Except I shan’t be mostly mastering because in all honestly I have no fucking idea what that is.  Apparently it is tweaking the teeny-tiniest of things in the final mix of a song and still somehow making the most significant of differences. I’ve heard a good masterer get the most amazing clarity of instrumentation from a shitty, over-compressed mp3 file, to the extent that it sounded amazing on vinyl.

We tend to use Reuben Taylor for our mastering these days.  As well as being a lovely (if slightly mental) fellow, he does an amazing job for a very reasonable fee in a very short space of time.  He was responsible for the Meursault All Creatures vinyl, as well as the gorgeous Rob St. John record and the King Post Kitsch Honeytone EP.

Anyhow, today Rory Sutherland, who helped me record and engineer the record, and I will be off with the final mixes for the split 12″ we’ve been recording with Waiters, Sex Hands, Dolfinz and PAWS and this will be the first time I have witnessed the process first hand.  So I’ll be sure to tell you what unspeakable wizardry takes place in the mastering suite.  Assuming, of course, that I understand any of it at all.

All these photos were taken by the fantastic Nic Rue.  Except the shit one.  That was Rory.

Anyhow, two bits of news:

Meursault are touring the UK and Europe as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s main support. 

Rob St. John is playing SHHH Festival.

The latter won’t clog up the page with tour dates, so I’ll do that first. The SHHH Festival is a celebration of quiet music and film, with bands playing, a film about David Thomas Broughton and musicians soundtracking silent movies.  It’s on Saturday 4th February at the Gallery Cafe in London and is less than a tenner too, so get your tickets here.

Now, as to the former little announcement, Meursault have been very kindly invited to support Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on their tour of the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe at the end of the month.  I’m not sure what else there is to say about this apart from the fact that it’s fucking incredible news, and to thank Clap Your Hands for inviting them. All the ticket info and the like can be found on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s website, but I’ve included a list of the dates below for ease of browsing. The only gig Meursault will be missing will be the Paris date on the 15th of February (which I haven’t listed below anyway).

25/1/12 – Dublin, Tripod
26/1/12 – Cork, Pavilion
27/1/12 – Galway, Roisin Dubh
28/1/12 – Glasgow, SWG3
30/1/12 – Leeds, The Cockpit
31/1/12 – Norwich, Waterfront
2/2/12 – Manchester, Ritz
3/2/12 – Liverpool, O2 Academy
4/2/12 – Bristol, Thekla
6/2/12 – Birmingham, HMV Library
7/2/12 – Brighton, Coalition
8/2/12 – London, Shepherd’s Bush Empire
10/2/12 – Utrecht, Tivoli
11/2/12 – Brussels, Orangerie
12/2/12 – Copenhagen, Frost Fest, Bremen Theatre
14/2/12 – Berlin, Postbahnhof
16/2/12 – Munich, Theaterfabrik
17/2/12 – Zurich, Plaza Club
18/2/12 – Bologna, Covo Club

Man man man man man this was fun.  And it sounds fucking brilliant!

Yesterday afternoon was spent at Toad Hall recording half of the songs for the Split 12″ we’ll be releasing in roughly April or May this year.  I described this on the Song, by Toad Records 2012 podcast we posted on the weekend, and included songs by all but one of the bands (for the fourth, see this podcast).

The plan, simply enough, is to record four songs by four bands we happen to think are brilliant, and then release them on a 12″.  We’re recording most of the tracks live, a lot like the Toad Sessions, and will be releasing videos of songs which we shoot live as we record, again a lot like the Toad Sessions.  I suppose you could describe this release as being like a release of a Toad Session recording, albeit a little more polished and without the interview bits and stuff like that.

Anyhow, Manchester bands Sex Hands and Waiters came through yesterday to record their bits, Dolfinz are recording on Friday and Saturday, and then Paws, who have business in London, will be doing their songs after they play Vic Galloway’s next Electric Circus night at the end of the month.

I remember when the Cold Seeds album was finished, and when Rob, Neil and Tom Western emerged from the living room after finishing the recording for Weald – everyone was high as a kite and absolutely wired.  I’ve been the same today – absolutely unable to do anything except work on preliminary mixes of yesterday’s recording to send down to the bands for feedback.

