Beard

Beard's Rites of Spring

2011-03-22T09:42:00.003Z

Our March edition bulges with beauties! Waulking songs from Barra, blissed out bearded dudes singing about honey, gorgeous Iranian ballads, sound poetry, blackened bass, Italian soundtracks, sepulchural organs, West African guitars, and cosmic freakout jazz.

Children in Djounhan - Bellula; Ishilan N-Tenere (Sahel Sounds / Missipssippi Records)
Intriya Ag Babo - Taliat; Ishilan N-Tenere (Sahel Sounds / Missipssippi Records)
Akron/Family - Silly Bears; S/T II The Cosmic Birth and Journey... (Dead Oceans)
Miss Mary Morrison and her chorus - Lathat siubhold beinne dhomh; Waulking Songs From Barra (Tangent)
Bob Cobbing - Interview; The Order of Things (Aeolus/pocketbooks)
Raime - This Foundry; EP (Blackest Ever Black)
Tim Hecker - In The Air II; Rave Death 1972 (Kranky)
Iron Knowledge - Showstopper; Chains & Black Exhaust (Memphix)
Larry Young - Khalid of Space Part Two; Lawrence of Newark (Sanctuary)
The Haxan Cloak - Burning Torches of Despair; ST (Aurora Borealis)
Nino Rota - Aria Di Roma Main Titles; LSD Roma (Cherry Red)
Dariush - Cheshm-e Man; Pomegranetes (Finders Keepers)

Enjoy! We'll be back on 18 April.

In the meantime, here's some bonus beats, featuring Larry Young

Godspeed ATP pt 2

2011-01-20T15:03:00.002Z

That's all folks! I was only commissioned to do a handful. Best ATP I've ever been to. As bold and brilliant as the Thurston Moore one was in 2006, it was a little heavy on the dude-rock-noise axis. Godspeed brought beauty, harshness and weirdness, and they gave us something to dance to as well. Job's a good un.

Flower-Corsano Duo

Chris Corsano is one of this festival's heroes, manning the sticks for mighty power trio Rangda and sitting in on Oneida's epic 10-hour jam, but it's his improvised set with UK underground godhead Mick Flower that takes him closest to Satori. I'm always wary of epithets like 'greatest drummer in the world' but really, Corsano is on another plane, his hands a blur as they dart around the kit, summoning forth a sublime polyrhythmic storm. His style is an avant-punk take on free jazz drumming, all rapid-fire rolls and low-end rumbles, with every nuance of the kit explored. He rarely locks into a regular groove, but somehow he is able to create momentum while pushing the music in multiple directions. Flower is less hyperactive, allowing the shimmering tones of his japan banjo – a modified electric dulcimer - to float serenely over the percussive mellee. Before long, however, he's bent over his instrument, rocking back and forth as he conjures a swirling mass of ragas and drone. The combined effect is truly psychedelic: ecstatic music to liberate body and mind.

The Dead C

It's tempting to apply images of bodily decay and post-industrial waste to New Zealand's premier noise-rock trio– the twitching corpse of garage rock being dragged through a yard of burning tyres, guitars corroded with battery acid etc – but there's a graceless beauty to their sonic muck that resists notions of nihilism or violence. Without an ounce of self-conscious cleverness, the Dead C deconstruct rock. What begins as slow, hypnotic and murky becomes utterly compelling as Robbie Yeats's drums drive Michael Morley and Bruce Russell's gloriously fucked guitars to series of climaxes and collapses. Primitive half-riffs are formed out of the fuzz and junk, fragments of song stumble wearily amidst squalls of feedback and it sounds gorgeous.

Some reflections on the Godspeed ATP part 1

2011-01-19T12:44:00.004Z

Some belated reviews of the fantastic Godspeed curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival that took place in December 2010. I did these for a major music site, but unfortunately I was the only person who submitted in the end, so they couldn't publish them. Part two tomorrow, featuring Corsano-Flower Duo and the Dead C.

John Butcher

On one level John Butcher's pieces are demonstrations of his staggering technique, but so unusual are the sounds emanating from his saxophones that the process becomes fascinating. There is a scientific quality to the way Butcher approaches the instrument (he once was a theoretical physicist) but the thoroughness of his acoustic investigations is matched by a playful and intense musical spirit. Mind-boggling moments abound, from the flighty soprano reels achieved through athletic feats of circular breathing, to the metallic split-tones which sound like Daleks and Cybermen getting it on in the Radiophonic Workshop. Most remarkable, and beautiful, is his manipulation of a feedback tone through his tenor. Holding the bell up to a microphone, he traps the feedback in his horn, releasing it by opening valves and tapping keys so that the drone is transformed into a ripple of percussive pops and clicks. Every so often he'll let the sound escape, letting it resonate in the air for a few seconds before being snatched back into the belly of his horn. A true master.

The Ex

A set of new material? In front of a festival crowd? Sheer madness! Not a bit of it. They may have been around for 30 years, but these Dutch post-punks surge ever forward, revitalised by new singer Arnold DeBoer. The lack of old favourites is never an issue, because ultimately it all comes down to the rhythm. Eschewing conventional punk attack for afro-motorik grooves and spiky, scratchy guitars, The Ex are rock's greatest dance band. Flanked by greying riff machines Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor, the boyish DeBoer is a commanding frontman, delivering breathless satirical rants and making his guitar sound like Konono No.1's electric thumb pianos. The moments where they lose themselves in the groove and run at each other like duelling stags are thrilling. But it is Katherina Blomefeld who is the true star. She's an inspired drummer, combining loose-limbed African polyrhythms with inexorable Krautrock momentum. It's fitting, then, that she should step up to the mic for the encore of 'Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek', a Hungarian folk song and longtime fan favourite. 'Theme from Konono' completes a peerless set, the band's righteous energy spreading througout the crowd.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz/Keiji Haino

On first impression Maher and Haino seem to represent two extremes of the Japanese underground: the former sweetly naive, the latter uncompromisingly dark and abrasive. But in fact, the two acts share a commitment to their individual visions, and have collaborated in the past. Maher's set is surprisingly loud, with the band joyfully stretching their charming pop tunes into lengthy Modern Lovers/Velvets workouts, all relentless rhythm guitar and parping trumpet. Throughout, Tori Kudo's skewed Syd Barrett via Beefheart guitar solos cut through the sweetness, consigning any whiff of tweeness to oblivion. Tame stuff, nonetheless, in comparison to Haino's set, which begins by subjecting a desolate blues lament to a harrowing onslaught of noise and bloodcurdling screams. Fed through four Fender amps, his guitar creates a ferocious wall of sound, vicious trebles and piercing feedback cutting through a blaze of distortion. A terrible beauty is born. The second half presents Haino as the dark prince of noise, manipulating tone generators and pedals into a raging invocation of sublime forces. Monstrous bass frequencies and thunderous drum loops rattle the rib cage, while Haino waves his hands and flails his long grey locks over some kind of Kaos Pad/theremin hybrid that brings down the Apocalypse in a tempest of swooping tones and howling white noise. A punishing set, but utterly thrilling and cleansing with it.

Stewart Smith

Beard Radio goes to Instal

2010-11-04T20:31:00.002Z

This week we're previewing Scotland's leading experimental music festival, Instal, which takes place at the Tramway, Glasgow, from 12-14 November.

We interview curator Barry Esson about how the festival has evolved over the years and what to expect next week. There are tracks from festival performers, including Catherine Christer Hennix, Florian Hecker, Ian Campbell and Christopher De Laurents.

Unrelated to Instal, we bring you new tracks from Sun City Girls, Ensemble Economiques and James Blake and classics from Bongwater, Sister Mary Nelson and David Sylvian, featuring Derek Bailey.

Listen here!

Sun City Girls - Ben's Radio; Funeral Mariachi (Abduction)
Florian Hecker - Acid in the Style of David Tudor 3 (Editions Mego)
Ensemble Economique - Real Thing; Psychics (Notnotfun)
Jean Luc Gionnet & Eric La Casa - Maison Glasgow Lisa (Arika)
Ian Campbell - The Golden Boy Eats
James Blake - Only Know What I Know Now; Klavierwerke (r & s)
Bongwater - Psychedelic Sewing Room; Too Much Sleep (Shimmy Disc)
Sister Mary Nelson - Judgement; Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music Vol 2 (Folkways)
David Sylvian - The Good Son; Blemish (Samhadi Sound)
Christopher De Laurent - Our Streets
Catherine Christine Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord (excerpt) (Die Schachtel)

Beard's Halloween Hour of Terror!!!

2010-10-28T22:27:00.002+01:00

Cower before the diabolical orgy of terror that is the Beard Radio Halloween Hour of Terror!!!

Featuring Anton La Vey, St Vitus, Inflatable Boy Clams, Rick Wakeman, a very odd David Bowie number, and much, much more. Can you handle the evil?

With special, blood-spattered thanks to my fiendish co-conspirator in evil Satanic Sean Welsh, and our henchmen in diabolis Murderous Matt Evans, Neil "Necromancer" Jacques, Reuben "The Ripper" Kay and Ghoulish Gary Thoms. May your souls rot in hell!

Black Sabbath - Supertzar; Sabotage (Sanctuary)
Rick Wakeman - Hell; Lisztomania OST (A&M)
King Horror - Loch Ness Monster (Trojan)
Inflatable Boy Clams - Skeletons (Subterranean Records)
Meco - Werewolf (Loose in London); Phonograph
Sebastian Peabody - Grave In The Desert; Wavy Gravy for Adult Enthusiasts (Beware)
Beherit - Goat Worship; The Oath of Black Blood (Emetic)
Anton La Vey - Satan Takes A Holiday (Amarillo)
David Bowie - Please Mr Gravedigger; S/T (Deram)
Caldera - Christ, When I Leave This Life; Capitol
Jack Lucifer - I Am Living Death (Kotzaak)
Riz Ortolani - Cannibal Holocaust (Main Theme); Cannibal Holocaust OST (Lucertola Media)
Ruth White - Spleen; Flowers of Evil (Limelight)
Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real (Capitol)
St John Green - Goddess of Death (Flick Disc)
St Vitus - Zombie Hunger; St Vitus (SSt)
The Vampires of Dartmoor - Tanz Der Vampire; Dracula's Music Cabinet (Finders Keepers)

Beard Radio 30.9.10 with special guests TIME

2010-09-30T21:26:00.002+01:00

Transmitting not-quite-live from Mile End, we welcome our very special guests Frances Morgan and Mark Dicker of glorious psych-folk-doom duo TIME, who will be playing us some of their favourite records. Frances also plays with Morgen Und Nite, is one of the finest music writers around and was editor and publisher of the lamented Plan B magazine. You may know Mark as guitarist in the mighty grindlords Trencher. Tune in for Turkish folk, Finnish electronica, French prog, Kosmische, harsh noise and an EXCLUSIVE new Trencher jam. Essential listening!

Fabio Frizzi - Falling For Emily/Beyond Emily; The Beyond (Dagored)
Pan Sonic - Corona; Gravitoni (Blast First Petite)
Omar Souleyman - Li Raja Behawakom; Jazeera Nights (Sublime Frequencies)
Secret Chiefs Three - Vajra; Book M (Web of Mimicry)
Erkan Ogur & Ismail H Demircioglu - Pencereden Kar Geliyor; Gulun Kokusu Vardi (Golden Horn Records)
Popol Vuh - Engel Der Gegenwart; Heart of Glass (Brain)
Trencher - Vlad Tapas; All suffering... soon to end (White Label)
Archaia - Soleil Noir; Archaia (Private Press)
Spacecraft - Surface; Paradoxe (Spalax Music)
Zen feat Murat Ertel - Mazhar Neyzen ve Kopegi; Bakirkoy Akil Hastanensinde (Ada Yayincilik)
Whitehouse - Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel; Bird Seed (Susan Lawley)

Unknown Is Best: The Return of Beard Radio 16.9.10

2010-09-16T21:56:00.004+01:00

We return with some beautiful new tunes from Afrirampo, Swans and Antoni Maiovvi and pay tribute to free jazz legend Noah Howard and poet and all round hero Edwin Morgan. There's some Bollywood proto-acid, sound poetry, cosmic disco, Moroccan electric banjo jams and a very, very odd unreleased Beach Boys tune. Shout outs to Chris Storey for the Jemaa El Fna recommendation, Katie Pope for the Edwin Morgan ASLS CD, and Frances Morgan for the Beach Boys bootleg. The Aeolus Morgan recordings come from a CD that comes with Ken Cockburn and Alec Finlay's wonderful anthology of Scottish sound, pattern and concrete poems, 'The Order of Things': well worth tracking down, as are most of the titles in Finlay's brilliant Pocketbooks series.

Afrirampo - Miracle Lucky Girls; We Are Ucho No Ko (Rock Action)
Edwin Morgan - Canedolia: an off concrete Scotch Fantasia (Aeolus)
Antoni Maiovvi - This is the beast; Thorns of Love (Caravan Recordings)
Mancingelani - Vana Vasesi; Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa (Honest Jons)
Swans - No Words/No Thoughts; My Father Will Guide a Rope From The Sky (Young God)
Edwin Morgan - The Day The Sea Spoke (Aeolus)
Chanjirit Singh - Raga Lalit Bombay; 12 Ragas to a Disco Beat (Bombay Connection)
Beach Boys - My Solution; Landlocked (Bootleg)
Noah Howard - Space Dimension; Space Dimension (America)
Edwin Morgan - At 80; 23 Poems of Edwin Morgan Vol 2 (ASLS)
Amal Saha - Lahmami; Ecstatic Music of the Jamaa El Fna (Sublime Frequencies)

The Return of Beard Radio

2010-09-13T19:17:00.004+01:00

This calls for a celebration...

After a well-earned summer break, Beard Radio returns to the air on Thursday 16th September at 6pm on Subcity.

Brace yourselves for another year of fluffed cues, eclectic tuneage and illustrious guests. In a turn up for the books, we're actually quite organised, and can reveal our September schedule!

Sep 16: Back to School
We welcome freshers, returning students and listeners old and new with some records that are exciting us right now. We also pay tribute to one of our heroes, the great poet, translator and scholar Edwin Morgan.

Sep 23: TIME
Transmitting not-so-live from Mile End, we welcome our very special guests Frances Morgan and Mark Dicker of glorious psych-folk-doom duo TIME, who will be playing us some of their favourite records. Frances also plays with Morgen Und Nite, is one of the finest music writers around and was editor and publisher of the lamented Plan B magazine. You may know Mark as guitarist in the mighty grindlords Trencher. This show promises to be a belter.

Sep 30: New Zealand Special
Beard buddy and Glasgow music scene legend-of-sorts Lo-Fi Bri spreads the gospel of the New Zealand underground. From The Chills to Alastair Galbraith, Pumice to the Dead C, this show will turn your world upside down in the best possible way.

2010-08-20T13:34:00.003+01:00

R.I.P Edwin Morgan 1920-2010

A true hero as an artist and a person, Edwin Morgan will be much missed. I've been reading his poetry since I was a wee boy and his humanity and spirit of enquiry have been an inspiration. Living in Glasgow, in Scotland, he's helped me think about my surroundings in new ways, while his internationalism and experimentation have opened my mind to concrete poetry, the Russian futurists, art, music. He's the guiding spirit of my academic work in many ways: from Glasgow to Saturn indeed. A great life. I'll share some of my Morgan finds from the National Library of Scotland later.

When You Go

When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

Siesta of a Hungarian Snake

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs Zs zs zs z

Giant Sand for The Quietus

2010-07-22T17:14:00.006+01:00

Very chuffed to have been asked by the lovely folk at The Quietus to pen a piece on the world of Howe Gelb and Giant Sand. My argument is that epithets such as 'godfather of alt. country' damn Howe with faint praise. He's got nothing to do with snoozesome Whispering Bob approved MOR Americana, and much more in common with cats like Neil Young, Meat Puppets, Gun Club, X, Thelonious Monk, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Cormac McCarthy, Captain Beefheart, William Faulkner, Doug Sahm, Lee Hazelwood, Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Linklater and Los Bros Hernandez.

I've been a fan of Howe for years, but so vast is his discography that I only discovered certain albums for the first time, at least in full, while researching this piece. Many of these are long out of print, but happily, Fire Records have managed to license the entire Howe/Giant Sand/Band of Black Ranchette/Arizona Amp & Alternator discography - some 30 odd records - and are commencing a reissue program, starting with 1983's Valley of Rain, so you need pay ridiculous collector's prices for such classics as Center of the Universe or Long Stem Ramp no longer.

The Howe quotes in the Quietus piece are from an interview I conducted with the great man in 2006. This first appeared in Beard 6 from 2007, which is still available. My jejune attempts at scene-setting are cringeworthy, but the interview is a good read, thanks to Howe's wonderful way with words and quality anecdotes. Email us if you fancy a copy. They're cheap!

I'm very excited to say that I will be interviewing Howe again next week, the results of which will also appear on The Quietus. In the meantime, catch him with Kristin Hersh at the Barbican in London tonight and at the Sage, Gateshead on Saturday 24 July. A European tour is lined up for November, so fingers crossed for a Scottish date.

I'll leave you with a couple of videos that aren't in my Quietus piece - hell there's just too much good Howe stuff on Youtube. Gorgeous live version of Spiral, from 2008's Provisions and the video for Happenstance (such a lovely word, very Howe) from 1994's Glum.

Reanimated

2010-07-14T15:46:00.006+01:00

Apologies for the lack of blog action lately. I've been a busy boy, working on my PhD, writing papers and the like. Beard Radio is off air for the summer, but we should be back in the Autumn. In the meantime, you can enjoy the last three shows of the semester, which we didn't list properly here. Suffice to say they're bangin'.

The real reason for this post is to plug Cry Parrot's latest warehouse party at SWG3. Live music and visuals, some great DJs and, well, us! Think I'm going to go for something of a cosmic vibe - a bit proggy, a bit synthy, a bit jazzy...

On that note, how great is this? Geeta Dayal has some interesting thoughts on this mindblowing proto-techno record by Bollywood musician and composer Charanjit Singh.

The Raw & The Cooked: Beard Radio 13.5.10

2010-05-13T21:40:00.005+01:00

Ass blasting Scandinavian free jazz, Sun Ra saluting comets with some astonishing electronic sorcery, blue-eyed soul old and new, kinky EBM, gorgeous jazz meditations from the Windy City, atmospheric dubstep, and motorik pop thrills... it can only be another episode of Beard Radio!

The Thing - Drop The Gun; Bag It! (Smalltown Superjazz)
Gayngs - Gaudy Side of Town; Relayted (Jagjaguwar)
Hall & Oates - Is It A Star?; War Babies (A&M)
Breakage - Vial (feat Burial); Foundation (Digital Soundboy)
Fad Gadget - Ladyshave; The Singles (Mute)
Sun Ra - Discipline; Concert For The Comet Kohoutek (ESP Disk)
Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake - For Brother Thompson; From The River To The Ocean (Thrill Jockey)
Subway - Simplex (Gatto Fritto Mix); Soul Jazz Singles 08-09 (Soul Jazz)

Picnic on a Frozen River: a Faust Interview

2010-05-11T12:17:00.005+01:00

The transcript of my interview with Jean-Herve Peron of mighty kosmische freaks Faust. This was the basis of my article for The List magazine. Of course there was plenty of material that I didn't have room for, so here's the whole thing. This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I've ever done. Thanks to Jean Herve Peron for being such an engaging chap.

Tell me about the early days of Faust.

We've been together since 1970 and there were six of us. One disappeared, another died (producer/mentor Uwe Nettlebeck), one lost interest, so it's gone through all kinds of changes. What happened recently, well, by recently I mean ten years ago, there's been two different currents within the Faust philosophy. (The other Faust features original keyboardist Hans Joachim Irmler and the members who joined in the early '90s) It was better to make a clean split, rather than argue for ever. One Faust is with Zappi and myself, two original members from the '70s and we are joined by Geraldine Swaine, who you might know, she was in Bad Servant and is a London painter lady, and James Johnson who is from Gallon Drunk and the Bad Seeds. And most of the time we invite people. I don't know who will come in Glasgow, but we might have a guy called Mick, he's one of yours I think. He plays guitar and uses his lyrics, he makes quite good lyrics. But my head is a bit confused, I'm not quite sure who will be guests in Glasgow. Maybe I'll keep that sort of a surprise, because I don't want to say who and then they say, oh shit, I'm playing somewhere else!

The BBC Krautrock film showed you and Zappi performing together. Was this in the Bad Durmentingen base?

No, no, no, not at all. You are confusing both Fausts, that's quite alright, I don't mind. It's all cool. We wanted it that way anyway. No, what you saw on BBC4 was a documentary at my house in Schiphorst in Northern Germany. Yeah, BBC4 came, they stayed for a few days, we answered their questions and it was very pleasant. Zappi and I, we started to improvise. I used a bit of the concrete mixer and Zappi went on with his percussion thing. We enjoyed it. I think the BBC people enjoyed it.

Were you playing a Mongolian horn? I've seen a few jazz musicians use those.

No. I'd love to have one of those. It was like a straight trumpet, you play only with the lips, you only play basics and harmonics. All horns function under the same principal, it's all with the lips and you play basics and harmonics.

Is this a good example of what you do live in that its improvised?

Ah, my ears are a bit fucked with old age and noise! On stage we do a mixture. We respect and love our audience so we realise there a few things to consider. First of all is what we are, that means improvisation, whatever comes up in our minds. But also what the audience is sort of expecting. They buy a ticket for Faust and they know they shouldn't expect anything precisely, so we do a few old tunes, and a few much more recent tunes, so everybody's happy. It's one third old tunes, one third recent tunes, and one third improvisation.

Are you bringing the cement mixer?

