Category: News

Everyone at Chemikal Underground were delighted when Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat’s ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ was announced as the winner of the inaugural Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award on Tuesday 19th June. With the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, doing the honours with the sealed envelope, it was pretty nail-biting stuff and a real pleasure to hear their names being read out.

Bill & Aidan picked up the grand cash prize of £20,000 as well as a unique, bound flip-book created by Glasgow School of Art graduate Fraser Clark for each of the ten shortlisted finalists. Aidan and Bill were quoted as being, rather inevitably, ‘delighted’ with the award while Award ‘Director’ and Chemikal founder Stewart Henderson duly retired to bed with a cold compress on his head to try and decompress from a five-month period best described as ‘taxing’.

The award itself represents an important, valuable arrival for Scotland’s music industry and will hopefully be the first of a great many.

Malcolm Middleton’s ‘Human Don’t Be Angry’ album is out now and available on deluxe heavy vinyl, cd and digital download.

In the bowels of a radioactive pop bunker somewhere between Glasgow and Falkirk, Malcolm Middleton has spent 18 months incubating a (super) heroic alter-ego.We all thought we knew the mild-mannered Middleton – sublime melodist with Arab Strap; acclaimed creator of solo albums like A Brighter Beat and Into The Woods – but behind the smile and modest beard, there throbbed the fluorescent brain of an ambient 80s overlord. He was hatching a plan for interplanetary domination, as soundtracked by the Art of Noise, Tangerine Dream, Whitesnake and Top Gun, and his plotting has borne brilliant fruit in the guise of Human Don’t Be Angry.

From the gorgeous alt-MOR swell of ‘Monologue: River’ to the lambent riffs and glimmering krautrock of ‘First Person Singular, Present Tense’ – not to mention the discombobulating art-pop thrill of ‘1985’ – Human Don’t Be Angry is a captivating, drum-embracing beast. It is fortified by guitar-fuelled instrumental adventures (‘The Missing Plutonium’), Frankie Goes to Hollywood homages (‘After the Pleasuredome’) and a fitting widescreen leitmotif (‘HDBA Theme’).  While Middleton’s solo lyrics are typified by self-deprecation, Human Don’t Be Angry’s vocalisms are more forthright, driven and loved-up. ‘I’m coming your way,’ he threatens on the cosmic marital aria, ‘Asklipiio’. Human, gird thy loins. THE LIST [4/5]

Malcolm Middleton’s announcement of his intention to “try something different” after he was done with 2009’s ‘Waxing Gibbous’ might have seemed an endeavour fated to be undone by his own all-pervading Malcolm Middleton-nes. Here the Scottish arch-miserablist has succeeded admirably. For, while ‘HDBA’ is a largely instrumental affair, one whose main musical cues are taken from ’80s power-pop and which only sparingly uses Middleton’s calling-card – that misanthropic, oddly comforting Caledonian burr – it’s a substantial and rewarding work: ‘Asklipiio’, for one, is up there with his very best. NME [8/10]

There are those out there who have been waiting for something, anything, from Holy Mountain that featured some of their recordings.  Well sometimes it’s the stuff you have to wait the longest for that’s the most satisfying and with ‘Earth Measures’, Holy Mountain leave us in no doubt about whether their blistering live shows will translate on record.

Recorded in 17 hours, the six tracks and 34 minutes of Earth Measures fuse all of the elements we’ve come to expect from Holy Mountain’s ridiculously entertaining live shows: MC5, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Iron Monkey, KISS, you name it…it’s all in there and as exhilaratingly loud as you could possibly hope for.

Holy Mountain will be playing at Nice N’ Sleazy’s as part of Insularis Records‘ pop-up shop for Record Store day.  Beyond that, you can catch them later in April at Edinburgh’s Banshee Labyrinth and then in Monorail for their ‘Earth Measures’ album launch. 

For those of you with fingernails bitten down to the quick in anticipation of Miaoux Miaoux’s debut album then chew no more: it’s finished, it’s due out on June 11th and, what’s more, it’s absolutely fantastic. Recorded in his own studio during 2011 and the early part of 2012 before decamping to Chem19 to mix the tracks with our very own Paul Savage, ‘Light of the North’ is an insistently melodic, self-assured celebration of all that is great in electronic-pop.

Due out on June 11th with preceding single ‘Better For Now’ highlighting the fresh, hook-laden approach of the album in general, make sure you catch Miaoux Miaoux at one of the many live appearances he has lined up over the coming months.