I know the industry is full of cynicism and all sorts of shit, but making music is just plain fucking exciting!

Here are a couple of videos to let you know who I’m talking about here:

We’ve got a couple of our more recent releases, like Rob St. John and Lil Daggers, as well as some of our confirmed and ready new albums for next year, by the likes of The Leg, Jesus H. Foxx and Yusuf Azak.

I’ve also got a couple of tracks from bands we’ll be releasing on a split 12″ in the Spring.  We’ll be recording that stuff in our house next week, so the songs we chose to represent those bands are for obvious reasons not the final ones we’ll be releasing, just tracks by the bands so you can get a bit of a flavour of what we’re up to.

With Ian on board and based on the good press we managed last year I am hoping we can really kick on with the label this year and make a decent impression.  Obviously the third Meursault album will  help, what with them being our most established band, but we have a good spread of stuff, from bands like Dolfinz with only a few demos to their name, to the likes of Yusuf Azak and The Leg who people know already and then the Foxx album, which has been ‘much anticipated’ for a while now.

So all in all it should be an exciting year, I reckon.  Enjoy!

Direct download: Toadcast #208 – Song, by Toad Records 2012

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Mongrels – I’m Gonna Murder Justin Bieber (00.21)
02. King Post Kitsch – The Make the Same Faces Whether Fuck or Fight (02.46)
03. Meursault – Flittin’ (locationmusic.tv Piano Version) (08.49)
04. Rob St. John – The Acid Test (17.59)
05. Lil Daggers – Dead Golden Girls (22.05)
06. Paws – Bloodline (Toad Session) (31.52)
07. Jesus H. Foxx – This is Not a Rental Car (40.31)
08. The Leg – Twitching Stick (43.00)
09. Sex Hands – Jinglebitch (51.56)
10. Dolfinz – Blowhole (55.36)
11. Yusuf Azak – Lay Me Down (63.12)

(Full Toad Session can be found here.)

So, I may have been a little tardy to make this an actual Christmas present, but The Savings and Loan would like to make you all a present of their self-titled EP, which you can download for free from their Bandcamp page.

This EP formed the basis for their debut album Today I Need Light, which we released on Song, by Toad Records at the end of 2010. They then added a couple of songs, re-recorded a couple and embellished a couple more with a little extra instrumentation to flesh out the full album, and the band wanted to make this available as a free download so you can see where it all came from.

I actually received a copy of the EP anonymously before I ever started Song, by Toad Records and that’s how we ended up working with the band.  Enjoy.

Anyhow, as you may have noticed in August, the engine room behind the New York Antifolk scene has now moved to Edinburgh and as such is the subject of a documentary on BBC Radio Scotland, which broadcasts in about forty-five minutes, and again on Sunday the 1st January, and will be available on the iPlayer after that.

I am not entirely certain, I have to confess, about how overseas people can hear the thing, but I am sure that the more determined of you can figure something out. Kids can crack this shit in minutes these days, can’t they?

The guys from La Blogotheque have been incredibly supportive of both Song, by Toad and, in particular, Meursault over the last few years, but due to their living in Paris and I in Scotland I’ve never actually met them in person.

Nevertheless, on their last European tour Meursault managed to finally take advantage of their long-standing invitation to record a session, although it was something of a stretch to actually manage it.  Having played their last show in Berlin the night before, and with a ferry booking later in the afternoon, Sam drove for eleven hours to get the band to Paris, dozed in the van while they recorded the session, and then carried on to the ferry and then Oxford without stopping.

Just in case you thought we didn’t work the little fuckers hard enough…

La Blogotheque have just published the session, and it looks fantastic. They’ve been doing this for a long time now so the sessions are bloody great, and their archive is truly amazing.  I’d like to thank them for their patience in waiting for this to finally happen, and also for the amazing support they’ve given us over the last few years.  Enjoy!

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s festivities, as well as some practical details.

Firstly, I never got my shit together to get tickets to Avalanche, for which I apologise, but it’s a really big venue, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting in, assuming you turn up relatively early (i.e. not 9pm).

Secondly, it is both child-friendly and BYOB.