Probably, probably. It all depends how much gear we have. We are touring now. It didn't fit in my van, but I will try again to make it fit. It's a good instrument, we miss it when it's not there. It creates a very droney atmosphere and it seems to reach ladies, it seems to move the heart of ladies in some way. In Glasgow when we last played, I remember a lady – she didn't have much interest in our music, she just came because her man liked it and she said, ok I'll go along and see what they do. At the end she came up to me in tears and said, and I'm not kidding, 'Oh god, The Fish,' - which is the song we play with the concrete mixer - 'That really moved my heart.' So that was very motivating, not flattering, very inspiring.

Are you bringing along other power tools?

We are going a little bit back to basics, having less things all around, making more straight music. That doesn't mean a thing really. James plays guitar and keyboard and vacuum cleaner, Geraldine plays the accordian, guitar, keyboard, she paints on stage, and Zappi plays metals and percussion. I blow different horns, I try to play some acoustic guitar, play some bass, and I love to have a talk with my concrete mixer, with a chain saw, things like that. And I also like to paint on stage.

Some of your shows in the 90s were pretty crazy, with fireworks going off. Are you going to have any of that, or are you not allowed to say?

(Laughs) Unfortunately we can't do that anymore. In the 90s nobody knew what we were up to, so when we arrived at a venue and they asked 'are we going to do the usual thing?' we'd say 'yeah yeah yeah.' Then we'd start putting things on fire, starting fireworks. And now the promoters are aware of this and they have us sign this thing saying 'no open fire, no bombs, no fireworks'. So we cannot be as carefree as we used to be.

But instead you've got the painting and all other kinds of visual elements.

(enthusiastically) Yeah yeah. I don't feel like doing always the same things. There was a period where I enjoyed that. We change.

I guess it becomes a drag, like Jimi Hendrix having to set fire to his guitar at every show...

Right, yeah.

How do you feel about the influence Faust have had? When you returned in the '90s new artists lined up to work with you like Jim O'Rourke, Keiji Haino, Dalek, Nurse With Wound and Michael Morley of the Dead C. Do you feel an affinity with them?

We never, ever realised that we were influential. We never realised that we would have any impact on anybody. We were and we still are unaware of all this. When people come up to us and say 'ah, your music and this and that' of course it is a nice massage for our ego but we were never aware of that, so I guess it's a good thing. I feel happy that I can tell my children and my grandchildren that I have done something that doesn't seem to have been that bad, because people seem to think that I gave them inspiration. I will say one example like Stereolab. I seldom feel that they like our music, but one nice thing about it is that they've taken it one step further, or one step in their own direction. They've take an inspiration, an impulse and they've used it their way. Or NWW. Maybe they just took the energy, or the general attitude of our music, they didn't take any chords or plagiarise, they just took the energy.

It's maybe harder to copy Faust than Can or Neu, say, as there isn't a particular signature sound, like the 'motorik beat'.

You are quite right, but I would disagree when you say we don't have motorik. Zappi from time to time, he loves to go into one of his mighty beats, but other times we like to be without any rhythm.

Have you been working on new material?

Yes. We are going to go into the studio in July. We don't really work. We meet once, twice, three times a year at my place in Schiphoff, we spend maybe five, six days together and then we jam, we record it very roughly. Then we pick up the themes and try to remember them. We've been doing this to prepare the UK tour, because we are here quite regularly, so we don't want to repeat ourselves, so we have to get a new set all the time for the UK. So we did this in March and we came up with some new things.

It seems you're still working in a similar way to the Wumme years, albeit over shorter periods of time?

Yes, we work in a very similar way. In the back of heads is the feeling of being free, not being under pressure to produce anything. If something happens it's fine, if not it's also fine. We are happy to be together and we happen to have people around us who are excellent cooks, we have good wine, so everything is art in life, not only music, not only getting into the rehearsal studio and producing sounds, but everything is art. It's like Wumme all the time. Maybe we're just stupid, maybe we're just naïve! (Laughs)

Anything you'd like to add?

If you could mention the Avant-Garde Fest in Schiphorst that would be a great help. (Happy to oblige. See below)

Also tell your people that we enjoy very much to play the northern part of England (sic), we went all the way to Edinburgh... You are fucking loud! We too are sometimes! We have to have a good sense of humour because your are loud. But it comes from the heart and this is what I really like. It's not because you are disrespectful of our music, it's just that you are very vital, very passionate.

Faust play The Arches, Glasgow, tonight, then tour the UK.
Peron's Avant-Garde Fest takes place in Schiphorst, Germany from 2 – 4 July 2010. Confirmed acts include Lydia Lunch's Big Sexy Noise, Blood Stereo, Gallon Drunk and, of course, Faust!

Fab! Gear! The Beard Beatles Special!

2010-05-09T19:36:00.005+01:00

We raise our thumbs aloft to the Fab Four. Rest assured this is no predictable Mojo-style snooze fest featuring the same old stuff. We kick off with a classic blast of Yoko, with John freaking out, Sonny Sharrock style, on noisy slide guitar. Take that Yoko haters! There's Beatles sampling hip-hop, bizarre easy listening proto-mash-ups, and some great - and memorably awful - Beatles covers, including one from the infamous Sgt Peppers film starring the Bee Gees, Pete Frampton and Frankie Howerd! There's a tune from Macca's secret lounge project, Thrillington, featuring an all star cast of session musos including Clem Clattini, and, fresh from recording Serge Gainsbourg, Herbie Flowers and Vic Flick. You can tell: Flower's bass playing is awesomely fluid and funky. We even manage to fit in a couple from the Fab Four themselves, as well as some weird solo cuts. Of course, we had far more stuff lined up than we had time for, so keep an eye on the blog over the next few days for some bonus beats.

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - Why; Plastic Ono Band (Apple)
The Rutles - Cheese & Onions; Anthology (Warner Bros.)
The Beatles - I'll Follow The Sun; Beatles For Sale (Parlophone)
Ernest Ranglin - You Won't See Me; Trojan Beatles Box (Trojan)
Alan Copeland - Mission Impossible/Norwegian Wood; Golden Throats (Rhino)
Wu Tang Vs The Beatles - Got Your Money; Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers (Teasearecords)
Beastie Boys - Sounds of Science; Paul's Boutique (Capitol)
Dangermouse - 99 Problems; Grey Album (Self-Released)
The Beatles - Dear Prudence; The Beatles (Apple)
Ringo Starr - Blindman; Goodnight Vienna OST (Apple)
Paul McCartney - Temporary Secretary; McCartney II (Parlophone)
Percy 'Thrills' Thrillington - Too Many People; Thrillington (Regal Zonophone)
Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out (Motown)
George Burns - With A Little Help From My Friends; Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band OST (RSO)

Beard Radio 29.4.10

2010-05-01T20:10:00.002+01:00

It's the last Beard Radio before the election, but hopefully not the last under a Labour government. Not that we're Labour cheerleaders by any means, but better them than the Tories... As a fuck you to bigots everywhere, this show is full of Eastern Europeans: Poles, Hungarians and Bulgarians. Plus some amazing music from the middle-east, anti-Tory tunes and some sage like commentary on the media circus. It's not all political, but tonight's show is all about celebrating the power of music to bring people together and counter ignorance and hate.

Le Mystre Des Voix Bulgares - Pilentze Pee; Vol 1 (4AD)
Anna Adamis & Gabor Presser - Ringsad El Magad No 2; Well Hung (Finders Keepers)
Vex'd - Nails; Cloud Seed (Planet Mu)
Omar Khorshid - Sabirine; Guitar El Chark (Sublime Frequencies)
Krzysztof Komeda - Astigmatic (excerpt); Astigmatic (Polskie Nagrania Muza)
Robert Wyatt - Mass Medium; Old Rottenhat (Domino)
Specials - Maggie's Farm; Stereo-Typical (Two Tone)
Lord Beginner - Mix Up Matrimony; London Is The Place For Me (Honest Jons)
Kenny Graham & His Satellites - Lullaby; Moondog and Suncat Suites (Trunk)
John Coltrane - Peace On Earth; Infinity (Impulse)

Cry Parrot's 3rd Birthday, with Beard DJs

2010-04-20T16:12:00.004+01:00

Posting this on behalf of the good folk at Cry Parrot. These guys have been putting on DIY gigs in Glasgow for three years now so they're celebrating with a party at the Flying Duck on Thursday 22 April. They've kindly asked me to play some records, but don't let that put you off, as there are some great bands and DJs playing. I'll be on between 8.30 and 9.30 in the kitchen. Expect missed cues, records being played at the wrong speed and a delirious mix of synths, saxophones, brutal bass and wayward beats.

Cry Parrot's DIY principles, eclectic booking policy and love of a good party has helped breathe new life into the Glasgow underground. Their shows are colourful, noisy, messy and fun. When they put on Pocahaunted's dubbed out psych-funk show in a sweaty rehearsal space I danced like a loon. When they put on The Ex & Brass Unbound I danced like a loon. Hell, whatever they put on I'll probably end up dancing like a loon. They've a nice line in unusual venues as well, Gary War's flat gig being a delightfully odd experience. And while they've brought some great touring acts to town, they deserve special kudos for supporting local acts, a number of whom will be performing at Thursday's party. Ultimate Thrush are always a blast of gonzoid noise rock, Teenage Ricky pull of the unlikely trick of making math rock silly, weird and fun, while Nackt Insecten's improvising space-rock trio Moon Unit always bring it. The latter were fantastic at Mono for Record Store Day on Saturday.

It should be a blast. I hope to see you all there.

Here's what Cry Parrot have to say about the event:

In the main room, we’ll have 7 of our favourite bands playing, while in the kitchen we’ll have some ace DJs (including a disco takeover by Side-Show + Brian D'Souza!). There will also be a selection of independent record and zine stalls to rummage through til' 11.30pm.

We are very excited. We hope you are too.

Entry is just £5. Join us!!

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IN THE MAIN ROOM:

ULTIMATE THRUSH – By far one of the most exciting bands in UK, never-mind Scotland. Fast, freeform, complex, unpredictable, but - of course, fun – Ultimate Thrush deliver an aural and physical assault with their mindbending spazz-core. Its always an absolutely pleasure having these guys along.

TWO MINUTE NOODLES – The last time we saw this band, it was in the middle of the woods in Cumbria. Everyone –even the local woodmen and farmers – got up the front during their set and danced the night away. Featuring Moz from Quack Quack and Chops, Two Minute Noodles are a two-man micro-party. Think Goblin composing the soundtrack to Ace Ventura.

GUMMY STUMPS – Another one of our favourite Glasgow-based bands. Choppy, gruff no-wave, lead by the Scottish equivalent of Mark E Smith. Features members of Park Attack and Vars of Litchi.

ETERNAL FAGS – Ex members of Plaaydoh and Dirty Summer making a fresh new racket. Tight, playful punk, with the melodic soul of Wipers and The Replacements.

TEENAGE RICKY – Skittles-induced hyper-pop. Teenage Ricky deny all logic: Girly falsettos, triple guitar freakouts and one minute long songs shouldn’t work, but for them, it just seems perfect. Features members of Gay Against You, Danananaykroyd, Sexy Entourage and Tangles.

MOON UNIT – Transcending psychedelic explorations in the style of Neu! and Acid Mothers Temple. Every set they do is different, and every time they’ve never failed to blow our mind. Unmissable stuff.

CHEER – A beautiful tapestry of tape loops, subtle guitar picking and field recordings. Everyone who caught his gig with Grouper will be sure to agree he is something special.

DAM MANTLE (DJ SET)

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IN THE KITCHEN:

SIDE-SHOW w/ BICEP + BRIAN D'SOUZA (11.30 – 3AM TAKE OVER!!! YASS!!!)

HALLEWULAH HITS DJS

ADAM STAFFORD DJ (Y’all is Fantasy Island)

BEARD DJs

RECORD/ZINES BY: AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE, CRASIER FRANE, ELECTROPAPKNIT, HANSEI DIY AND MORE

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Preceding the party, there will be an open-air performance by the lovely RM HUBBERT and WOUNDED KNEE.

Flying Duck
Thursday, 22 April 2010, 19.30-03.00
£5

Beard Radio 25.3.10

2010-03-26T14:31:00.002Z

This week's show focusses on (relatively) new releases. Sassy hip-hop, dark pop melodrama, hypnagogic desert-blues, dreamy glo-fi, future dubstep and garage, warped AM gold and more.

Dominique Young Unique - Show My Ass (Art Jam)
Envy - Chips In My Dip; Set Yourself On Fire (Stop/Start)
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round and Round; 4AD
J Dilla - Safety Dance; Donut Shop (Stones Throw)
Q-Tip - Barely In Love; Kamaal The Abstract (Jive)
James Blake - The Bells Sketch (Hessle Audio)
Zola Jesus - Night; Stridulum EP (Sacred Bones)
Dam Mantle - Rebong; Grey EP (Halleluwah Hits)
Toro Y Moi - Talamak; Causers of This (Carpark)
Bok Bok - Citizen's Dub (feat Bubbz) (Blunted Robots)
James Ferraro - Last American Hero (extract); Last American Hero (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Mosca - Square One (Night Slugs)

Next week, it's our Beatles special with a difference. Fab! Thumbs Aloft! etc

Beard Radio with special guest John Cavanagh

2010-03-18T23:05:00.003Z

Tonight's Beard Radio with special guest John Cavanagh. Featuring exclusive new tracks from Family Elan, Nalle, Ben Reynolds and Trembling Bells, plus John's reminiscences about Alex Chilton, Delia Derbyshire and reading the football results on Saturday Sportscene.

Family Elan - Trees of Ishfahar (Alt. Vinyl)
Del Shannon - My Love Has Gone (Bear Family)
Ben Reynolds - Pull Back The Covers (White Label)
Lesley Duncan - Love Song (Sanctuary)
Delia Derbyshire - Liquid Energy (Glo-Spot)
Geoff Goddard - Telstar (demo) (Unreleased)
Geoff Goddard - Girl Bride (HMV)
Phosphene & Friends - See Sign Defined (Pickled Egg)
Trembling Bells - Did We Sing Together (Honest Jons)
K-Space - Kuzungu (Ad Hoc)
Big Star - When My Baby's Beside Me (Big Beat)
Yummy Fur - Department (Vesuvius)
Nalle - Sunne's Return (Alt. Vinyl)

Beard Radio with special guest John Cavanagh

2010-03-16T13:48:00.003Z

Beard Radio is delighted to announce our special guest, the legendary John Cavanagh! Radio presenter, musician, producer, writer and raconteur, John will be playing some of his favourite records, as well as some exclusive new tracks.

In addition to working for BBC Scotland and presenting his own weekly Soundwave show on Radio Six International, John has recently been producer for weird-folk luminaries Trembling Bells and Family Elan, while working on his own Phosphene Project.

Past projects include a one-man show about electronic music goddess and BBC Radiophonic Workshop legend Delia Derbyshire, and a book in the 33 & 1/3 series on Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates of Dawn. He has also been involved in the release of records by Derbyshire and Ron Geesin.

Read all about his activities on the Phosphene site.

We're really excited for this show. Do tune in and turn on.

Beard Radio 4.3.10

2010-03-04T23:56:00.002Z

Stew and Reuben bring you an hour of awesomeness. Glorious new releases from Joanna Newsom, Hyperdub and Ghost Box, some freaky Joe Meek classics, some visionary British jazz, German cabaret tango-pop, Glasgwegian prog obscurities and an absolutely incredible Japanese underground classic. We dedicate this show to Guru of Gang Starr. Get well soon sir!

Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Co; Have One On Me (Drag City)
Slapp Happy - Casablanca Moon; Acnalbasac Moon (Virgin)
Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - Minsato Le, Mi Dayihome; World Psychedelic Classics Vol 3 (Luaka Bop)
Kan Mikami - Bang!; Bang! (URC)
Geoff Goddard - Sky Men; Joe Meek Alchemist of Pop (Castle)
Advisory Circle - Nuclear Substation; Mind How You Go (Ghost Box)
Joe Harriot & John Mayer Double Quintet - Raga Gauld-Saranga; Indo-Jazz Suite (Columbia/Atlantic)
Gang Starr - Beyond Comprehension; Step In The Arena (Chrysalis)
Captain Marryat - Dance of Thor; S/T (Shadoks)
The Buzz - You're Holding Me Down; Joe Meek Alchemist of Pop (Castle)
Terror Danjah - Acid; 12" (Hyperdub)

Beard Radio 25.2.10

2010-02-26T00:36:00.005Z

Tonight's show brings together a gem from the Rock In Opposition singles box in the form of R Stevie Moore's (pictured) ersatz cockney Suicide banger What You Looking At?, some mindblowing Italian prog, some gloriously funky free jazz from Joe McPhee, Dundonian dubstep from Loops Haunt and much more. Special thanks to Daniel Padden of the One Ensemble, whose fantastic DJ set at the wonderful Sir Richard Bishop gig the other night gave me a few ideas for the show.

Joe McPhee - Shakey Jake; Nation Time (Atavistic) 1970
Kuedo - Starfox, 12" (Planet Mu) 2010
US Girls - Red Ford Radio; Go Grey (Siltbreeze) 2010
Area - La Mela Di Odessa; Crac (Cramps) 1975
R Stevie Moore - What Are You Looking At?; V/A 16 Dance Party Smash Hits (Recommended Records) 1985
Ennio Morricone - Trafelato; Crime & Dissonance (Tzadik) 1971
Sarah Kechington - A Hollow Tube; Dummy Jim (Unshaped) 2010
The One Ensemble - Khaki Knickers; Dummy Jim (Unshaped) 2010
Fred Frith - Too Much Too Little; Step Across The Border (Fred Records) 1990
Richard Thompson - Roll Over Vaughan Williams; Henry The Human Fly (Fledg'ling) 1972
Loops Haunt - Joplin 12" (Black Acre) 2010
Aphex Twin - Finger Bib; Richard D James Album (Warp) 1996
Joseph Spence - Out On The Rolling Sea; Happy All The Time (Folkways) 1964

Sir Richard Bishop interview - director's cut

2010-02-21T19:28:00.006Z

Photo copyright Mark Sullo

This is a director's cut of the preview of Sir Richard Bishop's Glasgow gig I did for The List. A slightly lazy director's cut admittedly - it's just the preview with the full Q & A tacked on rather than a through-written feature, but hey, I've got a PhD to do! Hopefully Bishop's tales of magick, travel and Arabic guitarists, as well as some choice youtube clips, should make up for it. Be sure to check out his new heavy psych band with Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano, Rangda.

For the past three decades, avant-garde guitar wizard, Sir Richard Bishop has dazzled, confounded and disturbed, both as a member of Arizona freaks Sun City Girls, and as a wildly inventive solo artist. While less deranged than Sun City Girls’ sprawling oeuvre, Bishop’s own albums are just as eclectic, deftly leaping from gypsy jazz to Indian ragas, or between psychedelic rock and electronic soundscapes. Reflecting his Lebanese ancestry, Bishop’s current album, the excellent Freak of Araby, pays homage to the Arabic surf-rock of Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid.

You're on tour just now, but have you been on any other travels
recently?

I recently returned from two months in Thailand and Laos where I was doing a little research and taking a lot of photographs for some potential projects in the future. I had a guitar with me as well and Idid work on some new material. I may go back to India later this year unless things get too busy.

You've recorded an album with Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano as Rangda. It's more psych rock and less improv than I expected. Perhaps you can tell me about this project?

Ben and I had been discussing this idea of working with Chris and forming this trio for a couple of years now. Chris was pretty busy for a while but the chance to get together finally came about last September and we did our first show after about an hour and half of practicing. The record which we recorded a day after the show did include a lot of improvisation based on some loose ideas that each of us had but we also wanted to concentrate on creating a few structured songs. We will be
touring in Europe in late May and there will probably be equal parts improvisation and compositions. We have been discussing a lot of possibilities and it is a project that all of us are excited about and we hope to continue touring and make a lot of records over the next few years.

You mentioned that you and Alan Bishop might start another band. Has this happened yet? Any other projects in the pipeline?

We've discussed a few options but haven't done anything yet since both of us have been quite busy - myself with touring and Alan has been extremely occupied with Sublime Frequencies. Seems like there just isn't enough time to do everything we want to right now but I am hoping that changes in the future. But it's sometimes difficult to think about another band with Alan without Charlie (Gocher, the late SCG drummer) being part of it. It will take some more time to come to terms with everything.

Does your interest in magic and the occult influence your music making in any way? Some might say your pieces are like invocations.

It influences most aspects of my life in one way or another including musically but I try not to think about it too much. I think the influence may have been stronger when Sun City Girls was performing live and making records because there was a ceremonial aspect to a lot of what we were doing. But with my solo music it doesn't seem to play as big a role as in the past but that is okay. I am aware of the energies that are present, but the less I think about it, the better.

Freak of Araby was a tribute to Omar Khorshid and Arabic surf rock. Was this a project you'd long planned, or was it more spontaneous?

It was something that just happened. I had been listening to a lot of Omar Khorshid's music prior to the recording session but it wasn't my intention to make any kind of Arabic or Middle Eastern type record. But after recording a couple of original pieces that were "eastern" sounding, I decided that I wanted the entire record to reflect that sound, even though I had a number of other songs that I was going to record but I decided to scrap those. So I scrambled to find some traditional songs to record and a number of them were songs that Khorshid also played. I then wrote a couple more pieces which fell into the same category. It all happened so fast. So it just kind of worked out the way it did and The Freak of Araby was the result.

I've heard Khorshid's album Rhythms of The Orient, which I love, but are there any other albums by him, or similar artists, you'd recommend?

