My new music #1 - The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

This time last week I sat for three hours waiting for Fence's website to get back online so I could buy a ticket for Homegame. I swiftly became bored of hitting refresh repeatedly and decided to have a go at designing a poster for the upcoming Trapped Mice EP Launch. Being a bit crap at art I started looking for images I could 'creatively borrow' and a search along the lines of "neutral milk hotel gig poster" threw up the image below.

Coming up third in the search results was a picture from a review of The Rural Alberta Advantage's Hometowns, a band and album I'd never heard of before but for some reason I was attracted to the artwork. The review compared them to Neutral Milk Hotel and that was enough for me to give them a listen on Spotify, since then the album's been played almost non-stop around the house, if you've not heard of them before I really would recommend looking them up. The record is packed with catchy yet moody harmonies but if you need it narrowed down to a track or two then I'd say that Frank Ab and Don't Haunt This Place are must listens.

This album is neither Scottish or particularly new, it was originally released in 2008 by a bunch of Canadians but I'll definitely be playing something from it on our first show back on Fresh Air because the songs on it are simply astounding. The band's second album Departing is being released on the 1st March featuring Stamp which you can download for free from the link below, all you have to do is give Saddle Creek your email address.

Huzzah for server overload!

I Build Collapsible Mountains Session

On Saturday I hit the studio with Luke Joyce (I Build Collapsible Mountains) to take a second attempt at recording a session. If you listened to our show back on December 5th you would've heard Luke in studio with us but at the end of the show Charlotte unplugged the computer before it had saved the show meaning we had lost it all. On the plus side because we were recording off air we managed to get five songs recorded instead of the three we had before.

I've pinched the photo above from a session Luke did on one of Lloyd from Peenko's Fresh Air shows during the festival taken by David from Kid Canaveral. You can listen to the show here.

Luke's set was:

Easily Led

History Making

Jump The Blue/Where We Go Tomorrow

Quickest Exit

Rails

Download

Back in action!

Happy new year! Even for students we've taken a long Christmas break where I examined the damage writing my dissertation in the van and various Costa's while on tour with The Last Battle has done to my degree, worth it though!

This week seems to be the start of things kicking off in music for me in 2011 with Trapped Mice playing tonight at Bannermans before hitting Glasgow for recording at Elba Studios and Ayetunes's gig at the end of the week. We're also recording our first session of the year on Saturday with I Build Collapsible Mountains after our first attempt in a session with him ended in technical failure.

We should be back on Fresh Air at either the end of January or start of February and we have another 2of our favourite bands confirmed for sessions but you'll have to wait to find out who they are! We're ideally wanting to have a band on the show every week so if you want to come in or know any bands who would then get in touch via email or twitter.