Thirdly, bands will play roughly from doors at 2pm to 6pm, when there will be a break for some scran and a stretching of legs, and then more music from 7pm until we have to bugger off at eleven.  No hints as to who and when though, sorry.

The venue is here.  And the event is in the community hall downstairs, which is to be found through the door shown in Streetview below.

Umm… that’s about it.  Hope to see you there.  Happy Christmas!

Cheers,
Matthew
]]> http://songbytoadrecords.com/news/song-by-toad-records-christmas%c2%a0party/feed/ 0 http://songbytoadrecords.com/news/lil-daggers-%e2%80%93-dead-golden%c2%a0girls/ http://songbytoadrecords.com/news/lil-daggers-%e2%80%93-dead-golden%c2%a0girls/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:01:55 +0000 Matthew http://songbytoad.com/?p=13010

Well folks, here we go, our last release of the year! Happy Christmas and all that, and feel free to forget about presents for the kids and buy one last lovely piece of vinyl instead.  Honestly, they’re just kids, they probably won’t remember and they’ll end up resenting you anyway, whatever you do, because kids are ungrateful little shits like that.

Anyhow, Song, by Toad Records’ final act of 2011 (apart from our awesome all-day label Christmas Party on Saturday) is to release the self-titled debut album by Miami’s Lil Daggers.  It’s a nasty record, and my favourite review so far (well, apart from the 5* one we’re apparently getting in Artrocker, which is awesome) was published in Subba Cultcha, where Emma Rochford produced the following little gems:

“this is music which is unashamedly ugly and hostile and it works all the better for it.”

“There are points when, for me, Lil Daggers push it too far and border on the unlistenable which makes this record a bit too much of an uncomfortable listen but I guess that’s pretty much the point. You’d be hard pushed to find a band that can give you the creeps quite like Lil Daggers.”

Now, I might suggest that it’s a little bit more of a pop album than that, but then I have a fairly well developed taste for this kind of growl these days.  Actually I reckon it’s a pretty hummable record, with the possible exception of the ungodly snarl of Ghost Herd, and to prove this we hereby present our usual enticement of a free download, this time of Dead Golden Girls, which can be snagged from the Soundcloud widget below.  And the album, should this tickle your fancy, can be bought here or in Avalanche Records down on the Grassmarket, either on black vinyl or very limited edition grey marbled vinyl.

Dead Golden Girls by Song, by Toad

Well the BBC have their list, the BAMS sort of have theirs and now we have ours: hot tips for bands to make it big in 2012, in this case as chosen by a selection of music bloggers designed to give a decent cross-section of opinions and some sort of reasonable alternative to the pap peddled on the Beeb.

Now, to be entirely fair, although it is easy to make fun of the BBC’s Sound of 2012 list (here it is, so you can compare, contrast and make snide remarks on Twitter), it’s not something I really tend to do because… well who cares, really.  That list is for the commercial, pop side of the industry and for fans who give a fuck about that kind of thing.  I don’t particularly think I or anyone reading this website is likely to fall into those categories, so why on Earth would any of us care that it’s full of bands we’ve either never heard or think are shite.  Of course that’s what we think, it’s not a list written for people like us.

The scary part about that list, and something which does bother me about it, is the effect making it or, more importantly, not making it can have on the levels of attention and effort given to artists by their record labels.  This is hardly the fault of the listmakers of course, and it is very much the nature of the nettle you grasp when you choose to play around at that end of the music industry, but it is nevertheless pretty fucking sickening.   Mind you these labels are very clearly not artistic enterprises, so a commercial entity acting in a commercially ruthless way shouldn’t stir even the tiniest eddy of surprise in anyone.

So I feel I should point out that this list is not intended in any way to be a dig at the BBC list, nor a vehicle for criticising it, Andy from Von Pip simply thought it would be an interesting thing to try, just to see what we came up with, and if our list perhaps brought some interesting, slightly different bands to the fore.  And with the shortlist to be announced in a little while, without any further ado, here is the long list:

The Long List  (in no particular order)

Houdini Dax.

French Wives.

The Good Natured.

Lianne La Havas.

Theme Park.

Alt J.