Rhythms of the Orient is great! But Khorshid's records are hard to locate. He made nine full length records in Lebanon in the early 70s, plus he composed the soundtracks for numerous Egyptian and Lebanese films. The soundtracks were never made available commercially. You can, with a little digging, find some download links online but in order to get the actual LPs (or cassettes) from the 70s, you'd probably have to go to Cairo, Damascus, or Beirut. Some to seek out are: Belly Dance From Lebanon, Tribute to Oum Kalthoum, Tribute to Farid-Al-Atrache, and Belly Dance with Omar Khorshid (Volumes 1-3). There is also a Lebanese guitar player from the 70s named Mohammed "Mike" Hegazi who made at least two LPs. These are almost impossible to find but they are great if you can locate them.

It's interesting that this is an electric solo tour. Any particular decision for switching from acoustic? Does it suit the Freak of Araby material better, or are you doing something else altogether?

I just needed to step away from acoustic guitar for a while. I wanted to force myself to try something different and not play the same material that I had been playing during the last few tours. I am doing a couple of pieces from the Freak of Araby which work best with electric guitar but since I don't have a backup band, I can't do much more from the record. I am also doing a fair amount of improvisation and trying out some new songs and some older pieces that I haven't really played live before.

You help gather material for Sublime Frequencies. Are you encouraged by its recent success? For example, people went crazy for Omar Souleyman when he played here in Glasgow. Also, have you made any recent musical discoveries for the label on your travels?

I've collected some music and film over the last couple of trips abroad for the label and perhaps some of that will be released at some point. But there is quite a backlog of material already and a lot of other people are now submitting stuff as well. Either way the label will continue to release incredible music that hasn't been heard. I am excited that the label is finally getting some good recognition and it is quite inspiring on many levels. I wish I could have seen some of those live shows from the Souleyman/Group Doueh tour. I have seen quite a bit of video footage from the tour but I want to experience it in person. We're trying to get Omar to come to the United States later this year. I just hope the authorities will grant him permission to enter the country.

Sir Richard Bishop plays Stereo, Glasgow on Wednesday 24 Feb, with support from Graeme Ronald (RememberRemember) and RM Hubbert.

Beard Radio 18.2.10

2010-02-18T23:13:00.003Z

Beard radio touches your erogenous zones with Kate Bush and Hyetal & Shortstuff, surfs the waves of Lebanese psych with Omar Khorshid, drops a tear in your beer with Hank Williams, and levitates the White House with the incredible electrified free jazz of Love Cry Want. And then some...

Sir Richard Bishop - Barbary; The Freak of Araby (Drag City)
Omar Khorshid - Ah Ya Zen; Rhythms From The Orient (Unknown
Stellar Om Source - Copper Dream; Ocean Woman (Self-released CD-R) (pictured above)
Oneohtrix Point Never - Russian Mind; Rifts (No Fun)
Kate Bush - The Sensual World; The Sensual World (EMI)
Hyetal & Shortstuff - Don't Stop, 12" (Punchdrunk)
Hank Williams - I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You); Greatest Hits Vol II (MGM)
Nicholas & Gallivan with Larry Young - The Great Medicine Dance; Love Cry Want (Weird Forest)
Bobb Trimble - Another Lonely Angel; Harvest of Dreams (Drag City)
Carla Bley -Hotel Overture; The Elevator Over the Hill (Jcoa Records/Virgin)

NB - I said the trombonist on Elevator... is Roswell Rudd. Wrong! It is of course the great Jimmy Knepper. Check 'im out on classic Mingus albums like Ah Um.

Beard Radio 4 Feb & Jan 29

2010-02-07T20:31:00.004Z

Charge your glass, plump your cushions and sit back to enjoy another fine edition of Beard Radio. Stew is flying solo and manages not to screw up too much. On the menu: Dave Holland, PJ Pooterhoots, Anaal Nathrakh, Albert Ayler, Pangea and Flower-Corsano Duo serving it rare. Not 'alf

Albert Ayler - Our Prayer; Live In Greenwich Village (Impulse)
Pangea - Why (Hessle Audio)
Dave Holland - Interception; Conference of the Birds (ECM)
Prince - Darling Nikki; Purple Rain (Warner Bros.)
St. Vincent - Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood; Actor (4AD)
Anaal Nathrakh - Virus Bomb; Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here (Feto)
Flower-Corsano Duo - 85% Pure; Live From The Chocolate Cities (Self-Realeased)
PJ Pooterhoots - Chase (Tigerbass)
Sly & The Family Stone - In Time; Fresh (Epic)
Untold - Stop What You're Doing (James Blake Remix) (Hessle Audio)

Oops, we forgot to post last week's show. Well, here it is: from metal to slow jams to visionary British jazz, it can only be Beard Radio!

Split Enz - The Choral Sea (A&M)
Real Estate - Beach Comber (Woodsist)
Absu - Amy (Candle)
Stu Martin & John Surman - Live at Woodstock Town Hall (Dawn)
Raffertie - 7th Dimension (Planet Mu)
Sparks - Achoo (Island)
The Ex - Huriyet (Ex Records)
Vektor - Deoxyibonucleic Acid (Heavy Artillery)
Teddy Pendergrass - Turn Off The Lights (Sony)
Mercyful Fate - A Dangerous Meeting (Roadrunner)
Erasure - Stop! (Mute)

We played The Ex on this show. Read my interview with Andy Moor. Longer director's cut version to follow soon.

Beard Radio 21.1.10

2010-01-23T17:18:00.003Z

We're back, with yet more PROG CORNER in the form of USAISMONSTER and a truly insane Yes tune, some ridiculous power metal, a slept on PE classic, a killer new Wiley beef track, Japanese sax mayhem and the new Joy Orbinson, putting the joy into, er, joy...

Wiley - Last day of 09 (reply to Trim) (White Label)
Public Enemy - Do you wanna go our way??; There's A Poison Goin' On (Atomic Pop)
Roxy Music - Street Life; Stranded (Island)
Sax Ruins - Korromda Peimm; Yawiquo (Ipecac)
Megadeth - Last Rites/Loved To Death; Killing Is My Business... (Combat)
Joy Orbison - BRKLN CLLN (Doldrums)
Blind Guardian - This Will Never End; Nightfall (Nuclear Blast)
USAISAMONSTER - Somehow; Tasheyana Compost (Load)
Yes - Sound Chaser (edit); Relayer (Atlantic)
10cc - Honeymoon With A B Troop; How Dare You (Mercury)
Bruce Springsteen - Dream Baby Dream (Blast First Petite)

Beard Radio 14.1.10 now with Prog Corner

2010-01-14T20:59:00.002Z

Stewart's flying solo and making loads of technical mistakes in the process. Oh dear. Good tunes though! Plus PROG CORNER! Behold our monolithic new jingle.

Abba - Eagle; Greatest Hits Vol 2 (Epic)
Boredoms - No Core Punk; Osorezan no Stooges Kyo (Earthnoise)
McCoy Tyner -Ebony Queen; Sahara (Original Jazz Classics)
Mark Hollis - Colour of Spring; Mark Hollis (Polydor)
Eno & Harmonia - Welcome; Tracks & Traces (Gronland)
Dolphins Into The Future - On The High Seas; On Sea Faring Isolation (Not not fun)
Josephine Foster - Trust In The Unexpected; Graphic As A Star (Fire)
Van Der Graaf Generator - Still Life; Still Life (Charisma)
Alasdair Roberts - You Muses Assist; Spoils (Drag City)
Pangaea - Memories (Hessle Audio)
Bird Names - A New Map For Kissing; On Opaque Things (Pecan Crazy)
Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Wake Up And Make Love To Me; New Boots & Panties (Stiff)

Beard Radio Brighton Takeover 7.1.10

2010-01-12T13:08:00.005Z

It's a Brighton Takeover for the first Beard Radio of 2010 as we're joined by Joseph Stannard (Wire magazine, The Outer Church club) and Petra Davis (Plan B) who select tonight's fine tunes. Where else would you hear Billy Joel and Clannad alongside Gay Beast?

Lady Sovereign - Ch Ching (White Label)
Ikonika- Smuck (Planet Mu)
Clannad - Robin The Hooded Man (RCA)
David McAlmont & Michael Nyman - Secrets, Accusations & Charges; The Glare (NM Records)
Moon Wiring Club - A Friendly Warning (Gecophonic Audiosystems)
Paul McCartney - Talk More Talk; Press To Play (Parlophone)
Bee Gees - Love You Inside Out (Warner Bros)
Sun Dog Peace House - Infinite Life (Digitalis)
Electrik Red -Drink In My Cup; How To Be A Lady Vol 1 (Def Jam)
Solange Knowles - Stillness Is The Move (Geffen)
Cheap Trick - Stop This Game (CBS)
Gay Beast - White Diamonds (Skin Graft)
Billy Joel - Pressure (CBS)
Beyonce - Upgrade; B'Day (Columbia)
Hall & Oates - Downtown Light (RCA)
Broadcast - Man Is Not A Bird; Haha Sound (Warp)
Scritti Politti - Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder; Anomie & Bonhomie (Virgin)

This week's Beard Radio is back on Subcity at the usual time of 7pm on Thursday evening.

The third Outer Church club night takes place tomorrow night at Brighton's Free Butt. Put on your moon boots and get on down to Joe's cosmic and hauntological sounds.

Beard Radio New Year Party Session

2010-01-02T23:49:00.004Z

Happy New Year to all our wonderful listeners!

Stew and Gary are joined by our good chums Kate and Brian for a truly banging two hour Hogmanay party session. Of course, it's good at any time of year. Crank it up and party on folks!

2562 - Love In Outer Space; Unbalance (Tectonic)
Boredoms - Ant 10 Lindstrom remix; Super Roots 10 (Thrill Jockey)
Patrick Cowley - Menergy (Polydor)
Sun Ra & His Arkestra - Disco 2100; The Singles (Evidence)
Second Phase - Mentasm; Joey Beltram Classics (R & S)
The Juan MacLean - You Can't Have It Both Ways (DFA)
Asha Senator - One Bible (Dancehall Jungle Mix); Rumble In The Jungle (Soul Jazz)
Topcat - Love Mi Ses; An England Story (Soul Jazz)
Rainbow - A Light in The Dark; Rising (Polydor)
Marnie Stern - Roads? Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads; This Is... (Kill Rock Stars)
Dr Dre - Let Me Ride; The Chronic (Death Row)
2000F & J Kamata - You Don't Know What Love Is; Hyperdub 5 (Hyperdub)
Notorious B.I.G. - Mo Money Mo Problems; Life After Death (Bad Boy Records)
Terror Danjah - Zumpi Hunter; Gremlinz (Planet Mu)
XTC - That's Really Super Super Girl; Skylarking (Virgin)
ELO - Livin' Thing; The Very Best Of (Epic)
Devo - Gut Feeling; Q: Are We Not Me? A: We Are Devo (Virgin)
Andrew W.K. - Ready To Die; I Get Wet (Mercury)
Joe McPhee, The Thing, Cato Salsa Experience - The Witch; Two Bands & a Legend (Smalltown Superjazz)
Durrty Goodz - Destruction; Ultrasound (Ultrasound)
Daft Punk - Crescendolls; Discovery (Virgin)
LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version) DFA 2 (DFA)
David Banner - Play (Universal)
Raffertie - Wobble Horror (Planet Mu)

Beard's Christmas Gift To You

2009-12-24T11:12:00.004Z

Beard presents a Christmas gift to you: a Spotify playlist of festive tuneage, featuring Sun Ra, Marvin Gaye, John Fahey, Vashti Bunyan, Jean Ritchie, Vince Guaraldi, Lindstrom, Dexter Gordon, Flaming Lips, Esquivel, Bruce Haack, Free Design and many more!

I should add that there's no irony intended in the selection of Wham's Last Christmas: it's a genuinely beautiful song. That Jackie Gleason tune is easy listening at its weirdest, with the strings lost in a snow storm of reverb and echo. Gotta give props to Stones Throw for their Baad Santa compilation; a source of much festive oddness. Merry christmas everyone!

Sunn O))) Director's Cut

2009-12-15T22:49:00.010Z

This is a director's cut of my interview with Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))), originally published in The List. Read on for tales of amp worship, Miles Davis and bagpipes. Plus news of a collaboration with Ulver.

When doom lords Sunn O))) played the basement venue of Glasgow's Oran Mor in 2004, the sub-bass vibrations shook the lights out of their sockets in the restaurant above. 'I remember that one clearly,' says Stephen O'Malley, core member, alongside Greg Anderson, of the experimental metal titans. A Sunn O))) gig is an intense experience, with the band dressed in their trademark grim robes, cranking out downtuned riffs and layers of feedback at extreme volumes. Since their inception in the late '90s, Sunn O))) have experimented with their doom 'n drone template to incorporate a variety of influences from electronic music and black metal to modern composition and jazz. This year's Monoliths & Dimensions is their most expansive release to date, featuring collaborations with avant-garde composer Eyvind Kang, a Viennese women's choir, and Sun Ra trombonist Julian Priester, among others. Less claustrophobic than previous releases, the album sees Sunn O))) letting the light in to their sound, culminating in the sublime 'Alice', which initially recalls the desert-blues of latterday Earth, before transforming into a stately ensemble jazz piece complete with a gorgeously understated solo from Priester. Of course, the album still has its share of brutal riffs and unsettling noise, not to mention the black magic croak of Hungarian vocalist Atilla Csihar.

How do you go about translating the Monoliths & Dimensions material to a live setting?

First of all it starts off as Sunn O)))'s music, never exactly translating our albums, and vice versa. I think we've actually played a number of dates 'supporting' this record – this is like a music industry term, supporting an album. It's funny, it sets up expectations for a band, even for us. We've done many, many tours over the years and Sunn's music is constantly mutating. We don't have a choir on stage, I guess that's the main question, and we're not using a string section either, but some of the music is structurally it comes from the songs. We focus a lot on the melody and the harmonic aspects of that music and it's incredibly powerful. It's also something we're able to afford to do (laughs) There's already ten people on the road with the band so I think expanding live to include most of the ensemble stuff is a challenge that we're willing to take and we're gonna work on but it's not going to be for a touring situation.

I understand you've got Steve Moore playing Hammond organ?

Yeah, there's a Hammond. There's a lot of dynamics in the music, which is something we hadn't worked with too much in the past, to be honest, even though dynamics is a pretty simple concept, but our version of dynamics has been very much on one side (laughs) There are a lot of cleaner parts. Greg's playing bass and I'm playing guitar, so that actually opens up quite a bit of room for different types of interpretive play. Steve Moore is a multi-instrumentalist, so he's picking up quite a lot. And also Atilla, he becomes a centre anchoring point for all of the music. But overall it's a progression of Sunn's live aspect more than anything else. At this moment we're working as a quartet, so hopefully the expectations are well met or superceded as usual. Steve is playing trombone a little bit. In Earth he plays mellotron and is primarily a keyboardist and trombone player. He does that with us too. He's a great musician and his background and approach is something we feel pretty fortunate to play with someone like that. He's really open about music – as we are – but he's coming from a really different background and it's exciting to play with different collaborators. Sunn has become a melting pot. He was also really involved in the record, in the spirit of the record and also some of the elders that were on the record, he's studied with them and he played with them on the record. It's definitely coming from the same creative spirit.

Trombonist Julian Priester/Pepo Mtoto (who played with Sun Ra and made his own incredible albums of electronic jazz such as Love,Love) appears on the new album, and there's a song called Aghartha, a mythical underwater world and also the name of a Miles Davis live album. So would you say the album has a jazz influence?

In A Silent Way and Get Up With It, Aghartha, Pangea; the spirit of the playing on these records and the supernatural element in the music, these have been an influence on the band since the start and I think it really came through on the White albums when Rex Ritter was in the band. When he was playing with us it made that influence all that more obvious, and the electronic element too. This is the music we love, and the spirit is so important to pay attention to as far as approaching experimental music on your own. Even though it's such a big major label accessible thing, these Miles Davis albums, they're incredibly important in the history of experimental music I think. Especially with ensemble and band based things, using different instrumentation and plucking people from different backgrounds. Maybe I'm fantasising this whole spirit of what the band may have been like on the On The Corner sessions or whatever, but even that fantasy is really important; it's a fluid, creative spirit that led to those albums being recorded. I think it's really inspiring. But musically on stage with Sunn O))) I'm not going to say it has jazz influences or the choir is replaced by a piccolo flute. The structure of the music doesn't allow that kind of rearrangement to be rational. It's gonna make perfect sense when you hear the music live, especially if you've experienced a Sunn O))) live concert in relation to the records we've put out, it's a different animal. In many ways it's more powerful, demanding, but I would say that the live aspect has grown a lot from the beauty that we were able to access on Monoliths & Dimensions.

It's still going to be heavy as hell?

Oh fuck yeah. Actually, I think there's gonna be more equipment per member than there ever has been. Full backline. But there's also quieter parts than we've ever had as well. Sunn O)))'s expanding in one direction, it's also expanding in many directions, it's poly-dimensional. I was looking at photos of the last time we toured in the UK in 2006 with Justin Broadrick, and I 'm wondering what kind of disease we have in that our gear keeps growing incrementally. The first time we toured the UK I think I was playing two Sunn half stacks, and this time I'm going to have three full stacks, six amps. And Greg's backline – he's gone from playing two half stacks to three bass stacks plus a guitar half stack. In some ways I think it's a kind of classical thing. If Sunn O))) had existed in 1971 it would probably be exactly the same as it is now, including the equipment, so in some ways it's kind of a dinosaur progression but it's interesting cos the music has opened up so much and we've played a lot of concerts now, we've played about 50 concerts this year, we've done four small tours, so I think people in the UK are really gonna get the cream of what we're capable of right now.

What did you take from the GrimmRobes tour and Thor's Hammer reunion?

I gotta say for me personally, I can't speak for Greg of course, but for me it's going back to the roots of playing music with Greg and that's for this whole thing. That's the root of Sunn O))), that's the root of fucking Southern Lord, Thor's Hammer, all of these things comes back to that, playing together. Especially with the Thor's Hammer stuff, that was like jumping back in time, but the people who play in that band we're all very good friends and it came back together immediately and it was amazing to reencounter that now, after everything, recognising the patterns that still exist in your guitar playing from this primitive fucking death metal band to whatever Monoliths & Dimensions is, there's links there. Doing the GrimmRobes tour, the Shoshin tour as we called it, that really... Greg and I wanted to keep our feet on the ground after making the Monoliths record because there was so much press reaction to that, besides the really long production process and how we had to extend to make the record happen, and finish the record, which was a huge, it was difficult. It was a challenge to produce that record in many ways. I guess we were fortunate because the band was ten years old last year and we were able to link it in with the anniversary, but the real reason we wanted to do those concerts was to show the core of the band, the core of Sunn O)))'s music in a way that's a direct contrast and compliment to the most expansive piece of work either of us had ever done, which is the Monoliths & Dimensions record. In some ways our hope was the fans and people who like Sunn O)))'s music would appreciate that for just the musical aspect, just the pure guitar and the amps basically. And it worked in a way that I was not expecting because even from my own experience, it seemed so musical when we were doing it, I don't remember this stuff being like that. I remember it being fucking chaos and noise, really a difficult situation to play live in early days but very simple too. And the first show we did it was like, this is fucking beautiful, this is fucking epic. We played in Berlin and there were complete overtones of 19th century composition somehow, this bombastic composed, almost operatic music, it had that feeling, so I think in some ways Greg and I reconnected musically again by doing that. And we very consciously made ourselves – we want to keep our feet on the ground all the time with this band despite any story you've heard or experience you've had with the music, we strive to keep it very down to earth and to keep our expectations in check so the experience of discovery is very strong for us as well, and we don't get ahead of ourselves as well. It's a fragile thing this music, it could implode on itself, we want to preserve that and the best way to do that is to stay in reality. I'd like to do more duo shows and I think we will, it's reintroduced another facet to the live thing that's valid and can exist simultaneously. And also one of the expectations that we want to keep out of the picture is who's gonna be on stage, who are the guests, is this gonna be the show I want to go see or not. I've always wanted to keep it billed as Sunn O))), not Sunn O))) featuring this person, this person and this person. It's more about Sunn O))) the entity, rather than the individuals. Nothing against the collaborators because of course we're very grateful that they're involved and everyone is very gracious and agrees on it and appreciates a little bit more of an anonymous approach. But when we do it as a duo then it's ok, that has nothing to do with it as well. Sunn O)))'s form can be so many different things.

Any new releases in the pipeline?

We did quite a bit of basic tracking during those two weeks, so there's quite a bit of other material, some of which has been worked on further, like the Kannon stuff, that's why we mentioned it in the press a few times, but as of right now, I'm unsure, and I don't want to predict what the next steps will be, it's kinda like, yeah, we've recorded this material but here we are three years later again, do we want to revisit this old material put it, try to produce that into something else. Or maybe Monoliths & Dimensions is the result of all of those ideas and the next step is something else. That said we're also working with a record in collaboration with the band Ulver, which they're producing, and that's at a pretty advanced stage already. There's material out there that hasn't been completed yet, but I'm not sure what the next steps will be. We're sincerely just focussing on the live aspect just now, there's a six month cycle with that. Once that's done I'm sure we'll move back into the album mentality.

I'm interviewing you for a Scottish magazine, so to put a kilt on things, as it's known in the media, I understand you used to be a bagpiper.

Yeah, I was in a pipe band for five years when I was a teenager, I played bagpipes, Scottish bagpipes, just the regular, loud pipes. I was in a band and we played some Highland Games and stuff. (laughs) The school I went to had a bagpiping band because there was some Scottish heritage to the school. That was actually, this is kind of predictable, but this was the first place I started hearing about drone intonation, because you have three drone pipes sitting right next to your ear, y'know, they have to be clearly in tune, or slightly out of tune with each other in order to provide the bedrock to the melodic answer, so from my own foundation musical background the bagpipes are pretty heavy in there. Bagpipes and Morbid Angel and Black Sabbath.

