Coffee-Table Notes

“It's a literary and philosophical group,” says the voice of the late Edinburgh-based poet Paul Reekie in a faux-radio interview at the start of this 2CD, forty-four track retrospective from Vic Godard. As a singer/songwriter, Godard's band Subway Sect may have been forged by punk, but his adopted surname, taken from iconoclastic film-maker Jean Luc Godard, revealed a far smarter talent who quickly and quietly stepped aside from the melee to plough his own maverick furrow. On this respect, Godard's low-key singularity has slowly but surely cast him as an elder statesman reclaiming and refreshening his past. Reekie, like many people on this album, first encountered Godard with his band Subway Sect supporting The Clash at Edinburgh Playhouse on the 1977 White Riot tour. Reekie went on to become president of the Scottish branch of the Subway Sect fan club – the literary and philosophical group he waxes lyrical about here. As Godard's online sleeve-notes relate, the p

When Paul Haig, Malcolm Ross and co called time on Edinburgh's jangular art-rock funkateers Josef K following the release of both theirs and Alan Horne's Postcard label's sole album release, 'The Only Fun In Town', in 1981, Haig styled himself as the original European son, all electronic beats and artfully moody sidelong glances. In the NME, Paul Morley even went so far as to somewhat fancifully declare Haig as 'the face and sound of 1982' and the 'enigmatic fourth man' in a parallel universe imaginary New Pop quartet which also included Billy Mackenzie of The Associates, Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr and ABC front-man Martin Fry, and look how that worked out. As this two CD compendium of some thirty tracks recorded during a peripatetic tenure between 1982 and 1991at Michel Duval's chic post-modern Belgian label and some-time Factory Records affiliates, Les Disques du Crepescule, testifies to, Haig was more slippery than all of his then cont

Four stars Thrrp! is a 1987 comic book by Leo Baxendale, who created Minnie The Minx, The Bash Street Kids and a million other pop-eyed cartoon urchins. Published by the tellingly named Knockabout Comics, Thrrp! spins a near wordless yarn concerning twin brothers Spotty and Snotty Dick, who rid a town of 'a mysterious plague of Snotties and Bogies' by leading them out, Pied Piper fashion. With the book's title referring to the noise made by the towns-folk as they let rip en masse with particularly soggy follow-through farts, Thrrp! was hailed twenty years after its publication on Now Read This!, a blog by former chair of the Comic Creators Guild, Wim Wiacek's, as a 'gloriously gross, pantomomic splurt-fest' and 'the most lunatic slapstick to grace the music hall or comic page'. There is something of this in Usurper, the Edinburgh-based duo of Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff, who, for a decade now since disbanding their sludge-doom-racket combo, Gian

The Sexual Objects – Feels With Me (Eyelids in the Rain) Five stars For seekers who know, Davy Henderson is the greatest rock poet on the planet, and has been ever since he exploded into Edinburgh's post-punk art/pop scene with the short-lived but fast-burning Fire Engines. High-concept pop entryism followed with Win before the guitar shards of The Nectarine No.9 got things back to basics. Henderson's latest vehicle is an altogether warmer affair, and this first recorded sighting since 2011 debut vinyl long-player, 'Cucumber', retains its loose-knit appeal. A download-only parallel universe smash hit, it opens with Simon Smeeton's acoustic guitar intro before ooh-oohing its way into a gorgeous harmony-kissed instant classic that warns against false prophets before bursting into raptures of its own making. There are shades here of '22 Blue', an early lament by The Nectarines, which Henderson, Smeeton, drummer Iain Holford and bass player Douglas