The Jezabels.

Lucy Rose.

Bastille.

Beth Jeans Houghton.

Friends.

Washington.

Meursault.

Daughter.

Outfit.

Just to add some thoughts about the very concept of tipping bands for success, I have to mention that it’s not really something I particularly believe in, honestly.  I mean, it’s fine for the BBC list, in fact that’s pretty much all that list is, in essence, a list of people they think are going to make it big, irrespective of artistic merit.

From my own perspective, on the other hand, I can only do the opposite.  I pretty much never spend time thinking about whether or not a band can crack it commercially, so it’s not a  judgement call I have any practise or skill in making.  As you know, on this blog I write from pretty much one perspective alone: whether or not I personally enjoy something.

Consequently my ‘tips’ are never really tips as such, they are simply bands I think are mostly likely to record and release something I think is awesome next year, irrespective of whether or not it makes any commercial impact.  So this list, for all I was delighted to be a part of it, contains precisely none of the bands I nominated, largely because they were all so obscure (almost) no-one else mentioned them at all. I didn’t even vote for Meursault, because I thought they were too old and, on the verge of completing their third album, too developed as a band to really qualify.

I suppose this looks like a bit of side-stepping, but it really isn’t.  I have no problem at all with none of the bands I chose making the list.  One was close, by all accounts, and that’s just how democracy works.  If I want a list where I entirely approve of all the bands then I should just bloody well write my own, shouldn’t I.  And in the meantime I hope this provides a selection rather more suitable to this audience than the BBC list.  Happy browsing, and feel free to mention any stand-outs in the comments – I’ll be doing the same myself.

The Blog “Panel” consisted of

Breaking More Waves, My Band Is Better Than Your Band,God Is In the TV,  Sweeping The Nation, The Von Pip Musical Express, The Recommender, Faded Glamour, Drunken Werewolf, Flying With Anna, Not Many Experts, Under-classed Idle Ideas, Sonic Masala, Mudkiss, The Ring Master, Both Bars On, Music From A Green Window, Dots And Dashes, Daily Growl, And Everyone’s A DJ,  Kowalskiy! Just Music I Like, Cruel Rhythms,  The Blue Walrus, Music Fans Mic, Seventeen Seconds, Eaten By Monsters, Seven Sevens, Unpeeled, New Rave Brain Wave, Peenko, Music Liberation, Song, By Toad.

Top Five coming in the New Year.

As we get closer and closer to the official release of Weald, Rob St. John’s debut album, we figured one last freebie was worth offering up, and if you still aren’t into it, then frankly there’s no redeeming you, sorry.

After the gorgeous Your Phantom Limb (available to preview and to buy on 7″ here) we figured something bigger and more upbeat was in order, to showcase the full range of the album.  Sargasso Sea may start out small, but it builds to a great crescendo of harmonies, charging forward with forceful bass and drums in a rousing ending which apparently lasted longer than the song itself, until an executive decision was made by Rob and Neil to maybe fade it out at the five minute mark or so.

There’s always  part of me which secretly regrets these sensible decisions, but at least it does mean that the song is radio-friendly, and as such it is excellent to see Gideon Coe giving it a couple of spins this week.  Gideon has been consistently supportive of Song, by Toad Records since our very first release, so I really appreciate the fact that he’s continued to stick by us for so long.

Anyhow, the album is out on gatefold vinyl (with download code) on the 22nd or something like that, but if you order one from us I’ll post it out, and I gave Avalanche Records in Edinburgh a couple of advance copies too. In the meantime you can download Sargasso Sea for free from the embedded Soundcloud widget below.  Enjoy!

Rob St. John – Sargasso Sea by Song, by Toad

Malky from eagleowl asked if a friend of his could come along to Rob St. John’s album launch the other week and take some pictures.  Well he did, and despite the lighting being a bit of a challenge, they’ve turned out beautifully.  The gentleman in question is Iain Stewart, whose website is here, and here is a small selection of pics from Pilrig the other week. Thanks – they look fantastic!

Lil Daggers, whose first release on Song, by Toad Records was the amazing King Corpse EP, which we put out on 7″ vinyl back in June, are gearing up for their debut album, out on Song, by Toad Records on 5th December 2011.