Beard Radio 10/12/09

2009-12-10T21:30:00.003Z

With Gary preparing for ATP, tonight's Beard Radio was co-presented by homeboy Colin. We bring you the FUNK, Dam Funk (pictured below) to be precise, and round things off with some horror disco that sounds like John Carpenter and Juan Atkins together in electric nightmares. We pay tribute to the late great Jack Rose (above) with one of his own tunes, a mesmerising track by Pelt, some old time country blues and some avant-hillbilly from Henry Flynt. Following on from last week's spin of the Sunn O))) epic Alice, we bring you an amazing piece of electronic jazz from the trombonist on that track, Julian Priester aka Pepo Mtoto. Plus a little festive cheer!

Lindstrom - Little Drummer Boy; Real Life Is No Cool 3CD (Smalltown Supersound)
The Qualities (Sun Ra) - It's Christmas Time; The Singles (Evidence)
Jack Rose - Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground; 2 Originals (VHF)
Pelt - Calais To Dover; Skullfuck (VHF)
Henry Flynt & The Insurrectionists - Uncle Sam Do; I Don't Wanna (Bo'Weavil)
Dâm-Funk - Burn Straight Through You; Toeachizown (Stones Throw)
Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto - Images; Love, Love (ECM)
Robert Wilkins - That's No Way To Get Along; 1928-1935 Before The Revenance Vintage Country Blues (Magpie Records)
Claude Ely - There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down; Goodbye Babylon (Revenant)
Roger Christian - Little Mary Christmas; A John Waters Christmas (Watertower Records)
Gatekeeper - Optimus Maximus; EP (Fright)
Ramadanman - Core; Soul Jazz Records Singles 2008-2009 (Soul Jazz)

Plus background music from the Strawberry Singers!

Beard Radio 3/12/09

2009-12-03T22:05:00.002Z

Space disco, wonky, heavy prog, dreamy pop, electronic composition, epic doom, lush jazz, avant guitar wizardry and classic jungle - it can only be another brain-wobbling episode of Beard Radio.

Lindstrom & Christabelle - Lovesick; Real Life Is No Cool (Smalltown Supersound)
Ikonika - Please; 12" (Hyperdub)
King Crimson - Red; Red (Island)
Bernard Parmegiani - La Roue Ferris (excerpt); Chronos (Prospective 21e Siecle)
The Pastels/ Tenniscoats - Vivid Youth; Two Sunsets (Geographic)
Sunn O))) - Alice; Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)
John Coltrane - Nancy (With The Laughing Face); Ballads (Impulse)
Bill Orcutt - My Reckless Parts; A New Way To Pay Old Debts (Palilia)
4 Hero - Journey from the Light; Early Plates (Reinforced)

Tell you what, listening to Sunn O))) (picture above) and Bernard Parmegiani (pictured below) at high volume in the dark is the bomb. See y'all at Sunn O))) on Sunday night!

Beard radio 26.11.09

2009-11-26T21:56:00.002Z

Haunted dub, micro-house, proto-black metal, cosmic jazz, classic Dundonian DIY... it can only be another glorious episode of Beard Radio! Introducing our rubbish new David Lynch jingle...

Soft Pink Truth - Everybody's Soft; Do You Party (Soundslike)
King Midas Sound - Cool Out; EP (Hyperdub)
Faust - I've Got My Car And My TV Pts 1 & 2; So Far (Polydor)
Sun Ra - Love In Outer Space; Night Of The Purple Moon (Atavistic)
The Scrotum Poles - Pick The Cat's Eyes Out; Messthetics 105 (Hyped To Death)
Wire - Sand In My Joints; Chairs Missing (Harvest-EMI)
Queen - Brighton Rock; Sheer Heart Attack (EMI)
Untold - Anaconda; 12" (Hessle Audio)
Hellhammer - Messiah; Satanic Rites (Prowlin' Death)
George Russell - Stratusphunk; Outer Thoughts (Milestone)
Cybotron - Cosmic Cars; Enter (Fantasy)

Plus bed music from the marvellous Having A Ball With The Three Suns (RCA Victor)

This show is dedicated to the memory of Freddie Mercury, who died 18 years ago this week.

Beard Radio 19.11.09

2009-11-20T12:16:00.003Z

With the skies above Glasgow weeping, Beard Radio brings you sunshine and joy. And it seems to have worked, cos the morning after we woke up to a beautiful autumn day.

Holger Czukay - Cool In The Pool; Movies (EMI)
Ducktails - Let's Rock The Beach; Landscape (No Not Fun)
Todd Rundgren - International Feel/Never Never Land; A Wizard A True Star (Bearsville)
Mercury Rev - Empire State (Son House In Excelsis); See You On The Other Side (Beggar's Banquet)
Toumani Diabate - Kaunding Cissoko; Mande Variations (World Circuit)
Archie Shepp - Mama Too Tight; Mama Too Tight (Impulse)
Susumu Yokota - King Dragonfly; Grinning Cat (Leaf)
The Clean - Tally Ho!; The Clean Compilation (Flying Nun)
The Cars - Just What I Needed; The Cars (Elektra)
Dukes of Stratosphear - You're A Good Man Albert Brown; Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (EMI)
Charles Wright & Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself (Warner Bros)

Simon Reynolds blogs about beards - and Beard - for the Guardian

2009-11-11T14:36:00.010Z

Flabbergasted - and absolutely delighted of course - to be mentioned in Simon Reynolds' Guardian blog about the place of facial hair in noughties music culture:

Until recently there was even a UK music zine called Beard whose cover stars tended to be mutton-chopped minstrels such as Alasdair Roberts and Robert Wyatt. The magazine's founders, Stewart Smith and Neil Jacques, developed "an admiration for beards" at the start of this decade through listening to Wyatt, Dennis Wilson and Will Oldham.

As we've pointed out before, the name Beard started as a bit of a joke, but it stuck and proved to be quite a fun angle; cue top tens of literary and pop beards, snakes and ladders reborn as beards and razors etc. Alas, we never realised our plans for a knitting pattern. The name had its downsides - every dodgy band who tried to befriend us on myspace would point out their bass player's beard, and people assumed we were only interested in male artists with beards, something we tried to redress by putting Vashti Bunyan on the cover of our last issue - but we thought of it, so we can hardly complain. It's true that Beard covered a lot of "spiritually bearded" artists, as Reynolds deftly puts it, but while I remain a great fan of certain acts like Joanna Newsom, Ali Roberts, Josephine Foster and Trembling Bells, I've grown disillusioned with most so-called "nu-folk". Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver are just bland acoustic rock acts. That said, I don't want to align myself with Matt Valentine, whose tedious hippy dribblings represent one of the most overrated bodies of work this decade. Earnest (read deadly dull) indie rockers like Glasgow's own Frightened Rabbit and the Twilight Sad (no patriotic cheerleading from us at Beard!) rock the beard and plaid look too, as if to wear their sincerity on their sleeves.

None of this takes anything away from the many talented and imaginative musicians who sport facial fuzz. I agree with Reynold's about the excellence of Wayne Coyne and Lindstrom's neatly-trimmed 1970s soft-rock style beards. And of course there are some magnificent beards in the worlds of metal, jazz and prog. Beard salute you!

Beard Radio 5.11.09

2009-11-06T12:16:00.002Z

This week's Beard radio is now up to listen again. Featuring a mental prog double header, some crazy metalcore, rousing 70s theme tunes, womb-like dub-folk, digital anarcore and much more. Also, Stew skelps his head on the CD player. Madness you can't do without!

Barry Gray Orchestra - Stingray (Cinephile)
Oneohtrix Point Never - Computer Vision; Rifts (No Fun)
Atari Teenage Riot - Start The Riot; Delete Yourself (Digital Hardcore)
Gentle Giant - The Boys In The Band; Octopus (Vertigo)
Rush - Tom Sawyer; Moving Pictures (Mercury)
Raymond MacDonald & Peter Nicholson - Polworth; OB30 (Iorram)
Converge - Reap What You Sow; Axe To Fall (Epitaph)
Lydia Lunch - Lady Scarface; Queen of Siam (Triple X)
John Martyn - Small Hours; One World (Island)
The Fall - I Am Damo Suzuki; This Nation's Saving Grace (Beggar's Banquet)
Pearson Sound - WAD; 12" (Hessle Audio)
Slayer - Public Display Of Dismemberment; World Painted Blood (American)

Beard Radio's Halloween Haunting

2009-10-29T21:47:00.005Z

Behold! Prepare to submit your trembling souls to the sheer wanton terror of Beard Radio's annual witching night special. Quiver with fear, shriek with horror and curse your existence as Stewart and Gary let the devil take over their souls live on air! Our shiversome selection of tenebrous tunage takes in hauntological transmissions, face-melting death metal, witchy prog, evil techno, satanic jazz invocations and readings from Byron. Miss this chilling, thrilling hour at your peril, for we shall doom the souls of non-believers for eternity! Bwahahahahaha!!!!

Black Widow - Come To The Sabbat; Sacrifice (CBS)
Cathedral - Hopkins (The Witchfinder General); The Carnival Bizarre (Earache)
The Shaggs - It's Halloween; Philosophy of the World (RCA/Rounder)
Kode 9 & The Spaceape - Ghost Town; Hyperdub 5 (Hyperdub)
Drexciya - Devil Ray Cove; Neptune's Lair (Tresor)
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck; Psychedelic Jungle (I.R.S)
Dead Raven Choir - Bluenose; My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind (Aurora Borealis)
Advisory Circle - Eyes Which Are Swelling; Other Channels (Ghost Box)
Topper - Hell's Fire; Songs of Faith and Inspiration: Spiritual Psychedelic Rock For The Devoted Listener (Sound Stories)
Repugnant - Spawn of Pure Malevolence; Epitome of Darkness (Soulseller Records)
Roswell Rudd - Satan's Dance; Roswell Rudd (Impulse!)
The Caretaker - Lacunar Amnesia; The Persistent Repetition of Phrases (History Always Favours The Winners)
Screaming Lord Sutch - All Black and Hairy; SLS & The Savages (EMI)
Blue Phantom - Violence; Distortions (Spider Records)
Hellfish - Wolfman (Death Chant)

Backgrounds:
Delia Derbyshire - Phantoms Of Darkness; Out of This World: Atmospheric Sounds from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (BBC)
Stewart Smith & Gary Thoms: ghoulish vocal horror, Garageband cathedral organ and sound effects

Special thanks to our most evil brethren Matt Evans and Reuben Kay for their musical suggestions. Satan has your back.

Beard Radio 22.10.09

2009-10-22T21:16:00.003+01:00

Beard Radio bounds across your speakers and into your body, mind and soul with an inimitable mix of Balkan folk, visionary hip-hop, nautical folk, slinky indie, next level dubstep, spectral song, neo-Krautrock freakout and stormin' acid-mod.

A Hawk And A Hacksaw - Turkiye; Deliverance (Leaf Label)
J Dilla - Lightworks; Donuts (Stones Throw)
Nic Jones - The Humpback Whale; Penguin Eggs (Topic)
St. Vincent - Actor Out Of Work; Actor (4AD)
Shackleton - Let Go; 3 EPs (Perlon)
Grouper - Heavy Weather/I'd Rather Be Sleeping; Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (Type)
Raekwon - Cold Outside (feat Ghostface Killah); Cuban Linx II (ICEAL)
Hudson Mohawke - Rising 5; Butter (Warp)
Cooly G - Weekend Fly; 5 Years of Hyperdub (Hyperdub)
Cave - Requiem For John Sex; Psychic Psummer (Important)
The Open Mind - Magic Potion; Nuggets II (Rhino)

This week's bed music is Hammond Organ Dance Party by Big Jim H. It's a groove sensation!

Beard Radio 15.10.09

2009-10-15T21:27:00.003+01:00

It's another bootylicious Beard Radio!!! Stewart and Gary bring tha ruckus!

Jakes & TC - Deep; An England Story (Soul Jazz)
Flaming Lips - Worm Mountain; Embryonic (Warner Bros.)
Jay-Z - Can't Knock The Hustle (Fool's Paradise Mix); Reasonable Doubt (Rockafella Records)
Sa-Ra Creative Partners - Gemini's Rising; Nuclear Evolution (Ubiquity)
Sonny Sharrock - Many Mansions; Ask The Ages (Axiom)
Burning Witch - Sacred Predictions; Crippled Lucifer (Southern Lord
Quarta 330 - Bleeps From Outer Space; 5 Years of Hyperdub (Hyperdub)
Evangelista - The Slayer; Prince of Truth (Constellation)

Beard Radio 08.10.09

2009-10-08T21:45:00.005+01:00

This week's show is available to listen again.

Stew and Gary bring the tunes and the swears - hey, PJ Harvey started it! A bit of dubstep, an amazing wiggly grime instrumental, some beautiful jazz, lush disco with amazing synths, Iranian classical music and NEW LIGHTNING BOLT! Rhode Island's finest unleash a gonzo hoedown.

I made a slip of the tongue during the show. I said Angels was by Don Cherry. It is of course by Don Ayler.

Darkstar - Aidy's Girl's A Computer; Hyperdub 5 (Hyperdub)
PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman A Man Walked By/The Crow Knows Where...; A Woman A Man Walked By (Island)
Position Normal - Fart In A Bottle; Cassette Album (Self-released)
Micachu and The Shapes - Calculator; Jewelry (Rough Trade)
The Thing - Angels; Bag It! (Smalltown Superjazz)
Terror Danjah - Zumpi Hunter; Gremlinz (Planet Mu)
Lightning Bolt - Funny Farm; Earthly Delights (Load)
Zeki Duygulu - Karciar Taksim; Victrola Favorites (Dust To Digital)
XTC - Respectable Street; Black Sea (Virgin)
Patrick Cowley - Going Home; 12" (Megatone)

Our Glasgow listeners can catch Darkstar, along with Rustie and Jaimie Vex'd, at Ballers Social Club at Stereo on Friday October 9th. Micachu is also playing Glasgow that night, at the Captain's Rest. And Ballers also present Terror Danjah at the Sub Club on October 22. What a month for gigging and clubbing!

Pick up the excellent Position Normal cassette album from their website. A hauntological, scatological, wonky sample-based delight!

This week's wonderful bed music was Billy Mure's Supersonic Guitars Vol II. The cover, I'm sure you'll agree, is rather beautiful.

Beard Radio 1.10.09

2009-10-03T16:10:00.005+01:00

Stewart and Gary return with an hour of amazing music and pish banter. In honour of our friend Alex's progrimage to Magma in London next week, we bring you a classic track by the French lunatics. Plus vintage Greek rebetika, deranged wobble-step, neo-Italo, dreamy bedroom pop, harsh black metal, Glasgwegian mutant hip-hop, classic doom, hauntological transmissions and glorious synth pop.

Raffertie - Wobble Horror; 12" (Planet Mu)
Pentagram - All Your Sins; Pentagram (Peaceville)
Marika Papagika - Zmirneikos Balos; I Don't Feel At Home In This World Any More (Mississippi Records)
Magma - Ima Suri Dondai; Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh (Seventh Records)
Antoni Maiovvi - They Return; Shadow Of The Blood Stained Kiss (Seed Records)
Nite Jewel - Artificial Intelligence; Good Night (No Pain In Pop)
Acephale - The Book of Lies; Mord Und Totschlag (Aurora Borealis)
Broadcast & The Focus Group - The Be Colony; Witch Cults of The Radio Age (Warp)
Hudson Mohawke - Star Crackout; Butter (Warp)
Thomas Dolby - Flying North; Golden Age of Wireless (EMI)

If you enjoyed the Thomas Dolby song, then check out Beard chum Joseph Stannard's interview with the synth-pop pioneer on Drowned In Sound.

This week's bed music was a charity shop favourite, Moog Party Time on Contour. The version of Sailor's Coconut is particularly choice, while the breezy take on Beautiful Sunday brought much cheer to the studio.

Beard Radio 24.9.09

2009-09-24T21:20:00.002+01:00

Stewart and Gary bring you the second Beard Radio of the term. And this time there's only one cock up! Yes, unfortunately there's a minute or so of dead air around the 11 minute mark 'cos we forgot to turn the microphones on. Oooops! Hey, that's the sort of hapless idiocy we're known and loved for. Our show starts about 1 minute 30 seconds into the file with the awesome NWOBHM shredder Angel Witch, by Angel Witch, from the album Angel Witch. YOU'RE AN ANGELWITCH!!!

Yes, this week's show is brought to you by the words WOBBLE and WITCH. So we've got some bass heavy wobblers and some witchy sounds for you, as well as a bunch of other stuff we like. Bugging out at the brilliance of Tyondai Braxton's solo LP, grooved by the Yiddish improv of Barnacled, haunted by the minimal pop beauty of The xx, spangled by Bizzy B's darkside classic, wobbled by Cotti's dubstep banger... In other words, a killer show. Enjoy!

Angel Witch - Angel Witch; Angel Witch (Castle Communications)
Bizzy B - Twisted Mentasm; Retrospective (Planet Mu)
Tyondai Braxton - The Duck and The Butcher; Central Market (Warp)
Anthony Braxton - RFO - MIF; Saxophone Improvisations Series F (Inner City)
The xx - Crystalised; The xx (Young Turks)
Cotti - The Truth Hurts; Soul Jazz Records Singles 2008-2009 (Soul Jazz)
Angelblood - Terrorist Bang Bang; Masses of the Daggers (Captain Trip Records)
Wounded Knee - Bools 7" verson (Nuts & Seeds)
Barnacled - Title; Charles (ESP-Disk)
Luke Vibert - Acidisco; YosepH (Warp)

Beard Radio 17.9.09

2009-09-17T21:58:00.005+01:00

This show is dedicated to the memory of the great Rashied Ali (above)

Beard Radio returns in its usual shambolic style. Some fuckin' boss tunes though.

A few technical issues, not least the silence for the first 3-4 minutes. Dunno what that's all about, cos the tune played on the monitors. Hmm....

Todda T feat Mr Versatile - Rice & Peas, Skanky Skanky (Columbia)
Kid Bera-Bera and Mr King Jeroo - Katanga Country, Soweto Music (Rough Trade)
Divorce - Early Christianity (Optimo Music)
Richard Youngs - Like A Sailor, Beyond The Valley of the Ultrahits (Sonic Oyster)
John Coltrane - Jupiter, Interstellar Space (Impulse)
Zomby - Godzilla, One Foot Ahead of the Other EP (Ramp)
Vom - Turkish Delight, Primitive Arts (At War With False Noise)
Nite Jewel - Lover (No Pain In Pop)
Robert Wyatt - Sea Song, Rock Bottom (Virgin/Domino reissue)
Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo ( Hotflush)

The return of Beard Radio!

2009-09-07T13:45:00.008+01:00

WE'RE BACK BACK BACK!!!

Beard Radio is back on air on Thursday 17th September at 7pm. We'll be online at subcity.org as well as broadcasting locally on 104.4FM. The show will also be available to listen again online.

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BEARD 0)))

We at Beard pride ourselves on creating ridiculous jingles for the show. Now those nice chaps from Sunn 0)) have recorded a special jingle just for us. Join with us in raising the doom claw in their honour. For legal reasons, I should add that the jingle may not actually be by the real Sunn 0)), just as previous jingles may not actually have been by the real Queen, Michael Rother, Dave Pearce or Lt Daniels from The Wire...

NOW WITH EXTRA FACIAL HAIR!

That's right, I've grown a beard over the summer. The Beard Radio gang are fully fuzzed up for the new term.

MORE SOON!

Now my dissertation is finally out of the way, expect some more frequent updates over the next few weeks.

Staving off blogdeath

2009-08-19T15:07:00.007+01:00

Apologies for the lack of updates, but my life has been taken over by my dissertation. It'll all be over by the end of the month, so things should pick up again in September, not least because Beard Radio shall be returning to the airwaves at subcity.org, as well as 106.6 FM in Glasgow during Freshers Week. We'll also start getting the articles we prepared for the aborted Beard issue 7 online.

Had a few pieces published in The List recently, so here's the roundup. Click on my byline if you fancy reading any of my earlier pieces, including an Instal 09 preview.

Divorce

Billy Childish

Trembling Bells

Alex Neilson and Lavinia Blackwall's (apologies for misspelling the name in the article) ecstatic folk-rock band Trembling Bells are currently on tour, so catch 'em while you can.

WED 19th CAMBRIDGE / Portland Arms
FRI 21st - AARHUS, Denmark / Jazzjuice Festival
SUN 23rd – GREEN MAN / S.Wales
MON 24th LANCASTER / Yorkshire House
TUES 25th EDINBURGH / Electric Circus
WED 26th GLASGOW / Stereo

I'll leave you with this fantastic Journey cover by Petra Haden. She gave a similar treatment to The Who Sell Out. Shame about the smirking hipsters in the crowd: Don't Stop Believing is a genuinely awesome song, as Marnie Stern and David Chase know well. (Don't watch the latter clip if you've not seen the final episode of The Sopranos btw - massive spoiler) This one goes out to my wonderful friends Matt and Georgia, ahead of their wedding next week.