Four stars Of all the paeans to the late Lou Reed in the last couple of weeks, one of the most touching was a poem by Paul Haig ( http://www.paulhaig-rhythmoflife.com/post/65335307611/words-for-lou-reed ), whose old band, the Reed/Velvet Underground/Chic-inspired Josef K, have proved so influential on the likes of Franz Ferdinand and others since their brief existence in the very early 1980s. To see such a private artist acknowledge a musical debt like this was surprising too. Like Reed, beyond some mid-80s major label hiccups, Haig has done things on his own terms. Where it would have been easy to go down the revivalist route and reform Josef K, apart from a handful of live shows a couple of years ago, Haig has kept studiously out of view, ploughing his own wilfully individualistic and largely electronic furrow. There won't be many aware that this fourteen-track collection of skewed, beat-based electro-melodrama released, as many that preceded it, on his own tellingl

A lot can happen in twenty-three minutes. It certainly does in the new album by The Leg, mercurial junkyard auteur Dan Mutch's manic spleen-venting song-writing vehicle over four albums and the best part of a decade. With cellist Pete Harvey and drummer Alun Thomas completing The Leg's (un)holy trinity, The Leg formed out of the ashes of the trio's previous band, Desc. Harvey was there too in Mutch's first band, Khaya, who were way too out of step with the second half of the 1990s they existed through, despite the acclaim, the John Peel sessions and the wilful self-destruction. Khaya's three albums, Desc's sole full-length effort plus assorted singles and EPs are available somewhere or other, and should be sought out post-haste. As should too The Leg's two collaborations and another one on the way with kindred spirit, fellow traveller and former Dawn of the Replicants vocalist turned absurdist story-teller, Paul Vickers. Oh, and The Leg's own '

4 stars When the decidedly non-jazz based Jazzateers reformed to play a double bill with Vic Godard reviving his 1980s swing-based set at Glasgow International (yes) Jazz Festival earlier this year, it shed some light on one of the great missing links of the original Sound of Young Scotland based around Alan Horne's Postcard Records. This re-release of the band's eponymous 1983 album, which originally appeared on what was becoming an increasingly pop-based Rough Trade about to unleash the Smiths into the world, is even more overdue. The line-up that appears here features guitarist Ian Burgoyne, bassist Keith Band and drummer Colin Auld, who founded the band in 1980 with vocalist Alison Gourley, before future Bourgie Bourgie crooner Paul Quinn took over. Main singer here, however, in the band's third incarnation, is Grahame Skinner, who would go on to front glossy white soul combo, Hipsway at a time when every designer lager TV ad under the sun was being sound-track

4 stars It's not every day a free-jazz-punk-skronk-funk combo get to strut their stuff on a prime time BBC TV sit-com. This, however, is exactly what happened on December 7 th 1982 when Rip Rig and Panic appeared on the living room set of The Young Ones to perform their single, You're My Kind of Climate, featuring Andrea (mum of Miquita) Oliver miming vocals in place of absent teenage chanteuse Neneh Cherry while roadie and performance poet Jock Scot similarly mimed trumpet. Granted The Young Ones, set in an anarchic student flat occupied by Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson was hardly Terry and June, created as it was on the back of the burgeoning alternative comedy boom. Set alongside The Young Ones' other musical guests who included Madness, Motorhead and Dexy's Midnight Runners, however, Rip Rig and Panic stood out like a mad uncle making a charming nuisance of himself at a wedding. So much so, in fact that they were informed th

4 stars It was Kitchenware Records underdogs Hurrah! Who gifted this bumper 5 CD 1980s indie-pop compendium takes its name its title via a lyric from their single Hip Hip, which duly inspired a Sarah Records related fanzine. It's arguable that neither Kitchenware, Sarah or the bands they housed could have existed without Orange Juice, who flirted with the fragile notion of happiness on their song, Felicity. It was Edwyn Collins' arch-janglers, after all, who arguably invented the anti-macho, anti-rockist aesthetic that would go on to become a genre before Madchester and Brit-Pop triumphalism shoved such literate sensibilities aside. It's odd, therefore, that while Collins' Sound of Young Scotland contemporaries Josef K, Aztec Camera and Fire Engines are here, Orange Juice aren't. Neither, indeed, are The Pastels, who picked up Postcard Records DIY mantle and went on to influence the spirit of every generation of independently-minded bands that followed in t