It is self-titled, coming out in the first week of December, and will be on vinyl only, with a download code included.  In fact, there will be two versions of the vinyl available: a normal black version, and about twenty special editions on lovely marbled stuff, for the nerds and obsessives out there (yes, I know, like me) and you can pre-order one here.

As per usual, we are giving away free mp3s as an inducement to get you to part with your hard-earned cash, and we’re starting with the awesome Dada Brown, which you can download from the Soundcloud widget below:

Dada Brown by Song, by Toad

Hi-res album artwork

This album is a dark, sulky, scuzzy record, with elements of psych-rock, garage and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. At times it’s more upbeat and aggressive, and at times, like the fantastic Ghost Herd, it’s more downbeat and menacing.

There are two editions as well, a standard black vinyl version and a very limited special edition on marbled vinyl.

01. Wasting
02. Slave Exchange
03. Ghost Herd
04. Past Due
05. Pignose
06. Give Me the Pill
07. Dada Brown
08. Wicked Lady Jam
09. Pair of Lives
10. Dead Golden Girls
11. Strange Wolf

Ian Greenhill used to write Have Fun at Dinner, as well as reviews for plenty of respectable publications too.

On a personal level, despite the fact he was clearly as mad as a sack of spanners, I always thought Ian was one of the best writers knocking around the Scottish blogosphere, and when he started writing features where he took local musicians shopping for secondhand records, and then discussed their purchases afterwards, I became downright envious that I had never thought to do something like that myself.

Anyhow, given his skills are being exploited by no-one more worthy than high street retail at the moment, a short pub conversation has resulted in him coming on board here at Song, by Toad Records.  The idea is that he will start writing for the site as and when he feels inclined, as well as helping us with radio plugging, PR work, and distribution.

I’m also hoping he can get involved in improving the blog, allowing us to do more interviews, writing about a slightly different kind of music, and stuff like that.  Basically I am at the limit of what I personally can do at the moment, but for all I have always been very wary of taking someone on, Ian is someone I genuinely trust to write well, to approach people the right way, to dig up interesting music, and basically to represent the label and the blog the way I personally feel it should be represented.

I also think he’ll be able to perform that incredibly tricky balancing act of bringing his own personality to what we’re doing here, whilst not making anything feel all that different, which is a bit of a challenge. So yes, please make the lad welcome and so on and so forth, because I am delighted to have him on board.

Johnny Lynch very kindly suggested that I put together the bill for an all day hangover-buster/refueller the day after the Fence Collective’s Hott Loggz! Festival (see, Hott Toadzz – get it? get it?).

So, I have compiled a collection of the very finest Song, by Toad Records bands, as well as a couple of Toad Pals, and Johnny has arranged for us to use the Hew Scott hall from 2pm to 10pm, to allow those who have to be at work on the Monday to get back to their various homes.

There will be a bar in the room, and bangers and mash available upstairs at the AIA Hall, and a better way to spend a Sunday wasting time and talking pish I cannot imagine.

Tickets will be a fiver, and will be available on the door.

Those of you listening to it as normal, innocent punters will hear lush, lovely acoustic pop tunes, swathed in strings, piano and Yusuf’s gorgeous vocals (although the familiar looping and layering is a little less prominent here than on earlier releases).

He seems to divide opinion, Yusuf, which is odd because I don’t really think of him as the most deliberately challenging or obtuse of our artists.  Nevertheless, in conversations with people about his stuff I get a lot of baffled looks on one hand, and a lot of passionate lectures about how he is by far the best band on the label on the other.  Very few indifferent shrugs though.

From my point of view, as someone who has heard and is currently organising the nuts and bolts around releasing Yusuf’s next album, I find this EP interesting for slightly different reasons.  For me the highlight is the utterly gorgeous Swim, which is also kind of significant because it hints a little at the new album, which will be out in the spring sometime.

As well as the more familiar Yusuf stuff, with the intricate guitar and the lush strings, there are a couple of absolutely stunning piano-led songs on the album which are possibly a couple of the best things I’ve ever heard from him.  I am really looking forward to it coming out, and as soon as we finish the album artwork and get a finalised master I can let you all know the release date.  Until then, enjoy this.

