These
are busy times for Last Night from Glasgow, the four-year-old record label
whose unique subscription based model has all but broken the mould for DIY endeavours.
In the last month, the label led by Ian Smith, Stephen Kelly and 400
subscribers have put out the first album by C-86 legends Close Lobsters for thirty
years. There have also been singles by Mt. Doubt and Lemon Drink, the latter of
whom launched their new four-song EP, Better Run at a sold out show in Glasgow
last weekend.
Releases
are pending too from ‘existential nerd rock’ band, Slime City, and a debut from
Life Model, while in May, Medicine Men will release their second album, A
Different Port. Then there is the long-awaited release of Earthbound, the
second album by Starless, aka Friends Again and Love and Money keyboardist Paul
McGeechan.
This spate
of activity follows on from acclaimed releases from Cloth, L-space and a new album
by 1990s indie darlings, Bis. The last year too has seen LNFG expand operations
with two new sub-labels. While Komponist
focuses on instrumental composition, Hive is an initiative that enables
unsigned artists to put out their work beneath the LNFG umbrella while
retaining control of everything they do.
To top
things off, a new LNFG offshoot, Past Night From Glasgow, has been set up to
reclaim neglected recordings. First out the traps will be Sisters, the debut
album by The Bluebells first released in 1984, and which spawned hit singles,
Cath and Young at Heart. Under normal circumstances, this run of activity would
mean various launches. Given the lockdown caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, however,
Lemon Drink’s Better Run shindig might well be the last LNFG live event for
some time.
“It’s a
fairly volatile time,” is how Smith sees it. “We’re about to cancel three
shows, and will probably have to cancel another eight. We’ve got four records
coming out, and it’s a big mess. No-one knows what’s going to happen, but
people are always going to want to listen to new music, and radio stations are
always going to want to play it.”
Last
Night From Glasgow was forged in the aftermath of the Scottish independence
referendum in 2014, with a spirit of optimism about the level of musical
activity in the country co-existing with a desire to fill the void left following
the result. With a quarter of a century’s worth of business experience running
his own company, Smith had seen a crowd-funding model work in other spheres, and
wondered what might happen if you applied it to a record label.
Along
with Kelly and four other partners, Smith invited sixty people to sign up for a
year’s subscription of £50. For this they received copies of records they’d
backed along with access to launch gigs. Seizing the means of production in such
an egalitarian way was a political act as much as a musical one.
“One
thing we’re very vocal about at Last Night From Glasgow is the failed morality
of the Scottish music industry,” says Smith. “Young bands are force fed this
idea that you have to work with promoters who’ll pay you twenty-five quid for a
support slot, work with expensive PRs, and that you have to go on these
seminars that charge you eighty quid. What we want to do is try and get young
bands on the right path, to get them out of the Glasgow bubble, and to show
them that none of this stuff matters.”
In its
first year of existence, Last Night From Glasgow, named after a line from
Abba’s song, Super Trouper, released seven records. This included the debut
album by Teen Canteen. The following year the label doubled its output, with
new work by the likes of singer-songwriter Annie Booth, Emme Woods and Teen
Canteen, and a digital-only single by Bis. In 2018, LNFG released more than
twenty records, including debuts from Cloth, Domiciles and L-space, as well as
the Bis album, Slight Disconnects. Last year saw an album by Broken Chanter, as
well as releases by the likes of Fenella and Sister John.
“What’s
exciting for us is picking up on bands quite early on, and getting them in a studio
and watching them develop,” says Smith.
As an
illustration of this, LNFG signed Cloth twenty-four hours after Smith heard
their demo on the phone. The band’s eponymous debut album, released four months
ago, sold out, and is about to be repressed. LNFG remains, however, a
cross-generational enterprise. Future plans include releasing former Superstar
driving force Joe McAlinden’s soundtrack to EDIT, the short film written by
Martin McCardie and directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.
With
LNFG’s subscriber base having grown to 400 from its initial sixty, the label
looks set to expand even more. Smith also has grander ambitions to transform
the country’s musical landscape in a way that puts even more power into grassroots
cottage industry labels.
“We have
sensible ambitions, and we have ludicrous ambitions,” he admits. “One of the
more ludicrous ambitions is to buy a lathe, so we can cut our own records and
open Scotland’s first pressing plant. That would save all that extra cost of
having to get records pressed abroad. But whatever happens, the ultimate thing
is to keep on putting out music we believe in.”
Better
Run EP by Lemon Drink, Headless by Mt Doubt, and Post Neo Anti by Close
Lobsters are available now. For details
of all other releases on Last Night From Glasgow, Komponist and Hive, contact www.lastnightfromglasgow.com
The Herald, March 21st 2020
ends
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