4 stars Eclectica abounds on on this four-band snapshot compendium of dispatches from some of the country's more gloriously, and at times wilfully off-piste musical glories, who provide two songs apiece to this limited edition vinyl, alongside more of the same to be downloaded on purchase of an equally limited pack of customised beer. Plastic Animals kick things off with 'Sheltered,' a piece of sci-fi grunge that counterpoints urgent guitars and manic synth squiggles with laid-back stoner vocals. On side two, the band's second piece, 'Floating,' is jauntier, leaning here to more hypnotically voguish dream-pop stylings Magic Eye sound beamed in from behind a shoe-gazer's fringe, so beguilingly lovely are the swooping female vocals and echo-box filtered guitar patterns on 'Flamin' Teenage', which leaves plenty of swoonsome space to breathe. 'Japan' drifts off into similarly exotic waters, guitars pinging out oriental melodi

4 stars The Sound of Young Scotland continuum runs on apace with plenty of bounce on this debut mini album by a quartet led by former Bricolage and some-time Sexual Object Graham Wann. Instrumental jangularity abounds, but so does a dance-floor glam joie de vivre that's as infectious as it is deliciously calculated. Nouveau serious fun starts here. The List, April 2013 ends

3 stars Former uncle John and Whitelock stalwart David Philp is the crooning mastermind behind this seven song set of post-modern Palm Court swing awash with fiddle, accordion and acoustic guitar, which sounds at times not unlike The Monochrome Set gone retro zydeco. As wryly jaunty as all this sounds, there's a doleful melancholy to Philp's delivery, which nevertheless retains a trad warmth worth waltzing to. The List, April 2013 ends

4 stars At first listen, Conquering Animal Sound chanteuse Anneke Kampman's first sojourn into off-piste collaboration sounds like the straightest thing she's done. Here she is, singing proper words and everything alongside seasoned jazz guitarist Medboe and his band who here include saxophonist Konrad Wisniewski on a suite of songs that seeks to capture an environmental essence complete with twittering noises off between songs. Listen harder, and there's a spectral oddity at play throughout Kampman's coos and Medboe's dexterous and atmospheric picking that lulls one into a false sense of security before exploding into little light-and-shade storms. Recalling Trish Keenan in Broadcast or Alison Statton's post Young Marble Giants trio, Weekend, Medboe keeps the melody intact while Kampman's rich, glacial voice swoops without fear, punching out each phrase with a calculated off-kilter precision that makes for a scarifying pastoral delight in this refreshingly

As with the season they're generally cashing in on, Christmas albums somewhat mercifully only come round once a year. While much festive fare is as depressingly jolly as it is unbearably ubiquitous – see Top of the Pops 2's annual Xmas special, plus department stores' endless looping of the Now That's What I Call Christmas compilation – there have been some genuinely inventive reimaginings of the season of goodwill in pop form. Both Motown and Phil Spector released superb Christmas compilations, while The Beach Boys and James Brown filled a whole album apiece to their very singular takes on festive fare. On a more leftfield front, both ZE Records and Factory-connected Belgian label Les Disques du Crepescule released Christmas albums. While the former gifted the world The Waitresses joyous Christmas Wrapping on ZE's dryly named A Christmas Album in 1981, the latter's Ghosts of Christmas Past collection found the likes of The Durutti Column, Cabaret Voltai

4 stars So-called 'regional' album compilations were crucial statements of independence during the post-punk fall-out that briefly shook up the bone-idle London-centric record company hegemony. Snapshot documents of blink-and-you'll-miss-em scenes in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Brighton and other cities proliferated on shoestring DIY labels, which, politically, were as much about self-determination as music. By collecting and selecting new material from eight Glasgow-based acts, this new collaboration between three of the city's micro-labels (including the debut release by venue Stereo) does something similar in capturing the here-and-nowness of a fecund and forever-changing independent musical landscape. Tut Vu Vu, Palms, Organs of Love, Gummy Stumps, Sacred Paws, The Rosy Crucifixion, Muscles of Joy, Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lock Pickers all present new work in an elaborate box set made up of two 12” vinyl LPs, a CD and a booklet featuring

