut and then finally somehow distill 40 minutes of footage of Indietracks 2009 into a 30 second clip featuring all the bands.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 last year are here, here and here

Sorry the sound quality is pants, I recorded it all on my trusty Canon Ixus 50 camera and built-in microphone with a 2Gb memory card in black and white, and used Windows Movie Maker for editing and subtitles. Its not high definition, its not even DVD quality, it's barely YouTube quality. I'm not a professional, I'm an unemployable wretch, so its got to be quick, easy and hassle free.

There were loads of other video folk at Indietracks, the Scottish mob, the pretty girls with professional equipment and the thousands of folk thrusting cameraphones at the stage, there's got to be some higher quality videos out theremost of them are listed in performance order on this page here, but this video is what I saw and what I heard, and it was great, I know cos I was there. Was There Then.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 are here, here and here

Indietracks long video - Part 1

Part 1 of the Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy full length video of Indietracks 2009



This video feature the following bands recorded on Friday and Saturday

• Modular
• Rose Elinor Dougall
• Au Revoir Simone
• Little My
• Lets Whisper
• Friends
• Tender Trap
• Fitness First
• The Frank and Walters
• Labrador
• The Specific Heats
• Butcher Boy
• Camera Obscura
• Alaska
• Emmy the Great
• La Casa Azul
• 'Allo Darlin'
• The Smittens
• David Pope from The Just Joans
• Moustache of Insanity
• The Vegetable Assembly
• Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps
• Pete Green

My plan is to do a full length video in two 10-minute long parts, this is the first one, the second one with cover bands from the Sunday. I also plan to make a 7-minute cut, a 3-munite cut and then finally somehow distill 40 minutes of footage of Indietracks into a 30 second clip featuring all the bands.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 last year are here, here and here

Sorry the sound quality is pants, I recorded it all on my trusty Canon Ixus 50 camera and built-in microphone with a 2Gb memory card in black and white, and used Windows Movie Maker for editing and subtitles. Its not high definition, its not even DVD quality, it's barely YouTube quality. I'm not a professional, I'm an unemployable wretch, so its got to be quick, easy and hassle free.

There were loads of other video folk at Indietracks, the Scottish mob, the pretty girls with professional equipment and the thousands of folk thrusting cameraphones at the stage, there's got to be some higher quality videos out there, but this is what I saw and what I heard, and it was great, I know cos I was there. Was There Then.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 are here, here and here

La Casa Azul - Indietracks

There a chap on stage on his own singing with a video of five of his mates on a big screen behind him.

He's dressed in white and wearing a motorbike helmet, kind of like half of Daft Punk, as Kraftwerk.

Rather thumping sample-based dance music and some neat synchronised video effects.

Lots of people in the crowd are singing along, which surprises me a wee bit, half of its in Spanish.

Emmy the Great finishes on the indoor stage so crowds of people are flocking out to watch La Casa Azul in their thousands.

He kind of cuts a Moby-like figure, when Moby is at his Jesus Christ-est.

But it just goes on and on and on. Its so loud and thumping, the music permiates the whole festival site now, there's no escape. I just want a quiet corner somewhere ans happy quiet music. But instead I must wait for La Casa Azul to finish.

Fifteen years ago, I would have loved it, the mysteriousness od having a band that no one has seen in the flesh, samples and covers and dance music for hours on end, but I'm old tired this century, I have wish for simpler pleasures.