 

No prizes for guessing which particular 80’s movie standard is being
referenced here, although we must say it does make for some rather
eye-catching artwork. The opening salvo from Human Don’t be Angry’s
titular debut album, ‘The Missing Plutonium’ has that easy, familiar
hook to it that makes you think you’ve heard it a million times before
when, in actual fact, it’s just because Malcolm has got such a great ear
for a tune.

The b-side is the live version of a track entitled
‘Whatsleft’ and what it lacks in punctuation, it more than compensates
for in length, clocking in at just shy of 7½ minutes…

When we first heard about FOUND’s plans for #UNRAVEL it was hard not to get over-excited.  Their track record for excelling in the unconventional is beyond dispute (just ask BAFTA who hurled a gong their way in recognition of Cybraphon) so when the added spice of Aidan Moffat’s involvement came to light, well….

Suffice to say the end result is really quite spectacular and rather complex.  Exploring the reliability of memory and how our stories can often change depending on ta specific set of circumstances, #UNRAVEL manages to…ah fuck it, we’ll let the experts explain:

#UNRAVEL – 3 minute documentary from FOUND on Vimeo.

Not bad eh?

Hubby will be playing some more dates around Scotland in support of his much feted album ‘Thirteen Lost & Found’.  These dates will supplement those supporting Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat as well his other imminent European ventures soon to be announced.

While all of these shows fall, undeniably, into the ‘must attend’ category, we feel compelled to draw particular attention to the St Andrew’s show on 15th.  This will be at our friends at Fence‘s Eye O’ The Dug Festival featuring such luminaries as Django Django, KT Tunstall, Errors, Hot Chip and, mouth-wateringly, King Creosote and Jon Hopkins performing their Mercury nominated Diamond Mine album…

The Human Don’t Be Angry album is complete, the artwork finalised and we’re helping you dip your toe in the HDBA water with this free download from the album, the title track no less: H.D.B.A. Theme.

Malcolm Middleton’s new solo guise, Human Don’t Be Angry, finds him plowing a more ambient, largely instrumental furrow. Recorded and produced by Paul Savage at Chem19 Studios, the album, by Malcolm’s own admission, did not turn out exactly as he had planned, evolving instead into an irresistibly melodic collision of electronica, live drums, guitars and drum machines. 

Tracklist
1. The Missing Plutonium
2. H.D.B.A Theme
3. First Person Singular, Present Tense
4. After the Pleasuredome
5. Monologue: River
6. Jaded
7. 1985
8. Asklipiio
9. Getting Better (At Feeling Like Shit)

‘HDBA is a facade, a front so I can have fun again musically,’ says Middleton, who describes himself as having felt bored and restricted by what he jokingly refers to as the ‘heart-on-sleeve complaining’ of his solo work. ‘I thought I’d go back to what I enjoy,’ he says, ‘which is playing guitar and writing melodies.’

The album will be released on April 23rd with a digital download single, The Missing Plutonium available a few weeks prior.

Julian Corrie aka Miaoux Miaoux aka one of our most recent signings, spent a week in Chem19 mixing tracks with Paul (Savage) for his upcoming album and, from what we’ve heard so far, it’s going to be rather special.  Having already recorded and tracked the songs in his own studio, it was felt that some time with Paul in Chem19 would add the requisite amount of magic to what was already sounding like a phenomenal record.

You can see (and hear) Julian roll out some songs from the album when he provides able support for Warp’s new signing KWEZ at the The Art School in Glasgow on February 25th (see info to your right). 

We’re very excited that Loch Lomond – and when we say Loch Lomond, we mean all of Loch Lomond – are coming back over to the UK and Europe to play some shows with their full lineup.  For those of you lucky enough to have attended the amazing shows Ritchie and Brooke played last year, the prospect of having Loch Lomond’s full complement back on this side of the Atlantic is a mouth-watering one.

Their album from last year, ‘Little Me Will Start A Storm’ was a slow-burning, subtle classic: highlighting the wonderful vocal performances of Ritchie Young and the close, spare harmonies of his bandmates.  Their reputation as a live band precedes them, as they’ve left a trail of wide-eyed converts in their wake on tours in the US, most notably with The Decemberists.  Don’t miss out on catching them this year if you have the good fortune of them rolling into a town near you. 

Another reason to try and catch Loch Lomond live will be the opportunity of snagging their brand new ‘White Dresses EP’: recorded exclusively for Chemikal Underground, this 5 track EP features brand new, previously unreleased material including the track ‘Kicking With You Feet’ which will hopefully be picking up some radio play as in the coming weeks in support of the tour.  You can pre-order the EP by clicking the cover art to your right or pick one up from the band if you’re lucky enough to get to one of their shows.