Major/Minor playlist

2009-07-12T12:54:00.004+01:00

Fun night at the Flying Duck. All went well, apart from my haunted turntable, which decided to speed up to 45 rpm of its own volition. I was powerless to act and had to hastily crossfade to another tune! Heavier on the beats than any set I've played before, and all the better for it. Thanks to Stewart and Caroline for having me. They asked me to write down my playlist, so here goes:

Pastels/Tenniscoats - Vivid Youth
The Chills - Pink Frost
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Interesting Results
Pocahaunted - Chains
Kode 9 - 9 Samurai
Astral Social Club - Caustic Roe
Zombi - Spirit Animal
Zomby - Where Were You In '92?
Jakes & TC - Deep
Glass Candy - Computer Love
Telepathe - So Fine
Omar Souleyman - Leh Jani
Gang Gang Dance - First Communion
The Honeys - He's A Doll
Belbury Poly - From An Ancient Star
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Tropical Hot Dog Night
Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath - Nick Tete
Xiu Xiu ft Michael Gira - Under Pressure

---- Skeleton Bob solo set (nice Del Shannon & Cookies covers!)------

Vivian Girls - Where Do You Go?
Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
Raincoats - No One's Little Girl
Joe McPhee, The Thing & Cato Salsa Experience - The Witch
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent

---- Blood Of The Bull set ------

Secret Chiefs 3 - Akzamachamarei
The Bug ft Tippa Irie - Angry
Flying Lotus - Gng Bngr
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Theme De Yo Yo
Joker - Do It

Beard makes a public appearance

2009-07-11T10:38:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Been incredibly busy working on my Masters dissertation and preparing for a PhD interview. Outwith academia, I've been seeing Ornette Coleman at the Royal Festival Hall, Evan Parker's Double Quartet in Glasgow, and working my way through all five seasons of The Wire. All utterly amazing.

Anyway, I'm playing some records at my friend Caroline's lovely pre-club Major/Minor at the Flying Duck tonight. If you're a regular listener to Beard Radio then you'll have an idea of what to expect: jazz, hip-hop, dubstep, punk, psych, funk, indie, Turkish psych, Syrian party bangers, country, metal, Balkan beats, general nonsense and fluffed cues. What's not to like? Live music comes from Fence chaps The Red Well, Divorce guitar slinger Hillary Van Scoy in her Blood Of The Bull guise, and Skeleton Bob's Jode Henderson playing a solo set. Nice!

Amazing week of gigs ahead: the mighty Team Brick is playing Glasgow tomorrow. His long-awaited album Alogon is out now on Geoff Barrow's Invada label and it's an incredible mix of prog, doom, drone, Middle Eastern psych, jazz and modern classical. If I had more time to blog I'd be writing a lengthy review of this. Look out for Joseph Stannard's take in the forthcoming issue of The Wire. Then on Tuesday I'm going to my first stadium gig in 14 years. It can only be Springsteen. Yeah!

Steven Wells RIP

2009-06-25T11:57:00.005+01:00

Saddened to hear of the death of music press legend Steven Wells. My earnest teenage self was infuriated by his demolitions of whiney indie bands, but I eventually saw the funny side and realised that he was often right. As he says in his final column, why do society's most privileged feel their story is one worth telling? This rant for the Quietus may pick on an easy target (the egregious Los Campesinos) but the wider point about twee's political and cultural conservatism is bang on the money.

While Britpop/Cool Britiannia was in its ghastly back-slapping, self-deluding pomp, he was one of the few NME writers calling bullshit on the whole enterprise. He understood the importance of politics to culture, and his punk rock socialism and impassioned championing of multi-culturalism has had a big impact on me. Only last year, he wrote this funny, but angry, defence of immigration. In the light on BNP election gains, his piece is sadly all the more relevant and necessary.

While it's probably true he ran out of new things to say about music, it was still entertaining when one of his rants would wind up morons on the Guardian blog. I recall an amusing anti-guitar piece he wrote recently that suggested that the world's greatest guitarist was Richey Manic, 'cos his guitar wasn't plugged in. Cue "that doesn't even make sense" comments from humour-bypass idiots.

His accounts of his cancer treatment stand as his finest achievement: brutally honest, funny and touching. RIP Swells. Hope you're enjoying a ginger ale in heaven with Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer.

Stopgap, or a few notes on the state of Noise and the Glasgow underground

2009-06-15T11:26:00.013+01:00

The final Beard radio of the term should be with you soon. Just waiting on the Subcity IT bods to fix some technical issues. We're going to be doing the odd podcast over the summer, however, so watch this space for further information.

I had a lovely time at Le Weekend. The hottest weekend of the year so far, expeditions up Dumyat, and some damn fine sets from Evangelista, Trembling Bells and the improv trio of John Edwards, Steve Noble and Alex Ward. Full review to follow this week.

This is a good opportunity to share some links. David Keenan doesn't quite declare Noise dead, but his impressions of the No Fun festival in New York are of a scene that is split between power electronic fundamentalists and more inventive artists who are taking Noise off in different directions. This has been going on for some time, with some quarters denouncing the post-Wolf Eyes wave of Noise, or even latter-day Whitehouse (laptops? How could they?). I enjoy a bracing Noise onslaught as much as the next man, but it's probably true that the all out approach of power electronics has had its day. And personally, I find that scene's nihilism and obsession with "transgression" to be tedious at best. In my Plan B review of Glasgow Implodes I barely mentioned any of the power electronics acts, simply 'cos they were pretty shit. A bloke sticks one hand down his pants and gropes the audience with the other, while his mate grimly crouches over some pedals = zzzzz. Vomir's set at least stuck to its anti-music/anti-performance principles - we were given black bin liners to put over our heads while a static scree played out - but other than make us feel a little claustrophobic, what was the point? Some sheep skull wielding doom metallers went down well, but I found them to be generic and uninspired, neither heavy nor seething enough. Doom acts like this are to Sunn 0)) and Asva what Slaughter & The Dogs are to PiL and The Slits. The stuff I did like at GI was the least power electronics oriented. While Atomized's set up was essentially power electronics, their twisted takes of 80s pop hits, where dying synths could be heard crying out amidst the blast furnace roar, made for a funny, but unsettling experience. Glasgow's Vom do heavy, hypnotic space rock better than most, while Skullflower, although very much part of the original noise/industrial scene possess a heady, psychedelic sensuousness that's a million miles from the stunted grunts of your power electronics conservatives.
At the risk of raising the "our music always had a dance element" spectre, one of the more interesting developments in noise is the incorporation of electronic music. Louis Pattison's review of No Fun in the current Plan B describes Carlos Giffoni's set as bordering on acid house, while Frances Morgan, in the same issue, wonders if the laptop damaged cut ups of John Wiese have more in common with Venetian Snares than orthodox noise. Meanwhile you have Astral Social Club's psychedelic techno excursions (this year's Octuplex is a monster) and Leslie Keffer tentatively dropping in a thumping house beat to her set at Colour Out Of Space last year. While some noise fans will no doubt turn their noses up at such notions, noise and electronica share an interest in texture, dynamics and repetition, so these mutant strains make perfect sense. Another interesting development is where noise sidesteps aural assault to focus on atmosphere and disorientation: Aaron Dilloway's tape manipulations being an outstanding example. All this is to me is far more exciting than grotty noise tapes with black metal artwork. Bring on the noise/techno/bass music mutations!

Finally, an article I've been meaning to post for a while: Craig Woods on the Glasgow Underground from the excellent Paraphilia Magazine. The Scottish media has a tendency to root for anything Scottish. On one hand this is understandable - it seems mean-spirited and counterproductive to shit on new acts - but on the other it can lead to a frustrating lack of debate. So it's refreshing to read Woods write of:

the lamentable status quo that has paralysed and debased Glasgow‘s underground music scene
to the extent that the term ―avant garde is now applied (evidently without irony) to the flaccid
fetidity of Frightened Rabbit and the terminal tedium of The Twilight Sad.

Good to see somebody finally putting the boot into Frightened Rabbit and Twilight Sad's dreary "anthemic" indie rock, as well as the glut of maddeningly conservative indie-pop bands that seem inescapable (on that point, how utterly pointless and charmless is Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl? Belle & Sebastian's magpie tendencies used to be cute - Dog On Wheels steals from Love's Alone Again Or with Nancy & Lee's Summer Wine to delightful effect - but they've long since descended into immaculate but characterless soft pop pastiche) Just in case you think he's dismissing Glasgow music outright, he cites a number of fine bands from the past few years (Park Attack, The Royal We, Errors et al) but points out they are too disparate to constitute a "scene" or "wave". Until now...

With a combination of experimental originality and a frisky passion for original Punk values, these
few acts have worked swiftly and indefatigably to redraw the margins and assault Glasgow with an
enthralling trash-art sensibility which has finally given this city the kick up the arse it has long required.

He cites the ferociously good Divorce, and young bands like Ultimate Thrush (spazzed out noise punk) and Plaaydoh (noisy Deerhoof Casio pop) as examples of raw, trashy and playful bands who have been fuckin' shit up. Having also attended the Megafest event at the Flying Duck in February (wish I'd blogged it!) I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that this night felt like the start of something, as well as a culmination of the previous few years of underground DIY. As Woods writes, "This is the night that Glasgow‘s revitalised underground unites and coalesces before a suitably awestruck audience". Discussing the article with Craig, we agreed that DIY promoters Nuts & Seeds have played an essential role in cultivating the new scene by bringing weird, noisy and fun underground acts to Glasgow and getting local acts to support, and presenting it all with great artwork and ethical ideals. They've helped create an atmosphere where incredible, uncategorisable bands like Tattie Toes (still my favourite local act) can reach new audiences. There is of course more to Glasgow than guitar bands, and what makes things particularly exciting just now is the vibrancy of its club scene. Numbers and Lucky Me have blurred the boundaries, both musically and socially, between hip-hop, bass music and techno, while Curious Curious continues the eclectic spirit of Optimo, albeit with more of a cosmic disco bias. The more all these different scenes communicate the better.

I'll end on a little music. Wonderful LA psych/drone/dub duo Pocahaunted are on tour this week, playing Glasgow tonight. Here's a jam from their magical Island Diamonds platter.

Beard Radio 25 May

2009-06-03T12:24:00.005+01:00

After much delay (technical difficulties, no fault of my own) last week's Beard radio is finally online!

Featuring a lovely new jingle recorded by my granny!

Lindsay Buckingham & Stevie Nicks - Crying In The Night, Buckingham Nicks (Polydor)
The Thing - Hidegen Fujinaka Szelek, Bag It! (Smalltown Superjazz)
Betty Harris - Mean Man, Saturday Night Fish Fry (Soul Jazz)
Evangelista - The Blue Room (Constellation)
John Prine & Iris Dement- In Spite of Ourselves, A Date With John Waters (New Line)
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - Note I love You + 100, II (Eskimo)
Link Wray - The Swag, Pink Flamingoes Soundtrack (Vomit)
Mount Vernon Arts Lab - Hobgoblins, Seance At Hobbs Lane (Ghost Box)
Afrirampo - Track 1, Sutto Breakor (P Vine)

Back next week with our final Subcity show of the term. However, we have plans afoot for some Beard podcasts throughout the summer. Watch this space...

Stag & Dagger Glasgow review pt 1

2009-05-28T15:19:00.009+01:00

Mika Miko & Black Lips: Classic Grand, Glasgow, Saturday May 23

It's tempting to mythologise Mika Miko, portray them as the super-cool LA girl band from some imaginary '80s teen movie. And certainly, they're perfectly happy to humour such notions, asking us if we've seen Valley Girl, starring a young Nicolas Cage. I haven't, but then it wasn't a big hit over here, despite having a ridiculously awesome soundtrack, including Sparks' 'Eaten By The Monster of Love' and Josie Cotton's 'Johnny Are You Queer'. Truth be told, though, Mika Miko have more in common with California punk and rrriot girl than the poppy New Wave. Having last seen them two years ago in a Glasgow basement bar, I wasn't sure how their energetic punk show would translate to the larger, and altogether more plush, Classic Grand. Not to worry: these chicas shred it. Jennifer Clavin and Jenna Thornhill's vocals strike the perfect balance between dead-eyed punk yow and hyperactive teen yelp, finding a tone that's simultaneously knowing and party righteous. An underrated guitarist, Michelle Suarez spikes her power chords with angular Wipers riffs and mutant rockabilly X licks, while the rhythm section drives it all forward with an infectious groove. The slam-dancing bozos down the front don't quite it, but Mika Miko make punk rock to dance to. Clavin and Thornhill have some good moves: twisting on one foot and flapping their arms like Ari Up doing the funky chicken, and a hybrid hop-skip that's both charming and so utterly right. Towards the end, Thornhill whips out a sax for some Lora Logic skronk action, and me, I couldn't be happier. My only question: what happened to the telephone mic?

After all this Black Lips prove to be rather charmless. Their joyless simulacrum of '60s garage and '90s grunge makes you want to hit them over the head with the Nuggets boxset, or better still, a Billy Childish album. This is how it's done, bozos: catchy riffs, barely contained sexual tension, biting lyrics and infectious beats. Black Lips bludgeon when they should swing, plod when they should stomp. The atmosphere turns slightly unpleasant when bassist Jared Swilley stares out a stage jumper. “One of us is gonna get hurt and it's not gonna be me,” he whines while giving the over-excited punter the evil eye. What humourless, macho nonsense. Get me outta here!

Plan B R.I.P.

2009-05-22T13:01:00.010+01:00

I'm very sad to hear that Plan B magazine is to close. As others have pointed out, it wasn't the web that necessarily did for Plan B: the advertising recession meant it was no longer possible to keep the magazine going without cutting staff, pages and print quality. They did the right thing to quit while they were ahead: nobody would want something as special as Plan B to fall into terminal decline like Melody Maker or other magazines. It's a serious blow for music journalism. Plan B allowed its contributors the kind of freedom that had all but disappeared from the mainstream music press, and its passion, wit and intelligence was a joy to behold, even when you disagreed strongly with a writers' opinion. It looked amazing too, with beautiful photographs and illustrations that captured the personality of the music.

This feels like the end of an era. I first picked up Plan B's predecessor, Careless Talk Costs Lives, when I moved to Glasgow to study journalism in 2002. Increasingly frustrated by the NME and a bit bored of Mojo's dad rockness, I needed something that directed me to the world of possibilities I sensed was surely out there. Meeting my Beard co-conspirator Neil Jacques, and discovering Stephen Pastel's then recently opened Monorail record store were important factors in my awakening, but CTLC played a huge role in my exploration of unknown realms. At first it seemed infuriating. I'd never really been a big Melody Maker reader, so I was perhaps unprepared for Everett True's wildly opinionated and personal writing. This was not how we were being told to write in journalism class! But I soon came to love the magazine's approach, and came to trust its writers' integrity and passion. CTCL tore the retrogressive bullshit of NME's trumpeted New Rock Revolution to pieces, all the while pointing me to the good shit. The magazine also had a strong sense of underground music history, and with Neil's record collection and a shop like Monorail at hand, it wasn't difficult to access the likes of Daniel Johnston or Jad Fair - indeed, both artists performed wonderful shows in Glasgow during the summer of 2003. CTCL was the first place I read about Peter Brotzmann, thanks to a free jazz roundup by the excellent Jon Dale. The striking illustration (apologies, I don't have a copy at hand to credit the artist) of a walrus 'tasched bezerker made me think, 'I wanna check that crazy motherfucker out'. I didn't actually get round to that for another few of years, but a seed was planted.

Plan B continued what CTCL had started, but thanks to the direction of Frances Morgan, developed its own personality. It was broader in scope, perhaps a little less cranky, but still hugely characterful. While indie-rock focused, it had the confidence to cover grime, techno, dubstep, noise, metal, experimental music and pop in a passionate, knowledgeable manner. As a poster on the Plan B forum put it, a magazine that can write about Keiji Haino alongside Britney is right up my street. I'm really proud to have contributed to recent issues, albeit in a minor way, and have my modest efforts placed alongside pieces by such intimidatingly great writers as Frances, Neil Kulkarni, Everett True, Joseph Stannard, Petra Davis, Kicking K, Lauren Strain, Miss AMP, Richard Stacey, George Taylor, Nicola Meighan, Daniel Barrow, Euan Andrews, Louis Pattison, John Doran, Matt Evans, Melissa Bradshaw et al.

The CTCL and Plan B forums have been lively and friendly places over the years, helping me through several crappy temp jobs and various episodes of personal angst. The forums introduced me to all kinds of amazing music, books and films, and, most importantly, to some wonderful people. It began for me when a few of us Glasgow posters realised we were all going to the same gigs. A meet up was surely in order. Good times and great friendships ensued, and various ATP's, Green Man's and other festivals brought posters from further afield together. We even ended up meeting some of the Plan B staff, who turned out to be as generous, friendly and righteous as their writing suggests. This open and good natured spirit continues. It's no great exaggeration to say that CTCL and Plan changed my life.

As the staff have pointed out, this is not the end, but an opportunity for new beginnings. I can't wait to see what its staff and contributors get up to next and wish them all the best for the future.

Finally, let me direct you to some excellent posts by Everett True, Daniel Barrow, Jon Dale and Ned Ragget.

Stag & Dagger

2009-05-20T13:36:00.005+01:00

The festival season is already well underway, and Stag & Dagger looks to be a right bobby dazzler. Beard is particularly psyched about seeing Mika Miko again, following their legendary Nuts & Seeds gig with No Age two years ago. In addition to playing some of the most fun, danceable punk rock you'll ever hear, The LA punks tore up a Mika poster on stage: "That asshole stole our name!" What's not to like? Other acts we're looking forward to are The Mae Shi, Dananananaykroyd, Clark, Dolby Anol, Twitch and David Barabarosso, one of the chaps behind the excellent Curious Curious club night.

GLASGOW SATURDAY - 23 MAY

COLD WAR KIDS, THE MAE SHI, PHANTOM BAND, WHITE DENIM, BLACK LIPS, THE TWILIGHT SAD, THE ALIENS, BMX BANDITS, CLARK (WARP), JD TWITCH (OPTIMO), DANANANANAYKROYD, THE JOY FORMIDABLE, MILES BENJAMIN- ANTHONY ROBINSON, CURSIVE, CHEW LIPS

GRINGO STAR, THE ELVIS SUICIDE, MEURSAULT, BOYCOTTS, OVER THE WALL, ART OF PARTIES DJS, MEN & MACHINES, NME DJS, RECORD PLAYERZ DJS, FRENCH WIVES, HOT CLUB DJS, PAPER PLANES, WOODENBOX WITH A FISTFUL OF FIVERS, KONX-OM-PAX, LEMONADE, FINDO GASK, JACOB YATES AND THE PEARLY GATE LOCK PICKERS, DOLBY ANOL, THE GAY BLADES, DAVID BARBAROSSA, TUBELORD

Glasgow Venues & Acts

Art School (hosted by The Skinny magazine)
David Barbarossa, Meursault, Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lock Pickers, White Denim, Phantom Band, KONX-OM-PAX, Tim Exile, Clark

Art School - Vic Bar
Lemonade, Joy Formidable, Chew Lips, Record Playerz DJs, Art of Parties DJs, DOLBY ANOL

Nice N Sleazy
Boycotts, Findo Gask, Gay Blades, Cursive, Hot Club DJs

Captain’s Rest (hosted by NME Radio)
Over the Wall, Paper Planes, Tubelord, Miles Benjamin-Anthony Robinson, French Wives, Dananananaykroyd, The Mae Shi, NME DJs

Stereo
Woodenbox with a fistful of Fivers, St Deluxe, BMX Bandits, The Aliens, Men & Machines, JD Twitch (Optimo)

Classic Grand (hosted by Simple)
Elvis Suicide, Gringo Star, Mika Miko, Black Lips

ABC1 (hosted by Firetrap)
Secret Guest, The Twilight Sad, Cold War Kids

Beard radio 18.5.09 - win tickets to Le Weekend!

2009-05-20T11:24:00.003+01:00

Back once again with some hot new platters and a little hidden history...

Don't miss Omar Souleyman (above) and Group Doueh on the amazing Sublime Frequencies tour this week!

Joker - Do It, 12" (Kapsize)
Slayer - Psychopathy Red (Tour CD)
Divorce - Juice of Youth, 10" (Optimo)
Josie Cotton - Johnny Are You Queer? (Bomp!)
Trembling Bells - Your Head Is The House of Your Tongue, Carbeth (Honest Jons)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums - There Is No Light , The Snake (Leaf)
Abner Jay - I'm So Depressed, The True Story of... (Mississippi Records)
Sunn 0))) - Big Church, Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Interesting Results, Grandes Exitos (Paw Tracks)
Omar Souleyman - Laqtuf Ward Min Khaddak, Dabke 2020 (Sublime Frequencies)
Spiritual Singers - Kimia, Ntsamina (Mississippi)

We also have tickets to give away for Le Weekend, Stirling's Out Limits Music Festival, taking place from Friday 29th to Sunday 31st May.

Starring Evangelista, Trembling Bells, John Edwards, Drew Mullholland of Mount Vernon Arts Lab and Portishead's Adrian Utley, Eddie Marcon and an exhibition by Ghost Box's Julian House, it's another cornucopia of leftfield delights.

To win, simply answer the following question...

Evangelista's Carla Bozulich was a member of which '90s alt country band?

(a) Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (b) Uncle Tupelo (c) Geraldine Fibbers

Answers to beardmag@yahoo.co.uk

We will announce the winners on next week's show.

Beard radio tunes into cosmic frequencies on the Holy Mountain

2009-05-11T23:31:00.003+01:00

Not the last show of the term after all. Hurrah! We're back with some truly beautiful music, as well as a truly stupid new jingle.
Cosmic free jazz, Zimbabwean mbira, Turkish psych, splatter beats and a truly remarkable Japanese psych-punk gem from 1983 that's been uncovered by those righteous doods at Holy Mountain records.

Old Time Relijun -Indestructible Life, Catharis In Crisi (K)
Erin Koray - Karl Dalar, Elektronik Turkuler (Dogan)
Margot Guryan - Love, Take a Picture (Oglio)
Thelonious Monk - I Surrender Dear, Solo Monk (Sony)
Shimat - Shut Up (Hellfish Remix), 200 (Planet Mu)
Mhuri Yekwa Chiboora - Ngoto Yakaipa, Mbira Singles Collection (Dandemutante Music)
Onna - Mune O Tsutsunde, 7" (Holy Mountain)
Nomeansno - It's Catching Up, Wrong (Alternative Tentacles)
Notorious B.I.G. - The What (feat Method Man), Ready To Die (Arista/Puff Daddy Records)
Noah Howard - Space Dimension (America Records)
Sugar - Come Around, Beaster (Creation)

This week's background music: Moog Party Time!