4 stars With art school credentials to spare, Colvin Cruikshank's trio of Edinburgh scene-setters mash up a grab-bag of left-field post-punk conceptualists to make something that seems to channel the ghosts of every act who ever made the Wee Red Bar such a crucial hot-bed of musical and artistic eclectica while still sounding oh so very now. There's even a glam rock styled tribute to the bands alma mater on 'E.C.A'. Musically jaunty and lyrically wry, Snide Rhythms are possessed with an off-kilter quirkiness bordering on brilliance that more than justifies the band's name. On 'Yah Versus Schemie', they even manage to dissect the sociological roots of class war in one minute and fifteen seconds with a wit that withers even as it puts two fingers up to both parties before running away snickering.  The List, December 2012 ends

4 stars Forget Bowie and Bing. As winter warmers go, Bill Wells' reinvention of twelve festive favourites featuring vocalists Lorna Gilfedder (Golden Grrrls), Kate Sugden (Johnny and the Entries), Aby Vulliamy (The One Ensemble) and Gerard Black (Francois and the Atlas Mountains) is an exquisite slowed-down treat. With each of the singers offering more reflective and at times mournful renderings of normally celebratory sing-alongs, from Sugden's opening take on Oh Xmas Tree, through to the finale of We Three Kings, more depth is given to each song that belie any notions of Nouvelle Vague style kitsch. Wells' textured keyboard arrangements lend even more weight to a collection that puts meaning back into a season where comfort matters as much as joy. The List, December 2012 ends

4 stars Off-duty Tattie Toes drummer Shane Connolly and band-mate Jer Reid alongside Arab Strap-and-a million-others guitarist Stevie Jones form the core of this low-key side-project super-group, but on this organic-sounding debut are emboldened by an all-star cast of similarly off-piste mavericks, including pianist Bill Wells, viola player Aby Vulliamy and vocalist Nerea Bello. The result on these six instrumental workouts veers from angular Mediterranean thrash to post-Tortoise twang, with wonky piano and viola scrapes pulsed by busy drum patterns. Beautifully textured, it beguiles one minute before going into orbit the next, a bit like a post-rock Mahavishnu Orchestra with all the indulgences chopped out. Lovely. The List, August 2012 ends

4 stars It’s de rigeur for Turner Prize winners to play in bands these days, and anyone familiar with Martin Creed’s oeuvre from his 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival show at the Fruitmarket Gallery and accompanying live song-and-dance routine at the Traverse will know what to expect from this most calculated of borderline autistic, OCD auteurs. To whit, in this pre-Olympic run-up to orchestrating all the bells in the country to ring out for three minutes, Creed thrashes out eighteen miniatures of love and hate that fuse the desperate yearning of playwright Sarah Kane and the No Wave minimalism of Glenn Branca with the DIY messthetics of Swell Maps and the brattish cartoon petulance of Jilted John. Bookended by ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’, which sound-tracked the Fruitmarket lift’s rise and fall, Love To You is a bumpy thirty-seven minute and nine second ride through the confessional ups and downs of fatal attraction, obsession, rejection, frustration and apparent acceptance. If ‘1234’

4 stars Long before his soundtrack for Jane Campion's The Piano, Michael Nyman's very English form of baroque minimalism had impeccable art school credentials. Following his debut on Brian Eno's Obscure label, this 1981 follow-up five years later was produced by Flying Lizard and Nyman's former student David Cunningham. On this handsomely packaged re-release, early scores for Peter Greenaway miniatures are jauntily insistent, while free jazz saxophonists Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker skitter and splutter all over 'Waltz' like Teddy Boys at a tea dance. The lengthy 'M-Work', composed for a performance sculpture by Bruce McLean and Paul Richards, is a foreboding epic of contemporary classicism in exelcis on a valuable archive of a composer en route to defining his cinematic oeuvre. The List, February 2012 ends