Yusuf Azak – Swim

I mentioned this a few weeks ago when I told you about Ian Humberstone’s half of this gorgeous split 7″ single.  Well the vinyl itself comes out today, although those who pre-ordered theirs should already have them, so I thought I might take the opportunity to share Rob St. John‘s side with you as well.

Both the songs were recorded by Ian on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the artwork for the single itself uses photography by the two artists.  Ian and Rob have been friends and collaborators for years, so there’s something really nice about being able put out a release by the two of them.

For Rob, of course, this also serves as the first single from his forthcoming debut album Weald, which we are releasing on gatefold vinyl at the tail end of November.  For those who want a copy earlier than that, however, you can order a copy online or buy one at his album launch shows, which are as follows:

14th Oct London – King’s Place with Viking Moses and Birdengine
15th Oct Oxford – Modern Art Oxford with Viking Moses and Petrels
22nd Oct Edinburgh – Pilrig St. Paul’s with Meursault, eagleowl & Viking Moses.

Tickets for the Edinburgh show can be bought at Avalanche Records in Edinburgh, or online at Brown Paper Tickets here.

And, after reading all that faff I suppose it’s only fair that I give some music, really.  So without further messing here are the two songs in question, along with videos composed of archive footage, all sourced from the Creative Commons licensed stuff at archive.org.

Rob St. John – Your Phantom Limb by Song, by Toad

Ian Humberstone – House On The Hill by Song, by Toad

Given that I now have a vested interest in selling the album I can’t really review it here, but I do want to at least try and describe the thing, because it’s a great project, which is why I was so determined more people had to hear it.

To describe it as briefly as possible, Jonnie invited ten bands he loves to record the barest of bare bones of a single track of theirs, and he then built up the song around that framework.  As well as being a really nice idea, this also helps what might just end up as any other compilation hang together really well as an actual album, despite every song being written and sung by someone different.

For me, apart from obvious Toadly preferences like Meursault and Inspector Tapehead, the two standout tracks on this are by Adam Beattie and The Oates Field.  Both songs are kept relatively simple, and in fact for a project which hangs around its producer, it’s not unusual for Jonnie to treat the songs on Deskjob with a particularly light touch.

So, go to the Song, by Toad Records site to buy the CD and to Jonnie Common’s site to find out more about the man himself.

Adam Beattie – Bone Dry

The Oates Field – Nae Luck

Full tracklisting:
01. Panda Su – Eric is Dead
02. Adam Beattie – Bone Dry
03. Iona Marshall – Hearts
04. Adam P. Gorman – Hitchhiker
05. Meursault – And Butter Would Not Melt
06. The Oates Field – Nae Luck
07. Inspector Tapehead – Pherenzik Tear
08. Autistic Angus – Sleepless
09. Conquering Animal Sound – Maschine
10. eagleowl – Sorry I Spoke

Jonnie is a Glasgow-based artist, recently signed to Manchester label Red Deer Club, who was formerly known as Down the Tiny Steps (Fence Records) and is currently part of Inspector Tapehead (Song, By Toad). This is actually a self-release but seeing as we are both friends and fans of his, he kindly offered to let us make it available in the Toad shop.

Jonnie invited this rich cast of talent to record one of their songs in a minimal format and persuaded them to grant him carte blanche in adding instrumentation as he saw fit. The result is a strong and eclectic long player of unique arrangements which will be launched with a one-off performance at The Captain’s Rest.  The launch will feature 9 of the 10 acts, with each act playing 2 songs in intimate fashion.

“This project was about getting lots of people who I think are immensely talented onto a release together. I’m very proud of the album and if it turns any fans of one act onto any of the 9 others, then I’ll have achieved what I hoped to.” – Jonnie

Jonnie Common presents DESKJOB – album preview (paper)clips by Jonnie Common

“Jonnie Common has pulled a sonorous blinder with Deskjob” - The List
“Finely-produced electronic interjections and scrappy folk shanties” – The Scotsman
“bouncing astral straddling ditties that share the Beta Band’s penchant for a scued up, ragtag tune” - Drowned in Sound