Pictured: Onna (above), Old Time Relijun's Arrington De Dionyso (below)

Eggs Eggs Eggs: Beard Radio gets sulphurous

2009-05-04T22:05:00.003+01:00

EGGS EGGS EGGS!!!

Yes, it's another edition of Beard Radio, brought to you following some late night screenings of John Waters' trash classic Pink Flamingos. We open with a couple of glorious tunes from that film's wondrous soundtrack, and later on, drop an impassioned Ike & Tina number beloved of Baltimore's most famous son.
We've also got new tunes from Alasdair Roberts, Sir Richard Bishop, Mika Miko, Kode 9, and Yoshimi's latest project, OLAibi, as well as the incredible Egyptian surf psych of Omar Khorshid. We also pay tribute to the Scottish playwright, poet and counter-cultural figure Tom McGrath, who passed away last week. A life-long jazz fan, in 1973 McGrath brought Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Mahavishnu Orchestra to Glasgow. So we've got some classic '70s Miles in there. I think next week might be our last show of the term. Don't quote me on that though!

Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent, Pink Flamingos Soundtrack (Saliva Films)
The Nighthawks - Chicken Grabber, Pink Flamingoes Soundtrack (Saliva Films)
Alasdair Roberts - Hazel Forks, Spoils (Drag City)
OLAibi - Eisa, Tingaruda (PECF)
Miles Davis - Black Satin, On The Corner (Columbia)
Omar Khorshid - Raqsed Al Fada, Rhythms of the Orient (Lebanon/Egypt)
Sir Richard Bishop & His Freak of Araby Ensemble - Kaddak el Mayass, Freak of Araby (Drag City)
Ike & Tina Turner - All I Can Do Is Cry, A Date With John Waters (New Line Records)
The Ex, Getachew Mekuria & Guests - Eywat Setenafegagn, Moa Anbessa (Terp Records)
Mika Miko - Turkey Sandwich, We Be Xuxa (PPM)
Kode9 - Black Sun, 12" (Hyberdub)

Beard goes to Hinterland

2009-04-28T11:57:00.002+01:00

With special guest Guanoman in tow, we preview the Hinterland festival. All these fine tunes, plus an exclusive Guanoman/Beard live improv duet!
The listen again has some overspill from Benzo and Nav. The Residents! Nice.

Tattie Toes - Amapola, Split 7" with 7 Hertz (Nuts & Seeds)
Aphrodite's Child - The Four Horsemen, 666 (Vertigo)
Black Sun - Code Black (At War With False Noise)
Remember Remember - Fountain, RememberRemember (Rock Action)
Flat Earth Society - Flatology (Crammed)
Marion Brown - Once Upon A Time (A Children's Tale), Geechee Reminiscences (Impulse)
Guanoman - Son of Son of Ghazilla (Transdimensional Sushi)
Desalvo - Brown Flag, Mood Poisoner (Rock Action)
Rustie - Aspartame n Spice (Warp)
Death - Freakin' Out (Drag City)
Capillary Action - Bloody Noss (Discorporate)
Parliament - The Silent Boatman, Parliament (Invictus)

Beard DJs @ Captain's Rest, Friday 24 April

2009-04-24T15:42:00.005+01:00

Just a quick not to say I'll be playing some records at the Captain's Rest, Great Western Road, Glasgow tonight from 8pm alongside the lovely Simon and Eva. Jazz, funk, Afro-pop, Syrian party bangers, hip-hop, dubstep, grime, and out sound of other varieties.

Apologies for the lack of updates: the last month has been essay madness. But the radio show will be very much BACK on Monday. We'll be previewing the Hinterland festival with our very special guest, that putrid bearded beauty Guanoman!

Instal links

2009-03-29T14:46:00.004+01:00

I'm writing up some of last weekend's Instal festival for Plan B, so I'll keep my powder dry for now. However, I have come across a few Instal related links that are of interest, as well as my preview of the festival for The List. Hey, it's my blog, a bit of shameless self-promotion is par for the course.

Taking part in Phil Minton's Feral Choir was an amazing, liberating experience. Minton begins by chuckling and chortling. You find yourself joining in and then he's got you. All inhibitions are lifted and before long you're wailing, shrieking and slobbering with the best of them. Some splendid person has posted edited highlights of the Feral Choir on youtube. This is the first recording I've heard, so it's interesting to compare how it sounds from the audience as opposed to within the choir. Powerful and dense. Go team! There are a few more video clips from the festival. Steve McCafferty's dazzling sound poetry is especially worth a look. If anyone objects to me posting these up just drop me a line and I'll remove them.

Couple of blog posts on Instal. David Keenan didn't see anything he truly loved this year, but he's absolutely right to praise the organisers for their achievements. He seems agnostic about the Feral Choir, but his analysis of how sound poetry has infected the underground is timely and perceptive. I have to confess that most of the ultra-minimalist stuff didn't do it for me, so it's interesting to see what a fan of this music made of it all. Enter Richard Pinnell at Watchful Ear.

Beard radio's post-Instal peyote bass party!

2009-03-25T14:57:00.002Z

A post Instal peyote bass party from Beard Radio!

Grails - Reincarnation Blues, Doomsayer's Holiday (Temporary Residence)
The Raincoats - Shouting Out Loud, Odyshape (Rough Trade)
Kode 9 & The Spaceape - Kingstown, Memories Of The Future (Hyperdub)
Pocahaunted - Track 3, Chains (Tear Drop)
Lucky Dragons - Wooden Cave Loop, Dream Island Laughing Language (Upset The Rhythm)
MADVILLAIN - Rainbown, Madvillainy (Stones Throw)
Pocahaunted - Track 2, Chains (Tear Drop)
Deradoorian - High Road (Lovepump United)
Royal Trux - Lightning Boxer, Royal Trux (Drag City)
Hawkwind - Master Of The Universe, In Search Of Space (Liberty)

Beard radio on 106.6 FM 16.3.09

2009-03-18T14:05:00.003Z

Our last FM show (don't worry, you can still catch us online!) and the second of our Instal previews, featuring highlights from the festival, past and present and an interview with Barry Esson of curators Arika.

The Monks - Love Comes Tumbling Down, Black Monk Time (Light In The Attic)
Cobalt - Gin, Gin (Profound Lore)
Seymour Wright - In The Wright Place At The Wright Time (www.arika.org.uk)
Hermann Nitzch - Die Geburt (www.arika.org.uk)
Giant Sand - Center Of The Universe, Center Of The Universe (Restless)
Charlemagne Palestine - Duo Strumming For Two Harps, Strumming Music (Robi Droli/New Tone)
Jerome Noettinger w/ Metamkine - Kill Your Timid Notion 2004 excerpt (www.arika.org.uk)
Arington De Dionyso - Bird Shadow, Breath Of Fire (K Records)
Gorilla Biscuits - Degradation, Start Today (Revelation Records)
These Are Powers - Parallel Shores, All Aboard The Future (Dead Oceans)
Nels Cline, Wally Shoup, Chris Corsano - Lake Of Fire Memories, Immolation/Immersion (Strange Attractors Audio House)

Beard Radio 106.6 FM - 9 March

2009-03-11T12:50:00.008Z

Steve McCaffery and friend do their thang

Good show this week. Well, I enjoyed it at least!

We start off with some cracked Middle-Eastern avant-rock from Sun City Girls, followed by one of the stars of their label Sublime Frequencies' European tour, Omar Souleyman, with an awesome Syrian party banger.

In anticipation of Glasgow's amazing Instal festival (20-22 March) we bring you Steve McCaffery's incredible sound poetry, Phil Minton's 100 strong Feral Choir, and Joan La Barabara singing the birds who live in her head. Vocal experimentation is one of the strands running through the programming, so we pay tribute to that with some other artists who explore the potential of the human voice. There's playful sing-song from Afrirampo, hirsute balladry from Bonnie 'Prince' Billie, and sublime soul from the great James Carr. Finishing it all off, we bring you a tripped out masterwork from Sun Ra, whose title is a tribute to festivals like Instal and anyone opening minds and ears to new sounds.

Sun City Girls - Space Prophet Dogon, Torch of The Mystics (Cargo)
Omar Souleyman - Leh Jani, Highway To Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria (Sublime Frequencies)
Steve McCaffery - Carnival (excerpt) www.arika.org.uk
Afrirampo, Want You, Kore Ga Mayaku Da(Tzadik)
Phil Minton - Feral Choir (Vicenza) www.arika.org.uk
Bonnie 'Prince' Billie - My Life's Work, Beware (Domino)
Joan La Barbara - Les Oiseaux Qui Chantent Dans Ma Tete www.arika.org.uk
James Carr - Pouring Water On A Drowning Man (Goldwax)
Sun Ra - There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), Lanquidity (Evidence)
This week's background music: Meco - Star Wars Theme!

Take a chance and find DESTRUCTION!!!

2009-03-03T22:11:00.003Z

Beard radio goes Italo, goes grime, goes jungle, goes jazz, goes radiophonic...
and finds time to dedicate a couple of romantic numbers to our lovely friends Mark and Xime, who are getting married on Friday. Enjoy!

Mr Flagio - Take A Chance (Squish)
Astral Social Club - Caustic Roe, Octuplex (VHF)
Durrty Goodz - Destruction, Ultrasound, (Awkward Music)
LTJ Bukem - Atlantis (Good Looking)
Miles Davis Rated X, Get Up With It (Columbia)
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrel - You're All I Need To Get By (Tamla Motown)
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Important In Your Life (Bezerkley)
The Advisory Circle - Frozen Ponds/ Celebrate Michaelmass Now!, Other Channels (Ghost Box)
Jesus Lizard - Mouth Breather, Goat (Touch & Go)
This week's background music: Hammond Dance Party! by Big Jim "H". A charity shop classic!

Beard radio on 106.6 FM 23.2.09

2009-02-25T18:32:00.002Z

The first of four FM broadcasts. It's a bit of a mess! I was pure knackered and made numerous technical errors, including speaking into the wrong mike for the first half. Not quite dead air - you can hear me if you turn it up!
Other than that, some bangin' tunes as ever...

Gang Of Four - Natural's Not In It, Entertainment (EMI)
Zombi - Spirit Animal, Spirit Animal LP (Relapse)
Ornette Coleman - Civilisation Day, Science Fiction (Sony)
The Thing - Broken Shadows/Ride The Sky, Action Jazz (Smalltown Superjazz)
Bob Lind - Cheryl's Coming Home, Hearing Is Believing: The Jack Nitzche Story (Ace)
Wolf Eyes - Stabbed In The Face, Burned Mind (Subpop)
Mobb Deep - Shook Ones Pt II, The Infamous (Loud)
Belbury Poly - From An Ancient Star, From An Ancient Star LP (Ghost Box)

Beard Radio 18.2.09

2009-02-18T17:48:00.006Z

It's another shambolic edition of Beard radio!

Abe Vigoda - The Garden, Skeleton (V2)
Albert Ayler - Bells, Love Cry (Impulse)
Antony & The Johnsons - Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground, The Crying Light (Rough Trade)
Triple School - Biggie On The Thorax, Plaaydoh/Triple School split EP, (Nuts & Seeds)
Ex Models - Pink Noise, Zoo Psychology (Frenchkiss)
Harry Pussy - I Fought The Police, What Was Music? (Siltbreeze)
King Soly - Tamil Dub, Box of Dub 2 (Soul Jazz)
Alan Courtis & Aaron Moore - untitled (CDR)
The Trembling Bells - Carbeth (Honest Jons)
Black Dice - Lazy TV, Repo (Paw Tracks)
Edgar Varese/Julliard Percussion Ensemble - Ionisation, Complete Works (Decca)

Make sure you catch Trembling Bells, Alex Neilson's new song based project, playing live this week!
Feb 18th Glasgow, Captain's Rest
Feb 20th Edinburgh, The Bowery
Feb 26th Glasgow, Stereo (supporting Vetiver)
And they'll be on tour throughout the UK in April!

As mentioned on the show, you have until the 20th to pick up a £20 early bird ticket for Instal 09. Further details at www.arika.org.uk

If you enjoyed the Courtis/Moore jam, make sure to catch them on tour this week. Their Glasgow date is on Saturday 21st at the Flying Duck. Support comes from fellow Volcano The Bear traveller Daniel Padden and Sarah Ketchington with her incredible mechanical instruments! It's a bargain £4 and the doors are at 7pm. More info at www.nutsandseeds.org

Finally, Subcity Radio will be launching its four week FM broadcast with a special event at Glasgow School of Art on Friday. More details here.

Beard Radio's Cosmic Disco Inferno 9.2.09

2009-02-09T21:52:00.010Z

This week's Beard Radio... it's thumpin', it's jumpin', it's top trumpsin'. We've got Lindstrom's INCREDIBLE Boredoms remix, some amazing Algerian jeep beats, gorgeous drone and, in anticipation of Glasgow's Halt Bar Valentine's Hijack, some blisteringly horrible noise and some deranged violin abuse.

Bellemou Benissa - Li Maamdouche L'Auto, 1970's Algerian Proto-Rai (Sublime Frequencies)
Missy Elliot - The Rain, Supa Dupa Fly (EastWest)
Fennesz - The Colour Of Three, Black Sea (Touch)
Harmonia -Dino, Musik Von Harmonia (Revisited)
Boredoms - Ant 10 (Lindstrom Remix), Superroots 11 (Vice)
Gang Gang Dance - House Jam, Saint Dymphna (Social Registry)
Blue Sabbath Black Fiji/Helicoptere Sanglante - Untitled, S/T (Countripsyde)
Helhesten - Dithyramb, Chops split LP (Upset The Rhythm)

Tonight's background music: Fuzzy Felt Folk (Trunk Records)

For your reading pleasure

2009-02-08T19:29:00.003Z

Our favourite psychogeographer (although Stewart Home runs him close), Iain Sinclair, talks to the Guardian's Rachel Cooke about his new book on Hackney, the Olympic development and urban decay. And as a Beard bonus beat, here's Sinclair in action, taking the BBC for a walk around Abbey Park cemetery in Stoke Newington.

For my Masters dissertation, I'm interested in exploring psychogeography in the context of writing - or filmmaking, music, art etc - about Glasgow. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to claim Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan et al as psychogeographers, but their work does contain elements of that, admittedly rather loose, concept: walking, critiques of urban development, hidden places, magic... I've also dug up some interesting travel writing on Glasgow, including an Alfred Watkins inspired mapping of the area's ley lines by Harry Bell. His book, Glasgow's Secret Geometry, is sadly out of print, but the full text is online here. And although I can't check the catalogues online, I imagine Glasgow's wonderful Mitchell Library has a copy.

Interesting article by Jessica Hopper on what the success of No Age could mean for LA's all-ages punk venue The Smell. The Smell has become a model for DIY scenes, creating a genuine sense of community. The worry is that its success could change all that, as hipsters and suits move in, robbing it of its integrity. Here's hoping The Smell continues to spread its righteous, pungent vibes across the world. This reminds me, I should really get my No Age interview on here. Uni comes first, but I'll get there eventually.

Simon Reynolds, blogging for the Grauniad, applies his recent theorising on middlebrow rock and pop to Animal Collective. Predictably, the idiot trolls who plague Comment Is Free are quick to call Reynolds pretentious, blah blah etc etc. Just as dispiriting is the commentator who wonders where all the good British music is. If only he'd clicked on the awesome Zomby clip Reynolds posts on the blog... Anyway, the idea of music that sits between the mainstream and the underground, the experimental and accessible is nothing new, but it's interesting to see Reynolds reclaim the term middlebrow from dullards like Coldplay and Elbow, in much the same way academia has sought to use the term positively to describe, for example, certain strains of women's writing from the mid-20th century. One commentator suggests that middle brow is the best kind of music and no one needs a Metal Machine Music. I'm sure Reynolds would disagree. Surely the two can't exist without each other? Experimental music exists in its own right, not just as a lab creating raw materials to be filtered and processed for mass consumption. The main problem with middlebrow is its unavoidable class consciousness. While that can be useful in understanding the modes of production and comsumption, it does tend to oversimplify things. Maybe this is me showing my age, but I don't really care about whether music is popular or not. Of course, in the real world, these things can make a difference in terms of cultural currency. Ultimately, Christgau's term, semi-popular music is the best we've got.

Beard Radio shakes its rump

2009-01-27T17:20:00.003Z

Epic visonary punk, Italian death jazz, Brooklyn hipster nonsense, lo-fi scuzz, West Saharan guitars, Japanese koto, turntable drone, early 90s hip-hop, wonky and some huge rump shaking bass: it's another exciting edition of Beard Radio!

Wipers - Youth Of America (Morphius)
Silver Jews - Tennessee (Drag City)
Telepathe - Devil's Trident (V2)
Zu - Beata Viscera (Ipecac)
The Bug ft Tippa Irie - Angry (Ninja Tune)
Chieko Mori - Tokyo Light (Important)
Sic Alps - Sing Song Waitress (Siltbreeze)
Group Doueh - Wazan Samat (Sublime Frequencies)
Phillip Jeck - Chime Again (Touch)
Main Source - Snake Eyes (Wild Pitch)
Neil Landstrumm - Shit Daddy Bass (Planet Mu)

Feast your eyes and ears on this short film about the incredible Western Saharan band Group Doueh!

Fuck Mixing Let's Dance

2009-01-26T14:56:00.004Z

It's been rather quiet on here of late, so you may have been wondering what we've been up to. Writing essays and moving house mainly. Lack of internet access has restricted my postings too. There was Beard radio last week, but we did do a show the week before, and we'll be back on air tonight. Keep an eye out for some tasty new posts - reviews, features and think pieces - as well as further episodes of Beard radio. Details of our first show of 2009 as follows:

Beard radio 12/01/09

Laurie Anderson - Sharkey's Day (Island)
Animal Collective - My Girls (Domino)
Zomby - Fuck Mixing Let's Dance (Werk Discs)
Arthur Russell - I Couldn't Say It To Your Face (Rough Trade)
The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby (Reprise)
Wino - Release Me (Southern Lord)
23 Skidoo - Kundalini (LTM)
Groupe Inerane - Kuni Majagani (Sublime Frequencies)
Black Sheep - Flavor Of The Month (Mercury)
Pavement - Stereo (Domino)
The Stooges - LA Blues (Elektra)

Bit of a boring post this, so let's liven up proceedings with some interesting links!

Beard mag regular Ben Haggar has an epic roundup of his favourite albums of 2008 at his Stereosanctity blog. A great read as usual, with plenty of interesting choices.

Over at the Quietus, Luke Turner takes the annual industry led hype orgy to pieces, exposing the complicity between PR and editorial and the cynical careerism of acts like Florence & The Machine and White Lies.

Great tribute to Ron Asheton by UK DIY underground renaissance man Chris Summerlin at Diskant.net. Chris also has a new blog, which is well worth a look.

And finally, the sad news that David Berman has brought the Silver Jews to an end. His posts on the Drag City forum are pretty remarkable. Berman reveals that his estranged father is a right wing corporate lobbyist. For years Berman sought refuge from this in music and academia. Now he wants to take him on. I'm sad there will be no more Silver Jews music, but I look forward to new projects, whether it's more poetry, or, as he suggests, muckraking investigative journalism or screenwriting.

I've seen or heard some great new bands recently, so I'll be back soon with links in a few days. An antidote to the corporate tipster frenzy.

Christmas Beard Radio!!!

2008-12-15T20:58:00.003Z

Skip forward about three minutes at the start of the listen again feature. I can assure you that ghastly NME indie turd was nothing to do with us, although the Bad Seeds song beforehand was pretty sweet.

Aaanyway, IIIIIT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Join Matt and Stew in the Beard Christmas Grotto, along with Stevie Nicks on tambourine, for an hour of Christmas cheer and favourite tunes from the past year.

Yo La Tengo - It's Christmas Time (Matador)
Low - Just Like Christmas (Rough Trade)
Harvey Milk - Death Goes To The Winner (Hydra Head)
Hercules and Love Affair - Time Will (DFA)
Marnie Stern - Roads? Where We're Going We Don't Need No Roads (Kill Rock Stars)
Beat Happening - Christmas (K Records)
Ghostface Killah - Ghostface Xmas (Def Jam)
Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs - Corner Of The Season (Sonic Oyster)
Meshuggah - Pravus (Nuclear Blast)
Flaming Lips - Christmas At The Zoo (Warner Bros.)
Darlene Love - (Christmas) Baby Please Come Home (Impression)

Beard Radio 8.12.08

2008-12-08T20:46:00.002Z

It's a family affair, as Beard co-founder Neil Jaques returns with his super-cute toddler in tow! Stew, Neil and Lucas bring you songs about sharks and porpoises and other sea creatures and much, much more besides!

Highlight of the show is Lucas's amazing live improvisation with our special guest, Dutch free-uke maestro, Dick Van Grobschnitten!!!! Channelling the primitivist third eye spirit of such cosmic travellers in eternal throat majesty like Yoko Ono, Derek Bailey and Spongebob Squarepants, the pair deliver an incredible, once in a lifetime throwdown of radical thought and expression!!! Available tomorrow on art edition 10" vinyl from Beard Records, a snip at £29.99!!!*

All that and toe tappin', Scottish country dance band synth freakouts (no, really!) in the background from the Billy Anderson Band, as salvaged from a charity shop bin by your crate digging Beardsters.

B-52s - Rock Lobster (Island)
Vaselines - Molly's Lips (Subpop)
John Coltrane - Sun Star (Impulse)
Robert Wyatt - Stalin Wasn't Stallin' (Rough Trade/Domino)
Xhol Caravan - Planet Earth (Hansa)
The Replacements - I Hate Music (Twin Tone/Rhino)
Yo La Tengo - Season Of The Shark (Matador)
The Monkees - Porpoise Song (Columbia)
Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Def Jam)
Kultur Shock - God Is Busy (Koolarrow Records)
Beach Boys - Steamboat (Brother)

*That last bit may not be strictly true

Love & Rockets: New Stories

2008-12-07T20:33:00.004Z

Los Bros Hernandez - Love & Rockets: New Stories (Fantagraphics Books, 2008)

Now into its third decade, the Hernandez brothers’ Love & Rockets is firmly established as one of the great art-comics and an important expression of Mexican-American art. Hip, sexy, beautifully drawn and, above all, brilliantly written, Jaime’s Locas stories and Gilbert’s Palomar saga raised the bar for independent comics in the 1980s, and their work continues to be full of vitality and imagination.

Following the final issue of Love & Rockets Volume II last year, the comic has switched from a periodical pamphlet to an annual trade paperback. The new format suits them: Jaime presents the first instalments of a new adventure featuring his Locas characters, while Gilbert and occasional contributor Mario experiment with one-off stories and bizarre humour.

Jaime’s gorgeous cover art, depicting a giant female superhero lifting the roof of an art deco office building as if it’s the lid of a teapot, is a playful hint towards the book’s content. In contrast to the ironised, even dismissive attitude towards mainstream superhero fare in some art-comics, Jaime unapologetically celebrates them, while playing with their conventions. Although the sci-fi trappings of Jaime’s earliest Locas stories were dropped in favour of realist stories about Maggie Chascarillo, a bisexual Mexican-American, and her friends and lovers, the author continued to express his love of comics, wrestling and punk through his characters. His new Locas story, ‘The Search For Penny Century’ begins with Maggie poring over issues of Ti-Girls, a second tier female superhero comic, with her room-mate, and possible lover, Angel. (Jaime has a gift for gradually drawing out details of characters’ relationships and histories. Angel is a relatively new character, and he has been careful not to give away too much too soon). The twist, which Jaime has been setting up for some time, is that the universe of these comics exists alongside that of Locas. We learn that Penny Century, Maggie’s reckless bombshell friend, has finally realised her dream of gaining super-powers, but in the process has lost her two daughters. In a neat take on the La Llorona legend, she travels the universe searching for them, leaving mayhem and destruction in her wake. After the complex treatment of memory and ageing in recent stories like Ghost Of Hoppers, this sudden leap into the realms of fantasy might seem a little trite. But by exploding Penny to cosmic dimensions, Jaime dramatises her grief and reminds the reader how she’s reinvented herself, from a working class Chicana to a billionaire’s wife. It also humanises her: for possibly the first time, we see Penny in tears, a vulnerable, lonely woman struggling with a terrible loss. Coming to her aid are the Ti-Girls, of whom Angel is revealed to be a member, even though she has no super-powers. She is joined by the middle-aged Espectra, and the statuesque Alarma, who, prior to this, we had been led to believe was playing at dress-up. As with any superhero universe, there is a hierarchy, and the Ti-Girls are very much the working-class outsiders in relation to the snooty WASP sorority girls, The Fenomenons. As with his mid-period stories about women wrestlers, Jaime proves himself to be an acute observer of female power relationships.

The art is stunning, with the clean lines, inspired composition, and mastery of body language Jaime is renowned for. Yet he retains the ability to dazzle with new tricks, running wild with Jack Kirby-esque motion lines in the action scenes, creating an almost psychedelic array of swooping, swirling trails around his heroines.

Gilbert’s stories are much more inscrutable. Stepping away from the Palomar universe, his stories present a travelling salesman suffering from a bloated stomach, a gay man leaving his lover to explore frozen wastes, two Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis analogues slaughtering aliens, and a kangaroo scoring big in Vegas thanks to some coin dispensing humanoid penises. The first of these, ‘Papa’, is the most successful, a magic realist miniature that creates sublime effects through Gilbert’s expressive landscape work. The second, ‘Victory Dance’, feels like a fragment, yet on reflection, its ambiguity is quite affecting, leaving the reader to speculate on the characters’ history and motivations. There is also a surreal strip entitled ‘?’, where the camera, as it were, floats through a house to reveal two cheerful ducks and a floating orb drinking from a bottle of wine. Thick, rounded lines and stylised interiors make it look different to the rest of his work, and the results are both funny and unsettling. Gilbert also draws a brief farce penned by Mario. It’s not one of their finer moments. While his strengths lie in extended narratives (the intense serial killer drama Human Diastrophism, the sprawling portrait of Los Angeles in Love & Rockets X), Gilbert’s shorter pieces allow his imagination free reign. Neither he nor Jaime has been known to bow to expectations and this latest incarnation of Love & Rockets is no exception.

Stewart Smith

Beard radio: Nightmare Before Christmas Special!!!

2008-12-04T17:17:00.003Z

An ATP: Nightmare Before Christmas Special, featuring tracks from some of the acts appearing at the Mike Patton and Melvins curated shindig!

With our very special guest co-presenter, the one and only Guanoman!!!

Fantomas - Charade (Ipecac)
The Melvins - Oven (Boner)
Os Mutantes - Ave Lucifer (Luaka Bop)
Taraf de Haidouks - Untitled (Crammed)
White Noise - Here Come the Fleas (Island)
Junior Brown - My Baby Don't Dance To Nothin' But Earnest Tubbs (Curb)
Meat Puppets - We're Here (SST)
Double Negative - Redshift (Blazed Up Records)
The Locust - Wet Nurse Syndrome Hand Me Down Display Case (Gsl)
The Damned - Stab Your Back (Stiff)
Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Karin (Pias)
Zu/Mats Gustafsson - Over The Furnace (Atavistic)
Dalek - 3:46 (Hydra Head)
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks - Burning Rubber (Antilles)
Bernard Parmegiani - Matieres Induites (INA-GRM)
Mastodon - March of the Fire Ants (Relapse)
Leila - Time To Blow (Domino)
Vocal Sampling - Mi Guantanamera (Sire)

2008-11-27T10:53:00.000Z

Beard on Subcity Radio 24.11.08

2008-11-25T14:33:00.005Z

William Parker

This week! Music! Mumbling! An MV&EE diss!

Lokonon Andre and Les Volcans - Mi Kble Dogbekpo (African Scream Contest, Analog Africa, 2008)
William Parker - Morning Mantra (Double Sunrise Over Neptune, Aum Fidelity, 2008)
Arthur Russell - Habit Of You (Love Is Taking Over Me, Audika, 2008)
Bruce Haack - Electric To Me Turn (Electric Lucifer, Omni, 1970)
Baby Dee - Compass Of The Light (Safe Inside The Day, Drag City, 2008)
Directing Hand - What Put The Blood (What Put The Blood, Dancing Wayang, 2008)
Robert Wyatt - Gharbzadeghi (Old Rottenhat, Domino reissue 2008, orig 1986)
Burning Star Core - Challenger (Challenger, hospital, 2008)
This week's background music: The Best of Martin Denny on Liberty Records

Hinterland 2009

2008-11-23T13:29:00.003Z

Finally, Glasgow gets its own one-ticket, all venues festival!

Hinterland will showcase established and upcoming Scottish talent as well as some of the UK and Europe’s best emerging and well known bands. The visual art element of the festival will provide a backdrop to the entire event in venues and en route. About 50% of all performers at Hinterland will be Scottish and the Hinterland Committee will advise upon the final line-up. Bands will run from 7-11pm and will be followed by DJ sets and guest appearances in clubs running into the early hours on both days.

Looks promising, and with Glasgow School Of Art and Rock-A-Rolla magazine involved, the lineup should hopefully be pretty diverse.

Taking place between 30th April and 1st May, it may just be the thing to plug the gap left by Triptych.

RememberRember Interview

2008-11-20T10:43:00.004Z

The Royal We and Sexy Kids bassist, Multiplies synth wizard, Mogwai auxiliary, Flying Matchstick Men axe-smith…Graeme Ronald’s musical CV is impressive to say the least. But it’s as RememberRemember that Ronald has come into his own, spinning guitar loops and found sounds into densely beautiful compositions that suggest a post-rock Steve Reich, or Mogwai making mischief with Eno’s ambient works. His debut album, on Rock Action, is out now and the launch party takes place on Sunday at Glasgow’s Brel bar. To recreate the dense layering of the album, Ronald is playing with a special 10-piece ensemble.

For those who know you as a member of Multiplies or TRW, the sound of RR might come as a surprise. When did you start making RR music and why?

I don't think anyone, particularly now with the rate and manner in which music is consumed, listens exclusively to one type of music. I love pop music, and the Royal We was a great pop band, really fun to be involved with. Multiplies, for me at least, was all about repetitive rhythm, circular melody, propulsion and movement. I think the connection to RememberRemember is more evident there - slowed down a lot though, obviously! I've always doodled away on tunes in my bedroom whether it was tracking with two ghetto blasters, four track tapes, or computers. It was in the midst of the maelstrom that playing with Multiplies kind of became that I started developing these ideas a bit further, about four years ago I suppose, but it took me another couple of years to have the confidence to start playing them live.

Do you use loops and delay as a compositional tool or are they just a way of creating the arrangements?

I bought a looping pedal when I was in America with Mogwai and it was a godsend to me. I think they are the greatest invention since the television! I find writing music on a computer quite tedious and time consuming, now whenever I have a melody in my head I just stick it right down with my guitar and instantly start imagining what other melodies and textures could complement it. I actually find looping a truer rendering of the music that my brain is imagining because it's almost like being able to sing or play 20 melodies at once, which is quite hard to do in real life.

You also use toys, stationery and other gadgets as sound sources. What’s the thinking behind that?

Partly it's just a fun gimmick, it's hardly tremendously original, Matmos being the first obvious example that comes to mind, but I just like the idea that anything can be an instrument. I use the toys and everyday objects mostly to create rhythms, because I can't play drums and they just sound a lot cooler than drum machines. I also really enjoy those happy coincidences when you're listening to a record at home and somebody’s cooking in the room next door, or some building work is going on outside, or like now, I’m tapping the keys on my dad's laptop. So you hear all of those sounds alongside the music and it almost becomes part of it. There are a lot of "everyday" sounds on my record because I want people to be listening to it and not know if what they’re hearing is on the CD or happening in their house somewhere.

To what extent are your live sets improvised?

Since all the sampling and looping is done live, the sets are never identical performances, there's always some new mistake that ends up on a loop that has to be accounted for! The improvisation comes in as a response to making the mistakes into not being mistakes anymore. Every song has a set of four or five melodies that I really like and try and make sure I remember to play them at some point.

The live set has evolved from solo performances to a trio with violin and saxophone – how has this come about and what are the aims?

My very first couple of gigs were actually improvised "happenings" with random assortments of friends. I wasn't taking it particularly seriously then. When I wrote some pieces that I really liked, and realised I could do it on my own, I started playing solo. I met James (saxophonist) randomly smoking outside (Glasgow music bar) Nice & Sleazy's a while ago and we got talking about music and after a while started playing together. He can create some really rich, beautiful tones. Joan (violin) was in The Royal We and we'd been talking about working on Remember stuff for ages. I've been in too many more or less traditional "rock" bands, and wanted to incorporate tones that just can't be created with a guitar or a synth. I still play on my own from time to time though. I see RememberRemember being more of a fluid collective than a band, where people are free to come and go whenever they feel, apart from me, obviously.

Tell us about the album.

I worked at Green Door studios with Sam from Mother and the Addicts engineering. It was an extremely productive session. All of the gear in there is analogue, and it was recorded mostly to tape. I wanted all of the long looped sections to be played continuously live, so it was hard work...it sounds like it paid off and I’m super excited about it. The instruments, apart from the obvious sax, violin and guitar, range from mobile phone keypads to a Chinese harp, with a lovely smattering of Rhodes piano too! It's going to be fucking impossible...I mean quite a terrific challenge to recreate live!

Beard Radio 17.11.08

2008-11-17T20:47:00.008Z

The Brotz brings the motherfucking skronk with the aid of his enormous horn.

IT'S A BRONTOSAURUS SEX PARTY!!!

Minutemen - The Glory Of Man (Double Nickels, SST)
Rolo Tomassi - Oh Hello Ghost (Hysterics, Hassle)
Brotzman/Gustafsson/Nilssen-Love - Bullets Through The Rain (The Fat Is Gone, Smalltown Superjazz)
High Places - Visions The First... (High Places, Thrill Jockey)
Brian Eno/David Byrne - Regiment (My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, EG/Ryko Reissue)
Extra Life - I Don't See It That Way (Secular Music, Planaria)
Beach Boys - 'Til I Die (Surf's Up, Brother)
Sunhil Carguly - Ajhoun Na Aye (Bollywood Steel Guitar, Sublime Frequencies)
Kleenex - You (Angry Side) (Lipstick Traces, Rough Trade)
Mika Miko - Capricoronations (CYSLABF, Kill Rock Stars
Yeasayer - Sunrise (All Hour Cymbals, Now We Are Free)

Plus the not exactly wonderful Moog Party Time playing in the background as bed music. It's high time I made use of all my dodgy charity shop records. Watch out for more easy cheesey sounds in coming weeks.

Beard on Subcity Radio 10.11.08

2008-11-10T20:33:00.008Z

Gil J Wolman

To paraphrase Fontella Bass's scatalogical exclamation in tonight's first tune, this show is like a low fart that's music to your brain. In the best possible way.
We've got some hot jazz, existential art-song, Lettrist sound-poetry and a novel take on a Jewish melody. There's a Bollywood synth and steel guitar wigout and some tranced out excursions for organ and tape delay. We also celebrate Neil Young's loopy cinematic folly Human Highway by playing an awesome cut from his unfairly maligned electro-rock opus Trans and a rare, but super-catchy apocalyptic hoedown from Devo. Enjoy!

Art Ensemble Of Chicago - Theme De Yo Yo (Stance A Sophie, Soul Jazz reissue 2008)
Gil J Wolman - Megapunies: 24 Mars 1963 (Lipstick Traces, Rough Trade comp, 1993)
Secret Chiefs 3 - Akramachamarei (Xaphan: Book 9 of Angels Vol 9, Tzadik, 2008)
Scott Walker - Psoriatic (The Drift, 4AD, 2006)
Gautam Dasgupta - Duniya Mane Bura To Goil Maro (Bollywood Steel Guitar, Sublime Frequencies comp, 2008)
Neil Young - Computer Age (Trans, Geffen, 1982)
Devo - It Takes A Worried Man (Pioneers Who Got Scalped, Rhino/Wea)
Terry Riley - Anthem Of The Trinity (Shri Camel, Sony, 1978)

Terry Riley

Beard Radio - US Election Special

2008-11-03T20:47:00.004Z

It's our US Election Special!

Songs about politics, race and protest, as well as some comedy clips, old and new.

We also pay tribute to the late, great Yma Sumac, and Mother Of Invention Drummer Jimmy Carl Black.

James Brown - Funky President (Polydor)
Nas - Black President (Columbia)
DVDA - America Fuck Yeah! (Atlantic)
Bill Hicks - The Elephant Is Dead! (Rykodisc)
Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag (Anti)
Yma Sumac - Ataypura (Capitol)
Mothers of Invention - Concentration Moon (Rykodisc)
Richard Lewis - Election Rant (dailyshow.com)
Parliament - Chocolate City (Casablanca)
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan (Columbia)
Richard Pryor - Bicentennial N****r (Warner)
Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet (Def Jam)
Extra Golden - Obama (Thrill Jockey)
Charlie Haden - We Shall Overcome (Impulse)

Here's Richard Lewis's glorious election/penis rant on the Daily Show in all its glory!

Even More Sounds of Death and Terror: It's The Vault of Horror!!!

2008-10-28T17:42:00.007Z

Absolutely chuffed to be part of this jolly shindig! Hang on, that's not very Halloweeny is it? Let's start again. There's been a murder on the dancefloor! Shake your severed limbs and watch you don't slip on the pools of blood as a beastly line up of musickal deviants commit horrific acts upon your ears! Can you handle the Vault Of Horror? Bwah ha ha ha!!!

HALLOWEEN LINE-UP:

Vom

Plaque Terror (Hockyfrilla/Nackt Insecten)

Bridget Hayden (Vibracathedral Orchestra)

Nalle

The Radiation Line VS Mills & Boon

PLUS film screenings, visuals

DJ sets from John Cavanagh, eva, Stu from Beard magazine, and Anne from BaNG!bAnG!

Friday 31st October @The Flying Duck 8pm til 3am £6

It's the bloodcurdling Beard Radio Halloween Special!

2008-10-27T21:52:00.005Z

Egad! It's the Beard Halloween Special!!!!

With Shocking Stew of The Suppurating Wounds joined in the studio by Monstrous Matt The Vile Necromancer of Partick and Rancid Reuben The Mad Monk of Harrow!!!!!

Horrorcore! Horror jazz! Horror Soundtracks! Nasty Japanese Death Metal! Camp variety! The freakiest of freak beat! Electronic horror! And terror so unclassifiable it will rupture your spleen!!!!

Black Sabbath - The Wizard
Gravediggaz - Diary Of A Madman
Ronald Stein - Spider Baby
Sun Ra - Halloween In Harlem
Delia Derbyshire - Wizard's Labratory
Coffins - Buried Death
Douglas Byng - I'm A Mummy
Jason Crest - Black Mass
The Tango Saloon - Dracula Cha Cha Cha
Runhild Gammelsaeter - Collapse (Lifting The Veil)
The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black - I Believe In Halloween
Superfine Dandelion - Janie's Tomb
Roky Erikson - Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)

Spooky sound effects from Disney's Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House
Nasty sounds of torture from BBC Sound Effects 27: Even More Sounds of Death and Horror, produced by the mighty Mike Harding.
B-Movie Trailers from Wavy Gravy: For Adult Enthusiasts Vol.1

Also, check out Subcity's new spoken word show, Rara Radio!

Beard Radio 20.10.08

2008-10-20T23:00:00.004+01:00

I'm joined this week by my good chum Colin Ferguson, who selected the tunes in the second half of the show (Eddie Marcon onwards). New stuff from DSP, No Age and Christina Carter, some utterly beautiful Japanese drone-pop from Eddie Marcon, spooked Ethiopian jazz, neo-psychedelic pastoralism from XTC and genius DIY dada-pop from The Homosexuals. We mark the demise of unlamented Austrian far-right scumbag Jorg Haider with MDC's Nazis Shouldn't Drive.

"They should've paid attention in driver's ed
Instead of hating foreigners, queers and reds"

Death Sentence Panda - Untitled (Insects Awaken, Upset The Rhythm)
XTC - Yacht Dance (English Settlement, Virgin)
Girma Beyene - Set Alamenem (Very Best Of Ethiopiques, Manteca)
Karate Party - Pressure (Moo-La-La)
No Age - Teen Creeps (Nouns, Subpop)
Christina Carter - Capable Of Murder (Original Darkness, Kranky)
Eddie Marcon - Amime (Shining On Graveposts, Preservation)
Washington Phillips - Lift Him Up That's All (Goodbye Babylon, Dust To Digital)
Hasil Adkins - Chicken Shake (Norton 7")
MDC - Nazis Shouldn't Drive (Magnus Dominus Corpus, Sudden Death)
The Homosexuals - Prestel (Astral Glamour, Messthetics)
Marty & Elaine - Stayin' Alive (Private Press)
Deluxe Folk Implosion - Daddy Never Understood (Domino 7")

Beard on Subcity Radio 13.10.08

2008-10-13T21:37:00.006+01:00

Japanese disco bliss!
16 minutes of DOOM!!!!!
Shouty punk rock!!
Math-pop joy!
Free jazz in praise of culinary excellence!!!

It can only be another exciting episode of Beard Radio!!!

Triple School - Sniffin' Glue (Autoconstuccion CD, CCA, 2008)
Mercury Rev - Trickle Down (Boces, Beggars Banquet, 1993)
High Places - Storm (High Places, Thrill Jockey, 2008)
The Cecil Taylor Unit - Pots (Mixed, Impulse, 1961)
Foxface - Tortillas (Autoconstuccion CD, CCA, 2008)
Times New Viking - No Sympathy (Stay Awake EP, Matador, 2008)
Asva - Game In Hell Hard Work In Heaven (What You Don't Know Is Frontier, Southern, 2008)
Mariah - Shinzo No Tobira (Japan 1983)
Marnie Stern - Ruler (This Is..., Kill Rock Stars, 2008)
Gummy Stumps - Succulent (Autoconstuccion CD, CCA, 2008)

Check out the wonderful 20 Jazz Funk Greats blog for more about Mariah.

This week we celebrate Abraham Cruzvillegas's exhibition at the CCA, Autoconstruccion, by playing some of the songs he co-wrote with Glasgow bands. The CD is available from the gallery. We strongly recommend you visit the exhibition, take a ride on the soundsystem bicycle, and pick up a copy of the CD.

Apologies for the massive fuck up, ie the dead air for the first few minutes of Asva. I left the fader on cue, so I could hear it, but the listeners couldn't. A completely basic error, I really am a numpty. So if you're listening again, skip forward a few minutes when Asva is supposed to start.

Beard Radio 6.10.08

2008-10-07T20:59:00.003+01:00

Joe McPhee

Francisco Lopez

On this week's show we preview Kill Your Timid Notion, Dundee's pioneering festival devoted to exploring the borders between sound and vision. Brought to you by the good people behind Glasgow's Instal Festival and The Music Lover's Field Companion in Gateshead, KYTN brings together experimental music, performance, art and film, making for an experience that'll open your ears, eyes, and mind. While we can only represent the sonic side of the festival, we hope our selections will have you intrigued - expect to hear sounds electric and acoustic, digital and analogue, human and animal. We're not joking about the animals by the way.

All that plus the usual mix of miscued records, overuse of the word "awesome", and new tracks from some of our favourite artists.

I must apologise for my ridiculous banter. I'd just been to a postgrad meet and greet, where wine did a flow quite freely. So there's a very relaxed presentation style this week, as well as some impromput microphone stand spring improvisations. Well, they made some great resonant tones!

Playlist in full:

Cato Salsa Experience & The Thing with Joe McPhee - The Witch
Antony & The Johnstons - Shake That Devil
Lucky Dragons - Morning Ritual
Keith Rowe - The Room (excerpt)
Gang Gang Dance - First Communion
Tattie Toes - Ximon
Vivian Girls - Tell The World
Francisco Lopez - La Selva (excerpt)
Shonen Knife - Top Of The World

Beard on Subcity 29.9.08

2008-09-30T00:32:00.003+01:00

From hurricane lashed Texas to a dreich Glasgow, Beard co-founder Neil Jaques is back for our latest show! And he's brought some amazing old records from his father-in-law's collection with him. Meanwhile, Stewart will be dropping some recently acquired bombs. So after a barrage of new releases for our first show, we fancied going for a kind of new old theme this week. So we'll be winding back a couple of years, then back to the 1940s, before beaming right back through time again, like music geek timelords.

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - I Love You Big Dummy (Lick My Decals Off) Reprise
Rammelzee - Pogo (The Bi-Conicals Of...) Gomma
Yes - Beyond and Before (Yes) Atlantic
Jelly Roll Morton - Dead Man's Blues (compilation on Bluebird)
Kelis - Good Stuff (Kaleidoscope)
June Tabor & Maddy Prior - My Husband's Got No Courage In Him (Silly Sisters)
Olivier Messiaen - Liturgie De Cristal
(Quartet For The End of Time - Deutsche Gramophon recording with Daniel Beironbom)
Laura Nyro - New York Tendaberry (New York Tendaberry) Columbia
Ornette Coleman - Free (Change Of The Century) Atlantic
Charlie Feathers - Uh Huh Honey (Uh Huh Honey) Norton
Minor Threat - Betray (Out Of Step) Dischord
Nas - New York State of Mind (Illmatic) Columbia

Beard Radio on Subcity 22.09.08

2008-09-22T21:41:00.004+01:00

Tributes to the late, great Norman Whitfield and Rick Wright. Some very noisy stuff from two of our favourite Glasgow acts! Some very pretty music! Some nonsensical banter. It can only be Beard Radio!

Gather round ye feral children and worshippers of Pogon. Fire up the crystal set and let Beard Radio lift you heavenward on radiant beams of feedback and breath. Or in other words, tune in to hear Stewart and regular guest Matt, aka Guanoman, mumble and miscue some very good records. Huzzah!

Temptations - Psychedelic Shack Tamla Motown
Pink Floyd - Paint Box EMI
Abe Vigoda - Dead City PPM
Zach Hill - Dark Arts Ipecac
Mick Barr & Zach Hill - Desert Glass Bubble Kill Rock Stars
Baby Dee - Big Tittie Bee Girl Drag City
Desalvo - Tongue Scraper Pts 1 & 2 Rock Action
Rolo Tomassi - I Love Turbulence Hassle
Fred Frith - King Dawn Tzadik
Kasai Allstars - Kafuulu Balu Crammed Disc
Made Out Of Babies - Peew The End
Kylie Minoise - Neck Brace Art Appreciation Club Kovorox Sound

Desalvo's album launch takes place on Sunday 28th September at Stereo. Support comes from the equally mighty Kylie Minoise!

The Return of Beard Radio!

2008-09-11T21:04:00.003+01:00

Yes! Your favourite follically minded radio show is back back back on Monday 15th September at 7pm on Subcity Radio.

We've got a summer's worth of musical discoveries to share with you, as well as some hot new releases. Not quite sure what Monday's show will bring, although there's a fair bet we'll play some of the acts from Colour Out Of Space, as well as new tunes from some Beard radio favourites.

Look forward to new jingles, special guests and our hapless attempts to get to grips with the station's new mixing board!

Colour Out Of Space

2008-09-02T22:46:00.003+01:00

Behold the Lovecraftian beast emerging slobbering and shrieking from the English channel this weekend! Yes, it's Colour Out Of Space in Brighton this weekend. Organised by Dylan Nyoukis [of Decaer Pinga, Blood Stereo and the label Chocolate Monk], it's one of Britain's best underground and experimental music shindigs, featuring noise both psychedelic and harsh, dadaist sound poetry, free improv, DIY scuzz and all kinds of uncategorisable brain wobble and throat gush. Did I just write that? Anyway, ignore my sub-Coley guff, and know this: Colour Out Of Space is fucking necessary. See you there.

Save The Common Place!

2008-08-27T21:41:00.003+01:00

Posting this on the behalf of Dom of Leeds collective Chinchilla and the mighty CHOPS. Leeds has a healthy underground music scene, renowned for its drone based improv and noise rock, and is a key part of the UK's DIY infrastructure. So the potential closure of one of its best venues is more than a local matter. Sign the online petition and leave your comments. Take it away Dom!

The Common Place is a volunteer run venue, activist centre, meeting space and vegan cafe in Leeds.

Chinchilla have put on a load of gigs there, including involvement in the monthly Funder Strikes x2 bands and club night.

The Council have revoked The Common Place's Club licence, which is the major source of funding for rent, etc. The Council believe that the Club does not satisfy the conditions for being a ‘qualifying club’ in relation to a qualifying club activity to which the certificate relates (section 61, Licensing Act 2003). This doesn't exactly give a reason for why they have revoked the licence, but it probably has something to do with The Common Place showing a film called 'On the Verge', which is a film about Smash EDO, an anti arms/anti war campaign from Brighton. "The film has become notorious, not so much because of the material it contains but because of the reaction of police forces and local authorities to it. Made for less than £500, the film tells how a small but committed group of activists, smashEDO, are taking on the Brighton base of an international arms manufacturer and, in the process, their local constabulary. The police, who are not shown in a good light in the film, intervened to stop the movie's premiere at a cinema in Brighton, and since then police officers and council officials have been paying calls to venues across the country where On the Verge (so called because the smashEDO protesters were confined for a while to a narrow grass verge opposite the factory they were targeting) is due to be shown, suggesting that it is not a good idea to show the film." (The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/27/ethicalliving.activists).

We believe that the Council's actions are totally unwarranted. The Common Place is the only independent, self-financed community, cultural and political space in the city centre. As a private members club, it serves as a vital resource for hundreds of local residents as well as supporting voluntary and community activity, particularly around homelessness, housing, environmental, womens' and asylum issues.

By revoking the Common Place's Club Premises Certificate, the Council is removing the Common Place's ability to generate much-needed funding through licensed events, meaning almost certain closure. We believe this is exactly the kind of venture Leeds City Council should be supporting to increase active citizenship in the city.

If you could spend a minute of your time signing this petition to the Council, it could help make the difference.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/thecommonplace

http://www.thecommonplace.org.uk

Student Radio Awards 2008

2008-08-21T16:24:00.003+01:00

Beard Radio is delighted to be one of Subcity's nominations for Best Specialist Programme in the BBC Radio 1 Student Radio Awards. We're very flattered to be chosen. You can listen to the clip we've submitted, as well as those of the other nominated Subcity shows here.

Hopefully we'll be back with more Beard radio in the new term. In the meantime, we're working our little beardy socks off to bring you the long-awaited Beard issue 7. Huzzah!

Live! Tonight! Team Brick! RememberRemember! Guanoman! Noma!

2008-08-14T11:07:00.003+01:00

We're not promoting this, but we're great fans of the artists involved, so we're only too happy to spread the word. Yes, tonight sees Team Brick return to Glasgow for his first solo show here in almost a year. Team Brick's debut album proper is due for release at some point this year on Geoff Barrow's label Invada. Like his live show, it's hard to know exactly what to expect, other than total brilliance. Psychedelic noise, looped and delayed instruments and objects (whatever he has to hand really), heavy riffage, manic skronk are all a possibility. One certainty, however, is his intense, hugely powerful vocals. He's a Bristolian Mike Patton, a West Country C Spencer Yeh!, intoning Biblical threats, projecting stentorian odes and screaming blue murder. Whatever, he rules and you don't want to miss him. Here's what he did in Glasgow last year...

RememberRemember, signed to Rock Action, needs no introduction. Beautiful minimalist post-rock, spun from loops of guitar, glockenspiel, toys and whatever else he has lying around.

Super psyched about the live return of the mighty Guanoman. It's been a year since his last show, but this bizarro rock thunder beast has been busy concocting new prog-doom epics and siring a Guanochild. Huzzah!

Completing the bill is Noma, creating buzzing drones and ambient brain massage with a guitar and reclaimed home electronics. Watch out for his pink vibrator!

Diskant is ten!

2008-07-24T21:03:00.004+01:00

Glasgow based music and pop culture website Diskant is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a fabulous all singing, all dancing party at the CCA. Live music comes from much fancied bliss-popstrels Findo Gask and existential electronic punks Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element, while I'll be manning the decks for one of my mildly shambolic, but hopefully funky and righteous, DJ sets. And what's more, there's an indie tombola, where you can get the chance to win some top prizes. See you there!

W'Owfi Fest

2008-07-13T12:44:00.004+01:00

Beard fully supports Wo'Owfi, a fantastic day of underground music and DIY fun in aid of Organisation For Women's Freedom In Iraq.
There's live music from Kylie Minoise, Skeleton Bob, Gummy Stumps, Jer and Shane, Mills & Boon, Mike & Solveig, James William Hindle and Calvin Halliday, Johnny & The Entries and some Taiko Drummers. Plus DJ sets from Katrina of the Pastels, Dep from Monorail, Simon from Lucky Luke, What's more, there's a zine stall, a food and book swap and a raffle, featuring prizes donated by Alisdair Roberts, The Pastels, Euros Childs and many more good people.

It all kicks off today at 3pm. Sorry we didn't post this sooner, we're useless disorganised mooks. Should be a great day. Photos and stories to follow.

Beard hijaks the Halt Bar Hijack! (for a couple of hours at least...)

2008-06-11T22:00:00.013+01:00

Now then, now then, there's a fine FREE event a-happening this weekend (Fri 13-Sun 15 June) at the Halt Bar on Glasgow's Woodlands Road and yours truly has been asked by the marvellous young gents running it to spin a few top pop tunes. I'll be on from 5-8pm on Saturday, so come down and say hello.

The Halt Bar Hijack features Beard faves Kylie Minoise, Nackt Insecten, Noma, Vom, Super Adventure Club, Triple School, Plates (featuring Howie from the mighty Tattie Toes), Wounded Knee, Sparrow & The Workshop and much, much more. And did we mention it's FREE? Yes, we did, but it bears repeating.

The last Beard radio! (for now...)

2008-06-09T23:00:00.003+01:00

Our last show! Myself, Neil, Guanoman and Chris. We can only apologise for Chris's offensive banter. He is a bad, bad man.

Sparks - Dick Around (Hello Young Lovers, 2006)
Cheap Trick - Surrender (Heaven Tonight, 1978)
Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing (1955)
Clipse - Mama I'm Sorry (Hell Hath No Fury, 2006)
Dananananaykroyd - The Greater Than Symbol And The Hash (Cissy Hits, 2008)
Shellac - Prayer To God (10000 Hurts)
Yo La Tengo - Did I Tell You? (Fakebook, 1991)
Fleetwood Mac - Sara (Tusk, 1979)
Erin Koray & Ter - Hor Gorme Garibi (Hava Nargile
Eat Skull - Punk Trips (Sick To Death, 2008)
THe Hospitals - Hairdryer Peace (Hairdryer Peace, 2008)
The Open Mind - Magic Potion
Patty Waters - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair (ESP Disk, 1966)
Bo Diddley - Diddy Wah Diddy
Meshuggah - Combustion (Obzen, 2008)
Beach Boys - Solar System (Love You, 1977)
Gorguts - Nostalgia (Obscura, 1998)
Sparks - I've Never Been High (Exotic Creatures of The Deep, 2008)
Harvey Milk - The End (Special Wishes, 2003)
Robert Wyatt - Sea Song (Rock Bottom, 1974)
The Tornadoes - Telstar (Decca 7", 1962)
Velvet Underground - Afterhours (The Velvet Underground, 1968)

And then Black Static Transmission, with added Guanoman and Beard. Not for the easily offended. Again, we can only apologise...

VALET - Kehaar [ 'Naked Acid' ]
MOUTHUS - The Final Tribes [ 'For The Great Slave Lakes' ]
MELVINS - Dies Iraea [ 'Nude With Boots' ]
APPLEBLIM - Gold & Silver [ 'Soundboy Punishments' ]
FRACTION - Get Out of Her [ 'Moon Blood' ]
GROUND ZERO - Those Were The Days [ 'Plays Standards' ]
SKULLFLOWER - Fak Revolt [ 'Ponyland' ]
KASTANETZ & KATZ SINGING ORCHESTRAL CIRCUS - Rumble 69 [ 'Quick Joey Small' ]
ALICE COLTRANE + PHAROAH SNADERS - Journey In Satchidananda [ 'Journey...' ]

Beard Static Transmission - final radio show!

2008-06-08T16:01:00.005+01:00

Yes, that time has come: the final Beard radio of the term. Hopefully Subcity will let us come back for more shambolic broadcasting mayhem in the Autumn (when I'll actually be a real live student again!), but in the meantime prepare to wrap your lugs around a very special final show. This is no ordinary edition Beard radio, but an epic three hour jam with Black Static Transmission, who are normally on right after us. We'll do our normal show from 6-8pm, but with added noise mayhem and offensive banter from student radio legend Chris Storey (his Grind Your Mind show won an award for best specialist programme), before hanging around to invade his airspace from 9pm. We'll also have our good chum and jingle co-creator Guanoman in to drop some heavy bizarro rumbles and massage your third eye with some esoteric nuggets.

Doing the radio show has been an absolute blast, so we want to go out on a high. We'll be playing stuff we've always wanted to play along with some favourites from the past year. And we're taking requests! Bring it on: beardmag@yahoo.co.uk

No Age

2008-06-05T19:37:00.007+01:00

Photo: Jeremy Hogan

Apologies for the lack of posts and radio show this past week - I've been jumping around to popular beat combos at Barcelona's glorious Primavera Sound festival. More on that coming soon, but in the meantime, here's something from No Age. Their Sub Pop debut Nouns is out now and it's chock full of scuzzy noise-pop gems. The LA duo werebitchin' at Primavera - catch 'em when they roll up in your area!

This is the full transcription of the interview with No Age I did for The List. I would liked to have asked more questions, but it was only for a short piece and I had limited time. But hats off to Dean Spunt for the righteous and fun things he has to say. They've played Glasgow by now, but hopefully they'll be back soon. You can read the published article here.

Tell me about how No Age started.

Dean Spunt:It started with Randy and I thinking about the type of music we wanted to hear. We wanted to make music we could listen to. Our first proper show was at the smell in April 2006. Randy and I love to play music together and it happens so natural that we decided to make it a two piece, instead of adding more members. The first songs we wrote were Dead Plane, Get Hurt and Neck Escaper.

The Smell scene has been gaining a lot of attention. How has being a part of that shaped you as people and as a band?

DS:The smell, for us, has always been a place we admired, so the attention is due i think. The amount of attention has nothing to do with us as people or as a band, we would still be doing the same thing (because we were!) if nobody had heard of us or the smell. In my mind the smell has been the coolest punk club around for the past ten years, so i have always seen it the same way, mystical and awesome. The Smell hasn't changed a bit either.

You have great merchandise, especially the bandanas. Any new lines being introduced for the next tour?

DS: We made a NEW ERA hat for the magazine FADER, designed shirts for the skateboard company ALTAMONT, a shirt for ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION, some sunglasses with a no age / void logo... void was a hardcore band from the 80's if you didn't know, one of the best bands to ever exist. Only the glasses will be on tour, everything else will be in stores or are super limited items..

Some bands "are all about the music" but for you there's so much more - art work, personal politics, a DIY ethos. Do you think it's important to represent something?

DS:It is important for us to represent ourselves, to be honest and just make music. The other things are important because they are what we do, and become what we are. We are both vegan, we enjoy playing in places other than rock clubs, we like art, punk rock, etc. don't get us wrong,
we are "all about the music" too.

Your live shows are inclusive and joyous. As you progress to larger venues and festival stages how will you maintain that quality?

DS: By doing the same thing! Trying harder to make it more fun, and hopefully we will be able to.

Along with Times New Viking, you favour a scuzzy lo-fi sound. Is this a reaction against increasingly slick indie-rock production or more of a reflection of your influences?

D: Both. But mainly for us it was because we couldn't afford to be in a studio. All we had was our friend who recorded some stuff on 1/4 inch tape for us and we had a digital twelve track. The new record was mainly recorded in studio's on very, very nice equipment. That was exciting for us, a new challenge. That didn't stop us from bringing tape recorders, broken microphones, mini disc players etc into the studio with us to record stuff as well, all that stuff ended up on the new record too.

Your last Glasgow show, with Mika Miko was a blast. Are you looking forward to playing Optimo?

DS: we are looking forward to it VERY MUCH! since Glasgow was our favorite show of that whole tour by far.

Beard goes to Primavera 26 May 2006

2008-05-26T21:36:00.002+01:00

OM!
Lord Kitchener

Bit of a Primavera theme this week, with most of the show taken up with tracks from acts appearing at the Barcelona festival this week. But there's still room for Archie Shepp, Lightning Bolt, Bill Wells, Faust, Siouxie, Lord Kitchener, some Kiwi pop and Ethiopian jazz.

The Sonics - Strychnine
Public Enemy - Night of The Living Baseheads (It Takes A Nation of Million, 1988)
Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain (Wonderful Rainbow, 2003)
Faust - It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl (Faust So Far, 1972)
Six Organs of Admittance - Jade Like Wine (Shelter From The Ash, 2007)
Om - At Gaza (Conference Of Birds, 2006)
Bill Wells & Aby Vulliami - Black Christmas (Loathsome Reel Book, 2008)
Archie Shepp - Girl From Ipanema (Fire Music, 1965)
Tindersticks - Travelling Light (This Is... 1994)
Cat Power - Cross Bones Style (Moon Pix, 1998)
The Fall - 50 Year Old Man (Imperial Wax Solvent, 2008)
Look Blue Go Purple - Circumspect Penelope (Tuatara: A Flying Nun Compilation, 1986)
The Chills - Satin Doll (Dunedin Double EP, 1981)
Lord Kitchener - My Wife's Nightie (London Is The Place For Me)
Mulatu Astatqe - Yekermo Sew (Very Best of Ethiopiques)
Young Marble Giants - Choco Lono (Collossal Youth, 1980)
Throbbing Gristle - Almost A Kiss (The Endless Not, 2006)
Animal Collective - Water Curses (Water Curses EP, 2008)
Siouxie & The Banshees - Slow Dive (Kissing In The Dreamhouse, 1982)
Edan feat Dagha - Rock N Roll (Beauty & The Beat, 2005)
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Shotgun Willie (Real Emotional Trash, 2008)
Shangri Las - Out On The Streets

Beard radio 19.05.08 - win tickets to Le Weekend!

2008-05-19T22:26:00.010+01:00

Evan Parker

Hamid Drake & Raymond Boni

This week I'm joined again by Mark Haydn, who has brought his lovely tunes and dulcet Northern tones for your aural stimulation. Listening back to the show I realise we forgot to turn the jingle channel off during our opening bit of chat. Oooops!

We're previewing Le Weekend, Stirling's No Limits Music Festival, which kicks off at the Tolbooth on Friday 23 May, with a smattering of tunes from acts performing at this year's festival, as well as highlights from previous years. So that means William Parker, Hamid Drake, Evan Parker, Bill Wells, The Pastels, Thurston Moore and Borbetomagus. Tasty!

Win a Le Weekend festival pass!!!

Which of the following artists has Evan Parker not worked with?

(a) Robert Wyatt
(b) Charlie Watts' Big Band
(c) Michael Parkinson's House Band

Email your answers to beardmag@yahoo.co.uk

Here's our playlist, with Le Weekend connected artists highlighted.

De La Soul - Buddy (Three Feet High and Rising, 1989)
RZA - A Day To God is 1000 Years (Birth of a Prince, 2003)
Richard Thompson - Roll Over Vaughan Williams (Henry The Human Fly, 1972)
Ennio Morricone feat Edda Dell'Orso - Alla Serentina (Dell'Orso Sings Morricone, 2005)
William Parker & Hamid Drake - Sky (Summer Snow)
Tape - Sponge Chorus (Mileu, 2008)
Ex-Models - Chrome Hearts (Troubleman 2005)
The Blow - Fists Up (Paper Television, 2006)
Microphones - Bass Drum Dream (Song Islands
Roland Kirk - I Say A Little Prayer (Volunteered Slavery)
Tim Buckley - Starsailor (Starsailor, 1970)
The Pastels - Leaving This Island (Illumination, 1997)
Evan Parker Electro Acoustic Ensemble - Drawn Inward (Drawn Inward, 1999)
Richard Crandell - Etude in E (Spring Steel, 2007)
Reiko Kudo - Mrs Wheeler - (Rice filed silently riping in the night, 2000)
Noviciat de Soeurs Missionaires de Notre-Dame d'Afrique & four religious drummers - Yesu Mkwbaze (Lipa Kodiya City Council)
Jackie De Shannon - When You Walk In My Room (Her Own Kind Of Light, The Best of)
Thurston Moore - Neverday (Trees Against The Academy, 2007)
Alex Chilton - Alligator Man (Like Flies On Sherbert, 1980)
National Jazz Trio Of Scotland - Phantom Pain
Borbetomagus - Pink Pants